by his "brigade band" to the illustrious prisoner, of which—if it ever occurred—the object of it was happily unconscious. He also tells us that "Mrs. Davis was very watchful lest some disrespect should be shown her husband;" whereas the true and manifest cause of her anxiety was the wifely apprehension that some pretext might be devised for his assassination.
General Wilson fails in some respects to do himself justice. His reception of Mr. Davis, on his arrival at Macon, was more courteous and respectful than he represents it. The troops were drawn up in double lines, facing inward, and presented arms to the Confederate President as he passed between them. He was conducted, with his family, to private rooms at the hotel where the Federal commander was quartered, and a message was brought, inquiring whether be preferred to call on General Wilson, or to receive him in his own apartments. The answer was, that he would call on General Wilson, to whom he was accordingly conducted. (There was a reason for this use of the option offered, which it is not necessary to state.) The conversation that followed is not correctly reported by General Wilson, except that part of it relating to West Point, which was introduced by himself. Those who know Mr. Davis' keen sense of social and official propriety will not need to be told that what is said of his criticisms upon the principal Confederate leaders is purely fictitious. No such conversation occurred, and it is simply impossible that it could have occurred under the circumstances.
I deny the statement on the best authority, but no authority besides that of the moral evidence would be necessary to refute the assertion that the Confederate President could talk to a stranger and an enemy in a strain of gushing confidence which he never indulged in conversation with his own familiar friends. It is but charity to presume that General Wilson has confounded opinions attributed to Mr. Davis by popular rumor (whether right or wrong) with imaginary expressions of them to himself.
In the course of the interview, General Wilson abruptly and rather indelicately introduced the subject of the reward offered by the President of the United States for the arrest of Mr. Davis, and the charge against him of complicity in the assassination of Mr. Lincoln, inquiring whether he had heard of it. "I have," was the answer, "and there is one man who knows it to be a lie."
