Had Garibaldi or Napoleon after Sedan been subjected to the crowning indignity inflicted upon Jefferson Davis all Europe would have rung with the infamy of the brutal act, and yet the whirlwind of sectional strife had so fanned the fires of prejudice and hatred that the act was generally applauded at the North, and the officer responsible for this crime against civilization for many years exhibited the shackles as though they had been a trophy of honorable victory. Let us as Americans be thankful that such perverted sentiment was short lived, and that a day came when the infamous act was repudiated as wantonly cruel and brutal, and its perpetrators were more anxious to avoid the responsibility for it than formerly they had been to assume it. There is now no longer any doubt as to the person who is responsible for placing Jefferson Davis in irons, but it is only fair to General Miles to say that he was very young at the time. The grave charges against Mr. Davis, no doubt, served to mislead his immature judgment, and from the fact that Louis Napoleon had recently escaped from a fortification in France he, no doubt, believed that the extreme and cruel measure was necessary. In justice it should be further stated that as soon as General Miles believed the danger of escape no longer great he gave orders for the removal of the shackles, and thereafter treated Mr. Davis with much kindness. The story of Mr. Davis' two years' imprisonment at Fortress Monroe is too well known from Dr. Craven's impartial, if somewhat fragmentary, account to need further repetition here. XXXI. Efforts to Execute Mr. Davis It is a difficult matter at this distance of time to realize the attitude of public sentiment against Jefferson Davis the state prisoner of Fortress Monroe. As the chief executive of the late Confederacy, he was, in popular estimation, the incarnation, if not the proximate cause, of all the sins and suffering of Rebellion, but worse than all the administration which in feverish, puerile haste had declared him an accessory to the assassination of Mr. Lincoln and upon that score had paid out of the public treasury $100,000 for his capture, could not, or rather dared not reverse its attitude and speak the truth. The result was, of course, that the vast majority of the people at the North believed Mr. Davis to be as guilty of murder as he was of treason, and consequently there was a mighty clamor for his summary execution. Had there been a scintilla of evidence, nay, had there been any fact which human ingenuity could have tortured into a plausible resemblance to guilty knowledge of Mr. Lincoln's death, no one will now doubt that Jefferson Davis would have been murdered as was Mrs. Serrat.