[Andersonville Volume 3 by John McElroy]@TWC D-Link bookAndersonville Volume 3 CHAPTER LIII 8/9
What they were I know not, but I am informed by the Rev.Robert McCune, who was then Chaplain of the One Hundred and Twenty-Eighth Ohio Infantry and the Post of Johnson's Island and who was the spiritual adviser appointed to prepare Davis for execution, that the sentence was hardly pronounced before Davis was visited by an emissary, who told him to dismiss his fears, that he should not suffer the punishment. It is likely that leading Baltimore Unionists were enlisted in his behalf through family connections, and as the Border State Unionists were then potent at Washington, they readily secured a commutation of his sentence to imprisonment during the war. It seems that the justice of this world is very unevenly dispensed when so much solicitude is shown for the life of such a man, and none at all for the much better men whom he assisted to destroy. The official notice of the commutation of the sentence was not published until the day set for the execution, but the certain knowledge that it would be forthcoming enabled Davis to display a great deal of bravado on approaching what was supposed to be his end.
As the reader can readily imagine, from what I have heretofore said of him, Davis was the man to improve to the utmost every opportunity to strut his little hour, and he did it in this instance.
He posed, attitudinized and vapored, so that the camp and the country were filled with stories of the wonderful coolness with which he contemplated his approaching fate. Among other things he said to his guard, as he washed himself elaborately the night before the day announced for the execution: "Well, you can be sure of one thing; to-morrow night there will certainly be one clean corpse on this Island." Unfortunately for his braggadocio, he let it leak out in some way that he had been well aware all the time that he would not be executed. He was taken to Fort Delaware for confinement, and died there some time after. Frank Beverstock went back to his regiment, and served with it until the close of the war.
He then returned home, and, after awhile became a banker at Bowling Green, O.
He was a fine business man and became very prosperous.
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