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Johnstown Tribune Unknown Date HOW JUDGE BLACK SAVED THEM Thrilling Account of the Narrow Escape from Death, Dur- ing the Rebellion, of Members of Companies B and K, Fifty-fourth Regiment Reprinted, by Request, from the Somerset Democrat of December 2, 1896.      The following story of the War of '61-'65 has never appeared in print. The few persons named have gone to their graves, and he who bore the most prominent part in it has by that fact absolved those who heard it, from his own lips from the secrecy which he enjoined.      Outside of those who commanded armies in the field, the two most salient characters of the Rebellion were Abraham Lincoln and Edwin M. Stanton. Mr. Lincoln previous to 1856 was a Whig, and after that an adherent of the organized Republican party. Stanton up to the time he was made Secretary of War by Lincoln, had been an uncompromising Democrat. When Mr. Buchanan's Cabinet was formed and the late Judge Jere S. Black, of Pennsylvanla, was made Attorney-General, he sent for Edwin M. Stanton and made him First Assistant Attorney-General. They maintained these relations up to the period of the resigmation of Mr. Cass as Secretary of State, when Judge Black succeeded to that portfolio, and at the latter's request Mr. Stanton was made Attorney-General.      The character of Abraham Lincoln is too well known to require me to say anything of it. Possibly no two men holding like relations were ever more unlike than Lincoln and Stanton. Mr. Lincoln was mild, honest, determined, but always leaning to the side of mercy. Stanton was a man of stubborn fiber and combative instincts, and Lincoln and his War Secretary were often at cross purposes, but in such cases the President usually gave way, unless he was convinced that to do so was to injure the great cause in which his whole being was enlisted.      The writer knew Mr. Stanton personally before, during, and after the late struggle. His sturdy figure, long iron-gray beard, preoccupied, restless manner as Secretary of War can never be forgotten by those who came in contact with him. His whole character seemed to have been changed by the early events of the War. Many attributed this to a suddenly acquired vindictiveness toward the South. He seemed averse to meeting his former political friends, and we all know that a shadow hangs over his taking-off that has never been removed. At the time many of the newspapers insisted that his death was suicidal, the result of brooding over the horrors of a war that he might have done much to mitigate. I am loth to believe in the theory of suicide.      The almost tragedy I am about to rehearse brings out the characters of three great men, all of whom will figure largely in the history of the days when the Nation was fighting for its life. The story, as I have said, has never appeared in print. I got it from the lips of the late Judge Black himself, and several gentlemen on whom I have called, who also heard it from the same source, corroborate my version.      Outside of its interest as an episode of the War, it gives an insight into the characters of Mr. Lincoln, Secretary Stanton, and Judge Black at a period when the best and worst in men was brought out by a great crisis.      Early in December, 1862, two companies, B and K, of the Fifty-fourth Pennsylvania Volunteers, which had for some months been guarding the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad east of Cumberland, Md., were captured by a detachment of Confederate cavalry under Gen. Imboden. After a long, round-about march, they were taken to Richmond, Va., and confined as prisoners of war.      Gen. McNeil was then in command of the Federal forces in the Department of Missouri, and a Capt. Strahn was Provost Marshal at Palmyra. At Palmyra, Mo., there was a worthless busybody, posing as a Union sympathizer, who was continually going to Strahn and telling him that citizens were plotting against him, and his life was momentarily in danger. About this time the informer suddenly disappeared, and, although he had only gone over into Illinois, and later turned up, alive and well, Strahn had twelve of his best Confederate citizens of Palmyra arrested, and, after an informal trial, had them shot.      This information came to Stanton about the time that the two companies of the Fifty-fourth Pennsylvania were captured, and the Confederates had decided that as an offset to the twelve men shot at Palmyra they would execute the 120 Union soldiers captured by Imboden, ten to one. In some way it came to the ears of the captured Union men that they were to answer with their lives for the deaths of the twelve Confederates within a few days.      Among these captured Federals was Lieut. Harry G. Baer, of Somerset, Pa., who managed to get a letter smuggled to his brother, Judge Baer, of the same place, giving the facts. On receipt of it Judge Baer at once communicated with the late Judge Jere S. Black, at his home in York. Judge Black received the information in the afternoon of a day just about forty-eight hours before these men of the Fifty-fourth were to be executed. Most of them were from his native county--Somerset. Many of them the Judge knew personally, or at least knew their fathers. The Judge's whole heart was enlisted at once. He had little time to spare. Taking the earliest train available, he arrived in Washington some time after dark, and at once drove to the War Department and was shown into Mr. Stanton's private room. It was literally bearding the lion in his den, for those who remember the War Secretary at that time will never forget his leonine manner and his hard set face that never smiled through the long years of the War.      Judge Black hurriedly laid the case of the men held as hostages at Richmond before his whilom friend Stanton paced up and down the room like a caged wild beast, listening, without making any comment. As the Judge closed he said, "Stanton, what will you do?"      "Nothing," said the latter. "I am tired of these unceasing appeals."      It was now 10 o'clock at night. Although Judge Black was discouraged, he was determined to save the lives of his old neighbors or their sons. He hurried over to the White House to see the President. The overworked Executive met him kindly, listened to and was deeply moved by the the Judge's story. After a long talk, the President said:      "Judge, I sympathize deeply with you and these condemned men and am willing to do anything I can for them. But Stanton is Secretary of War. I have left all such matters to him. Commander-in-Chief of the Army, as I am, if I took any independent action in their case, I might produce a rupture in my Cabinet, and at this time that would be fatal. Go back to Stanton and tell him it is my wish, although not my order, that he exchange these men at once."      It was now nearing midnight. Judge Black went over to the War Department again and gave Stanton the message of the President. But Stanton was immovable. Still clinging to an intangible hope, the Judge went to the White House a second time and saw Mr. Lincoln. The President repeated what he had before said, and Judge Black saw that his only hope was in a final appeal to Stanton. Tired, discouraged, but yet hopeful, he made his last call at the War Department, only to find Stanton in the same unbending, almost brutal, frame of mind in which he had left him.      "Stanton," said the Judge, "I have been to see the President a second time and he reiterates, with emphasis, his former request that you exchange these men and save them to their friends and families."      The Secretary repeated his refusal, as did the Judge his request. As the bells were tolling midnight Stanton said:      "Judge Black, I will never grant this request. The preponderance of prisoners is largely in our favor, and, if necessary, I will have executed fifty Confederates for every Union man condemned rather than yield."      Judge Black was not made of the material that gives up a fight as long as there is a shade of hope. The two men paced up and down the floor of Stanton's office for some minutes, speechless. Finally Judge Black wheeled, and, suddenly facing the grim Secretary of War, said:      "Stanton. I have asked you to rescue the lives of these poor fellows on grounds of public policy, expediency, and humanity; you show no disposition to use your great power to save them. I now propose to make a final appeal. When I was made Attorney-General of the United States by Mr. Buchanan you were rather an obscure lawyer in western Pennsylvania, but, I admit, an able one. I recognized your ability when I was on the Supreme Bench of that State. Under any other circumstances I would not have alluded to this, but I believe, and I think you will admit, that whatever position or power you own to-day is due, indirectly at least, to me. I now ask you as a personal favor, without any injury to the great cause you represent, that you have these men exchanged."      There was silence for a few moments, and then Stanton looked up and said, moved by feelings he had never before exhibited during his incumbency of the War Office: "Judge Black, your appeal is irresistible." and then, glancing at the clock, he telegraphed to the Navy Yard to be in readiness to convey the Judge to Fortress Monroe and thence up the James River to City Point where flags of truce of the two armies were accustomed to meet to make exchange of prisoners.      Judge Black was rapidly driven to the Navy Yard, and although a vessel was always kept under steam for an emergency like this, there was some delay in having the commandant aroused and getting it under way. It was nearly 2 o'clock a. m. when he found himself steaming down the Potomac with carte blanche in his pocket from the President, and Secretary of War to use any honorable means to save the Pennsylvanians. There was delay again at Fortress Monroe, and also the place below City Point where flags of truce were sent out from vessels on one side of the line to those on the other, and it was late in the day when Judge Ould, the Confederate Commissioner of Exchange and Judge Black met on a boat in the James River. The two Judges had been acquainted in happier days and met very cordially, although Judge Black had almost as stubborn a man to deal with as he had found in Stanton. But he made the same personal appeal to Ould that he had to Stanton. Judge Ould referred to what he called the brutal, uncivilized treatment of the Palmyra prisoners and said that if it was to be a question of retaliation it might just as well commence then and there.      I should have said that Ould, as well as Stanton, was an Assistant in the Attorney-General's Department under Judge Black during Buchanan's Administration. But, to cut a long story short, Judge Ould finally agreed to the exchange, and on the very day the Federal prisoners were to have been hanged or shot, after Ould had hurried message by wire and courier to Richmond to save them, they found themselves free and happy on their way down the James River for their homes to recuperate from their long confinement in a military prison.      There is an incident connected with this little chapter of War history that I am convinced is perfectly well authenticated, yet on account of its reflection on American manhood I hesitate to repeat it. Strahn, the Provost Marshal under Gen. McNeil In the Department of Missouri, was a man of weak or no character. Palmyra was an old and wealthy town, and among twelve men held as hostages and afterwards executed for the supposed assassination of the go-between I have aluded to was a young man of good family and but lately married to a beautiful young girl whose father was a man of means. After all other efforts had failed to save this man's life, the young wife herself went to Strahn and made a tearful, but fruitless appeal. Finally, as she was leaving Strahn's quarters, he said: "If you will produce five hundred dollars in gold here to-morrow I will see that your husband is released." She started out at once, in a short time returned with the money, and, placing it in Strahn's hand, said: Now give me an order for my husband's release." The villain's thirst for gold was somewhat satisfied, but he had other and lower passions, and made a demand on the young wife for what in all the world is dearest to a woman. With blushing cheek and flashing eye, she at first disdained the barter. But what will not a woman do for the man she loves? I will not follow the story to its close. The man was executed after his young wife had made a sacrifice as great as that of any of the martyrs of old ever made on the rack or at the stake.                JAS. B. TREDWELL.