USA > Georgia > The history of the State of Georgia from 1850 to 1881, embracing the three important epochs: the decade before the war of 1861-5; the war; the period of Reconstruction, v. 1 > Part 34
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From these expressions of the Federal Generals it can well be under- stood that the frightful severities of this campaign in Georgia and Car- olina were intended. It is not our purpose to follow the fighting far- ther. On the 23rd of February, 1865, Gen. Joseph E. Johnston was re-instated in command of the inconsequential fragment of a Southern army. In this little force was 1,100 South Carolina militia and reserves. It is not irrelevant to contrast this small body of Carolina militia, de- fending Carolina soil, to the 10,000 of Georgia militia raised and armed and put in the field by Gov. Brown for months in defense of Georgia soil. The fact illustrates not the superior patriotism of the Georgia citizens, but the superior vigor and zeal of Georgia's war Governor.
On the 3rd of February, 1865, took place the celebrated Hampton Roads Peace Conference, between Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward of the North, and Mr. Stephens, Mr. Hunter and Judge Campbell of the South, which resulted in nothing. This Conference is given in full in Mr. Stephens' great work, "The War Between the States," and consti- tutes one of the most valuable chapters of that important work. It is
323
GENERAL JOHN B. GORDON.
a singular coincidence that an illustrious Georgian should have been the main actor in both of the two efforts at peace between the sections, and it keeps up the remarkable destiny of Georgia as the crowning factor of the revolution.
But the end was at hand. The colossal contest was drawing to its desperate and tragical conclusion, and it was a strange and unerring exemplification of the influential fatality of the State of Georgia in the struggle, that in the person of her gallant Gordon she figured so con- spicuously in these fateful final scenes. He was the second figure to Lee in the dismal glory that marked the gory failure of the revolution. In the terrible last days, it was the ringing name of John Gordon that most frequently thrilled the public ear. In the mighty throes of this expiring and gigantic war, it was the knightly figure of Gordon that led the forlorn hopes of the falling cause. It was Gordon with his unconquered bayonets, that last left the futile fortifications of Peters- burg; it was Gordon, undaunted and undismayed, that in the calamitous retreat led and fought in front of the enemy with his shattered band of heroes; and it was this same Gordon that was chosen to cut his way through the encompassing legions with his fragment of 2,000 intrepid men, in the most forlorn hope that was ever contemplated by soldierly desperation. And when the historic scene of Appomattox Court House came, with its memorable surrender of the army of Virginia, and its consequent collapse of the Southern cause, it was Georgia's Gordon that divided with his great chieftain, Lee, the sad celebrity of that heroic but irreparable conclusion of the grand drama.
On the 2nd of April, 1865, Lee's line at Petersburg was broken, and Davis and his cabinet left Richmond and went to Danville. On the 9th of April, Lee surrendered. On the 26th of April, Johnston surrendered, and in swift succession followed other surrenders up to the 25th of May, when the great war was ended-forever. Georgia witnessed and felt the horrors of a cavalry invasion by Gen. Wilson of the Federal army from Alabama, that officer reaching Macon at the time of being stopped from farther devastation by the truce following upon Johnston's surrender.
The President and his cabinet, the small nucleus of the dead Confed- erate government, the helpless representatives of its defunct authority, were fugitives and uncaptured. The State of Georgia was not to be balked of its curious fate of a foremost agency in the revolution, even in the final matter of being the arena of the last order of Confederate power, and the theater of the dissolution of its administration and capture of its President.
1
324
DAVIS AND CABINET AT WASHINGTON, GA.
As soon as Richmond fell Mr. Davis and his cabinet went to Danville. Remaining there a few days, he proceeded to North Carolina. When the armistice was arranged between Sherman and Johnston, Mr. Davis determined to go to Texas. A company of Dibrell's brigade of cavalry was assigned as escort. This was company B of the Ninth Kentucky cavalry, Captain Given Campbell. Mr. Davis had with him Gen. Breck- enridge, secretary of war; John H. Reagan, postmaster general; ex-Governor Lubbock, of Texas, aid-de-camp; Burton N. Harrison, private secretary; Col. William Preston Johnson, Lieut. Hathaway, Mrs. Davis and four children, Miss Howell, his wife's sister, and Midshipman Howell, her brother. At Abbeville, S. C., his escort left him, except the captain and ten men, including privates H. C. Anders, James H. Smith, J. T. Walbert, W. N. Ingrain, Heath and Hartness. The party had five wagons and three ambulances. Mrs. Davis and the family were sent on ahead. Mr. Davis arrived at Washington, Wilkes county, Ga., the home of Gen. Robert Toombs, on the 4th day of May, 1865. Gen. Bragg, Gen. J. M. St. Johns, commissary general, Gen. A. R. Lawton, quartermaster-general, and a large number of Confederate officers arrived there. The various heads of departments all had left Richmond together, and they remained with Mr. Davis in Washington, Ga., until they separated by his order. It was here that the Confederate admin- istration dissolved and the last official order of the Confederate govern- ment was issued, which is given in this chapter; and it was a singular and suggestive coincidence, strikingly exemplifying the strange caprices of human events, that a little country village, in a section of Georgia out of the range of military operations, and the home of the man who did more than all other men in the South to spring the revolution, and who had been the organizing premier of the Confederate government, should, by a fantastic fatality, be the spot where the heroic but ill-fated venture went to pieces and its last note of official authority was given.
President Davis and most of his staff stayed at the Heath House in Washington. The building was occupied also as a bank. Mr. Davis was very much worn, and saw but little company while in Washington. He remained there about thirty-six hours, reaching the town at noon of the 4th, and leaving it the 5th of May. St. Johns and Reagan spent the night with Gen. Toombs, as did Major Raphael J. Moses, of the commis- sary department, from whom we have obtained the most interesting particulars of this matter, and to whom we are indebted for a copy of the official order referred to. Major Moses was commissary for the State of Georgia, having been appointed to fill the place of Major Locke, who
325
THE FAMOUS CONFEDERATE SPECIE TRAIN.
had died. He had been sent to South-western Georgia by Gen. Lee, to try what effect direct appeals from one fresh from the field would have in inducing the people at home to send forward more liberal supplies of food to the suffering troops in Virginia, who, almost without rations, had been opposing the well-fed troops of Grant at the Wilderness and other points. On Major Locke's death, Major Moses was put in his place, and his duties as state commissary located him at Augusta in April, 1865, and his presence was required along the line of the Georgia railroad, and at the time written of his duties called him to Washington, where he received from Gen. Toombs an invitation to stay with him. Such hospitality was acceptable beyond expression, at a time when the pay of a Confederate major was $162.50 per month, in a currency that com- manded at the same time a day's board for the moderate amount of $50.
While Major Moses was in Washington, the President and his party arrived. Among the other attractions, that which filled the public eye of the watchful Washingtonians almost as much as the distinguished visitors, was the far-famed specie train, containing really between $100,000 and $200,000, which amount Dame Rumor exaggerated to untold millions, and which was an object of keen stimulus for the popular cupidity. The bulk of this money was in uncoined bullion-mostly bars of the precious metal, ummolded into dollars.
Gen. Dibrell gives this interesting account of what he knew of this famous and exaggerated money:
" I was directed to furnish four additional wagons to transport the specie, and Gen. Breckenridge in person directed Gen. Duke, with his brigade, to guard the specie train. We crossed the Savannah river and halted near Washington, Ga., about sunrise on the morning of the 2d of May. The specie train was parked in a lot near a house occupied by Gen. Breckenridge for head-quarters. The specie was taken into his room. I was present part of the time. The first box opened contained bullion, and was nailed up again. By direction of Gen. Breckenridge, muster rolls of all troops present were made out. This money for the troops, upward of $108,000, was turned over to Maj. E. C. White, my division quartermaster, (he being the senior quartermaster present,) and the amount due each soldier, $26.25, was paid through the regimental quartermaster on each muster roll. Each officer and soldier, including infantry and cavalry, as well as Gen. John C. Breckenridge, received just the same amount, $26.25.
" Maj. White, after the payments were all made, handed me a report in writing of the amount received by him and the payments made to each command, showing how he had disbursed the $108,000. This report I brought home with me, but have lost or mislaid it. Maj. White was a citizen of Anne Arundel county, Md., but of late I have been un- able to learn his address. G. G. DIBRELL."
Just before the President (Mr. Davis) left, Gen. Joseph F. Johnston sent Major Moses an order to furnish 250,000 rations to troops return-
326
INCIDENTS AT WASHINGTON, GA.
ing to their homes. The Confederate States had at the time of John- ston's capitulation with Sherman a very large supply, comparatively speaking, of rations at different points on the Georgia railroad, which connects Atlanta and Augusta, some one hundred and seventy miles apart, but as soon as it was known that the last hope of the Confederacy had passed away, the half-starved people along the line of railroad soon transferred the Confederate commissary stores to more convenient places, and there was not a week's rations for one hundred men from one end of the road to the other.
We not only had no rations to feed the returning troops, but if we had had enough to fill every storehouse on the route, there was no way of protecting them. It was in this contingency that Maj. Moses wrote and induced the Commissary General, St. Johns, to sign the last official order ever drawn by the Secretary of War of the Confederate govern- ment. It was signed by Gen. J. M. St. Johns, by direction of the Con- federate Secretary of War, in Washington, Ga., while in transitu and bound for parts unknown. It ordered Maj. Moses to arrange with some Federal general at Augusta or Macon to supply the returning troops and provide the hospitals with rations and necessary medicines, and for that purpose apply to the Confederate government for the necessary funds. The order being signed, Maj. Moses did apply, but it was like calling spirits from the vasty deep. They did not come. In this emergency Maj. Moses applied to Gen. Toombs, and he obtained an order from Gen. Breckenridge, the Confederate Secretary of War, upon the officer in charge of the specie train, to pay Maj. Moses 840,000 in bullion, of which $10,000 was to be turned over to the Quartermaster Department, in charge of Felix R. Alexander, Assistant Quartermaster under Gen. Alexander R. Lawton, the Confederate Quartermaster-Gen- eral. Armed with this order, Maj. Moses overtook the train of wagons a mile or so from Washington, the night of its departure, and received and receipted for what was estimated or guessed to be $40,000 of gold bullion.
This bullion was carried back 'to Washington, and being guarded over night, $10,000 was paid over to the Quartermaster-General, Lawton, and with the other $30,000 Maj. Moses started for Augusta, guarded by four members of the Washington artillery. Maj. Moses had a stirring time with his perilous treasure. It was, of course, known immediately that he had it in possession. The war had unhinged men's ideas and principles. But still more demoralizing of the public conscience was the desperate stress of the people, coupled with the knowledge
327
ATTEMPTED RAPE OF THE BULLION.
that the Confederate cause was dead, and that this specie was ownerless and a probable treasure trove and booty for the Federal soldiery. Maj. Moses, with punctilious honor, was resolved to part with it'only with his life and to deliver it according to orders in fulfillment of its kindly mission.
On the train from Washington to Barnett, where the branch road joins the Georgia railroad, he was watched and menaced with constant danger. At Barnett he had his car switched off before the train arrived at the depot and left in a cut, but the eager crowd swarmed around it. The car was taken up to the depot, and for several hours, until the Augusta train arrived, Maj. Moses was in the most perturbing perplexity and strain of his life. There were some two or three hundred returil- ing soldiers, besides the no less determined citizens. These desperate men, a reckless mob, coolly demanded the money, as being as much theirs as any one's, and they were armed to enforce their demand. A number of soldiers and officers stood by Maj. Moses, giving him friendly aid, among whom were Private Shepherd, formerly of Columbus, Ga., then of Texas, and Gen. Sanford, who is now practicing law in Mont- gomery, Ala. Maj. Moses remonstrated quietly and argumentatively with the menacing men surrounding him, and appealed to their honor and patriotism and stated his orders. At length it seemed nothing could avert the attempted ravishment of this specie.
A wounded officer seemed to be the ringleader. Finally, as if by an inspiration, Maj. Moses stepped up to this officer and addressed him in these words:
" Sir, your rank indicates that you are a gentleman, and your wound testifies that you have been a. gallant soldier. I appeal to you in the spirit of that honor that belongs to all brave men, to assist me in the discharge of this trust."
The officer promptly responded that he would willingly aid in the matter, and he went around among the threatening soldiers, quieting them. Maj. Moses was enabled to safely continue his trip, and delivered the bullion to Gen. Molineux, stationed at Augusta, and did so upon his promise to feed the returning soldiers and see that the sick in the hos- pitals were cared for. The bullion was weighed and turned out in excess fully $5,000. It was delivered by order of Gen. Molineux to one Adams, of Massachusetts, then acting as provost marshal of Augusta. Maj. Moses has since attempted to learn whether this money ever reached the Federal treasury, and went in company with Maj. J. D. Waddell to Washington city, and delivered it to the Hon. Jerry
328
GOLD FOR GENERAL TOOMBS.
Black, with the request that he would trace the fund, but he has never heard the result of the investigation.
Just after the departure of Gen. Breckenridge from Washington with a body of cavalry, a cavalry man rode back in a gallop and threw a bag of gold coin over the fence around Gen. Toombs' residence, and then rapidly rode away. No explanation was given of this liberal act, no instructions accompanied the money, and there was no clew ever obtained as to the motive or purpose of the soldier. The bag contained 85,000 in gold currency. Gen. Toombs at the time was in great stress for money, and was borrowing gold for his contemplated flight out of the country, but he swore with a round oath he would not touch a dol- lar of this money, so strangely and unexpectedly showered upon him. The bag was turned over to Capt. Abrahams, a Federal commissary, for the purchase of flour and other provisions for the returning Confed- erate soldiers, and Maj. Moses states that his son aided in. this disposition of the fund. Gen. Toombs was a princely financier and has always had a lordly scorn of unclean or illegitimate money. - His escape and adven- tures abroad were right romantic. After Mr. Davis and his party had all scattered out from Washington, and Gen. Toombs was about to get away, a Federal soldier rang at the door. Gen. Toombs himself went to the door, and the soldier told him he was after Gen. Toombs and asked if he was at home. The General replied " Yes," and asked the soldier to wait while he informed the General. Going in and telling Mrs. Toombs to delay the soldier as long as possible, Gen. Toombs went out the back door, mounted a horse that he had ready back of his premises, in anticipation of just such a contingency as this, and took to the woods, making for the coast. Mrs. Toombs held the soldier on one pretext and another for nearly half an hour, carrying him from room to room, all locked and the keys lost. These moments enabled Gen. Toombs to get away.
In England he was without a dollar in money; but a banking firm, for which he had done legal business before the war, learned of his being in that country and tendered him $100,000 for his use, which he declined, except several thousand dollars that he used for a friend. He was traveling on the train and met accidentally a nobleman whose acquaintance he had made in Washington, and this gentleman imme- diately consulted him professionally on a matter connected with some American securities, and for this legal opinion Gen. Toombs received a fee of $5,000, which relieved his necessities. No man in the Union has been a more successful maker of money than Gen. Toombs.
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THE LAST ORDER OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT, Given at Washington, Wilkes County, Georgia, May 5, 1865.
329
THE LAST ORDER OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.
We now come to the last official writing ever issued by the Confed- erate administration. For four years it had conducted this unparalleled war, directing the movements of a million of soldiers and disbursing $1,000,000,000. It had issued orders affecting the destinies of States, armies and a grand nation. It had witnessed the dissolution of its massive hopes, and here was the end of it all, the last official act of an agent of such colossal duties. The paper is both intensely interesting and touchingly pathetic. It is as historic a curiosity as the world affords, this last flicker of a mammoth revolution, this final order of a stupendous rebellion-this concluding authoritative act of the war of the semi-world. Such thoughits cluster around it as would make a grand epic. It is a short document, written upon the Confederate made paper that was manufactured in those days, a yellow, coarse, porous writing material, itself a significant symbol of Confederate times. The paper is of the commercial note size, thin, flazy, hardly bearing ink, rather a tough textured, blotting sheet, than a usable writing medium. As an ordinary document of every day life it would be valueless. It merely directed the payment of $10,000 of gold bullion, and on the order is written the receipt for the bullion, the paper thus testifying to the honesty and promptness of the disbursing officer of a great shattered government-an administration gone down hopelessly in a grand ruin. But as the last order of that Confederacy, that for four years had main- tained the mightiest war of all history, that was alike the center of such an innmeasurable range of hopes and memories, and the striking object of such an immense and turbulent conflict of blood, it has an interest and a poetry that cannot be expressed and that will grow with time.
By some curious chance the receipt comes first, and then follows the order, indicating that it was all one transaction. The order was written by Maj. R. J. Moses, as also the receipt. We give the order first:
" Maj. R. J. Moses, C. S., will pay $10,000, the amount of bullion appropriated to Q. M. Dep. by Sec. War, to Maj. R. R. Wood. By order of Q. M. Gen. " W. F. ALEXANDER, Maj. and Ass. to Q. M. Gen. " 5 May, 1865, Washington."
The receipt is as follows:
" WASHINGTON, May 5, '65.
" Received from Maj. R J. Moses three boxes estimated to contain $10,000 in bullion. This has not been weighed or counted, and is to be opened before two commissioned officers and a certificate of contents made, which certificate is to be forwarded to Maj. R. J. Moses, and by the amount certified to the undersigned is to be bound.
"R. R. WOOD, Maj. and Q. M."
With Mr. Davis was captured the balance of the coin and bullion,
330
THE LAST OF THE CONFEDERATE BULLION.
which was carried to Washington, D. C. In 1866, certain Virginia and Louisiana banks claimed that this money was their property and not the property of the Confederate States. Treasurer Spinner insisted upon a particular description of the captured coin, which could not be given. Subsequently, Secretary McCulloch, by order of President Johnson, directed Treasurer Spinner to turn the money over to the claimants, but on consultation with Secretary Stanton, he refused to do so, and soon after the bullion was coined. At Treasurer Spinner's instance, Congress . passed a resolution, approved March 22, 1867, ordering that this money be conveyed into the treasury by warrant. This was done. In 18:3 Judge Joseph Casey, attorney for the Bank of Louisiana, made another attempt in the United States Court of Claims, to get this money. He had a rule issued on the Secretary of the Treasury to show the kind and amount of coin captured, whether there were certain kegs of gold, Spanish and American coin, sixty kegs or less, and boxes of silver coin, and the disposition made of such coin, and the authority for the dis- position. Secretary Boutwell referred the rule to Treasurer Spinner, who gave the information desired, but claimed that Congress, having by resolution disposed of the matters, was the only power that could give relief. This appears to have ended.this episode of the last of the Con- federate finances captured on Georgia soil with the President of the Con- federacy in the sunny May of 1865.
It was a singular coincidence that the Davis government should have finally dissolved in a place having the same name as the seat of govern- ment-Washington-the objective goal of the war efforts of that ad- ministration. It was a fitting conclusion of the young government that, after four years of unequaled resistance to a Power that had been backed by the civilized world, it marked its last act of authority by a thoughtful loyalty to the comfort of its penniless and starved defenders.
On this 5th day of May, 1865, the Confederate administration thus gathered at Washington, Ga., and standing at last shorn of every ves- tige of authority, means, support and power, helplessly fugitive, its long-fought cause done forever, dissolved and scattered, never more to meet. General Breckenridge, the Confederate Secretary of War, went in one direction ; General St. Johns, the Commissary General, in an- other ; General Lawton, the Quartermaster-General, in still another : while Mr. Davis and Mr. Reagan, the Postmaster-General, fled leisurely at the rate of about thirty miles a day into the interior of Georgia. It was a strange want of vigilance and rapidity in Mr. Davis as an escap-
331
GEORGIA THE HEAVIEST LOSER OF THE SOUTHI.
ing fugitive, and it almost seemed as if he either did not apprehend or did not care for capture.
At Irwin's Cross Roads, in Washington county, a band of despera- does made a demonstration upon Mr. Davis and his party, ignorant of who they were. At Dublin another attack was threatened by some thirty deserters, but in both cases the bands were frightened or per- suaded off. A federal force of about two hundred cavalry, under. Lieu- tenant Colonel B. D. Pritchard, of the Fourth and Second Michigan regiments, finally captured Mr. Davis and his party near Irwinville, at daylight on the morning of the 10th day of May, 1865. The federal cavalry was divided and ran upon one another unexpectedly, firing and killing several soldiers.
For a long time the Northern press circulated the statement that Mr. Davis was captured in woman's clothes, but the statement was false, and was undoubtedly fabricated to throw ridicule upon him and the cause he represented. The report was an ungracious piece of malignancy, as ungenerous as it was malicious.
With the capture of President Davis on Georgia soil, the final blow was given to the Confederate government and the Southern cause that it rep- resented. The first act of war had been committed on Georgia territory, and the ultimate ending, by a providential fortune, came here too. The brilliant beginning and the calamitous conclusion both belong to Georgia, and with her other masterful instrumentality in the mighty episode, weave together a story of heroism, power and disaster, that will live in all ages.
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