Davis held two critical cabinet meetings on the afternoon of the twelfth and the morning of the thirteenth. Johnston and Beauregard attended both. At the first, the president spoke earnestly about promptly gathering deserters and conscripts to create an army large enough to give the Confederacy a chance. Although the two generals demurred, Davis clung to his view and adjourned the deliberations until the next morning when Secretary of War Breckinridge would be present.
The session on April 13 Postmaster General Reagan termed “solemnly funereal.” As he did so often, Davis began with small talk, but soon he became serious. He admitted the scale of recent disasters, but did not think them fatal. Then he asked Johnston and Beauregard for their views. The soldiers replied they saw no course but to sue for peace. They had no force capable of keeping up the war and did not believe one could be raised. The cabinet officers were polled. Only Benjamin advocated war. Reagan actually brought up what no one else had been willing to mention: capitulation. For the first time, the official family had broken ranks; it no longer stood as one with the president. During this discussion, Davis’s expression did not change. According to Mallory, he “sat with his eyes fixed upon a scrap of paper which he was folding & unfolding alternately.” Finally, he authorized General Johnston to seek terms from Sherman. At Johnston’s request, the president dictated a statement for Johnston to present to Sherman, which Johnston signed. The proposal did not mention the word “surrender”; instead, it called for a cessation of hostilities so that civil authorities in the states could act to end the war. Although Davis had no confidence this initiative would succeed, he agreed to it.49
After this conference Jefferson Davis received the official dispatch from his first soldier reporting his Appomattox surrender. Davis’s demeanor changed. He had been talking about carrying on the war west of the Mississippi. After reading the message he passed it along and turned away. According to a junior officer, Davis “silently wept bitter tears.” Robert E. Lee, Jr., who happened to be in Greensboro on his way to Johnston’s army, recalled that the president “seemed quite broken.”50
But Davis could not dwell on that bitter loss. Even though “depression is universal & disorganization is setting in,” as John Taylor Wood recorded in his diary, Davis had to act. He and his party had to move on, but with a different status. From Richmond to Danville and on to Greensboro, Davis had been a head of state with armies, though vastly weakened, to command and a fully supportive cabinet. Now his armies had either been surrendered or were melting away. Moreover, both his senior commanders and most of his cabinet officers believed the war lost.51
Davis and his advisers had become fugitives, forced to keep moving south. Davis hoped to reach Confederate forces in the Gulf states or even in the Trans-Mississippi where he could carry on the fight. To him waging a guerrilla campaign was not an acceptable option. He believed the social price far too high. His closest aide, William Johnston, reported him as saying, “Guerrillas become brigands, and any government is better than that.”52
The first goal was Charlotte, around eighty miles to the southwest. Because Federal cavalry had cut the railroad between the towns, the presidential party had to turn to horses and wagons. In a driving rainstorm and accompanied by a cavalry escort, the president on horseback headed out with his beleaguered group. Davis impressed a cavalry captain, who noted that he rode “very erectly” and appeared neither frail nor weak. On the journey to Charlotte, evidence grew that the end had come. Fearing reprisals, some people refused to take the president into their homes. On April 16, for the first time, Davis and several cabinet secretaries camped out.53
During his sad retreat from Richmond, Davis had not forgotten his family. Varina and the children had reached Charlotte after four days riding slow trains. Upon their arrival Burton Harrison closed the windows on their coach because of the “most shocking language” used by some deserters to revile the first lady. Although the townspeople did not rush forward to extend hospitality, decent rooms were found for the family in a private home. She reported to her husband that discouraging rumors dominated her news. She professed her love for him and her faith in his strength and ability. She also expressed her eagerness to come to him with the baby, but did not know when she could. The activities of the children she detailed for the absent father, from Billy’s being bad to Jeff’s generally behaving to the baby’s teething. “I am very well off,” she assured him. Varina had shown her own strength. Mary Chesnut found her “as calm and smiling as ever,” even under “altered skies.”54
As for the husband and father, he wrote of his love and his concern, though his outlook changed. From Danville he described his hurried departure from Richmond and the kindness of the local townspeople. He sent kisses to the little ones and letters for them. Always he prayed to God to watch over his loved ones. “Everything is dark,” he lamented just before leaving Greensboro. Telling her he would come to her if at all possible, he urged her to go on to Abbeville, South Carolina, where friends had offered safe haven.55
When Jefferson arrived in Charlotte on April 19, Varina had traveled on to Abbeville. In Charlotte the presidential office was set up in the Bank of North Carolina. Davis also found comfortable lodgings in a private home. The presidential entourage found the town a congenial stop. Preston Johnston informed his wife they were “living splendidly at this place,” with “all good things to eat and drink.” Shortly after Davis’s arrival, word came that Sherman and Johnston had agreed to terms based largely on the Greensboro proposal. While Sherman submitted the agreement to his government for its approval, Johnston requested instructions from his president. Davis asked for written opinions from his cabinet members, who told their chief to accept it. In his response Secretary of War Breckinridge, who had participated in the Johnston-Sherman discussion, gave blunt advice. He stated that Johnston’s army had dwindled to fewer than 15,000 men and could make no headway against the huge Federal forces. Moreover, he pointed out that Confederate ports were closed and that Federal armies could move at will through much of the Confederacy. He saw no possibility of assembling, equipping, and maintaining a large army east of the Mississippi. An understatement followed, “I think we can no longer contend with reasonable hope of success.” Accepting this counsel, Davis agreed to the terms, though he doubted the Federal administration would approve them.56
Yet Davis still hoped for some miracle. To General Bragg he reiterated his abiding conviction, “Could we be assured that the spirit of the country would rise to the level of the occasion I should feel confident of final success, and am not without hope that recent disaster may awake the dormant energy and develop the patriotism which sustained us in the first years of the war.” In a brief, impromptu address to soldiers, he declared, “the cause is not yet dead.” “Determination and fortitude,” he claimed, could yet bring victory.57
Davis tried to busy himself with the duties of chief executive. He deliberated with his cabinet about Joseph Johnston’s peace negotiations. He worked to obtain artillery and cavalry for the defense of Charlotte. He also sought information on Federal movements in South Carolina and Georgia. Governor Vance came to town to confer about his proper course. Davis talked of crossing the Mississippi and suggested that Vance come along with as many North Carolina troops as he could muster. After a momentary silence, Breckinridge said further fighting served no purpose. Sadly, Davis concurred. Yet, when approached by officers who had escaped capture at Lee’s surrender or were not present at Johnston’s, he encouraged them to head south and keep up the fight.58
While in Charlotte, Davis learned that his great antagonist Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated. All accounts of the occasion agree that Davis voiced regret at Lincoln’s death. He also observed that Lincoln would have been more lenient on the South than his successor was likely to be. Davis expected no favors for himself or his fellow Confederates from Andrew Johnson.59
On the twenty-third, President Davis attended church and heard a sermon entitled “And Thus
It Must Be.” That afternoon he wrote his wife a long letter, which he sent by messenger. Lee’s surrender “destroyed the hopes I entertained when we parted,” he explained. He admitted that deserters and stragglers were not now coming back into the ranks. “Panic has seized the country.” “The issue,” he confessed, “is one which it is very painful for me to meet.” He envisioned agonizing options: “On one hand is the long night of oppression which will follow the return of our people to the ‘Union’; on the other, the suffering of the women and children, and carnage among the few brave patriots who would still oppose the invader, and who, unless the people would rise en-masse to sustain them, would struggle but to die in vain.” He was convinced no bias marked his judgments. He always prayed for “wisdom and fortitude” to equal his responsibilities. “I have sacrificed so much for the cause of the Confederacy that I can measure my ability to make any further sacrifice required, and am assured there is but one to which I am not equal—My wife and my Children—How are they to be saved from degradation or want is now my care.”
As for that safety, he directed her to sail for a foreign port or to go to Texas, whichever “may be more practicable.” He knew she had little money, but if he could sell his land, she would have enough to secure her “from absolute want.” He planned to leave Charlotte quite soon, and if “a devoted band of Cavalry will cling to me,” he might get across the Mississippi. But should he be unable to accomplish anything positive in the Trans-Mississippi, then “I can go to Mexico, and have the world from which to choose a location.”
Before closing, he remembered their beginnings and pointed to her strength. “Dear Wife, this is not the fate to which I invited [you] when the future was rose colored to us both; but I know you will bear it even better than myself, and that, of us two, I alone, will ever look back reproachfully on my past career.” He asked that she kiss his children many times for him. And then closed: “Farewell, my dear, there may be better things in store for us than are now in view, but my love is all I have to offer, and that has the value of a thing long possessed, and sure not to be lost.”60
He did not tarry long. On April 24 President Johnson rejected the Johnston-Sherman pact, instructing Sherman that he could only offer Grant’s terms at Appomattox. With hostilities scheduled to resume in forty-eight hours, Johnston went back to Sherman. On April 26 he surrendered. That day Davis’s party got underway. It was smaller because General Cooper and the attorney general, who had resigned, remained behind. Again with horses and wagons, Davis, the other five cabinet officers, aides, and a cavalry escort struck out toward Abbeville, in western South Carolina near the Georgia border.
Davis’s group took a week to traverse its route of just over 180 miles to the small town. Only the presence of an escort of some 3,000 cavalrymen indicated that their horses and wagons constituted anything more than another small caravan of people displaced by the war. Crossing the state, the president was received with kindness and consideration; he slept in a private home every night. Once when he requested a drink of water, the lady of the house asked if he was Jefferson Davis. Upon his positive answer, she pointed to her baby crawling down the steps and said he was named for the president. Davis gave her a gold coin and told her to keep it for his namesake. At various points women offered him flowers and wreaths, and children scattered flowers before him. On one occasion a young woman noted tears on his cheeks. Viewing these scenes, John Wood recorded, “my heart rises to my throat whenever I see [them].”61
During this trek Davis was cordial and sociable. He chatted pleasantly with all, including cabinet members, aides, Carolinians he encountered, and soldiers in his escort. All reported him calm and relaxed, at least outwardly. In “very bright and agreeable conversation,” often with a cigar in his mouth, he talked about men, books—especially by Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron—dogs, how to build roads, and generally about earlier days. Not much business was transacted. When on the twenty-fifth the secretary of the treasury resigned and departed because of ill health, Davis appointed Reagan as acting secretary. On May 1 General Bragg joined the company.62
As he journeyed westward across South Carolina, Jefferson heard from his wife, who had sent a messenger with a response to his long letter from Charlotte. She let him know she was leaving Abbeville for Washington, Georgia, and eventually, she hoped, on to Florida, then abroad to Nassau or England; but she wanted his guidance before making final plans. She too testified to the powerful bond they had cemented since 1861. Replying to his lament about the blasting of the rose-colored future they had once envisioned, she told him, “It is surely not the fate to which you invited me in brighter days, but you must remember that you did not invite me to a great Hero’s home, but to that of a plain farmer.” “I have shared all your triumphs,” she added, “been the only beneficiary of them, now I am but claiming the privilege for the first time of being all to you now these pleasures have past for me.” She saw her future solely with him, and she wanted to join him as soon as possible. She envisioned a reunion in the Trans-Mississippi, where she was confident he could prevail.63
Davis reached Abbeville on the afternoon of May 2. He stopped at the home of Armistead Burt, an ardent supporter who had been a prewar congressman. Burt had been Varina’s host until her departure two days earlier. That afternoon Breckinridge thought the president should hear directly from the officers commanding his escort. The men were talking about the future and what plans had been formulated, if any. Davis called a conference for 4 p.m. in the Burt parlor, with Breckinridge, Bragg, and the six cavalry brigadiers in attendance. On this occasion as at Greensboro and Charlotte, Davis talked about continuing the war. Admitting the bleakness of the situation, he professed it no worse than the black days of the American Revolution. Taken aback, the cavalry commanders remonstrated while Breckinridge and Bragg kept silent. The commanders voiced a unanimous opinion: they could envision no military future. Davis inquired of them why with such an outlook they stayed in the field. To protect him, they answered, to get him to safety. Though shaken by the finality of their declaration, Davis called his safety inconsequential and adjourned the meeting. He would never again meet with military commanders as their commander in chief.64
Throughout his long retreat Jefferson Davis retained command of himself. He spoke bravely and talked about carrying forward the fight, but at Greensboro, Charlotte, and Abbeville he consistently acknowledged and acted on the realistic assessments of his secretary of war and his military commanders. Those who discussed official matters with him, including critical and astute men like General Beauregard and Governor Vance, commented on his attentiveness, his grasp of information, his close questioning. Even on that cheerless afternoon in the Burt parlor he impressed. One brigadier recorded that he had never seen the president “show to better advantage.” According to this officer, “the union of dignity, graceful affability, and decision, which made his manner usually so striking was very marked in his reception of us.”65
Although the presidential party had initially expected to stay in Abbeville at least several days, news of approaching Federals changed those plans. Following the council of war, the bulk of the escort was paid and dismissed from service. Toward midnight on May 2 a much smaller band left for Washington, Georgia, around fifty miles to the west. Davis pushed his companions through the night, and in a gray suit rode into Washington late in the morning of May 3. During the march Benjamin had peeled off for a dash to Florida, and at Washington, Mallory also went his own way. Breckinridge, who was in the rear overseeing the disbanding of cavalry units, made it to Washington the next day. The townspeople greeted Davis warmly. Even his blustery political opponent Robert Toombs participated, offering his erstwhile foe use of his house as well as funds and a horse.66
Learning that his wife had recently departed toward the southwest, Davis decided to follow. At this point what had been a retreat turned into flight. All pretense of an organized government and official military activity was dropped. Davis would strive
to move rapidly, accompanied by aides Preston Johnston, John Taylor Wood, and Francis Lubbock, ten volunteer cavalrymen, and John Reagan. Davis and Reagan even adopted new identities: the president as a Texas congressman trying to get home and Reagan as a judge from that state.
Davis’s intentions were clear. His advisers had been urging him to travel swiftly so that he could either reach the Mississippi River or get out of the country through Florida. Davis never planned to leave his country, unless a sea journey from Florida turned out to be the only way he could reach Texas, even if he had to go by way of Mexico. He had not yet given up his cause.67
Late on the morning of May 4 Davis rode out of Washington with his few companions. All carried their belongings on their horses but the president, who had a pack mule. Still working in his treasury capacity, Reagan came on that night. Arriving in Washington during the afternoon, Breckinridge decided not to ride after Davis. Instead, he hoped to mislead Federal pursuers by moving due south with some cavalrymen. Davis and his associates kept to country roads and avoided towns; they covered thirty miles before halting for the night.68
On the sixth the president made two important decisions. First, he directed the wagons carrying the gold designated for the Trans-Mississippi to proceed apart from his party. He wanted to move more rapidly than the loaded wagons permitted. At this point each man with Davis was given some gold coins. With $25,000 in gold left and with a guard detail under Captain Watson Van Benthuysen, a relative of Joseph Davis’s wife, the treasury train turned due south for Florida. On this day scouts reported that Varina Davis’s wagons were not far ahead and traveling in the same general direction. In addition, word had been received that stragglers planned to plunder their supplies. Davis decided to ride ahead in an attempt to find and protect his family. Around midnight he located Varina’s encampment near the village of Dublin. Although it had been six weeks since he sent his family away from Richmond, the same people made up Varina’s weary troops—her four children, her sister Maggie, and two servants. All were still under the care of the loyal Burton Harrison, who, except for a few days between Charlotte and Abbeville, had been with them all the way. A handful of volunteer officers had also added themselves to provide security.
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