Bloody Times: The Funeral of Abraham Lincoln and the Manhunt for Jefferson Davis

by James L. Swanson

  Popular images lampooned Davis for allegedly attempting to escape capture dressed as a woman.

  Jefferson Davis described what happened next. “I had gone perhaps between fifteen or twenty yards when a trooper galloped up and ordered me to halt and surrender, to which I gave a defiant answer, and, dropping the shawl and the raglan from my shoulders, advanced toward him.” The soldier leveled his weapon at Davis, but the Confederate president did not hesitate. “But I expected, if he fired, he would miss me, and my intention was in that event to put my hand under his foot, tumble him off on the other side, spring into the saddle, and attempt to escape. My wife, who had been watching me, when she saw the soldier aim his carbine at me, ran forward and threw her arms around me. . . . Recognizing that the opportunity had been lost, I turned back, and, the morning being damp and chilly, passed on to a fire beyond the tent. . . .”

  The manhunt was over. Jefferson Davis and everyone with him had been captured. But the gunfire was still going on. One of Davis’s men warned Pritchard that if shots were being fired, it was not the Confederates being killed. “Captain, your men are fighting each other over yonder,” he said.

  Pritchard was sure that Davis’s camp must be protected by more soldiers. But the other man insisted that he was wrong. “You have our whole camp; I know your men are fighting each other,” he said.

  Soon Pritchard and his officers discovered it was true. There were no Confederate soldiers behind the camp, only two Union regiments—the Fourth Michigan and the First Wisconsin. All were attempting to earn the glory of capturing Jefferson Davis and the gold he was supposed to have with him. Every Union soldier had heard the rumors—the “rebel chief” was fleeing with millions of dollars in gold coins. Yes, Confederate treasure was on the move in April and May 1865, but what the manhunters did not know was that Jefferson Davis was not the one transporting it.

  A second reward poster for Davis and other Confederate leaders. Neither Davis nor his pursuers learned of the reward until after he was captured.

  The gun battle caused hard feelings between the two regiments. They blamed each other and fought over the reward money promised to whoever captured Davis. The Fourth Michigan wanted to claim all the money and did not want to share it with the First Wisconsin. The Wisconsin men complained that if the Fourth had not fired upon them, then they would have been the ones who would have captured Davis.

  On the morning of his capture, Jefferson Davis wore a suit of Confederate gray and not one of Varina’s hoop skirts.

  Jefferson Davis, who sacrificed all he had for the Confederacy and who was captured penniless, without a single dollar to his name, must have appreciated the irony. He never commented about it, but it surely amused him to see Yankees killing each other and squabbling over money in their zeal to claim him as their prize.

  It was not until the skirmish between two regiments of the same army was over that Colonel Pritchard became aware that he had captured the president of the Confederate States of America.

  The men traveling with the president had used good judgment on the morning of May 10. No matter how much they desired to open fire on the Union cavalry, they knew they would lose the fight. They might kill several of the enemy, but the Union soldiers, outnumbering them by more than ten to one, might kill them all and then shoot the president. A gunfight at dawn, when visibility was low, might also lead to the deaths of Mrs. Davis and the children. Surrender, however hateful, was the honorable choice.

  Truth vs. Myth. Left: The Raglan coat Jefferson Davis actually wore the morning of his capture. Right: The shawl and spurs Davis wore the morning of May 10, 1865.

  And so, thirty-eight days after he left Richmond, after a journey through four states by railroad, ferryboat, horse, and wagon, Jefferson Davis was a prisoner. Several of his supporters thought he could have evaded the manhunt and made it all the way to Mexico, Texas, Cuba, or Europe, if only he had placed his own safety ahead of his own wish to continue to fight for the cause and preserve the Confederacy.

  No one is sure why Jefferson Davis did not leave the camp that night. Perhaps he was tired. Perhaps he hoped a few more hours of stolen rest would not matter. Perhaps he thought it was too late to escape to Texas. Perhaps he believed that, once he left this camp, he would never see his wife and children again. Perhaps part of him did not want to flee, run away to another country, and vanish from history. We will never know.

  Davis failed in his mission. He did not rally the Confederate army or the Southern people to continue the war. He did not escape to Texas to create a new Confederacy across the Mississippi River. But he had done his best. Robert E. Lee once said: “No man could have done better.”

  The war, and the manhunt for Jefferson Davis, were over. But he was alive. May 10, 1865, was the end for Jefferson Davis’s country and his presidency. Now Davis would begin a new, twelve-day journey to prison.

  That day in the Union capital, people did not rush into the streets to celebrate Davis’s capture. No one knew about it. Georgia was too far away for the news to travel to Washington on the same day. Instead, the newspapers were still filled with headlines and stories about the Lincoln assassination. May 10 was the opening day of the trial for the seven men and one woman accused of being accomplices in John Wilkes Booth’s plot to murder Abraham Lincoln and Secretary Seward. Many people believed that if Davis were captured before the trial ended, he would be rushed to Washington and charged as the ninth conspirator in Lincoln’s murder.

  On the morning of their capture on May 10, Davis, his family, and his aides remained defiant. They were not meek prisoners. They objected to the soldiers plundering their belongings, were offended at the disrespectful way the soldiers addressed the president, and scorned their captors as inferiors. To the Southern mind, these rude, ungentlemanly, thieving Yankee troops represented all that was wrong with the North.

  This fanciful print depicts Davis as a caged hyena wearing a lady’s bonnet. The Lincoln assassination conspirators perch above him on gallows, foreshadowing their execution.

  Their Southern pride infuriated their captors. The cavalrymen would find a way to settle the score, not with violence but by attacking Jefferson Davis’s most precious possession—his reputation. This was the beginning of the myth that Jefferson Davis was captured in women’s clothing—a myth that is repeated to this day.

  “The foolish and wicked charge was made that he was captured in woman’s clothes,” John Reagan wrote indignantly. “He was also pictured as having bags of gold on him when captured. . . . I saw him a few minutes after his surrender, wearing his accustomed suit of Confederate gray, with his boots and hat on . . . and he had no money.”

  Davis and his fellow prisoners were taken to Macon, Georgia. From there, on May 14, Davis was taken by train to Atlanta, and then he traveled to Augusta, from where he departed for Savannah.

  Another popular image that lampooned Davis for allegedly attempting to escape capture dressed as a woman.

  Chapter Fourteen

  On Sunday, May 14, a month after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and ten days after his burial in Springfield, the citizens of Washington read their morning papers and learned stupendous news. Jefferson Davis had been taken. “Thank God we have got the arch traitor at last,” Benjamin Brown French wrote in his diary. “I hope he will not be suffered to escape or commit suicide. Hanging will be too good for him.”

  While some hoped to see Jefferson Davis die, others hoped to make a profit out of his capture—particularly the circus owner P. T. Barnum. Barnum owned the American Museum in New York City, full of treasures and curiosities. As soon as he heard the story that Jefferson Davis had been captured in a dress, he wanted it as an exhibit. He wrote to Stanton, offering to make a donation to either the care of wounded soldiers or the care of freed slaves if he could have that dress.

  Stanton said no. He planned to keep the gown for himself. But once the clothes worn by Davis during his capture arrived in Washington, Stanton saw that the story was
a huge exaggeration. The “dress” was a loose-fitting, waterproof “raglan,” or overcoat. The “bonnet” was a rectangular shawl, a type of wrap President Lincoln had worn on chilly evenings. But the story continued to be told, and drawings, cartoons, and prints all over the country showed Davis in a hoopskirt and a bonnet.

  Printmakers continued to ridicule Davis after his capture.

  On May 16 Davis arrived in Savannah, Georgia, where he was put aboard a vessel bound for Fortress Monroe, Virginia. Meanwhile, Edwin Stanton was trying to decide what should be done with some prisoners he did not want—Varina Davis and the women who had been arrested with her. He discussed the question with Gideon Welles and General Grant. Stanton exclaimed that the women must be “sent off” because “we did not want them.” “They must go South,” he declared. Welles could not resist toying with him. “The South is very indefinite, and you permit them to select the place. Mrs. Davis may designate Norfolk, or Richmond.” Or anywhere.

  Stanton could not stand the idea of the former First Lady of the Confederacy showing up wherever she wanted. “Stanton was annoyed,” Welles saw, and “I think, altered the telegram.” Stanton suspected that if Varina returned to Washington, she could be a dangerous political opponent.

  By Monday, May 22, Jefferson Davis was imprisoned in Fortress Monroe, Virginia. He did not know whether he would ever see his wife and children again or even how long he would live. When he parted with Varina, he told her not to cry. It would, he said, only make the Yankees gloat.

  His captors refused to address him as “Mr. President.” They called him “Jeffy,” “the rebel chieftain,” or “the state prisoner.” He was always watched, and often not allowed to sleep. Through insult, isolation, and silence, they tried to humiliate him and break his spirit. He was, in the words of some newspapers, the arch criminal of the age, a man “buried alive” who must never be set free. Many people hoped that he would never emerge from his dungeon alive.

  Within days of his capture, popular prints ridiculed the Confederate president.

  Shortly after he was shut inside his prison, men entered Davis’s cell and told him they had orders to shackle him. Davis saw the blacksmith with his tools and chains. He told them all that he refused to allow such a humiliation, pointed to the officer in charge, and said he would have to kill him first. Davis dared his jailers to shoot him.

  Soldiers lunged forward to grab him, but Davis knocked one man aside and kicked another away with his boot. Then several ganged up on him, seized him, and held him down while the smith locked the chains in place.

  Printmakers continued to ridicule Davis after his imprisonment.

  As Davis entered prison, Mary Lincoln at last moved out of the White House. Benjamin Brown French, the commissioner of public buildings and grounds, went to say good-bye. “Mrs. Mary Lincoln left the City on Monday evening at 6 o’clock, with her sons Robert & Tad (Thomas),” he wrote. “I went up and bade her good-by, and felt really very sad, although she has given me a world of trouble. I think the sudden and awful death of the President somewhat unhinged her mind, for at times she has exhibited all the symptoms of madness. . . . It is not proper that I should write down, even here, all I know! May God have her in his keeping, and make her a better woman. That is my sincere wish. . . .”

  Contemporary sketch of Davis in his cell at Fortress Monroe.

  By May 24 Lincoln’s home in Springfield was no longer a center of the nation’s attention. But on this day a photographer—no one knows who—showed up to take the last known picture of the Lincoln home draped in mourning. The black bunting was windswept and weather-beaten. It was the same all across the nation. People could not bear to take down their wind-tattered, sun-faded, and rain-streaked decorations of death and mourning. Better, many thought, to allow time and nature to sweep them away.

  After the funeral, the last photograph of Lincoln’s Springfield home draped in mourning, May 24, 1865.

  On July 7, 1865, four of those who had helped John Wilkes Booth in his plot to murder Lincoln were executed. Three were sentenced to life in prison. But their trial had made one thing clear—Jefferson Davis had played no part in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. If Davis was to be put on trial or executed, it would be for treason, not for the president’s murder.

  After several weeks of silence, Varina received her first letter from Davis since his capture. It was written on the twenty-first of August. “Kiss the Baby for me,” he wrote. “My dear Wife, equally the centre of my love and confidence, remember how good the Lord has always been to me, how often he has wonderfully preserved me, and put thy trust in Him.”

  Davis and Varina wrote many letters to each other while he was in prison, and she was not the only person he received letters from. On January 29, 1866, a young girl in Richmond, Emily Jessie Morton, wrote to Davis to cheer him up.

  “I hope that you will not think me a rude little girl to takeing the liberty of writing to you, but I want to tell you how much I love you, and how sorry I feel for you to be kept so long in Prison away from your dear little children. . . . I go to school to Mrs. Mumford where there are upwards of thirty scholars all of which love you very much and are taught to do so. When we go to Hollywood [cemetery] to decorate our dear soldiers graves on the 31st of May your little Joes grave will not be forgotten.”

  On May 3, 1866, Varina Davis arrived at Fortress Monroe. She brought her baby daughter, Varina Anne, but left her other children behind. Her misson now was to save her husband’s life. Varina had been a popular and well-liked figure in Washington before the war. Now she used every social and political skill she had learned to save her husband. She wrote letters, met with important people, and talked to the newspapers. And eventually it began to work.

  By the fall of 1866, the government had still not put Jefferson Davis on trial for treason. Davis welcomed the idea of a trial. If he was found innocent, then the South was not wrong—it did have the right to leave the Union. If he was found guilty, he was happy to suffer on behalf of his people. His death, he believed, would win mercy for the South.

  The U.S. government wanted neither result. If a federal court said that it was not treason for some states to try to become a separate country, that would overturn the whole purpose and result of the war. But if Davis was found guilty and executed, he would become a martyr and inspire the South to fight back.

  Davis stayed in prison through the winter of 1867. But by the spring the government finally decided that it wanted Davis off its hands. He would be released on bail. The government claimed the right to put him on trial at a later time, if they chose, but they would not do so now.

  At 7:00 A.M. on May 11, 1867, the former Confederate president, still a prisoner, left Fortress Monroe and boarded a steamboat for Richmond. At 6:00 P.M. Davis reached the city, landing in the same place where, two years ago, Abraham Lincoln had received a wild welcome from the city’s slaves. Now the white citizens welcomed Davis back to his old capital. As he passed, men uncovered their heads and women waved handkerchiefs. “I feel like an unhappy ghost visiting this much beloved city,” Jefferson told Varina.

  On May 13 Davis appeared in court, his supporters posted a bail of a hundred thousand dollars, and he was freed. He was never tried, never convicted of treason, or of any crime. Once free, his first act was one of remembrance. He brought flowers to the grave of his son Joseph Evan Davis at Hollywood Cemetery, and while there he also decorated graves of Confederate soldiers.

  On June 1 a Confederate officer who had served under President Davis sent him a heartfelt letter, which rejoiced in Davis’s freedom. “Your release has lifted a load from my heart which I have not words to tell,” it said, “and my daily prayer to the great Ruler of the World, is that he may shield you from all future harm, guard you from all evil, and give you the peace which the world can not take away. That the rest of your days may be triumphantly happy, is the sincere and earnest wish of your most obedient faithful friend and servant.” The letter was signed by Robe
rt E. Lee.

  After his release, Davis was forced to ask himself questions. What did the future hold? Where would he go? What would he do? How would he live? How would he earn money? Like much of the South, his life was in ruins. He had lost everything. His plantation was wrecked, no crops grew there, and he owned no slaves to work the fields. Union soldiers had looted his Mississippi home of everything valuable. They even stole his love letters from Sarah Knox Taylor.

  Davis also had to decide what not to do. He vowed to do nothing to bring dishonor upon himself, his people, or the Confederacy. Because so many Southerners were poor, he decided that he would not shame himself by accepting charity while others were in need. He would not speak publicly against the Union, out of fear that his words might cause his people to be punished. He would not run in any election. He knew without doubt that he could be elected to any position in the South. But to run he would have to take a loyalty oath to the Union, something he would never do. To swear that oath, to say secession was wrong, would betray every soldier who had laid down his life for the cause. He would rather suffer death. And lastly, he decided he would never return to Washington, D.C.

  Oil portrait of Jefferson Davis as he appeared in the 1870s.

  Davis tried a few jobs but did not have much success. He found his true calling in a new role: remembering and honoring the Confederacy and those who had died for its cause. He wrote articles and letters, answering countless questions about how the war had been fought. He read histories of the war written by generals and political leaders. He supported the creation of the Southern Historical Association.