Dixie After the War Part 5

In Was.h.i.+ngton, Ga., the first town in America named for the Father of his Country, the Confederate Government breathed its last. A quiet, picturesque, little place, out of track of the armies, it was suddenly shaken with excitement, when Mr. Davis, attended by his personal staff, several distinguished officers, besides a small cavalry escort, rode in.

Mrs. Davis had left the day before. As long as her wagons and ambulances had stood in front of Dr. Ficklen's house, the people of Was.h.i.+ngton were calling upon her; first among them, General Toombs with cordial offers of aid and hospitality, though there had been sharp differences between him and Mr. Davis. Here, it may be said, she held her last reception as the First Lady of the Confederacy. She had expected to meet her husband, and went away no doubt heavy of heart--herself, her baby, Winnie, and her other little children, and her sister, Maggie Howell, again to be wanderers of woods and waysides. With them went a devoted little band of Confederate soldiers, their volunteer escort, Burton Harrison, the President's secretary, and one or two negro servants whose devotion never faltered.

On a lovely May morning, people sat on the Bank piazza asking anxiously: "Where can Mr. Davis be?" "Is he already captured and killed?" Dr.

Robertson, an officer of the bank, and his family lived in the building.

With them was General Elzey, on parole, his wife and son. Kate Joyner Robertson and her brother, Willie, sixteen years old and a Confederate Veteran, were on the piazza; also David Faver, seventeen, and a Confederate Veteran; these boys were members of the Georgia Military Inst.i.tute Battalion. A description of this battalion was recently given me by Mr. Faver:

"There were as many negroes--body-servants--in our ranks as boys when we started out, spick and span. We saw actual service; guarded the powder magazines at Augusta and Savannah, fought the Yankees at Chattanooga, stood in front of Sherman in South Carolina. Young Scott Todd lost his arm--Dr. Todd, of Atlanta, carries around that empty sleeve today. I bore handsome Tom Hamilton off the field when he was shot. I was just fifteen when I went in; some were younger. Henry Cabaniss and Julius Brown were the smallest boys in the army. We were youngsters who ought to have been in knee pants, but the G. M. I. never quailed before guns or duty! I remember (laughing) when we met the Cits in Charleston. They were all spick and span--'Citadel Cadets' blazoned all over them and their belongings. We were all tattered and torn, nothing of the G. M. I. left about us! Rags was the stamp of the regular, and we 'guyed' the Cits. We had seen fighting and they had not." Sixteen-year-old Lint Stephens, Vice-President Stephens' nephew, was of this juvenile warrior band. On the occasion of his sudden appearance at home to prepare for war, Mr. Stephens asked what he had quit school for. "To fight for the fair s.e.x," he replied. And to this day some people think we fought to keep negroes in slavery!

A "Georgia Cracker" rode in from the Abbeville road, drew rein before the bank, and saluting, drawled: "Is you'uns seen any soldiers roun' here?"

There were Confederate uniforms on the piazza. "What kind of soldiers?" he was asked, and General Elzey said: "My friend, you have betrayed yourself by that military salute. You are no ignorant countryman, but a soldier yourself." The horseman spurred close to the piazza. "Are there any Yankees in town?" "None. Tell us, do you know anything about President Davis?" After a little more questioning, the horseman said: "President Davis is not an hour's ride from here."

The piazza was all excitement. "Where should the President be entertained?" Ordinarily, General Toombs was munic.i.p.al host. Everybody is familiar with the reply he made to a committee consulting him about erecting a hotel in Was.h.i.+ngton: "We have no need of one. When respectable people come here, they can stop at my house. If they are not respectable, we do not want them at all." Everybody knew that all he had was at the President's command. But--there had been the unpleasantness. "Bring the President here," Mrs. Robertson said promptly. Dr. Robertson added: "As a government building, this is the proper place." Willie Robertson, commissioned to convey the invitation, rode off with the courier, the envy of every other G. M. I. in town. The little "Bats" were ready to go to war again.

Soon, the President dismounted in front of the bank. Mrs. Faver (Kate Joyner Robertson that was) says: "He wore a full suit of Confederate gray.

He looked worn, sad, and troubled; said he was tired and went at once to his room. My mother sent a cup of tea to him. That afternoon, or next morning, all the people came to see him. He stood in the parlor door, they filed in, shook hands, and pa.s.sed out." So, in Was.h.i.+ngton, he held his last Presidential reception.

"To hear Mr. Davis," Mr. Faver reports, "you would have no idea that he considered the cause lost. He spoke hopefully of our yet unsurrendered forces. Secretary Reagan, General St. John and Major Raphael J. Moses were General Toombs' guests. That night after supper, they walked to the bank; my father's house was opposite General Toombs'. I walked behind them. I think they held what has been called the Last Cabinet Meeting that night."

Mr. Trenholm, too ill to travel, had stopped at Charlotte; Secretary of State Benjamin had left Mr. Davis that morning; at Was.h.i.+ngton, Secretary of the Navy Mallory went; Secretary of War Breckinridge, whom he was expecting, did not come on time. News reached him of Johnston's surrender.

General Upton had pa.s.sed almost through Was.h.i.+ngton on his way to receive the surrender of Augusta. The President perceived his escort's peril. To their commander, Captain Campbell, he said: "Your company is too large to pa.s.s without observation, and not strong enough to fight. See if there are ten men in it who will volunteer to go with me without question wherever I choose?" Captain Campbell reported: "All volunteer to go with Your Excellency."

He was deeply touched, but would not suffer them to take the risk. With ten men selected by Captain Campbell, and his personal staff, he rode out of Was.h.i.+ngton, the people weeping as they watched him go. When he was mounting, Rev. Dr. Tupper, the Baptist minister, approached him, uttering words of comfort and encouragement. "'Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him,'" the President responded gently. He had made disposition of most of his personal belongings, giving the china in his mess-chest to Colonel Weems, the chest to General McLaws; to Mrs. Robertson his ink-stand, table, dressing-case, some tea, coffee, and brandy, portions of which she still retained when last I heard; the dressing-case and ink-stand she had sent to the Confederate Museum at Richmond.

His last official order was written at the old bank; it appointed Captain H. M. Clarke Acting Treasurer of the Confederacy. The last Treasury Department was an old appletree at General Basil Duke's camp a short distance from Was.h.i.+ngton, under whose shade Captain Clarke sat while he paid out small amounts in coin to the soldiers. General Duke's Kentuckians, Mr. Davis' faithful last guard, were the remnant of John H.

Morgan's famous command.

Soon after his departure, the treasure-train, or a section of it, reached Was.h.i.+ngton. Boxes of bullion were stored in the bank; Mrs. Faver remembers that officers laughingly told her and her sisters if they would lift one of the boxes, they might have all the gold in it; and they tried, but O, how heavy it was! She recalls some movement on the part of her parents to convey the treasure to Abbeville, but this was not practicable.

"It was a fitting conclusion of the young Government ... that it marked its last act of authority by a thoughtful loyalty to the comfort of its penniless and starved defenders," says Avery's "History of Georgia,"

commenting on the fact that under that act Major Raphael J. Moses conveyed to Augusta bullion exceeding $35,000, delivering it to General Molineux on the promise that it would be used to purchase food and other necessaries for needy Confederate soldiers and our sick in hospitals.

Soon after the treasure-train left Was.h.i.+ngton, some one galloped back and flung into General Toombs' yard a bag containing $5,000 in gold. The General was in straits for money with which to flee the country, but swore with a great round oath he would use no penny of this mysterious gift, and turned it over to Major Moses, who committed it to Captain Abrahams, Federal Commissary, for use in relieving needy Confederates home-returning. At Greensboro, General Joseph E. Johnston had taken $39,000 for his soldiers. There have been many stories about this treasure-train.[4] It carried no great fortune, and Mr. Davis was no beneficiary. He meant to use it in carrying on the war.

The point has been made that Mr. Davis should have remained in Richmond and made terms. Since governments were governments, no ruler has followed the course that would have been. He thought it traitorous to surrender the whole Confederacy because the Capital was lost. Even after Lee's surrender the Confederacy had armies in the field, and a vast domain farther south where commanders believed positions could be held. He believed it would be cowardly to fail them, and that it was his duty to move the seat of government from place to place through the Confederacy as long as there was an army to sustain the government. To find precedent, one has but to turn to European history. In England, the rightful prince has been chased all over the country and even across the channel. Mr. Davis believed in the righteousness of his cause; and that it was his duty to stand for it to the death.

His determination, on leaving Was.h.i.+ngton, was to reach the armies of Maury, Forrest, and Taylor in Alabama and Mississippi; if necessary, withdraw these across the Mississippi, uniting with Kirby-Smith and Magruder in Texas, a section "rich in supplies and lacking in railroads and waterways." There the concentrated forces might hold their own until the enemy "should, in accordance with his repeated declaration, have agreed, on the basis of a return to the Union, to acknowledge the Const.i.tutional rights of the States, and by a convention, or quasi-treaty, to guarantee security of person and property." What Judge Campbell thought could be secured by submission, Mr. Davis was confident could only be attained by keeping in the field a military force whose demands the North, weary of war, might respect. What he sought to do for his people in one way, Judge Campbell sought to do in another. Both failed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GENERAL AND MRS. JOHN H. MORGAN]

While Mr. Davis was riding out of Was.h.i.+ngton, Generals Taylor and Maury, near Meridian, Mississippi, were arranging with General Canby, U. S. A., for the surrender of all the Confederate forces in Alabama and Mississippi. These generals were dining together and the bands were playing "Hail Columbia" and "Dixie."

THE COUNSEL OF LEE

CHAPTER VI

THE COUNSEL OF LEE

"A few days after the occupation, some drunken soldiers were heard talking in the back yard to our negroes, and it was gathered from what they said that the Federals were afraid General Lee had formed an ambuscade somewhere in the neighbourhood of the city, and that he might fall upon them at any time and deliver Richmond out of their hands. How our people wished it might be so!" Matoaca relates. "Do not buoy yourself up with that hope, my dear," said her monitor. "There's no hope save in the mercy of our conquerors. General Lee is a great soldier, an extraordinary tactician, but he cannot do the impossible. Our army cannot go on fighting forever without money and without food."

When our beloved general came home, the doctrine he taught by precept and example was that of peace. "The stainless sword of Lee" had been laid down in good faith. We had fought a good fight, we had failed, we must accept the inevitable, we must not lose heart, we must work for our country's welfare in peace. The very first heard of him in his modest, unheralded home-returning, he was teaching this.

Young William McCaw, his courier for four years, rode in with him; and General Lee, before going to his own home, delivered William, safe and sound, to his father. Dr. McCaw came out when they stopped in front of his door, and General Lee said:

"Here, Doctor, is your boy. I've brought him home to you."

William was standing beside Traveller, his arm clasped around General Lee's leg, and crying as if his heart would break. The General put his hand on William's head and said:

"No more fighting--that's all over. You've been a good fighter, Will--now I want to see you work for your country's welfare in peace. Be a good boy.

I expect a fine Christian manhood of you. Goodbye," and he rode away to his own home, where his invalid wife awaited him.

It was good to have them home again, our men in gray; good though they came gaunt and footsore, ragged and empty-handed. And glad was the man in gray to cross his own threshold, though the wolf was at the door. Our men were ready enough for peace when peace--or what they mistook for peace--came; that is, the ma.s.s of them were. They had fought and starved their fill. The cries of dest.i.tute women and children called them home.

They had no time to pause and cavil over lost issues, or to forge new occasions for quarrel. All they asked now was a chance to make meat and bread and raiment for themselves and those dependent on them.

Yet some young spirits were restive, would have preferred death to surrender. The lesson of utter submission came hard. The freeborn American, fearless of shot and sh.e.l.l, and regarding free speech as his birthright, found the task of keeping close watch over his tongue difficult. General Lee knew the mettle of the fiery young courier to whom he uttered the parting words that have been recorded. To many another youth just out of armor, he gave the same pacific counsel:

"We have laid down the sword. Work for a united country."

[Ill.u.s.tration: RESIDENCE OF ROBERT E. LEE. 1861-65,

Richmond, Va.

Now the home of the Virginia Historical Society.]

One high-strung lad seeing a Federal soldier treat a lady rudely on the street (a rare happening in Richmond), knocked him down, and was arrested.

The situation was serious. The young man's father went to General Ord and said: "See here, General, that boy's hot from the battle-field. He doesn't know anything but to fight." General Ord's response was: "I'll arrange this matter for you. And you get this boy out of the city tonight."

There happened to be staying in the same house with some of our friends, a young Confederate, Captain Wharton, who had come on sick leave to Richmond before the evacuation, and who, after that event, was very imprudent in expressing his mind freely on the streets, a perilous thing to do in those days. His friends were concerned for his safety. Suddenly he disappeared.

n.o.body knew what had become of him. Natural conclusion was that free speech had gotten him into trouble. At last a message came: "Please send me something to eat. I am in prison."

Ladies came to know if Matoaca would be one of a committee to wait on the Provost-Marshal General in his behalf. She agreed, and the committee set out for the old Custom House where the Federals held court. They were admitted at once to General Patrick's presence. He was an elderly gentleman, polite, courteous. "I was surprised," says Matoaca, "because I had expected to see something with hoof and horns."

"General," she said, "we have come to see you about a young gentleman, our friend, Captain Wharton. He is in prison, and we suppose the cause of his arrest was imprudent speech. He has been ill for some time, and is too feeble to bear with safety the hards.h.i.+ps and confinement of prison life.

If we can secure his release, we will make ourselves responsible for his conduct." She finished her little speech breathless. She saw the glimmer of a smile way down in his eyes. "I know nothing about the case," he said kindly. "Of course, I can not know personally of all that transpires. But I will inquire into this matter, and see what can be done for this young gentleman." Soon after, Captain Wharton called on Matoaca. She could hardly have left General Patrick's presence before an orderly was dispatched for his release.

Friction resulted from efforts to ram the oath down everybody's throat at once. I recite this instance because of the part General Lee took and duplicated in mult.i.tudes of cases. Captain George Wise was called before the Provost to take the oath. "Why must I take it?" asked he. "My parole covers the ground. I will not." "You fought under General Lee, did you not?" "Yes. And surrendered with him, and gave my parole. To require this oath of me is to put an indignity upon me and my general." "I will make a bargain with you, Captain. Consult General Lee and abide by his decision."

The captain went to the Lee residence, where he was received by Mrs. Lee, who informed him that her husband was ill, but would see him. The general was lying on a lounge, pale, weary-looking, but fully dressed, in his gray uniform, the three stars on his collar; the three stars--to which any Confederate colonel was ent.i.tled--was the only insignia of rank he ever wore. "They want me to take this thing, General," said the captain, extending a copy of the oath. "My parole covers it, and I do not think it should be required of me. What would you advise?"

"I would advise you to take it," he said quietly. "It is absurd that it should be required of my soldiers, for, as you say, the parole practically covers it. Nevertheless, take it, I should say." "General, I feel that this is submission to an indignity. If I must continue to swear the same thing over at every street corner, I will seek another country where I can at least preserve my self-respect."

General Lee was silent for a few minutes. Then he said, quietly as before, a deep touch of sadness in his voice: "Do not leave Virginia. Our country needs her young men now."