Bloody Crimes (13 page)
It didn’t take long before Davis began to regret the invitation he had extended for the torpedo general’s daughter to sit beside him. “That young lady,” complained Colonel Harrison, “was of a loquacity irrepressible; she plied her neighbor diligently—about the weather, and upon every other topic of common interest—asking him, too, a thousand trivial questions.” Until the train could get up steam,
the passengers crowded together in the cars, according to Harrison, “waiting to be off, full of gloom at the situation, wondering what would happen next, and all as silent as mourners at a funeral.” The exception was the general’s daughter, “who prattled on in a voice everybody heard.”
Then an explosion close to the president rocked the car. No one knew what had just happened. Had Union troops intercepted the slow-moving train and tossed a grenade into Davis’s car? Or had a traitor sitting in the car tried to assassinate the president with a suicide bomb?
Burton Harrison saw it all: “A sharp explosion occurred very near the President, and a young man was seen to bounce into the air, clapping both hands to the seat of his trowsers. We all sprang to our feet in alarm.” The car smelled of black gunpowder, but no one had seen the telltale flash of the explosion. Harrison quickly discovered that this was not an attack but an absurd accident. One of the torpedo general’s officers, carrying explosive detonation fuses in the coattail pocket of his long frock coat, had sat down atop a flat-bottomed stove. His weight crushed one of the fuses, setting off the explosion, and nearly blowing off his backside. Davis and the other occupants of the car were unharmed.
D
avis’s train arrived in Greensboro, North Carolina, at around 2:00
P.M
. on April 11. He conferred with General Beauregard that day, and on the following day General Joseph E. Johnston, commander of the Confederate army in North Carolina, joined them to discuss Davis’s desire to continue the war. Davis also learned that a unit of federal cavalry had cut the road at a point where his train had passed only five minutes before. This was the closest he had come to capture since he had left Richmond, and from this point on, the government in exile was in danger of encountering Union troops at any moment.
Davis was not greeted with open arms by the citizens of Greens
boro, as he had been in Danville. This time the local dignitaries did not come forward to offer food and lodging to their president and his cabinet. The unfriendly reception outraged Stephen Mallory. “No provision had been made for the accommodation of the President and staff, or for his Cabinet…Greensboro had been a flourishing town, and there were many commodious and well-furnished residences in and about it, but their doors were closed and their ‘latchstrings pulled in’ against the members of the retreating government.” Colonel John Taylor Wood from Davis’s staff invited the president to share his family’s modest quarters, which Wood had rented for them after moving them away from Richmond to safety. Colonel Harrison commented on Davis’s reception there: “[The owners] of the house continuously and vigorously insist[ed] to the colonel and his wife…that Mr. Davis must go away, saying they were unwilling to have the vengeance of Stoneman’s [Union] cavalry brought upon them by his presence in their house.”
Mallory denounced the people of Greensboro as “pitiable” and ill-mannered. “Generous hospitality has ever been regarded as characteristic of the South, and had such a scene as this been predicted of any of its people, it would have encountered universal unbelief.” But Greensboro had denied the president the “uniform kindness, courtesy, and hospitality” which he had received elsewhere. Harrison echoed Mallory’s opinion of Greensboro. “The people in that part of North Carolina had not been zealous supporters of the Confederate Government; and, so long as we remained in the State, we observed their indifference to what should become of us. It was rarely that anybody asked one of us to his house; and but few of them even had the grace even to explain their fear that, if they entertained us, their houses would be burned by the enemy, when his cavalry should get there.” While in Greensboro, the horses belonging to Davis, his personal aides, and the cabinet were kept under twenty-four-hour guard to prevent their theft by townspeople or refugees.
The members of the Confederate cabinet, just as they had made
the best of their two train rides from Richmond and from Danville, endured their Greensboro humiliation with good humor. Upon their humble quarters, they bestowed the exalted nickname the “Cabinet Car” and made the best of the situation. It was, said Mallory, “a very agreeable resort” during the “dreary days” in the unfriendly town. “Its distinguished hosts did the honors to their visitors with a cheerfulness and good humor, seasoned by a flow of good spirits, which threw a charm around the wretched shelter and made their situation seem rather a matter of choice than of necessity. The navy store supplied bread and bacon, and by the active foraging of Paymaster Semple and others of the party, biscuits, eggs, and coffee were added; and with a few tin cups, spoons, and pocket knives, and a liberal use of fingers and capital appetites, they managed to get enough to eat, and they slept as best they could.” Unashamed, the highest officials of the Confederacy ate like common soldiers.
“The curious life of the fleeing Confederate Government in the ‘Cabinet Car’ at Greensboro continued for nearly a week, and was not all discomfort,” Mallory insisted.
Indeed, the difficulties of their position were minimized by the spirit with which these men encountered every trial. Here was the astute “Minister of Justice,” a grave and most exemplary gentleman, with a piece of half-broiled “middling” in one hand and a hoe-cake in the other, his face bearing unmistakable evidence of the condition of the bacon. There was the clever Secretary of State busily dividing his attention between a bucket of stewed dried apples and a haversack of hard-boiled eggs. Here was the Postmaster-General sternly and energetically running his bowie knife through a ham as if it were the chief business of life, and there was the Secretary of the Navy courteously swallowing his coffee scalding hot that he might not keep the venerable Adjutant-General waiting too long for the coveted tin cup! All personal discomforts were not only borne with
cheerful philosophy, but were made the constant texts for merry comment, quaint anecdotes, or curious story.
As soon as Davis arrived in Greensboro on April 11, he wrote to Joe Johnston.
The Secty. Of War did not join me at Danville, is expected here [Greensboro] this afternoon. As your situation may render best, I will go to your Hd. Qrs. immediately after your arrival of the Secty of War, or you can come here…I have no official report from Genl. Lee, the Secty. Of War may be able to add information heretofore communicated. The important question first to be solved is at what point concentration shall be made.
The president had visions of concentrating all available forces at a single strategic place from which he could smash the Union army.
As Davis dreamed of new victories, Richmond, the city from which he had been driven by force of arms, had become
the
tourist destination for the Washington elites, who pestered high government or military officers for written passes to enter the ruined city. Indeed, Mary Lincoln and a party of her guests had already toured Richmond, and on April 11 the president wrote out a pass authorizing his friend and marshal of the District of Columbia, Ward Hill Lamon, to enter that city. In the spring of 1865, it was the place to be.
On the afternoon of the eleventh Abraham Lincoln sat in his office and wrote out in his vigorous, clear hand the draft of an important speech he planned to deliver from the White House window that night. The president wanted to pay tribute to the armed forces that won the war, prepare the people for his postwar plans, and propose that blacks be given the right to vote. On April 12, General Lee wrote his penultimate letter to Jefferson Davis, telling his commander in chief what he already knew. This was Lee’s official announcement to the president that he had surrendered.
Near Appomattox Court House, Virginia
April 12, 1865
Mr. President:
It is with pain that I announce to Your Excellency the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia. The operations which preceded this result will be reported in full…The enemy was more than five times our numbers. If we could have forced our way one day longer it would have been at a great sacrifice of life; at its end, I did not see how a surrender could have been avoided. We had no subsistence for man or horse…the supplies could not reach us, and the men deprived of food and sleep for many days, were worn out and exhausted.
With great respect, yr obdt svt
R. E. Lee
Genl
Before receiving this communication, Davis gave a brief speech—no more than twelve or fifteen minutes long—in Greensboro. He boasted to his audience “how vast our resources still were, and that we would in a few weeks have a larger army than we ever had.” Davis explained how such an army was to be raised. “There is Gen. Lee’s army ought to be 140,000 strong—it is not 40,000—Gen. Johnston’s army is only 15,000—it ought to be 100,000—Three fourths of the men are at home, absent without leave. Now we will collect them, and…then there are a great many conscripts on the rolls who have never been caught—we will get them—and with the 100,000 men from Gen. Lee’s army and the 85,000 men from Gen. Johnston’s, we will have such an army as we have never had before.”
These remarks, more optimistic even than Davis’s “Danville Proclamation” of April 4, rested on wishful thinking, not the situation on the ground. Lee did not have forty thousand fighting men; his effectives numbered fewer than twenty thousand, and Johnston’s
forces grew weaker every day. Furthermore, Davis had no real force to round up deserters by the bayonet and compel them to fight. And even if, by some miracle, the Confederacy massed nearly two hundred thousand men, Union forces would still have outnumbered them. And even if Davis could raise such numbers, they could not be fed or supplied.
General Lee’s letter jolted Davis into reality. Robert E. Lee Jr. was present in Greensboro when Davis received it: “After reading it, he handed it without comment to us [Lee and John Taylor Wood]; then, turning away, he silently wept bitter tears. He seemed quite broken at the moment by this tangible evidence of the loss of his army and the misfortune of its general.”
At least Davis knew his family was safe. Varina wrote on April 13, telling him she was now in Chester, South Carolina. She was staying ahead of Union cavalry raiding parties: “The rumors of a raid on Charlotte induced me to come to this side of Charlotte—A threatened raid here induces me to leave here without making an hours stay which is unnecessary—I go with the Specie train because they have a strong guard, and are attended by two responsible men—I am going somewhere, perhaps to Washington Ga…Would to God I could know the truth of the horrible rumors I hear of you—One is that you have started to Genl Lee, but have not been heard of…May God have mercy upon me, and preserve you safe for your devoted wife.”
I
n Washington, Lincoln conducted a full day of business. The city was still celebrating Lee’s surrender, but the president had plenty of work to do. The war was not over. And soon, when it was, he would have to implement his plan for the reconstruction of the South. He had visited the telegraph office early in the morning, then had meetings with General Grant and Edwin Stanton, and another with Gideon Welles.
The staff saddled Lincoln’s horse at the White House stables, and he rode to his summer cottage at the Soldiers’ Home. Maunsell Field, an assistant secretary of the Treasury, rode in a carriage beside Lincoln’s horse and they talked along the way. Later, when Lincoln returned to his White House office he wrote out several passes allowing the bearers to visit various points south, including Richmond. Then the president, like other Washingtonians, enjoyed the grand illumination of the city.
Benjamin Brown French, commissioner of public buildings and grounds, enjoyed supervising the decoration and illumination of the public buildings and described the night: “The Capitol made a magnificent display—as did the whole city. After lighting up my own house and seeing the Capitol lighted, I rode up to the upper end of the City and saw the whole display. It was indeed glorious…
all of Washington
was in the streets. I never saw such a crowd out-of-doors in my life.” French even designed one sign himself. “I had the 23rd verse of the 118th Psalm printed on cloth, in enormous letters, as a transparency, and stretched on a frame the entire length of the top of the western portico [of the Capitol building]…‘This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.’ It was lighted with gas and made a very brilliant display…as it could be read very far up the Avenue.”
Not everyone in Washington relished the illumination. That night in his room at the National Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, John Wilkes Booth, the young stage star and heartthrob, wrote a letter to his mother. “Everything was bright and splendid,” he said. But, he lamented, “more so in my eyes if it had been a display in a nobler cause.”
The next day, on April 14, Jefferson Davis sent a hurried note to Varina.
Greensboro N.C.
14 April 65
Dear Winnie
I will come to you if I can. Every thing is dark.—you should prepare for the worst by dividing your baggage so as to move in wagons. If you can go to Abbeville it seems best as I am now advised—If you can send every thing there do so—I have lingered on the road and labored to little purpose—My love to the children and Maggie—God bless, guide and preserve you ever prays your most affectionate
Banny
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