Shot Down Like a Dog
On May 23rd, 1863, two days after Alvin Lloyd arrived in Mobile, he was arrested “by the Provo Marshal’s Mr. Parker from Massachusetts upon complaint of Mr Chamberlain, also from Massachusetts, proprietor of the Battle House, Mobile, and was kept in confinement, searched, & papers examined. There was nothing to warrant my detention & Parker discharged me.” Discharged. Freed. No proof. It is familiar. And most importantly, though Alvin repeatedly lies to the US authorities about his frequent, long prison terms, he has only been incarcerated twice: Very, very briefly for bigamy in Memphis, nine months in Georgia. Twice. Just twice.
And for the benefit of his claim, he is a Yankee vigilante committee of one. “Mobile is full of Northern men who are the very worst secessionists and fire-eaters.”312
At this time, much of Dixie was strewn with war dead. From battle campaigns won and lost, and the great prayer that Robert E. Lee’s Army of Virginia would crush the Yankees, with Richmond under threat of invasion, with wins and heavy losses on both sides—the internecine bloodletting—the heaving and pitching of a seemingly endless war, Alvin Lloyd had fueled and would fuel again an already raging fire. With words. In his guide. What he wrote and muttered in public hit a nerve. Hit many nerves. This puzzle of a man with an unstoppable compulsion to attack—parrying and thrusting without fear of consequence—would never, couldn’t ever, end well.
Now, with the stench of prison trailing him like foxfire, Lloyd came to a city that, though there were Unionists sprinkled among the populace, had by now declared itself pure Confederate, boldly vowing not to be “conquered and held in subjugation by an enemy whom its people have grown up detesting.”313
The Federal blockade of Mobile Bay led by Union Admiral David Farragut had greatly suppressed trade and decimated the economy. Even though the blockade-runners, the low, fleet ships that slipped frequently undetected though the blockade “maintain[ed] a trickle of trade in and out of Mobile,” privations and poverty were perceived as Yankee attacks.314 The city’s vital defenses were on high alert as were most residents. In fact, even those impugned by Alvin for being of northern origins were not the enemy.
And the man Alvin claimed arrested him on a “complaint,’’ Gideon Marsena “G. M.” Parker, was the Provost Marshal of Mobile. He was originally from Connecticut, although he had been in Mobile since he was fourteen. After the war, he would become Mobile’s mayor. He’d married the sister of Francis Henry Chamberlain, the proprietor of the Battle House Hotel. Hence the connection and this duo’s united front against Alvin Lloyd, who had come to town to prepare and publish his guide. And he did. That is the wonder of it. Though it is not known where in the city the guide was printed, here it was, at last. Now it was a cause for celebration after the long delay that was prison, after his tear through cotton country to amass monies to publish. The June 1863 edition of Lloyd’s Southern Railroad Guide cost fifty cents. “New Series Volume One, Number Two, with one hundred and thirty-eight pages,” he announced. This number was “the second issued since July 1861, when we were (as before published) driven from New York by an Abolition mob at midnight. We are not in right trim yet; a month or so hence our Railroad friends and the public may look for a better appearance of the Guide. We will shortly have our new map ready [it actually came out on or around October 10, 1863, from Mobile]. We have met with good cheer from every quarter and our Guide shall be a correct one or not at all. But it will require a little time to get the railroad men posted as to our whereabouts.”315
Despite the good cheer, and because Alvin could not resist, he found an opportunity to retaliate against Chamberlain the hotelkeeper. In print.
“The Battle House in Mobile is for rent: address J. Emanuel, President of the Battle House Company, Mobile. We hope some good Southern man will take charge of this house; it will pay. We believe that a majority of the stockholders would prefer a Southern man as a tenant. Rent: $14,000 per annum.”316
The guide included the railroads of Texas and a map of Charleston Harbor. As there had to be a lot of complimentary ads in this edition, piggybacking on the May edition, he knew he was going to be strapped for cash for a while, so he came up with another moneymaking venture: “I would most respectfully offer my services to my friends in the country, and all other who may need them, to act as an Agent in this City for any Negroes who may have been or are now at work on the Fortifications near Mobile, and will collect any claims due them for such services.”317
This issue is essentially an advertiser for Mobile, pages eighty-two through the end being taken up with ads from that city, complete with elaborate lithographs; Jarvis Turner’s Mobile Marble Works were busy and would get busier as they serviced the dead—“monuments, tombs, Gravestones” and “mantles, grates.” Commission merchants, wholesale grocers, slave auctioneers and auction houses, and the “wines, liquors & grocers,”—pages sixty-four to the end are ads. Pages twenty-eight to sixty-three are occupied with railroad schedules copied from Hill & Swayze’s 1862 Confederate States Steamboat & Railroad Guide, and hopelessly out of date.
“We shall publish our Guide in Mobile hereafter,” Alvin wrote, full of optimism, as he managed to revivify, strengthen, and like his beloved engines, steam ahead.318
And he did, at least for a while. The July edition also came out, from Mobile, prepared in June. And on occasion and much delayed by weeks, mail and newspapers like the New York Herald and other northern publications trickled into the city.
Perhaps Alvin Lloyd was sitting in a restaurant in Mobile, and as a former New Yorker himself was reading the Herald ’s news and came upon the death notices. “On Monday, June 1, Lloyd, Ernest P., only child of Harriet and W. Alvin Lloyd, aged 22 months and 9 days.”319
This is the child whose birth notice was published in the Herald while Alvin was in Canton, Mississippi, celebrating not only his recent freedom from Captain Klinck and the Memphis ordeal but also the Confederate victory at Manassas just as the bigamy stories about him were breaking all over the country. The mother, Harriet, is unknown. Another wife? Another child, a lost child, unknown to Alvin? Another mystery. And as for Alvin’s true cause—the Confederacy—news of Lee’s crushing defeat as he attempted to invade the north at Gettysburg, the three days of July 1 to 3, had reached all in the south.
On Saturday, July 18, 1863, Alvin left Mobile and arrived in Montgomery later that day. While he was there—and here is the reason for this fast exit—someone in Mobile wrote a letter to the Memphis Appeal, explaining Alvin’s departure from the city.
Quite a storm in a teapot has been raging in our city the past few days. A.M. [sic] Lloyd, publisher of Lloyd’s Railroad Guide, a comparative stranger, I think, in the city, published in the July number of his periodical the names of several prominent citizens who had business connections or families in the North. . . . This wholesale inferences were most unfair. It happened that several gentlemen whose Southern principles and practical patriotism were beyond question, had their families in the North—as indeed Capt. Semmes of the Alabama [Raphael Semmes, captain of the raider ship Alabama did have families in the North until recently]. . . . These gentlemen came out with cards in the daily press, denouncing Lloyd as a “liar,” “slanderer,” “scoundrel,” “imposter,” etc., one gentleman warning him to leave the city within twenty-four hours from the date of his card.
Alvin was exposed.
In the meantime, he published a card, stating that he was responsible, etc. Doubtless, in the list published in the railroad guide were names of disloyal men, men who had refused Confederate money, and who are enemies at heart to our cause, but the tried and true men who were denounced with the suspected, defeated whatever patriotic object the writer had, and the traitor can take shelter behind the known loyal men who had been wrongly attacked. Had Lloyd known more of the status of the prominent citizens he might have done good; as it is, he has done harm.320
Alvin had in fact done great harm to himself. He had been warned.
And in Richmond, on his own path to ruin, at this very time, Alphabetical Boyd was brought into Judge Halyburton’s courtroom. His Honor heard both sides of the argument—that Boyd had deserted as a private back in February 1862, and that as an officer (Boyd claimed he was a Colonel) he couldn’t be tried as a private, etc., and threw Boyd back in Castle Thunder Prison to await trial by the military authorities as a deserter.321
That day, Friday, July 24, Alvin left Montgomery, arriving in Augusta, Georgia, on the twenty-sixth, for a ten-day stay with his wife and child. On Sunday, August 2, he traveled and arrived at Columbia, South Carolina, the same day. He spent two days in the capital of the state where war began and where Sherman’s men would burn the city to the ground at war’s end. But now, northern prisoners were beginning to accumulate in the ration-deficient Sorghum Prison as Alvin stayed a week for unknown reasons. Perhaps he was trying to find a new place of publication, but to no avail.
On Saturday, August 8, Lloyd arrived back in Mobile. Whether or not the August and September editions of Lloyd’s Southern Railroad Guide ever came out is not known, but certainly the October–November one did—from Mobile again. This guide had 158 pages. For one dollar it contained the timetables, stations, connections, distances, and fares on all the railroads throughout the Southern states, with a guide to the principal watering places and summer resorts, and sketches of the different cities and towns in the South. Also a list of the best-kept hotels, with a list of all the cotton and woolen factories in the Confederacy, with names of proprietors and the post office of each factory. Pages 64 to 102 contained ads.322
As for Alphabetical Boyd, who would swear at different times that he was anywhere and everywhere, was, in fact, on August 12, 1863, in Richmond, extremely ill. The Confederate army records report “Private T.M. Boyd [sic], post office Clarksburg, Md. [which was, indeed, T.H.S. Boyd’s home address], of Company I of the Louisiana 1st regiment, was admitted to General Hospital No. 13, in Richmond, suffering from acute diarrhea.” The following day, diarrhea or not, he was thrown into Castle Thunder Prison. They fed him “Bennett’s Diarrhoea Killer,” obtainable at W. Peterson & Co, druggists at 155 Main Street. A few doses were all you needed. Unless it was colic diarrhea, for which Mr. Peterson recommended Extract of Jamaica Ginger. And, if you couldn’t get to Mr. Peterson’s in time, J. W. Randolph, the stationer at 121 Main, could offer you “Any Quantity of Paper!”323
Alvin was not similarly afflicted. But the letter, the tempest of a letter that arrived in Mobile, might well have sickened him.
Geo. W. Adams, supt of Central Georgia RR, residing at Savannah, Ga., wrote a letter to [Major L. J.] Fleming, engineer & supt of the M & O RR [Mobile & Ohio], stating to him that he understood that W. Alvin Lloyd was in Mobile, and that Lloyd was a spy, and had been confined in Chatham County Jail in Savannah, and had made his escape from that place and was in the employ of the Yankee Govt—to be on his guard and to inform the citizens of Mobile of the fact Lloyd was a scoundrel and abolitionist. This letter was shown to several citizens of the place, and given to the editor of the Mobile Register & Advertiser (John Forsyth) to publish.324
To make matters worse, in his guide, after a long series of cautions, words to the wise, pat phrases of instructions advising his readers to “betray no trust, divulge no secret, condescend to compliance rather than continue an angry dispute,” on and on comes blackmail. After this exhausting list of homilies and hymns to righteousness—bulleted in bold print—is a “LIST OF NAMES OF MEN DOING BUSINESS IN MOBILE WITH FAMILIES RESIDING IN THE NORTH.” Couched in a plea, but more of a warning, Alvin advises “A.J. Mullaney, Newton St. John, L. Merchant, Dr. Mandeville, J.F. Woodhull and G. Rapalie,” as “good friends of the South,” to have their “families join you in Mobile.”
Remembering the hard fears bubbling near to boiling in Mobile, Alvin has incited violence. In his own words:
I was caught by several citizens of the place, who advised me to leave. The Northern men who had endeavored to injure me by asserting I was an abolitionist & spy, I denounced them. They, 30 or 40, attacked me and shot me 8 times, one ball through the lung, one severed the spine, which paralyzed me. I was confined to my bed (not expected to live 2 weeks) for 3 months. I am yet paralyzed.325
The historical truth is vastly different: In Mobile, on October 1, 1863, just as his October issue of the guide was being published, Alvin was shot down “like a dog” on the street by Andrew J. Mullany. Exactly where on his body the bullets entered is not known, but the shooting almost killed him. What actually seems to have happened on that fateful day is that Mobile resident Andrew Mullany, one of the men accused of Union sensibilities by Lloyd in his guide, approached him on the street with the intention of accosting the slander-mongering publisher. Lloyd, ever ready for attack, “snapped his revolver twice” (cocked the weapon) and pointed it at the oncoming Mullany. Andrew Mullany shot Lloyd several times. It may have been nine times, as some papers reported, or eight, as Alvin said, and the badly wounded man had to be dragged to his residence, where he lay near death for several weeks. Mullany gave himself up and was subsequently released on bail. Alvin’s life was despaired of, and the press reported the event, some even saying he was dead.326
Although he didn’t die, the cost to Alvin was horrendous. That part is true. Alphabetical Boyd sums up Alvin’s terrible state in his 1872 deposition: “When Lloyd went South in July 1861, he was in enjoyment of good health and had every appearance of a man who would live a long life. When he came back in June 1865, he used a crutch and cane, and was constantly under the care of a physician and so until his death. His lungs were affected, and he also had paralysis of the back and leg, which was considerably shrunken and shortened. This paralysis occurred in Mobile—first in Savannah, and afterwards in Mobile.” By that is meant that Alvin definitely and without question suffered in Savannah, perhaps even to the extent of some form of severe rheumatism or arthritis. But as for the crutches and the paralysis there is no question that came after the shooting, and not before.327
As if by design, Virginia or Alvin summoned help, real help, from Virginia’s brother, Eugene Higgins, a shipping agent and commission merchant. Higgins wrote to Jefferson Davis on December 5, 1863, from Mobile. The letter is a paean to Alvin. It is a defense of Alvin. Higgins wrote:
There is a case, I think, if you had known of it, that would have you to act. It is this. Wm Alvin Lloyd, a true Southern Rights man, who has been treated shamefully by the authorities at Savannah, and here too. He has had the moral courage to publish the names of men speculating in Mobile whose families reside at the North. They are, Sir, enemies to our cause. For publishing these men in Mobile . . . he was attacked by these Yankee traitors, and shot down like a dog on the first of October last. Yes, Sir, for publishing facts against these Yankees, he is a cripple for life. You, Sir, can appreciate the acts of a true man to our cause. Mr Lloyd has lost everything he possessed by these Yankees, and was striving to rid Mobile of the nest of Yankee traitors (and it is full) when he was shot down.
And here is the request:
Now allow me, Sir, an humble citizen, to suggest to Your Excellency, to give Mr Lloyd some position to maintain himself and family. He is advanced in life, and the Provost Marshall here is a young man, and would do better service in camp than here in Mobile, and his assistants are all young men. I in common with nine tenths of Southern men in Mobile, would love to see you appoint Mr Lloyd Provost Marshall of Mobile. Of course, Sir, you act as best suits your taste. Very respectfully, Eugene Higgins. I think, Sir, this is a case where you would do a noble act by appointing this man to some office. He is despairing. Mr Lloyd is the publisher of Lloyd’s Southern RR Guide & Map. He is well known throughout the whole Confederacy. Respectfully, Eugene Higgins.
It is as if Lloyd is unknown to Jefferson Davis or Eugene Higgins thinks that to be the case. A peculiarity, to be sure, considering Lloyd’s frantic letters to the Confederate president from Savannah. But of course, thousands of people wrote to Jefferson Davis throughout the war.328
Alvin says: “Left Mobile for Richmond, Va., Dec. 22nd 1863, sick and wounded.” With his powers of resurrection, his will to live on and move on no matter how he incurred the violence he incited, Alvin Lloyd astonishes. This sick and wounded phoenix is somehow back on his feet.
On the way to the Confederate capital, he went to his family in Augusta to repair. Six days later, on December 28, he managed to visit the offices of the local paper, the Constitutionalist, handing them a free copy of his latest guide. The paper printed the news of Alvin’s shooting the following day. Even an event as insignificant as this might be picked up by newspapers around the country, especially if it involved a notorious scoundrel who had, perhaps, once resided in their town. For example, the Macon Telegraph of January 2, 1864, wanted its readers to know that “W. Alvin Lloyd, the Railroad Guide man, who was shot in Mobile some time since, and reported dead, was in Augusta, on crutches, a few days ago, slowly recovering from his wound.”
On Wednesday, January 6, 1864, Alvin arrived in Richmond.329
The Richmond Daily Dispatch of January 8, 1864, had this: “Loyd’s [sic] Railroad Guide. Mr. Loyd [sic], the proprietor of that most valuable publication, the railroad guide, has commenced the publication of a map in connection with it. The map is accurate and well gotten up. The representations of Charleston Harbor, and the islands around it, is very interesting just at this time. Mr. Loyd, who was shot recently in Mobile, did not die of his wounds, as reported.”
The Richmond Examiner of the same date, January 8, 1864, says: “Lloyd’s Railroad Map. We are indebted to Mr. W. Alvin Lloyd, of Mobile, for a copy of his beautifully executed Railroad Map for 1864. It is said to be the only correct map of the railroads in the Southern Confederacy in existence. We take occasion here to correct the report which we published some time ago, that Mr. Lloyd was dead, having been killed in a street fight in Mobile. The facts are these: A party of Yankees living in Mobile, infuriated by Mr. Lloyd’s exposure of them, attacked him in the street and in the affair he received nine pistol wounds some of them very severe, which disabled and confined him to his bed for several weeks. His escape from death was miraculous. He is still in a crippled condition, being upon crutches.”
According to Alphabetical Boyd’s 1872 deposition, “January, February and March 1864, I saw Lloyd in Richmond. He was getting information in regard to the fortifications, and as to strength and location of Confederate troops around Petersburg and Richmond. He sent this to Mr Lincoln by a blockade runner.”330
As for Boyd’s statement here, Alvin was indeed in Richmond, and so was Boyd, but not as he claimed, recently returned to Richmond after seeing President Lincoln in Washington. As fact, and again, the historical record negates the fictions, on the night of January 28, 1864, Boyd’s room on Franklin, between 8th and 9th, was entered in his absence and robbed of a trunk, containing about three thousand dollars worth of valuable clothing. He called the police and offered a large reward. Was it clothing or incriminating papers within the trunk? On June a vest would turn up, sported by Aleck Brace, Ann Newton’s slave. Aleck swore he bought it from Fanny Jones’s slave Pat, who swore he bought it from another man. The case against Aleck Brace was dismissed.331
Actually, what Lloyd and Boyd were doing was putting together the next editions of the Railroad Guide. Unmolested, it seems. But in 1864, Alvin’s experience in the South—the arrests, desperation, and poverty of 1861, a year culminating in his long term of imprisonment at Savannah, and 1862, most of which was behind bars or under arrest, not to mention the continued poverty and uncertainty about his family—was to change for the better.
By 1864, with the Confederate government facing inevitable defeat, in extremis, and far too preoccupied to bother with the likes of him, hobbling on crutches, with his resurgent powers intact, Alvin Lloyd was working again and being paid for his guides by the Confederate government. He was profiting, selling, and clearly not perceived as an enemy of the Confederacy.
Proof lies in several invoices and letters. A requisition dated February 2, 1864, was obtained at the request of US authorities by Francis Lieber, the author of the first laws of conduct in the field and later an archivist tasked with collecting Confederate documents. This requisition of the Secretary of War on the Secretary of the Treasury is “in favor of W.A. Lloyd for the sum of $860 payable out of the appropriation for incidental and contingent expenses of Army,” and marked ‘Special.’ ” As well, there is a receipt for ten copies of Lloyd’s Southern railroad maps, fifty dollars total, for use in General Winder’s office.332
On October 3, 1865, in his letter to Stanton outlining the letters he’d found in the Confederate archives regarding Lloyd, Lieber writes, “I would also call attention to the account, heretofore transmitted, of W.A. Lloyd, for ten of his war maps, furnished to the Rebel secretary of war, and the requisition upon the same fund, covering the same.” This last refers to a note, dated February 1, 1864: “Hon. Secretary of War. Ten copies of W. Alvin Lloyd’s War Map. $50. Richmond.” Then it says, “Received payment” and was signed “W. Alvin Lloyd.”333
There is another note, dated, February 1, 1864, from the Adjutant General’s office: “W. Alvin Lloyd sold 100 copies of his ‘Southern RR Map’ to C.S. Engineers Bureau, for which he received $500. Dated Richd., Va., Feb. 1/64.” And yet another from February 1, 1864: “Confederate States of America. 25 copies of Lloyd’s RR map. $150.” And another, for “40 copies of W. Alvin Lloyd’s Southern Railroad maps, at $5 each—total $200, for the Confederate States Nitre & Mining Service.” Alvin also received $125 for twenty-five copies of the map for the Ordnance Department, also February 1. And another of that date, for ten copies, at five dollars a copy, from the Navy Department.334
And now came a ploy, a dodge, a familiar and typical Lloyd and Boyd dance.
The Daily Richmond Examiner of Thursday, March 24, 1864, carried this open letter, written that day from the office of Lloyd’s Southern Railroad Guide, Richmond, by the publisher himself, William Alvin Lloyd: “The public are cautioned against paying moneys or giving advertisements to Thomas H.S. Boyd, on account of Lloyd’s Southern Railroad Guide, as he has been discharged from the employ of the undersigned—said Boyd being unworthy of confidence or respect.”
On the surface, it looks as if the two had a falling out. But it was not so. This was as might be remembered, an old game the two men played well. As long as the publisher took out an ad disclaiming his agent—in this case, Boyd—then all debts owed by the publisher that had been incurred by the agent were now legally uncollectable. Alvin had been doing this for years, as had all other con men in this field. It seems that Alphabetical had to make himself scarce for a while, so he joined the Confederate army again.
Alphabetical later claimed (in private life when he sought admittance to the Confederate Soldiers’ home) that in April 1864 he joined the 47th Battalion of the Virginia Cavalry as a lieutenant colonel, hence his use after the war of the name Colonel T.H.S. Boyd. However, was he actually a lieutenant colonel? Was he ever in the 47th? The 47th was formed in April 1864, yes, but Major William N. Harman was major in command, and major is lower than a lieutenant colonel, so Alphabetical would have shown as the commander, not Harman. In December 1864 the 47th would be merged into the 26th Virginia Cavalry. There was a Lieutenant Colonel Boyd commanding the 14th Veteran Reserves in 1864, but this was Carlysle Boyd, not T.H.S. Boyd.
However, in April 1864, the Confederate Army records do show a Thos. Boyd being enlisted by Captain Stewart in Richmond on April 15, 1864, as a private in Company N of the 2nd Regiment of the Virginia State Reserves, formerly the 19th Regiment of the Virginia State Militia. This man was soon transferred to Captain William A. Jenkins’s company, that is Company E of the 2nd Regiment Virginia Reserves. We duly find a Private T.H.S. Boyd in Company E of that regiment. Then, army records of July and August of 1864 show a Private T.H.S. Boyd, actually physically present in Company E, of the 2nd State Reserves, Virginia Militia. “Colonel Boyd” sounds a lot better than “Private Boyd.” No matter what the rank, a Confederate soldier is a Confederate soldier and Boyd was certainly that. Not admitted to the Union authorities, of course, but certainly one of the large cracks in the case, among many discoveries in the investigation that helped to prove the Lloyd fraud.
Alvin left Richmond on Wednesday, April 6, 1864, and arrived in Atlanta on the twenty-first, a Thursday. He gives us no clue what he was doing for the two weeks it took him to get to Atlanta, but one has to guess he was in Augusta, that town being Virginia’s base for most of the Civil War. “We went to Augusta, Georgia, together, and to Atlanta. This was about April or May, 1864.” So says Boyd in his 1872 deposition. Lloyd does mention Atlanta in April, as we have seen, but not Augusta. Lloyd may have forgotten about Augusta, but it’s unlikely. It was a 171-mile trip direct from Augusta to Atlanta on the Georgia Railroad.335 In regard to this trip, Boyd claimed to be traveling with Lloyd, but at that very moment, he was serving valiantly in the Virginia Cavalry, or as he sometimes noted, in the 2nd State Reserves. It is simply not possible for him to have been in two places at once.
Nonetheless, Alvin and his accomplices use Atlanta for a couple of additional reasons. One is that in 1865 the maid, Nellie Dooley, falsely testified that in or around April 1864, Lloyd gave her a letter to take to Lincoln. She claimed she got as far as the Rappahannock River before being turned back by pickets, and had to return to Atlanta with the letter. The truth is that on June 1, 1864, Alvin’s Southern Steamboat and Railroad Guide came out, now priced at five dollars, published in Atlanta. Of the 136 pages, the last 90 contained ads.
On Sunday, June 5, 1864, Alvin left Atlanta, and the following day went up to Columbus, Georgia. He was in Columbus six days, leaving on the twelfth, on the Montgomery & West Point Railroad, arriving in Montgomery the same day. He left Montgomery on Monday the thirteenth, and the next day was in Selma, Alabama. That day, Colonel Josiah Gorgas, Chief of the Confederate Ordnance Bureau at Richmond, wrote this note: “This department will take twenty five copies of Lloyd’s Rail Road map, to be delivered.”336
Another bit of historical truth now intrudes. On Wednesday, June 15, 1864, Alvin passed through Jackson, Mississippi. Again, it’s quite possible that during Alvin’s four-day stay in Selma, Alabama, he managed to pass through Jackson on the fifteenth. It’s just that he forgets to mention it, which is odd in that that was the very morning the eastern mails had failed to get through to Jackson, the Montgomery stage road having been rendered impassable due to the recent heavy rains. And his stopover in Jackson was long enough for the press to report it. And Alphabetical Boyd, who swears he was with him throughout this period, never gets a mention in the press like his boss does. Alvin, in his very detailed itinerary, never once mentions Boyd accompanying him. But that’s because Alphabetical was, in real life, with his regiment.337
Alvin left Selma on Saturday, June 18, 1864, and on the twenty-first arrived back in Mobile, not leaving there until July 11. On Wednesday the thirteenth he arrived at Atlanta, and on that day received fifty dollars in Confederate money from the Navy for two copies of his Railroad Guide. He left Atlanta on the fourteenth, getting to Augusta the following day. On the twenty-first he arrived at Columbus, and left there on Monday the twenty-fifth. On the twenty-sixth he arrived in Danville, Virginia, left there on July 28, 1864, and arrived in Richmond that night.338
Lloyd amazes. He has overcome. He has profited. Though crippled, he has summoned strength enough to make these numerous dashes about Dixie, as of old. What will await him now as he returns to Richmond? Has he, like most Confederates, been buoyed by the news of General Jubal Early’s attack on the defenses of Washington, DC, between July 11 and 12? Is this a harbinger of victory, or a flash, a false hope, a stab at the near impossible? For the Confederate forces are weakening. Lloyd is coming into view now. He is growing stronger, unlike Dixie, the land he roams. For Dixie is dying.