Leaving Dixie
It was April 2, 1865: A day fraught with panic. A night of terror. The Yankees were coming. Frightened residents hastily packed foodstuffs and china, boxes and baggage. Flee. Die at the hands of the invaders. No one knew. Under the cover of darkness trains had left, carrying soldiers, government documents, officials, and their families who’d leapt aboard. Crowds thronged the streets, pressed against the Richmond & Danville Railroad depot doors, desperate to get on a train out. Others crammed into carriages and horse carts, dragging trunks and baggage, possessions, pets, all in a panicked horde, fleeing the city. Some jumped in the James River, trying to swim away. Crowds of slaves prayed that “Father Abraham’s” promise of freedom was truly theirs at last.350
It was 11:30 p.m. Another half hour and the chimes of midnight would ring. If Jefferson Davis’s train didn’t get out within the next few minutes, and across the Mayo Bridge into Chesterfield County, the president, the entire Confederate cabinet, dozens of officials, clerks, all the passengers on all the cars would all be stuck in the capital to await the occupying Union forces thundering toward Richmond.
Somewhere in the madness of the night the rebel capital died. William Alvin Lloyd, Virginia, Clarence, and Nellie joined panicked throngs in a crush to seek safety, somewhere . . . anywhere. Perhaps the Lloyd party was obscured by smoke, the dense black smoke that billowed from Engine Number 24 as it waited patiently for the president who had not yet arrived.
Early that morning, General Grant broke Lee’s lines at Petersburg, and at 10:40 the awful news arrived at the Confederate war department—the government would have to flee Richmond. Jefferson Davis called an emergency cabinet meeting at noon. An hour later the evacuation of the capital started. As Richmond diarist Sallie Brock tells us, terror penetrated into every house. “Union troops, no longer obstructed, streamed toward Richmond.” At 7 o’clock that evening, Richmond received the last in a series of telegrams from Lee, repeating his urgent advice: “I think it absolutely necessary that we abandon our position to-night.”351
And now, approaching midnight, where was Jefferson Davis? Time, there was no time. Finally, Davis and E. L. Harvie, president of the railroad, came out of the office where they’d been sequestered for the last hour with Secretary of War Breckinridge. Stay or go? Davis was fevered, conflicted, in denial. He’d lingered, praying, hoping for a turn of events that would never come. At last, Davis climbed aboard.
Like many others who would say they were on the car that carried the president away, William Alvin Lloyd claimed that he, Virginia, Clarence, and Nellie were there, though not in the presidential car, but in another car, one of a long line of cars.
And of what was happening in the city, “After nightfall,” Sallie Brock wrote, “Richmond was ruled by the mob.”352 Many government documents, the valuable leavings of a government abandoning its capital, were strewn about, pitched from windows or burnt to ash in great pyres. Stores of liquor, ordered destroyed by city officials, were set upon. “Whiskey ran in the gutters ankle deep; and . . . half-drunken women . . . fought to dip up the coveted fluid in tin pans, buckets, or any vessel available,” Thomas Cooper DeLeon remembered.353
As the Confederate president fled into an uneasy dawn, Richmond was burning. Determined to destroy the warehouse stores before the Yankee invaders came, and “ignoring the possibility that selective fires could not be contained,” warehouses and flour mills were set on fire, and soon much of lower Richmond was an inferno. “The roar of the flames was heard above the shouts of people pushing through the black smoke as embers jumped from roof to roof.”354 When the arriving Union troops fought to put out the fires, Brigadier General Edward Hastings Ripley of Vermont wrote, the Confederacy “died like a wounded wolf, gnawing at its own body.”355
Alphabetical Boyd, who it must be remembered had, by this time, deserted and was now home in Maryland, later claimed in the courts that Alvin Lloyd, amid the frenzy, amid the news of evacuation, “went to see President Davis, Secretary Benjamin, and Quarter Master General Orton.” This Orton, to whom Boyd is referring, was actually A. R. Lawton, Alvin’s old nemesis from the Savannah days, who, after being wounded at Antietam, had been Confederate quartermaster general since August 1863.356
“We went to Danville, Va., on the same train of cars with Davis’s staff.” That’s Boyd again, and he expands upon this many years later, in the admissions ledger in 1895, at the Confederate Soldiers Home in Pikesville, Maryland, which was his last residence on earth: “Left Richmond April 2 1865 in charge of special car, in same train that carried President Davis and his family. Saw the last interview between President Davis, his cabinet and General Lee.”357
Every Richmond & Danville train out of the capital stopped at the great junction at Manchester. Passing through town, and crossing over the Richmond & Petersburg tracks, the long Davis train was an object of wonder to the people by the side of the road. The silhouette of the fireman, already blackened by the billowing pine smoke and flying sparks, was seen slinging wood from tender to furnace as the train picked up speed and headed out into the clear and calm night, hugging the west bank of the river. Time had run out, had ended for the Lost Cause.358
Alvin knew the Richmond & Danville well. He had traveled this line on many an occasion. Through Coalfield to Powhatan, then south to the Junction—Burkeville Junction—that the train reached at dawn.359
In Danville every available room was filled with clerks, government workers, and, eventually, Richmond refugees. In the words of one officer traveling with the Davis party: “Every private house in the city was thrown open to all in our train.”360
In the words of W. Alvin Lloyd in his prepared itinerary, at Danville, he “Stopped at the residence of L.A. Yates.” Louis Augustus Yates was a very well off shoemaker, aged forty, born in Culpeper, living with his wife Martha, their two daughters, Martha’s mother, and an apprentice.361
Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, thus effectively ending the war. As Boyd wrote, “Soon after, news came of the Armistice [the word “surrender” had originally been written here, but had been replaced] “at Appomattox C.H., and the death of President Lincoln.” As for Appomattox Court House, Jefferson Davis received the news at 3:30 on the afternoon of the tenth, when Captain William P. Graves reached Danville after an all-night ride from Appomattox Court House. According to Micajah Clark, the bad news “came with the paralyzing shock of a sudden earthquake,” and prompted Davis to go farther south immediately. “We stayed there [Danville] a few days,” says Boyd. “Lloyd left his family there, and we [Lloyd and Boyd] went to Greensboro, N.C. [allegedly on the train that left Danville at eleven o’clock on the night of Tuesday, April 10, with Jefferson Davis and his entourage aboard].”362
They arrived in Greensboro late the next afternoon. Whereas Danville had been friendly, even welcoming, to Davis and his retinue, Greensboro, which had always been a pro-Union city, was downright hostile, to the point of almost refusing accommodations to the refugees. This meant that most of them had to sleep in the railroad cars. Davis got rooms in the city with Colonel Wood.363
Boyd says of Greensboro: “Gained information as to army of J. E. Johnston. Sent it by negro servant to Petersburg, with instructions to give them to the commanding officer at Petersburg.” When reporting this, Boyd asserts that Alvin heard this information from General Beauregard, who did arrive in Greensboro not long after the Davis party. In the president’s railroad car office, Beauregard was asked by the president to report on General Johnston’s progress against the advancing Federal war machine of General Sherman. Beauregard was less than sanguine. In fact, he recommended surrender. Davis ordered him to send for Johnston, who reported to Davis on the morning of Wednesday the twelfth, again in the car at Greensboro. Johnston strongly urged suing for peace with Sherman, but Davis refused to consider such an idea, instructing him to beat Sherman and then take on Grant.364
The next day, the thirteenth, John C. Breckinridge, Jefferson Davis, Judah Benjamin, and Generals Johnston and Beauregard met in Davis’s car.365 Incredibly, Boyd testified that this was Alvin’s last report to President Lincoln.
On April 27, 1865, General Horatio Wright entered Danville, or, rather Colonel Hyde did. To quote Alvin in Enclosure 13, “The town of Danville was occupied by the Union forces on Thursday, April 27th/65. The Sixth Corps, commanded by Major Genl Wright. The people of Danville, as a general thing, are disloyal.” Here is Lloyd making sure the Federal government would see he was, as usual, ready to expose treasonists.
As well, he produced a blizzard of minutiae to convince Federal authorities that he was their man on the ground. In place. In Danville. On the lookout for Rebels.
Mr. Walker [James McKenzie Walker], the mayor who has been re-appointed by General Wright; J.C. Voss, merchant [Colonel James C. Voss]; John Holland, manufacturer of shells, etc, for the Rebel Govt; and the man at whose house the first secession flag was raised—Sutherland [actually William Thomas Sutherlin], was a major and quartermaster for the Rebel Govt, and one of the members of the convention that voted Virginia out of the Union; Capt. W.J. Clark, merchant [Mr. Voss’s next-door neighbor, William J. Clark]; Wicker Keen, merchant [this is Wicher Kean, with whom Congressman Bruce had stayed], Elisha Keen, member of the Rebel Legislature; Moore, who stabbed a negro soldier while passing through Danville.366
These and others of the same stamp have taken the oath of allegiance. Mayor Walker said publicly, “that after the Yankees came to Danville he would never accept the position of Mayor of the city if proffered to him.” Yet he did accept it, from Genl Wright. Samuel Moore (citizen) who killed the Union soldier (Negro) who was a prisoner of war in July 1864, is doing business at this time in Danville. He cut the Negro’s throat—a number of citizens witnessed it. Alva Woodray, blacksmith [this man is an Alvin Lloyd invention], and Robt Cole witnessed it, and will testify to the fact. Robert Harter lives near White Oak Point, 4 miles from Danville, knocked a Union soldier (prisoner) down with a stone. Linc Patterson of Danville witnessed it. Isaac Reeves tried to steal a watch from a Union soldier, who was a prisoner, and in the scuffle, a man by name of Ferguson, resident of Danville, shot the soldier for daring to resist. About 300 prisoners of war (colored soldiers) who were kept in prison at Danville [this was not a true prison—rather six tobacco warehouses], only 25 survived from the cruel treatment of those who had charge of the prisoners, and the 25 that did survive were retained as slaves, and given up to their pretended owners. These facts were given me by Col. Long, adj. of Col. Hyde (at this time stationed at Danville) [Colonel Thomas W. Hyde, commander of the Third Brigade, from Maine, who, it will be seen, had left Danville by the sixteenth], and is [sic] thoroughly reliable.367
On Thursday, May 18, 1865, according to Lloyd, “A young man, Captain Chase, called at the house where myself and family were stopping, and informed the proprietor, Mr Yates, that he was entertaining in his house a Yankee spy—by the name of Lloyd.” He signs this final document, “Wm Alvin Lloyd, Danville, May 18, 1865.” And so this final accusation by Captain Chase left the readers (the Federal authorities) with the words “Yankee spy.” It was perfect.
In his June 3, 1865, deposition, Alvin says he was in the insurgent states until May 24, 1865. However, Alphabetical Boyd says: “Lloyd reported to General Wright commanding 6th Corps at Danville, Va., and he furnished Lloyd, his family, and myself, with transportation to Washington about June 1, 1865, a few days after the first, from the 1st to the 5th.” This is impossible as Lloyd, Boyd, Virginia, and Nellie were in DC several days before they deposed there for the first time on June 3, 1865, and Lloyd’s pass has a May date franked on the back of it.
In fact, the last of Wright’s Sixth Corps left Danville on May 16, so Lloyd must have secured transportation from Wright on or before that date—certainly not after it, as Wright was no longer there. It wasn’t until the nineteenth that the 12th New Hampshire, acting on Wright’s suggestion, entered Danville to protect the town. This means, then, that if Wright did arrange transportation for Lloyd, then Lloyd, like Wright, was out of Danville by May 16. Also in late May 1865, Alvin was pressing his claim for back salary, and by June 1 had hired a lawyer to expedite that ambition—both events occurring in Washington, DC. So sometime during the next week, Alvin, Virginia, Clarence, and Nellie must have taken the Danville Railroad back up to Richmond, and from there made their way to City Point, in Prince George County, Virginia, on the south bank of the Appomattox, where that river comes out into the James, about twenty miles south of Richmond.
Alvin’s little group would have made the trip either by steamer down the James River, or by taking the Richmond & Petersburg Railroad down to Petersburg, and then cutting across from there on the City Point Railroad. Whatever their route, they arrived at City Point, where General Grant had been headquartered from 1864–1865. There was a huge supply depot and field hospital on-site.368
At City Point, Alvin produced the pass from Abraham Lincoln that he’d received on July 13, 1861. It is not known how he secreted this critical document, kept it safe during the war when his belongings, not necessarily his clothing, were repeatedly searched. There are a few possibilities: Possibly Nellie hid it on her person for a time, as she would later swear that she’d hidden the fictitious contract in her undergarments while with Lloyd in Lynchburg. As there was no contract, it is probable that she was referring to the pass. Or when in Savannah when Lloyd was allowed to send out letters from prison, imagine his fierce need to send the pass away immediately, the pass from the enemy president, stating, “Special business.” If that was the case, he would have reclaimed the pass from whomever he’d sent it to. But at City Point, Alvin’s pass was produced and franked (stamped and dated).369
Once Alvin and his retinue were legally processed through into Federal territory, from City Point they would have taken a steamer down the James, past Newport News, and into Chesapeake Bay before swinging up into the mouth of the Potomac River and proceeding upstream until they got to Washington. Alvin would contact Boyd in Maryland and together they would, in a matter of days, begin to lie their way to a great deal of money.