While Lincoln toured her home on April 4, Varina Davis had just reached Charlotte, North Carolina. She had declined an invitation to remain in Danville, electing instead to press on. She remembered the journey as being incredibly miserable: “The baggage cars were all needing repairs and leaked badly. Our bedding was wet through by the constant rains that poured down in the week of uninterrupted travel which was consumed in reaching our destination. Universal consternation prevailed throughout the country, and we avoided seeing people for fear of compromising them with the enemy, should they overrun North Carolina.”
Varina, her children, and their small group of traveling companions settled into a rented house in Charlotte, where they awaited word from Jefferson Davis. Colonel Burton Harrison, his escort mission accomplished, headed north to Danville to rejoin his chief in the new, temporary Confederate capital.
For Davis to maintain command over the forces of the Confederacy, and to order them into action, he needed military intelligence, especially from General Lee. The sudden evacuation of Richmond had disrupted Davis’s regular channels of communication and had left him blind. He spent much of April 4 sending and receiving messages. He wrote to General P. G. T. Beauregard: “Please give me any reliable information you have as to movements of enemy and dispositions to protect the Piedmont R.R. I have no communication from Gen’l Lee since Sunday.”
Beauregard replied at 3:30 P.M. from Greensboro, North Carolina. He knew nothing of Lee. “I consider R.R. from Chester to Danville safe at present. Will send today 600 more men to latter point. Twentyfive hundred more could be sent if absolutely needed but they are returned men from various commands in Army of Tennessee temporarily stopped here & organized here. General Johnston has ordered here some cavalry which I have diverted from Hillsborough to Danville. No news from Lee or Johnston.”
Davis replied promptly. “The reports in regard to the raiders very contradictory. But evidence indicates that they have not been at Madison. The cavalry you have ordered here, will be of especial value at this time, and with the Infantry en route will probably serve the immediate necessity. Have sent courier to Gen’l Lee from whom I have no communication.” The present status of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia two days after the evacuation of Richmond was central to Davis’s plans, and the lack of intelligence frustrated the president.
Later that day, bad news arrived from other regions of the Confederacy. Howell Cobb, former governor of Georgia and a major Confederate leader, sent word to Davis of multiple disasters: “Selma has fallen—The Enemy threatens Montgomery and it is believed will march upon Columbus Georgia. I submit for your consideration that Woffords command should be kept in Georgia & ordered to report to me. Please answer as Wofford is preparing to move towards Chattanooga and Knoxville Road East Tennessee & Georgia Railroad.”
Davis heard about more setbacks from his nephew Joseph R. Davis: “My Brigade was lost except about twenty men all captured; I went to Richmond to join you—arrived too late. I came to this place [Powhatan Courthouse] on foot. On the capture of my command lost everything. I will join the army and remain with it in some capacity. I deeply regret having missed you as I hoped in an humble way to have served you. Remember me in love to aunt and the children.”
Davis knew he had to inspire the people of the Confederacy and make them realize that his move to Danville was not a shameful flight to save himself but instead was a strategic retreat. He sought, by personal example, to make them believe that he had not abandoned them, that the cause was not lost, that he would never surrender, and that he would lead them to victory and independence. He drafted a presidential proclamation for the whole South to read. Issued the same day that Abraham Lincoln toured Richmond, the text was published as a one-page broadside on the printing press of the local Danville newspaper. Remembered only by students of the Civil War, and rarely quoted in full, the remarkable Danville Proclamation provides unfiltered insights into the mind of the retreating but unbowed president.
To the People of the Confederacy
Danville, Va.,
April 4, 1865
The General-in-Chief of our Army has found it necessary to make such movements of the troops as to uncover the Capital, and thus involve the withdrawal of the Government from the city of Richmond.
It would be unwise, even if it were possible, to conceal the great moral, as well as material injury to our cause that must result from the occupation of Richmond by the enemy. It is equally unwise and unworthy of us, as patriots engaged in a most sacred cause, to allow our energies to falter, our spirits to grow faint, or our efforts to become relaxed, under reverses however calamitous. While it has been to us a source of national pride, that for four years of unequalled warfare, we have been able, in close proximity to the centre of the enemy’s power to maintain the seat of our chosen Government free from the pollution of his presence; while the memories of the heroic dead, who have freely given their lives to its defence, must ever remain enshrined in our hearts; while the preservation of the capital, which is usually regarded as the evidence to mankind of separate existence, was an object very dear to us, it is also true, and should not be forgotten, that the loss which we have suffered is not without compensation.
For many months the largest and finest army of the Confederacy, under the command of a leader whose presence inspires equal confidence in the troops and the people, has been greatly trammeled by the necessity of keeping constant watch over the approaches to the capital, and has thus been forced to forego more than one opportunity for promising enterprises.
The hopes and confidences of the enemy have been constantly excited by the belief, that their possession of Richmond would be the signal for our submission to their rule, and relieve them from the burthen of a war which, as their failing resources admonish them, must be abandoned if not brought to a successful close.
It is for us, my countrymen, to show by our bearing under reverses, how wretched has been the self-deception of those who have believed us less able to endure misfortune with fortitude, than to encounter danger with courage.
We have now entered upon a new phase of the struggle, the memory of which is to endure for all ages, and to shed ever increasing lustre upon our country. Relieved from the necessity of guarding cities and particular points, important but not vital to our defence with our army free to move from point to point, and strike in detail the detachments and garrison of the enemy; operating in the interior of our own country, where supplies are more accessible, and where the foe will be far removed from his own base, and cut off from all succor in case of reverse, nothing is now needed to render our triumph certain, but the exhibition of your own unquenchable resolve. Let us but will it, and we are free; and who in the light of the past, dare doubt your purpose in the future?
Animated by that confidence in your spirit and fortitude, which never yet has failed me, I announce to you, fellow countrymen, that it is my purpose to maintain your cause with my whole heart and soul; that I will never consent to abandon to the enemy one foot of the soil of any one of the States of the Confederacy; that Virginia, noble State, whose ancient renown has eclipsed by her still more glorious recent history; whose bosom has been bared to receive the main shock of this war; whose sons and daughters have exhibited heroism so sublime as to render her illustrious in all time to come; that Virginia, with the help of the people, and by the blessing of Providence, shall be held and defended, and no peace ever be made with the infamous invaders of her homes by the sacrifice of any of her rights or territory.
If by stress of numbers, we should ever be compelled to a temporary withdrawal from her limits, or those of any other border State, again and again will we return, until the baffled and exhausted enemy shall abandon in despair his endless and impossible task of making slaves of a people resolved to be free.
Let us not then respond, my countrymen, but, relying on the never failing mercies and protecting care of our God, let us meet the foe with fresh defiance, with unconquered and unconquerable hearts.
Jefferson Davis
April 4 was a day of two different messages from two different men. One man, Lincoln, wanted to end the war and appealed to his people to “let ’em up easy.” The other man, Davis, anticipating a “new phase of the struggle,” beseeched his people to “let us meet the foe with fresh defiance.”
On April 5 Davis wrote a letter to Varina, revealing the details of his last few hours in the city:
Danville Va
5 April 65
My Dear Wife
…I made the necessary arrangements at my office and went to our house to have the proper dispositions made there—Nothing had been done after you left and but little could be done in the few hours which remained before the train was to leave—I packed the bust [of his deceased son, Samuel] and gave it to Jno. Davis who offered to take it & put it where it should never be found by a Yankee—I also gave him charge of the painting of the heroes of the valley—Both were removed after dark—The furniture of the house was left and very little of the things I directed to be put up—beddings and groceries were saved. Mrs. Omelia behaved just as you described her, but seemed anxious to serve and promised to take care of every thing which may mean some things. The Auctioneer returned acct of sale 28,400 dollars—could not dispose of the carriages—Mr. Grant was afraid to take the carriage to his house—&c. &c. I sent it to the Depot to be put on a flat, at the moment of starting it was said they could not take it in that train but would bring it on the next one—It has not been heard from since—I sent a message to Mr. Grant that I had neglected to return the cow and wished him to send for her immediately—
Called off on horseback to the Depot, I left the servants to go down with the boxes and they left Tippy—Watson came willingly, Spencer came against my will, Robert Alf. V.B. & Ives got drunk—David Bradford went back from the Depot to bring out the spoons and forks which I was told had been left—and to come out with Genl. Breckinridge since then I have not heard from either of them—I had short notice, was interrupted so often and so little aided that the results are very unsatisfactory.
The people here have been very kind, and the Mayor & Council have offered assistance in the matter of quarters and have very handsomely declared their unabated confidence—I do not wish to leave Va, but cannot decide on my movements until those of the Army are better developed—I hope you are comfortable and trust soon to hear from you.
Kiss my dear children—I weary of this sad recital and have nothing pleasant to tell—May God have you in his holy keeping is the fervent prayer of your ever affectionate
Husband
It was an odd letter. Davis had just lost his capital, the military situation was dire, and yet he wrote of personal things—carriages, paintings, a sculpture, and silver spoons. At first, this checklist makes Davis seem out of touch, oblivious to the danger, even foolish. Davis had never indulged such petty concerns during the war. Even when Union forces closed in on his beloved Mississippi plantation, Brierfield, and when Confederate soldiers were placed at his disposal to rescue his possessions, he declined the offer, proclaiming that the army does not act for the president’s personal convenience. The purpose of Davis’s letter was to calm Varina, to reassure her that the world had not yet turned upside down, that he had left their home with a sense of order—and that he had rescued her favorite painting of Stonewall Jackson and the precious marble bust of her dead son, Samuel. All was not chaos, at least not yet.
After Lincoln’s tour of Richmond, he returned to City Point, not to Washington. He still did not want to leave the field. He wanted to be there, with his army, for the end. His visit to the rebel capital had given him a taste of victory. On April 5, Secretary of State William Seward sent a telegraph to Lincoln: “We need your personal sanction to several matters here which are important and urgent in conducting the Government but not at all critical or serious. Are you coming up or shall I go down to you with the papers. The public interest will not suffer by you remaining where you are.”
But Lincoln did not want to go home: “Yours of to-day received. I think there is no probability of my remaining here more than two days longer. If that is too long come down. I passed last night at Richmond and have just returned.”
In Danville, Jefferson Davis did not know that Abraham Lincoln was using the White House of the Confederacy as an office to conduct peace negotiations with officials in Richmond. On April 6, Davis wrote another letter to Varina. “In my letter of yesterday I gave you all of my prospects which can now be told, not having heard from Genl. Lee and having to conform my movements to the military necessities of the case. We are now fixing an Executive office where the current business may be transacted here and do not propose at this time to definitely fix upon a point for seat of Govt. in the future. I am unwilling to leave Va. and do not know where within her borders the requisite houses for the Depts. and the Congress can be found…Farewell my love, may God bless preserve and guide you.”
Many Southerners agreed that the loss of Richmond did not signify the total defeat of the Confederacy. On April 6, Eliza Frances Andrews, the twenty-four-year-old daughter of Judge Garnett Andrews, a lawyer in Washington, Georgia, and the owner of Maywood plantation and its two hundred slaves, wrote in her diary: “I took a long walk through the village with Capt. Greenlaw after dinner, and was charmed with the lovely gardens and beautiful shade trees. On coming home, I heard of the fall of Richmond. Everybody feels very blue, but not disposed to give up as long as we have Lee.”
On April 6, Robert E. Lee telegraphed Davis from his headquarters at Rice’s Station, Virginia, South Side Railroad: “I shall be tonight at Farmville. You can communicate by telegraph to Meherrin and by courier to Lynchburg.” The Army of Northern Virginia was, President Davis believed, still in the game.
From Charlotte, Varina Davis wrote to her husband again on April 7. Their exchange of letters after the fall of Richmond was the beginning of a correspondence that evolved into one of the great collections of American love letters. “The news of Richmond came upon me like the ‘abomination of desolation,’” she wrote. “…I who know that your strength when stirred up is great, and that you can do with a few what others have failed to do with many am awaiting prayerfully the advent of time when it is God’s will to deliver us through his own appointed agent…Numberless surmises are hazarded here as to your future destination and occupation—but I know that wherever you are, and in whatever engaged, it is an efficient manner for the country.” She ended her letter intimately: “Our little ones are all well, but very unruly…Li Pie [their infant daughter Varina Anne] is sweet and pink, and loving her hands and gums are hot, and swollen, and I think she is teething…Write to me my own precious only love, and believe me as ever your devoted Wife.”
On April 7, Abraham Lincoln, still at City Point, continued to follow the telegraph and dispatch traffic. Reading between the lines, he sensed that victory was imminent. He had become an expert at reading the dry words of a military communication and then interpreting the unsaid meaning behind the text. He had read several thousand of them during the war and knew how to take their pulse. Now, on April 7, when he held them with his fingers, Lincoln could feel victory resonating from the sheets of paper. Then General Phil Sheridan gave the president a military assessment that inflamed his taste for victory so much that it provoked him to send a telegraph to General Grant. He ordered his commanding general of the armies of the United States to close in for the kill and win the war.
Head Quarters Armies of the United States
City-Point,
April 7. 11 A.M. 1865
Lieut. Gen. Grant.
Gen. Sheridan says “If the thing is pressed I think that Lee will surrender.” Let the thing be pressed.
A. Lincoln
That day in Washington, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles wrote in his diary: “It is desirable that Lee should be captured. He, more than any one else, has the confidence of the Rebels, and can, if he escapes, and is weak enough to try and continue hostilities, rally for a time a brigand force in the interior. I can hardly suppose he would do this, but he has shown weakness, and his infidelity to the country which educated, and employed, and paid him shows great ingratitude. His true course would be to desert the country he has betrayed, and never return.” Perhaps, Welles suspected, so would Jefferson Davis, and he expressed the same wish for the rebel chief.
In City Point, as Lincoln prepared to board the River Queen and return to Washington, a U.S. Army band serenaded him with a farewell evening concert. The president had spent eighteen days and seventeen nights with his men: The long visit had invigorated him and increased the bonds of affection between them. During the war the common soldiers had always been happy to see their president and cheered him on sight. In the election of 1864, it was the soldiers’ vote that kept Lincoln in office when their former commander, General George McClellan, tried to unseat him. Lincoln enjoyed military music, and during summers in Washington, the U.S. Marine Corps band had played concerts on the White House grounds. At 11:00 P.M. the River Queen steamed away from City Point and headed for Washington. Lincoln did not know it, but he was leaving a day too early. If only he could have read Robert E. Lee’s mind, he would never have returned to Washington that night.
While Lincoln was en route to Washington on April 8, Davis had been in Danville for five days. He still refused to believe that the Army of Northern Virginia was in danger of immediate collapse, even though Secretary of War Breckinridge had given him a report that day saying the war was lost. But Davis was far from the front lines and could not receive telegrams or couriers in anything close to real time. At the front, events were in flux, with the situation changing hourly. Far away in the new capital, Davis did not learn of battlefield events before or while they were occurring, but only after they had already happened. And Lee was fighting for his life. He did not have time to dispatch a series of detailed telegraphic or courier messages. And so the president of the Confederacy did not know what his most important general was thinking.
Lee considered the possibility of continuing the fighting, but he had hardly any men left and fit for battle—no more than several thousand. His thoughts, and loyalty, turned to his surviving soldiers. The postwar South would need them—the country had lost so many boys already. In many ways they were the South, not cities like Richmond, Atlanta, Vicksburg, New Orleans, Savannah, and the rest. If the Confederacy was doomed to lose these final battles, suffering great loss of life with no hope of victory, was it right to sacrifice any more lives? More fighting might have been suicidal, even criminal. Lee sent a courier to Danville bearing a message for the president: Surrender was inevitable. Lee knew what he must do. He composed a letter to General Ulysses S. Grant, asking that they meet the next day at a little place called Appomattox Court House.
In the morning a great controversy erupted in Richmond, on the first Sunday since the burning of the city and the beginning of Union occupation. In church services during the war, it was the custom of the ministers to ask God’s blessing for President Davis and the Confederate cause. Now Yankee officials demanded that ministers bless not Davis but Lincoln. This was too much for the downtrodden citizens to bear. The dispute made it all the way to the ears of Lincoln, who found the whole episode embarrassing.
In Danville, Davis, ignorant of Lee’s appointment with Grant later in the day, continued to make war plans. He sent a telegram to his top general to plan the next phase of the struggle: “Your dispatch of the 6th…received. Hope the line of couriers established will enable you to communicate safely and frequently…You will realize the reluctance I feel to leave the soil of Virginia…the fall of Selma and the reported advance of the enemy on Montgomery, and the fears expressed for the safety of Columbus, Georgia, caused me to direct Gen’l Cobb to aid in resisting the enemy in Alabama…I hope to hear from you soon at this point, where offices have been opened to keep up the current business, until more definite knowledge would enable us to form more permanent plans. May God preserve, sustain and guide you.”
It happened on April 9 around 1:00 P.M., without the participation of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis. While Lincoln sailed back to Washington, and while Davis waited in Danville for news, Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee met at the McLean house at Appomattox Court House, Virginia.
Grant treated Lee with the highest military courtesy and, after reminiscing with his foe about their common service in the Mexican War, offered to accept the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia on generous terms. Once the men laid down their arms and signed their paroles, they could return to their homes. They could wear their Confederate uniforms, take their horses, and just go home. They would not be made prisoners of war nor be punished as traitors. And before the men of the Army of Northern Virginia left the field for the final time, the boys in blue paid honor to them. It was as Lincoln would have wished.
Lincoln arrived in Washington at 6:00 P.M. and went from the wharf straight to William Seward’s home in Lafayette Square, across from the White House. Seward, bedridden from terrible injuries he had suffered in a recent carriage accident, lay still while Lincoln stretched his long frame across the foot of Seward’s bed and brought him encouraging news from the front and tales of his wondrous visit to Richmond. The president was ecstatic: The war would be over soon; he could feel it. Lincoln and Seward did not know that Lee had surrendered several hours earlier. After an hour of quiet, intimate talk, Lincoln went home.
Crowds at the White House demanded that the president show himself—the people had missed him and were disappointed that he had not been in Washington on April 3 to celebrate the fall of Richmond with them. He stepped to a window beneath the north portico and spoke an inconsequential greeting. News from Appomattox did not arrive at the War Department until later on the night of the ninth, too late for Washington to celebrate en masse, but Lincoln was told. No one knows what he did after he heard the news: Was he too overjoyed to sleep that night? Did he walk the halls or go to his office and stare through the window into the night? Did he haunt the telegraph office? Did he know that tomorrow morning would begin the greatest day in the history of Washington?
Washington awoke the next morning to the sound of an artillery barrage. If this was 1861, not 1865, Lincoln might have concluded that the national capital was under rebel bombardment. But, as one of the few people who had learned the previous night about Lee’s surrender, Lincoln knew better.
The president ate breakfast with Noah Brooks, who described how the inhabitants of the national capital learned of the surrender at Appomattox:
Most people were sleeping soundly in their beds when, at daylight on the rainy morning of April 10, 1865, a great boom startled the misty air of Washington, shaking the very earth, and breaking windows of houses about Lafayette Square…Boom! Boom! went the guns, until five hundred were fired. A few people got up in the chill twilight of the morning, and raced about in the mud to learn what the good news might be…but many lay placidly abed, well knowing that only one military event could cause all this mighty pother in the air of Washington; and if their nap in the gray dawn was disturbed with dreams of guns and terms of armies surrendered to Grant by Lee, they awoke later to read of these in the daily papers; for this was Secretary of War Stanton’s way of telling the people that the Army of Northern Virginia had at last laid down its arms, and that peace had come again.
Welles delighted in the moment: “Guns are firing, bells ringing, flags flying, men laughing, children cheering; all, all are jubilant.” Welles, like many others, believed that Lee’s surrender meant the war was over now, and he made no mention in his diary that day about the retreating Jefferson Davis: “This surrender of the great Rebel captain [Lee] and the most formidable and reliable army of the Secessionists virtually terminates the Rebellion. There may be some marauding, and robbing and murder by desperadoes, but no great battle, no conflict of armies, after the news of yesterday reaches the different sections. Possibly there may be some stand in Texas or at remote points beyond the Mississippi.”
On this day of victory no one in Washington was dwelling upon Jefferson Davis, his government in exile, or his last-ditch plans. It was seven days after the fall of Richmond, and Lincoln had still not issued any orders to capture Davis or the top Confederate political and military leaders. He had his reasons. The New York Times speculated that the rebel chief had already escaped but called for his death anyway. “It is doubtful whether Jeff Davis will ever be captured. He is, probably, already in direct flight for Mexico…but if he is caught he should be hung.” Indeed, on this day of jubilee, the predominant popular image of the fleeing president was one of dismissive bemusement rather than one of avenging pursuit. Soon that would change.
Robert E. Lee was preparing to leave his army and travel to Richmond, where he would reunite with his wife, Mary Custis Lee. His house had survived the fire and was now under guard to protect her property from looters. But first he wanted to thank his men and say good-bye. He did so by drafting a document that was meant as a personal, heartfelt tribute to be read aloud to the soldiers under his personal command who had surrendered with him. But soon it became known to a wider audience and spread throughout the South, where the people of the Confederacy embraced it as the thanks of the nation to all the men, living and dead, who had fought in the war.
Headquarters, Army of Northern Virginia
April 10, 1865
After four years of arduous service, marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude, the Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources.
I need not tell the brave survivors of so many hard fought battles, who have remained steadfast to the last, that I have consented to the result from no distrust of them.
But feeling that valor and devotion could accomplish nothing that would compensate for the loss that must have attended the continuance of the contest, I determined to avoid the useless sacrifice of those whose past services have endeared them to their countrymen.
By the terms of the agreement officers and men can return to their homes and remain until exchanged. You will take with you the satisfaction that proceeds from the consciousness of duty faithfully performed, and I earnestly pray that a Merciful God will extend to you His blessing and protection.
With an increasing admiration of your constancy and devotion to your country, and a grateful remembrance of your kind and generous considerations for myself, I bid you an affectionate farewell.
R. E. Lee
Genl
While Washington began a week of rejoicing, word traveled to Danville that there had been a great disaster, the worst possible news. A courier from Lee’s army reached Jefferson Davis. The intelligence he carried, remembered Navy Secretary Mallory, “fell upon the ears of all like a fire-bell in the night.” The rider delivered the message to the president’s office, where Davis and several cabinet and staff mem bers had gathered. Davis read the dispatch, did not speak, and passed it on. “They carefully scanned the message as it passed from hand to hand,” Mallory recalled, “looked at each other gravely and mutely, and for some moments of silence.”
Robert E. Lee had surrendered on April 9. The Army of Northern Virginia, one of the greatest military forces in history, was no more. The war in Virginia was over.
Lee’s surrender made Davis’s position in Danville dangerous. The news from Appomattox devastated the president. He questioned whether Lee should have surrendered. Couldn’t his best general have somehow disengaged from the Union army, charted a route south, and escaped to fight another day? Or could he have dispersed his men to reassemble at a designated point of concentration? Davis also feared that Lee’s capitulation would set a surrender precedent that other Confederate armies would follow. Such a chain reaction would be a catastrophe and would surely cause the total collapse and defeat of the Confederacy. Davis could not fight on alone, without troops to sustain the cause. With the Army of Northern Virginia now lost, it was urgent that the Confederate government increase the distance between it and the Union armies by retreating at once, deeper into the southern interior.
If Davis did not order that everyone evacuate the city at once, enemy cavalry could swoop in and capture what remained of the Confederate government. That would end the war. Leaving Danville meant not only fleeing one town but abandoning the state. To Davis, fleeing the principal state of the Confederacy was a terrible psychological blow. First he had lost his capital, Richmond; he had just lost his greatest general and his best army; and now he was about to lose all of old Virginia. This series of three staggering blows, all within one week, jeopardized Davis’s ability to rally the people and save the nation.
He ordered the immediate evacuation of Danville by a night train to Greensboro, North Carolina. Burton Harrison, back at the president’s side after escorting Varina Davis to safety in Charlotte, took control of the train: “We set to work at once to arrange for a railway train to convey the more important officers of the Government and such others as could be got aboard, with our luggage and as much material as it was desired to carry along, including the boxes and papers that had belonged to the executive office in Richmond.” The boxes were an important symbol because Davis felt that as long as he kept his cabinet intact and did not abandon the archives and working documents necessary for the continued operation of the government, the Confederate States of America lived.
Davis could not leave this place without thanking the people of Danville. He drafted a letter to the mayor.
To Mayor J. M. Walker
Danville, Va.,
April 10, 1865
Sir:
Permit me to return to yourself and council my sincere thanks for your kindness shown to me when I came among you, under that pressure of adversity which is more apt to cause the loss of friends than to be the occasion for forming new ones.
I had hoped to have been able to maintain the Confederate Government on the soil of Virginia, though compelled to retire from the Capital. I had hoped to have contributed somewhat to the safety of your city, the desire to the last was rendered more than a mere sense of public duty, by your generous reception of myself and the Executive officers who accompanied me. The shadows of misfortune which were on us when I came have become darker, and I trust you accord to me now as then your good wishes and confidence in the zeal and singleness of heart with which I have sought to discharge the high trust which the people of the Confederate States conferred upon me.
May God bless and preserve you, and grant to our country independence and prosperity.
Very truly yours,
JEFFN. DAVIS
Jefferson Davis’s “Danville Farewell” communicated a message very different from Robert E. Lee’s “General Order #9.” Lee told his men that continuing the war would have resulted in the “useless sacrifice” of their lives. He advised them that it was time to “return to [their] homes” and fight no more. In Danville, Davis expressed contrary sentiments. He regretted only that he could not “maintain the Confederate Government on the soil of Virginia” and called upon God to grant the Confederacy its independence. Davis and his government headed for their next destination, Greensboro, North Carolina. When he would cross the state line the next day on April 11, he would have to concede an awful fact. Virginia, queen of the Confederacy, was lost.
While Jefferson Davis and the cabinet packed up in Danville, in Washington Lincoln was treated to an evening of White House serenades that featured a boisterous performance of “Dixie.” Lincoln had loved the tune from the moment he heard it performed before the war at a theater in Chicago. The Confederacy’s adoption of the song as its anthem failed to diminish Lincoln’s enjoyment of it. When he spotted a band among a crowd of torch-bearing well-wishers who had gathered on his lawn, he made the people laugh by telling them that “Dixie” was one of the captured spoils of war and that he wanted to hear it right then. The band obliged, and the music of the Lost Cause echoed through Lincoln’s White House, drifted across the grounds and into the streets of the Union capital.
Meanwhile, Harrison posted guards to prevent unauthorized persons or baggage from coming aboard the train. The sentinels had their hands full. “Of course,” recalled Harrison, “a multitude was anxious to embark, and the guards were kept busy in repelling them.” Dozens of people beseeched him for passes. One general from the “torpedo bureau” claimed that he possessed valuable fuses and explosives vital for the war effort. Dubious, Harrison told the general there was no room aboard the train for him and his collection. Undeterred, the general got access to President Davis, with whom he had served in the army years ago. Davis told Harrison to find a place for the man and his daughters, and the ever-courteous president invited one of the women to share his seat.
Mallory painted a railroad station scene more chaotic than the night Richmond was evacuated:
Much rain had fallen, and the depot could be reached only through mud knee deep. With the utter darkness, the crowding of quartermasters’ wagons, the yells of their contending drivers, the curses, loud and deep, of soldiers, organized and disorganized, determined to get upon the train in defiance of the guard, the mutual shouts of inquiry and response as to missing individuals or luggage, the want of baggage arrangements, and the insufficient and dangerous provision made for getting horses into their cars, the crushing of the crowd, and the determination to get transportation at any hazard, together with the absence of any recognized authority, all seasoned by sub rosa rumors that the enemy had already cut the Greensboro road, created a confusion such as it was never before the fortune of old Danville to witness.
Burton Harrison marveled at the mad scene. He watched as the guards “excluded all persons and material not specially authorized by me to go aboard.” Harrison was not above taking advantage of the situation, if it was for the good of the cause. As he stood in front of the government’s headquarters supervising the removal of baggage and boxes of documents, two mounted officers—one a colonel—rode into town from Richmond. Harrison told them that Lee had surrendered and that the government was about to abandon Danville. Then Harrison eyed the colonel’s mount.
“I remarked on the freshness and spirit of his horse, and asked where he had got so good a steed,” he recalled. Harrison knew Davis could not count on obtaining uninterrupted railroad transportation for their entire journey. At some point, circumstances would dictate that they continue the retreat on horseback. The president and his aides could use all the good horses they could get for the next stages of the trip, and Harrison proposed a trade. He said he “should be glad to have the horse” in exchange for passage on the train.
Reluctant to surrender the animal, the colonel rode off and tried to board one of the cars, but the guards told him he could not without a written order from Harrison. He returned to Harrison, “whereby he remarked,” said Harrison, “that, if I would furnish such an order, he would accept my proposition about the horse. The arrangement was made immediately, and the colonel became a passenger on the train, which also conveyed my horse, with others belonging to the President and his staff.”
Mallory watched his colleagues gather near the train: “At ten o’clock, Cabinet officers and other chiefs of the government, each seated upon or jealously guarding his baggage, formed near the cars a little silent group by themselves in the darkness, lighted only by Mr. Benjamin’s inextinguishable cigar. It was nearly eleven o’clock when the president took his seat and the train moved off. The night was intensely dark, and with a slight rain, the road in wretched condition, and the progress was consequently very slow.”
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.
Davis’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 Greensboro, 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.”
In 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.
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—
I sent you a telegram but fear it was stopped on the road. Genl. Bonham bears this and will [tell] you more than I can write as his horse is at the door and he waits for me to write this again and ever your’s—
Lincoln began another busy day that included breakfast with his son Robert, just back from Appomattox; a cabinet meeting attended by General Grant; meetings with several congressmen; and letter writing, including one to a Union general about the future: “I thank you for the assurance you give me that I shall be supported by conservative men like yourself, in the efforts I may make to restore the Union, so as to make it, to use your language, a Union of hearts and hands as well as of States.” He agreed to escort Mary to the theater that night—Laura Keene was playing in the comedy Our American Cousin at Ford’s.
In the afternoon Abraham and Mary Lincoln went on a carriage ride to the Navy Yard. He told her that this day, he considered the war to be over. It was Good Friday, and in two days Washington would celebrate Easter. Lincoln wanted to laugh this night. That evening, just before he left the White House for the theater, a former congressman arrived and asked to see him on business. The president wrote a pass giving him an appointment at 9:00 A.M. the next day. As he was stepping into his carriage another former congressman, this one a friend from Illinois, approached him in the driveway. Lincoln said he couldn’t talk then or he would be late for the play. Come back later, the president told him. We will have time to talk then. Lincoln closed the carriage door.
In Greensboro, Davis spent a quiet night wondering what events the coming days might bring. His journey, although difficult, had not been a complete disaster. Yes, he had fled Richmond, lost Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia, and abandoned the state of Virginia to the enemy. He did not deny that these disasters had inflicted catastrophic blows upon the cause. Indeed, in his letter to Varina he despaired, saying everything was “dark.” But the situation was not all bad. During his twelve days on the run, he had escaped capture; relocated the Confederate capital twice, first to Danville, then Greensboro; kept the cabinet intact; retained the loyalty of a hand-picked inner circle of aides who vowed to never abandon him; protected his family; and prevented his strategic retreat from unraveling into a disorderly free-for-all. And he had maintained his dignity. He had fled Richmond not like a thief in the night, but as a head of state.
No one living in William Petersen’s house across the street from Ford’s Theatre ever claimed to have seen President Lincoln’s carriage pull over and park across the street. No one in the handsome, threestory brick house watched the coachman, Francis Burke, tighten the slack in the reins, nor did anyone see the president’s valet, Charles Forbes, jump down from the black, closed-top carriage to the dirt street, reach for the handle, and swing open the door for the passengers. Some of the Petersen boarders were out for the evening. The rest were occupied with other things.
They did not watch the president and Mrs. Lincoln or their companions, Major Henry Rathbone, an army officer, and Clara Harris, daughter of a U.S. senator, as they disembarked, walked several yards to the front door of Ford’s Theatre, and disappeared inside. It was Good Friday, at approximately 8:30 P.M., April 14, and they were late. And no one from the Petersen house hurried across Tenth Street, or followed the Lincolns into the theater, and purchased a ticket to the play, as more than 1,500 other Washingtonians had done, to attend the tired old comic chestnut Our American Cousin in the company of the president of the United States.
Abraham Lincoln loved the theater, and during the Civil War he had attended many plays at Ford’s and Grover’s, Washington’s two leading, and rival, playhouses. Tonight, twelve-year-old Tad Lincoln enjoyed Aladdin at Grover’s, a few blocks away on Pennsylvania Avenue. The Lincolns’ other surviving son, twenty-two-year-old Robert, home from his duties on Grant’s staff, chose to stay at the White House to read.
The next few hours passed without incident. Passing by Ford’s that night was the customary Friday-night foot and horse traffic, as well as revelers in the ongoing war’send celebration. At Ferguson’s restaurant, adjacent to the theater’s north wall, patrons ate their meals without the owner, James Ferguson, who had gone to Ford’s hoping to see General Grant. Earlier that day, newspaper ads had mistakenly touted the general as Lincoln’s theater guest. They were wrong: He and his wife, Julia, had declined the invitation and left town.
At Taltavul’s Star Saloon, the narrow brick building just south of Ford’s, customers gulped their whiskeys and brandies and tossed their coins on the bar as payment. One patron—a handsome, paleskinned, black-eyed, raven-haired, mustached young man—placed his order, drank it, and left the bar without speaking a word.
If anyone from the Petersen house had been watching the front door of the Star Saloon between 9:30 and 10:00 P.M., he might have recognized John Wilkes Booth, one of the most famous stage stars in America, as he emerged wearing a black frock coat, black pants, thigh-high black leather riding boots, and a black hat. Booth turned north up Tenth Street, observed the president’s carriage parked several yards in front of him, and then turned right, toward the theater, passing under the white painted arch and through Ford’s main door, the same one the president had passed through about an hour earlier. If his intention was to see the play, Booth was impossibly late.