Saving Pamplin Historical Park: Its Story, My Story, How You Can Help

 

   On July 16, 2025, my friend Chris Mackowski hit the airwaves for Emerging Civil War News with a fantastic announcement: the American Battlefield Trust is purchasing Pamplin Historical Park. When Pamplin Park opened in 1994, it was hailed as a “major player in that conflict.” (Richmond Times-Dispatch, June 22, 1994.)  The park, separate from the Petersburg National Battlefield, would “refocus attention on the dramatic events that led to the fall of the Confederacy.” (Richmond Times-Dispatch, April 27, 1994) 

   So what was the battle of Pamplin? Well, there was not a battle by that name. The Pamplin part is the name of the family that preserved the property. Located just below Petersburg, the property was purchased in 1810 by William E. Boisseau. Boisseau built Tudor Hall, and the family lived in the structure until 1864. That fall, McGowan’s South Carolina brigade arrived. The Boisseau family went elsewhere (probably Petersburg) and Brig. Gen. Samuel McGowan used the home as his headquarters. McGowan’s brigade left the entrenchments that ran through the farm on March 29, 1865, replaced by Brig. Gen. James H. Lane’s North Carolina brigade. Lane was minus one regiment, but the other four spread themselves throughout the works. One Tar Heel wrote that they were about ten paces apart. In the early morning hours, the massed VI Corps struck the position, breaking through the thinly held lines. Robert E. Lee was forced to evacuate the Petersburg and Richmond lines, moving west. The Boisseaus were forced to sell the property after the war. It was purchased by Asahel Gerow of New York. In the mid-20^th century, the property was purchased by Robert Pamplin and his son, direct descendants of the Boisseaus. They are the ones who created Pamplin Historical Park, which not only includes the best preserved earthworks in the nation, but also the restored Tudor Hall, the Breakthrough Museum, and the National Museum of the Civil War Soldier.

   My connection? In the late 1990s, I was working on my first book, a history of the 37^th North Carolina Troops. That regiment was stationed in those very works on the morning of April 2, 1865. Pamplin Park had just received the battleflag of the 37^th North Carolina on loan from the Museum of the Confederacy. I stood gazing at the flag for some time, counting the bullet holes that had been repaired during the war. Just a few dozen steps away were the breastworks where the 37th North Carolina was located, and where that very flag was captured.

   That history of the 37^th North Carolina was published in 2003. In 2005, I wrote an article about the breakthrough for America’s Civil War.  And in 2018, Savas Beatie published General Lee’s Immortals, my history of the Branch-Lane brigade. (You can order the books here)

   I’ve visited Pamplin Park many times over the years. Sometimes, I am a tourist, just walking among the trenches where the breakthrough took place so many years ago. Several times, I have been invited to speak about the events and the Branch-Lane Brigade (twice in 2024). In 2016, a monument to Lane’s Brigade was dedicated at the park. I was not the speaker – Edd Bearss was. But I had a chance to join with a great group of re-enactors, and spend a couple of days doing interpretive programs at the park.

   The American Battlefield Trust needs to raise $600,000 by November to finish the purchase of the Confederate defenses at Pamplin Historical Park (total cost is over $21,000,000). Like most other historic sites, not just those dedicated to the Civil War, Pamplin has struggled since 2020. This is a win-win situation for everyone. The American battlefield Trust already owns 200 acres of land adjacent to this 400+-acre tract. It is the location from which the VI Crops launched its attack. The American Battlefield Trust will continue the excellent stewardship of the Pamplin family and will allow this site to be preserved to teach the future about this important story of the past.

If you would like to help support this important effort to help preserve this unique site, you can find more information here

Nassau Bacon – from Ohio

 

      “We are eating new beautiful onions from Nassau,” Charles Blackford wrote in June 1864. Blackford was Longstreet’s assistant judge advocate.  Blackford’s letter home about the onions is a little more revealing concerning foodstuffs in the ANV in the spring and summer of 1864. He continues: “With our onions we have bacon cured in Ohio and shipped to Nassau to be sent to us by blockade runners.” It is well known that by 1864, most foodstuffs for the Army of Northern Virginia were coming from Nassau on blockade runners and into the port at Wilmington.[1]

   Almost everyone is familiar with the role of the blockade in supplying the Confederate armies. Agents from various states and the Confederate government worked out trade deals – either cotton, or promises of future cotton – in exchange for munitions of war, medicines, and foodstuffs. These items were then loaded onto ships, making their way to the ports in the Bahamas, largely Nassau. The items were then transferred to shallow-draft blockade runners and steamed into various Southern ports. By 1864, it was really only the port of Wilmington that was still open and supplying Lee’s army in Virginia. 

The Advance, a North Carolina blockade runner.

   “Nassau bacon is a term frequently used during the war. James C. Elliott, 56^th North Carolina, recalled that in 1864 “Our food was miserable—musty meal and rancid Nassau bacon. Our bread was cooked at the wagon yard on canal, west side of Petersburg.”[2] Another Tar Heel reminisced that “old soldiers will all remember Nassau bacon, a very gross, fat, porky substance which ran the blockade at Wilmington and was distributed among Lee’s veterans as bacon.”[3] Moxley Sorrel, also on Longstreet’s staff before being promoted to brigadier general in the fall of 1864, thought that some “bacon from Nassau was coming through the blockade, and it would not be incredible for the blockading fleet to allow it to come through in hope of poisoning us.”[4]

   But what of Blackford’s claim – that his bacon had been cured in Ohio and sent to Nassau? Hamilton Cochran, writing in Blockade Runners of the Confederacy  in 1958, explains how the process worked. Brokers, or “bacon buyers,” would visit hog farms in New York and other states “and offer hog raisers far more per pound for their hams and bacon than the United States government or civilian merchants were offering.” After the brokers bought large quantities of hog meat, it was  “salted and shipped out of New York or Philadelphia to Bermuda or Nassau. . .  Upon arrival in the islands, the hams and bacon were sold at quadruple their cost to agents of the Confederate States Quartermaster Corps, then shipped to hungry soldiers on the firing line.”[5] Eugene R. Dattel notes that at times, the meat shipped out of Boston or New York was sent to Canada first, then on to Bermuda or Nassau. The meat was also sent to Liverpool, unloaded and then reshipped to the Caribbean.  By January 1865, over eight million pounds of meat had arrived in the port of Wilmington alone. “This was extremely good business for Northern farmers whose sons were dying on Southern battlefields,” Dattel notes.[6]

   This round-about way of importing bacon (and other items) produced in the North to feed Confederate armies was not really a secret. Major General W.H.C. Whiting wrote in June 1863 that many of the blockade runners in Wilmington were “mostly filled with Yankee goods.” Whiting arrested the crew of one steamer, the Arabian, which had bypassed Nassau and sailed directly from New York.[7] War Clerk John Jones noted in October 1864 that Beverly Tucker was in Canada, contracting with a New York firm, to trade bacon for cotton “pound for pound.” The Secretary of the War had authorized the negotiations.[8] Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, James Seddon and others all knew about this operation. And it was not just limited to Wilmington. The trade was so heavy in eastern North Carolina and eastern Virginia that in January 1864 the Subsistence Department needed 600 to 800 bales of cotton each week, delivered to Weldon.[9] Writing after the war, Robert Tannahill told former Commissary General Lucius B. Northrop that “there is no telling the amount of supplies we could have gotten from the North in the way of exchange for cotton.”[10]

   Even Northern officials knew of the trade, much of which originated in New York. The American consul at St. George’s Bermuda, wrote to Secretary of State William H. Seward in June 1863: “I beg to apprise you that large quantities of mdse [merchandise] are shipped from N. Yk  [New York] to these islds and transshipped o/board steamers for blockaded ports. There is no doubt that Major Walker who styles himself Confederate States Agent, is receiving goods ex N. Yk by almost every vessel under various marks. A large portion of the goods shipped from here to Wilmington are from N. Yk.”[11] The trade continued, even after the capture of the Cape Fear River and Wilmington. On March 8, 1865, U.S. Grant telegraphed Secretary of War Edwin Stanton that “We have supplies going out by Norfolk to the rebel army stopped, but information received shows that large amounts still go by way of the Blackwater.” In another telegraph, Grant told Stanton that spies or informants in Richmond “send word that Tobacco is being exchanged for Bacon…” Lincoln gave Grant the authority on March 10 to suspend all trade permits and licenses, regardless of whoever issued them, within the state of Virginia, with a few exceptions.[12]

   If you would like to learn more about food and the Confederate Army in Virginia, check out my book, Feeding Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, here.

 

[1] Blackford & Blackford, Letters from Lee's Army, 252.

[2] Elliott,  The Southern Soldier Boy, 26.

[3] Clark, ed., Histories of the Several Regiments and Battalions, 4:53.

[4] Sorrel, Recollections of a Confederate Staff Officer, 281.

[5] Cochran, Blockade Runners of the Confederacy, 47.

[6] Dattel, Cotton and Race in the Making of America, 198.

[7] Jones, A Rebel War Clerk, 1:319, 321.

[8] Jones,  A Rebel War Clerk, 2:290.

[9] OR, Series 1, XLVI, pt. 2, 1104; Goff, Confederate Supply, 167.

[10] quoted in Goff, Confederate Supply, 168.

[11] “American Consular Records-Civil War Period.” Pt. 1, Bermuda Historical Quarterly, 17 (Summer 1961) 66.

[12] Basler, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 8:342-4.

The Deadliest Single Shot of the War

   The Civil War looks different in different parts of the country. The guerrilla actions in Missouri and Western North Carolina are a far cry from the large battles waged in North Georgia and Central Virginia. The same is true for the naval actions. Ships on blockade duty off Charleston Harbor are far different from the ironclad gunboats that steamed along the Mississippi River.

   In 1861, the Federal government began building special ironclads that were able to navigate the Mississippi River. The USS Mound City was one of those ironclads. Constructed in Mound City, Illinois, in 1861, she was 175 feet long in total and drew five feet of water, with a speed of nine miles per hour. Her armament consisted of thirteen cannons overall: thee 9-inch, six 32-pounders, and four rifled 42-pounders, with a crew complement of 175 men.[1]

   The Mound City steamed up and down the Mississippi River.

USS Mound City.

    Typically, an ironclad would escort a mortar boat down the river to bombard Fort Pillow.  On May 10, 1862, the Confederate River Defense Fleet attacked at Plum Point Bend. Most of the Federal ironclads did not have sufficient steam to maneuver. Three Confederate vessels, the CSS General Brag, General Sumter, and General Sterling Price, rammed the USS Cincinnati; the vessel later sank. The USS Carondelet and Mound City arrived, and the CSS Earl Van Dorn rammed the Mound City, opening a four-foot hole in the Federal ironclad. The captain was able to run the ship ashore before it sank. The timber and cotton-clad rams of the Confederate fleet were able to sink two ironclads with no losses. They moved off before the rest of the Federal gunboats arrived.[2]

   The Mound City was repaired and rejoined the squadron. A month later, the Mound City took part in an expedition up the White River in Arkansas to destroy Confederate gun emplacements located at St. Charles, Arkansas. This would allow Federal vessels to resupply a Union army under Maj. Gen. Samuel R. Curtis. Curtis was attempting to capture Little Rock but was stuck at Batesville due to a lack of supplies. Confederate forces under Maj. Gen. Thomas C. Hindman constructed fortifications near St. Charles to stop such an action. Besides the two artillery batteries, three ships were scuttled in the river as obstructions. Additional logs were floated down the river and driven into the bottoms to further impede ships. The main battery consisted of two rifled 32-pounders taken from the CSS Pontchartrain. The secondary position contained two, 3-inch Parrott rifles. Cannons were removed the CSS Maurepas before it was scuttled, and added to the defenses. Overall, the Confederate force numbered just seven cannons and 114 crewmembers, including 34 men from the 29^th Arkansas Infantry.[3]

   Joseph Fry, a former U.S. Naval Officer, the commander of the CSS Maurepas, was in overall command.

   The Federal expedition was composed of several ships – the timberclads USS Conestoga, New National, and White Cloud. Aboard the New National and the Jacob were members of the 46^th Indiana Infantry. Several miles below St. Charles, two scouting parties, one on the land and one on the river, were sent forward. They found the Confederate defenses but could not determine their strength.[4]

   On the morning of June 17, Federal naval vessels began moving up the river. The Mound City was in the lead. Confederate infantry, with a 12-pound howitzer, were sent as sharpshooters along the riverbank. When within two and a half miles out from the defenses, Confederates were spotted and the Mound City opened fire, scattering the pickets. The Federal infantry disembarked on the shore, and, with skirmishers posted, began to advance.[5]

   The Mound City began dueling with the shore batteries. Confederates were able to do much damage against the ironclad, even before they fired what appears to be the deadliest single shot of the entire war.  The Mound City moved to steam past the first battery when a solid shot struck near a gun port, killing three or four gunners. Then, the shot ruptured one of the ship’s boilers, filling the ship with scalding steam. Of the approximately 175 men on board, 125 were killed and over twenty others were wounded. The Mound City floated down the river and ran aground. Fry demanded that the remaining men onboard surrender. When they refused, the Confederates opened fire, killing several.[6]

   Additional Federal gunboats moved up into the position, and the Federal infantry positioned themselves to storm the works. With the Federals just fifty yards away, the Confederates abandoned their works. Twenty-nine Confederates, including Fry, were captured. Eight others were killed during the battle. The Mound City was towed downstream and the Federals began working on clearing the obstructions from the river. Many of the dead Federals were buried in a mass grave near the lower battery. The Federals destroyed the earthworks, transported the smaller cannons back to Memphis, and spiked the larger cannons, dumping them in the river.[7]

   What became of the USS Mound City? She was repaired and served in the Vicksburg Campaign, and later, the Red River Expedition. After the war, she was decommissioned and sold at public auction on November 9, 1865. The vessel was broken up in 1866.[8]

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[1] Mirza, Encyclopedia of Civil War Shipwrecks, 100.

[2] Symonds, The Civil War at Sea, 111.

[3] Chatelain, Defending the Arteries of Rebellion, 132, 181; Bearrs, “White River Expedition, June 10-July 15, 1862.” Arkansas Historical Quarterly, 21 (4): 315-318.

[4] Bearrs, “White River Expedition, June 10-July 15, 1862.” Arkansas Historical Quarterly, 21 (4): 312-314.

[5] Bearrs, “White River Expedition, June 10-July 15, 1862.” Arkansas Historical Quarterly, 21 (4): 319-20.

[6] Barnhart, “The Deadliest Shot,” Civil War Times, 45 (March/April 2006) 30-36

[7] Barnhart, “The Deadliest Shot,” Civil War Times, 45 (March/April 2006) 30-36; Hubbs, “A Rebel Shot Causes “Torture and Despair,” Naval History, 16 (2):46-50.

[8] https://www.navsource.org/archives/09/86/86066.htm

Feeding Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia

 

It has been a whirlwind past three weeks. Feeding Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia was released on April 3, 2025. I have signed, packaged, and shipped about 200 books, I have presented several in- person programs, and I have been interviewed on several different podcasts and vlogs. The reception has been fantastic!

I was recently featured on the Emerging Civil War podcast and the Unfiltered Historian, both of which you can check out below. Also, if you would like to order a signed copy, please visit my website here.

Emerging Civil War podcast

The Unfiltered History vlog

Confederate Sutlers and the Army of Northern Virginia

   The year 2020 was a challenging time for research. I was trying to finish Feeding Lee’s Army of Northern Virgina. Most libraries were shut down. While I have several Francis Lord books, I did not have his volume on sutlers, and I really did not want to buy a copy. A library just forty-five minutes away had a copy, but I was not able to view it, as the library was closed for an unknown time. So I ordered the book. I had been warned that the information regarding sutlers catering to Confederate regiments was slim. That was very true. Lord spends eighty-nine pages on Federal sutlers and just three on Confederate sutlers. “Records of Confederate sutlers are extremely fragmentary,” Lord writes, and states “most Confederate units never had sutlers.” Lord then takes the next two pages to talk about Southern patent medicines.[1]

   Lord does take about two-thirds of a page to list twenty-six sutlers attached to Confederate regiments, and even one gun boat. This is in comparison to over ten pages of sutlers attached to Federal regiments.[2]

   Confederate regulations stated that every military post could have one sutler, “appointed by the Secretary of War. . . and approved by the commanding officer.” Regiments not attached to a post were also allowed one sutler for every regiment, also appointed by the commanding officer, and subject to the approval of “the general or other officer in command.” Sutlers were not allowed to have “ardent spirits, or other intoxicating drinks,” let others operate their business, or lend on credit more than one-third of a soldier’s pay.[3] 

Federal sutler outside of Petersburg in 1864.

   Is Lord’s assertion, that most Confederate regiments never had sutlers, true? Maybe there is some type of register for Confederate regiments comparable to that which Lord found for Federal regiments, although he confessed that the Army of the Potomac and the Army of the James have good records, while the Army of the Tennessee and other western Federal regiments were not as well represented. To find mentions of those merchants who catered to Confederate regiments, we have to search their letters home.[4]

   Sutlers first made their appearance in soldiers’ letters, at least in the east, in the fall of 1861. A member of the 5^th Alabama Infantry noted that a brigade sutler was stationed nearby. The sutler was “crowded with men eager to buy.” However, the sutler “Charges double price for every thing he sells, yet is busy all the while.”[5] As inflation and scarcity rose, so did the prices that sutlers charged. Captain R.E. Parks, 12^th Alabama, noted that as the men were paid, the sutler’s wagons were being patronized. “Ginger cakes, porous and poor, cost 25 cents each. Vegetables and fruits are out of reach of the privates.”[6] In December 1863, Parks noted that after their sutler brought oysters for $20.00 a gallon, that he “couldn’t be a sutler. Their prices seem cruel and extortionate.”[7]

 

   Soldiers could buy a wide variety of items. A member of the 9^th Alabama recorded buying two chickens in November 1861; in July 1862, a member of the 15^th Georgia was purchasing fruit pies and loaves of bread; also in July 1862, a soldier in the 53^rd Georgia wrote of his regimental sutler having coffee, sugar, butter, chickens, and cabbage; right before the battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862, the regimental sutler of the 5^th Alabama arrived, and the men were able to get “some nice cakes & Candy. . . suag & coffey…” That sutler returned to the regiment on January 2, 1863, and the soldiers “hastened up to his wagons & bought a number of sugar cakes & ginger cakes which all hands pitched into, & I ate a good many before getting up. Our mess... invested $3 each in cakes principally & some apples."[8]

   While sutlers were forbidden to sell liquor, some did. A soldier in the 5^th Alabama noted in mid-January 1864 that they now had two sutlers in camp, “and one of them has gotten half the regiment drunk today.”[9] The hospital steward of the 4^th Virginia Infantry noted that the Provost Marshall had confiscated one sutler’s post when a search yielded twenty gallons of liquor hidden in sacks of rice and corn. The liquor was sent to the hospital for their use.[10]

Ralph H. McKim, 2^nd Virginia Cavalry, wrote that while on the Shenandoah Valley Campaign in 1864, he had to “rebuke the sutlers for selling their merchandise on the Lord’s Day.”[11] One member of the 17th Virginia Infantry recalled after the war that the regimental sutler once cleared $6,000 in one day.[12]

   Some sutlers served as banks to soldiers. Ted Barclay, 4^th Virginia Infantry, wrote home that “Mr. Trenton, the sutler of the 27^th [Virginia] Reg.,” had lent him $20 in September 1862.[13] Sutlers could also help transport boxes for soldiers – probably for a fee. A member of the 26^th Virginia noted in January 1863 that his regimental sutler had brought his “old blank trunk” from Richmond to the regiment’s camp.[14] Other sutlers could be generous. Chaplain William E. Wiatt was able to get one sutler to donate $2.00 “for the Fred[ericksburg] sufferers.”[15]

   Where did sutlers get their wares that they sold to the soldiers? Usually, they came from merchants in Richmond. Chas. Bayne & Co ran an advertisement in August 1861, telling the public that they carried an assortment of cigars and manufactured tobacco, with “Special attention paid to orders from Sutlers and Merchants who are supplying the army.”[16] G.B. Stacy advertised that he was selling “The Confederate Mattress” to those soldiers opposed to sleeping on the hard floor.[17] Lee and Durham were selling not only tobacco, but soap, sugar, tea, raisins, matches, Mustard, paper, pencils, pens, and hair and tooth brushes.[18] Spense and Garey were selling waterproof items, like coats, blankets, leggings, haversacks and knapsacks.[19] L.D. Brigg’s Bakery sold Crackers, cakes, Gingerbread, and Spicenuts.[20] Johnson and White advertised that they were selling York River Oysters, in cans, or by the firkin or barrel.[21]

   Wagons were used to transport the wares close to the camps. At times, the sutlers would be set up close to their regiments. In November 1861, a correspondent for a Richmond newspaper noted that at Manassas, several “Board shanties roughly thrown together” were being used as sutler shops.[22]

   This article primarily deals with sutlers connected to the Army of Northern Virginia. Was the experience the same in the Army of Tennessee? 

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[1] Lord, Civil War Sutlers and Their Wares, 90.

[2] Lord, Civil War Sutlers and Their Wares, 131.

[3] Confederate Regulations (1862), 22-3.

[4] Lord, Civil War Sutlers and Their Wares, 95.

[5] Hubbs, Voices from Company D, 56.

[6] Parks, “War Diary of Captain R. E. Park,” SHSP 26:9.

[7] Parks, “Diary of Capt. R. E. Park,” SHSH 26:26.

[8] Carter, Welcome the Hour of Conflict, 107; Ivy W. Duggan Diary, UGA, 73; Ronald, ed. The Stilwell Letters, 21, 22; Hubbs, Voices from Company D, 123, 131.

[9] Hubbs, Voices from Company D, 139.

[10] Roper, Repairing the “March of Mars,” 419.

[11] McKin, A Soldier’s Recollection, 237.

[12] Glasgow, Northern Virginia’s Own, 111.

[13] Barclay, Ted Barclay, Liberty Hall Volunteers, 107.

[14] Fleet, Green Mount, 194.

[15] Wiatt, Confederate Chaplain, 21.

[16] Richmond Enquirer, August 20, 1861.

[17] Richmond Dispatch, November 15, 1861.

[18] Richmond Dispatch, November 26, 1861, January 11, 1862.

[19] Richmond Dispatch, January 1, 1862.

[20] Richmond Dispatch, January 10, 1862.

[21] Richmond Dispatch, January 17, 1862.

[22] Richmond Dispatch, November 1, 1861.

The 3rd Georgia Infantry Commandeer Breckinridge’s Train

   In reading through Jefferson Davis’s papers, there is an interesting discussion regarding a train. It is April 1865. Davis and most of the Confederate cabinet have moved from Greensboro to Charlotte. John C. Breckinridge, Secretary of War, had caught up with Davis in Greensboro. As the group makes its way across the piedmont of North Carolina, Breckinridge is called away to meet with Joseph E. Johnston as Johnston is meeting with William T. Sherman at the Bennett farm outside Durham.

John C. Breckinridge (LOC)

   Davis, who had reached Charlotte on April 18, was anxious for Breckinridge to rejoin him. While Federal cavalry had wrecked most of the railroad around Greensboro and Salisbury, it was still possible to get trains almost to Salisbury. Breckinridge telegraphs Davis from Salisbury on April 20: “We have had great difficulty in reaching this place. The train from Charlotte which was to have met us here had not arrived. No doubt seized by stragglers to convey them to that point. I have telegraphed the commanding officer at Charlotte to send a locomotive and one car without delay. The impressed train should be met before reaching the depot and the ringleaders severely dealt with.” Davis responds: “Train will start for you at midnight with guard.”[1]

   Now, the rest of the story…

   In 1916, W. Frank Marsh was in Charlotte, reading a historical marker that described the last meeting of the Confederate cabinet in the city. Marsh, a member of the 3^rd Georgia infantry, had made it all the way through the war, surrendering at Appomattox Court House. “We were not able to secure transportation back home, so many of us started to walk through Virginia and North Carolina, half starved and some of us almost barefooted. We reached a point past China Grove [Rowan County] coming into Charlotte, some two hundred of us, hungry and sad and a motley lot all bent upon getting back into the country where we had our homes. We came upon a train destined for China Grove to bring back General Breckinridge from there to the conference of the Confederate Congress in Charlotte [the Confederate Congress never met in Charlotte, only the Cabinet], but we took possession of that train and demanded that the conductor take us to Charlotte. He refused and said he was under orders to get General Breckinridge and take him to Charlotte as fast as possible. We insisted and took charge of the train with the result that we told the conductor he could detach the engine and tender and go to China Grove to get the general, who would have to ride upon the woodpile in the tender.”

   “We remained in charge of the cars until the engine came back from China Grove with the General riding in the tender and I guess he was mad, but we hooked onto the cars and were brought in toward Charlotte. Finally, the conductor announced we were in Charlotte, and we all got out of the train only to find that we were not in Charlotte but in a bull pen some half a mile or more from the town and all held prisoners. The home guards had been ordered out in Charlotte and they had us in charge, while they took away our three officers and locked them up in Charlotte for failing to keep the soldiers in subjection instead of letting them confiscate the train.”

   “The next morning we were all released and going into Charlotte found that they had released our officers. Something to eat in those times looked bigger to our eyes than a gold brick. Well, we went down to the railroad station and there we found a train of cars with an engine attached and steam up, ready to go somewhere.”

   “We all rushed on, but the doors were locked and we couldn’t get in, so a lot of us climbed onto the roofs and this broke in the old timber. We found that it was Jeff Davis’ special loaded with Confederate gold and silver, with many kegs of coins aboard and when Jeff Davis found us so determined to get to Georgia he ordered a train made up and we were carried to Chester, S.C., which was as far as the train could go as the bridge had been burned. Those were stirring times and no mistake.”[2]

   There is much to process between these two accounts – trains still running in North Carolina in April 1865, telegraphs still operating, the passage of Lee’s paroled men through North Carolina after Appomattox, a glimpse of the remnants of the Confederate treasury, along with the charming magnanimity of Davis, it is just nice to flesh out the fragments of two communications between Davis and Breckinridge.

  

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[1] OR, Vol. 47, pt. 3, 814. See also Davis letters, Vol. 11, 553.

[2] The Charlotte Observer, October 20, 1916.