GABRIEL HAWKS WAS now a lieutenant in the army, but the honor of the field promotion paled somewhat when he considered how little competition remained for a position in the ranks of Confederate officers. After Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Courthouse on Palm Sunday, President Davis and the Confederate government had left Danville by train and proceeded to Greensboro, North Carolina, to confer with General Joseph E. Johnston and General P. G. Beauregard about the fate of the Cause.
Most of the lower ranks felt no need to wait for further advice about the outcome of the war. They were deserting from the train at every station, leaving their posts and their comrades, and slipping away to lose themselves in the tide of fugitives heading for home. Gabriel couldn’t say that he blamed them. How could anyone doubt that the war was lost in the face of the evidence of his own eyes? One of the soldiers who had been in the cabinet car was telling it all over about how he saw the secretary of the navy and the adjutant general passing a tin cup of coffee back and forth, for want of utensils, while the secretary of state himself was dipping his dinner out of a haversack of hard-boiled eggs. The soldier said they bore it all cheerfully, even joking about these sorry circumstances-and perhaps that was the worst sign of all. Surely the end was near.
Gabriel Hawks might have run, too. He was thinking about it as the train headed westward into Piedmont, North Carolina. He could follow the New River north and be back in Giles County before June. But then the navy’s paymaster James Semple had made him a lieutenant, and he felt he ought to set an example for the rest. Bridgeford laughed at him, of course, but then they made him a lieutenant, too, so there they were, in ragged, ill- fitting uniforms scrounged from somewhere by Mr. Semple. They hoped they wore deserters’ coats, not the leavings of dead men. Still, they were officers.
“The rise in pay delights me,” Bridgeford drawled. “Now it will only take us three months to save up our wages for a pound of butter.”
“That is, if they pay us at all.”
“True, Hawks. And well noted. But, hell, we may as well stick it out a while,” Bridgeford said, laughing. “Maybe Johnston can whip Sherman in Carolina. Maybe the damned Texans will march across the Mississippi and win the war for us yet. Then we’ll be fixed for life.”
“You think they will?” Hawks had asked him, feeling a shiver of hope.
“No,” said Bridgeford. “But look out there.” He pointed to the rolling vista of cornstalks, brown and broken behind crumbling fences. “It’s the same everywhere, Hawks.”
It
“And I’ve no family left,” Bridgeford went on. “I’ve grown accustomed to being hungry. What does it matter if we go or stay?”
So they had stayed, and when the train rumbled into Greensboro with only two hundred and fifty men aboard, Hawks and Bridgeford were still among that number. Some of the men joked that they’d just keep on riding the train to Mexico; they had been traveling on it for more than a week already. After a few days’ wait in Greensboro, the train ride began again; but this time the government officials were not aboard.
Word had it that Joe Johnston was going to surrender his army, too. They’d all heard reports of what he’d told the government officials. One of the orderlies could tell it off by heart: “ ‘I shall expect to retain no man beyond the byroad or cow-path that leads to his home. My small force is melting away like snow before the sun, and I am hopeless of recruiting it.’ ” The Confederacy had fallen with Robert E. Lee; only the politicians seemed ignorant of that fact. It was at last decided that Johnston would surrender his army, but political leaders would continue to retreat, perhaps to continue the fighting farther south, or failing that, to set up a government in exile in Mexico or in Europe.
On April 16 the presidential party disbanded to go their separate ways, some on horseback, some in wagons and ambulances, all heading south, and all with a few soldiers for escort. There was word that Stoneman’s cavalry was combing the area in search of Jefferson Davis, and the officials believed that a scattering of several groups of fugitives would increase the president’s chances of getting away. The train continued on as before, as an added decoy for the Union pursuers, now escorted by a mounted guard of Admiral Semmes’s forces to fend off the enemy cavalry. Their protection was more than a decoy for the opposition. The train in itself was well worth defending, for in one of its cars was the contents of the Confederate treasury: silver coin and gold bullion transported from Richmond with the evacuation of the government.
The tattered caravans wended their way south, following muddy roads past blackened chimneys and stubbled fields that would mean more hunger in the months to come. They stopped in Charlotte, North Carolina, for a week- long stay, where news of Lincoln’s assassination reached President Davis, but there was no rejoicing over the passing of their old adversary. He was thought a fair man, and one whose death boded only ill for the Southern people. Word of Johnston’s surrender was telegraphed to the anxious cabinet, and then a message from Johnston that the Union had denied Sherman permission to offer lenient terms of surrender. The flight was on again.
From Charlotte, North Carolina, the parties proceeded to Yorkville, South Carolina, with an escort of more than two hundred cavalry, troops escaping from Johnston’s surrender. They scouted the area for enemy troops and escorted the cabinet to the Greenville Railroad, on which they traveled to Cokesville. The Union forces were in hot pursuit; Davis was roused in the middle of the night to flee from enemy troops just ten miles from the town. Despite the fugitive nature of the government’s journey, its progress was never secret. The opposing forces always knew where they were going, and at each stop, the townspeople met them with cheering crowds and offers of hospitality. But the goodwill of the citizens would not protect them from the wrath of the victors; a capture would mean prison or the gallows.
They fled to Abbeville, arriving there on the second of May, but they didn’t stay long. While the Confederate cabinet was holding its last meeting at the home of Colonel Armistead Burt, the train pulled into the depot, still guarded by Semmes’s forces, and a change in personnel was made. George Trenholm, the secretary of the treasury, had been left ill near the Catawba River, and now the president appointed Postmaster John H. Reagan acting treasurer of the Confederacy. Reagan took charge of the train and ordered the cavalry to proceed to Washington, Georgia, forty-five miles to the south. When it arrived, he relinquished the office of treasurer to Captain Micajah Clark, formerly chief clerk of Jefferson Davis’s executive office. That transfer of authority was the last official signature affixed by the president to any document.
Hawks and Bridgeford knew nothing of these transactions of power. They accompanied the train on its southward procession, obeying whatever orders were given. They knew, though, that the train could not be guarded safely much longer. And more men were anxious to leave the service of the dying nation. How foolish it would be to die in an eleventh-hour battle for a country that no longer existed.
At Washington, Georgia, General Breckinridge demanded that the treasurer pay his troops out of the remaining funds. The soldiers’ paper money was worthless, and they would need money to make their way home, and so the quartermasters made out their payrolls and paid each man about twenty-six dollars in coin, enough perhaps to see them safely through.
Since the train was no longer a safe means of transportation, the forces disbanded one last time. Stephen Mallory, secretary of the navy, remained in Washington, Georgia, and Mr. Benjamin of the cabinet faded away before Jefferson Davis was captured at Irwinsville on May 10. The others were heading for Florida, hoping to outrun and outlast their pursuers.
Hawks and Bridgeford were among the small band of ex-navy men who accompanied Paymaster James A. Semple on the final leg of the journey to nowhere in particular. In their charge were a couple of wagons, containing the remnants of the navy’s supplies and rations. The paymaster was a legend in the military for the resourcefulness of his scrounging. In Danville, he was even lending supplies to some of the army personnel. Hawks wondered if he’d ever taste real coffee again. The concoction of mashed peanuts that they were drinking went by the name of coffee, but the taste wouldn’t fool a lap baby. The stuff was hot, and that was about all you could say for it. The food alone would make a man desert, never mind the hopelessness of a lost war. Going home meant meat without maggots, fresh eggs and vegetables, and maybe a dash of salt again.
“We have little enough to show for serving our country,” said Bridgeford as they rode along beside the wagon. His horse was a bag of bones covered with skin; its head drooped with exhaustion under the weight of its rider. “I have a few silver coins and a Confederate penny given to me by Admiral Semmes, a ragged coat, some scars, and the rank of lieutenant in a defeated army. It isn’t much of a start for my career as a civilian.”
