Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 09.djvu/562

Rh In my statement of the specie assets of the Treasury being $288,022.90, I counted the payment to Major Moses as being $40,000.

My last payment in Washington, Ga., was of eighty-six thousand dollars ($86,000) in gold coin and gold bullion, to a trusted officer of the navy, taking his receipt for its transmission out of the Confederacy, to be held for the Treasury Department.

Judge Reagan and myself left Washington, Ga., about 11 o'clock P. M., taking with us a few of Duke's men as guides, who we dismissed with thanks a few hours aftewardafterward [sic], and joined President Davis' party next morning, as they came out of their bivouac about sunrise.

After greetings, I found the party consisting of the President and staff and a few others, Captain Given Campbell and twelve of his men, my train and its quartermaster and party. (After Duke's command had been paid off, the men learning that full freedom was given to their action, some sixty men formed themselves into a company, among them my fellow-townsmen, Messrs. W. R. Bringhurst and Clay Stacker, and rode to town and offered themselves to President Davis as an escort just as he was leaving; but it seems that he declined their courtesy, and they afterward left town with General J. C. Breckinridge.) We traveled together that day and went into camp that evening a few miles south of Sandersville, Ga. There the President heard disturbing reports from Mrs. Davis' party, they fearing attempts to steal their horses by stragglers, and decided next morning to take his staff and join her party for a few days. As everything on wheels was to be abandoned by him, and as it was decided that I was to remain with my train, the chances of the capture of which were steadily increasing, the Federal General Wilson having spread his large cavalry force out like a fan from Macon, I called the staff together, and inquiring as to their funds, found that they had only a small amount of paper currency each, except, perhaps, Colonel F. R. Lubbock, A. D. C., who had, I believe, a little specie of his private funds. Colonel Wm. Preston Johnston told me that the President's purse contained paper money only. I represented to them the chances of capture of my slower-moving train, which would be compelled mainly to keep the roads in case of danger—that they would need money for their supplies en route, and to buy boats in Florida, etc., and that I wished to pay over to them funds to be used for those purposes, and they consenting I paid, with the concurrence of Hon. John H. Reagan, the acting Secretary of the Treasury, $1,500 in gold each to Colonel John Taylor Wood, A. D. C.; Colonel Wm. Preston Johnston, A. D. C.; Colonel F. R. Lubbock, A. D. C., and Colonel C. E. Thorburn (a naval