Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 09.djvu/564

Rh Judge Reagan received was the money mentioned above, near Sandersville—which was a deposit, not a payment. The Treasury train was never with President Davis's party. They found it at Abbeville, South Carolina, rode away and left it there, and rode away from Washington, Georgia, shortly after its arrival there, while it was being turned over to me. It will have been noted that the receipts quoted are of two classes—payments to troops and clerks for their own services; but to officers of higher rank, like Generals Bragg and Breckinridge, or to members of the President's military family, they were for transmission to a distance, to be afterward accounted for to the Treasury Department. In my narrative of events I have given full names of persons, most of whom are still living witnesses of the occurrences at Washington, Georgia. Colonel James Wilson, of General Breckinridge's staff, was perhaps cognizant of much that I have related. A few concluding remarks may make clearer the condition of affairs which arose at Washington, Ga., on that 4th of May, 1865.

The last Cabinet meeting, which could be called such, was held at Abbeville on the 2d of May, at which it seems to have been decided that the attempt was hopeless to carry the organized force to the Trans-Mississippi Department, it being too small to cope with the enemy it would have to encounter, and it was left free to the soldiers to decide their own action—the move was to be a voluntary one. The soldiers before this had intuitively grasped the situation. The roads were full of men—paroled soldiers from Lee's and Johnston's armies; escaped men from both, having evaded surrender; men who had been exchanged and had started to join their commands—and north of Abbeville and all the way to Florida, I met men who, being still free to fight, were wending their way to the Mississippi river. I met them on my return from Florida in June, plodding their weary way back to their homes. These belonged to the Atlantic States. I traveled with some all the way to Virginia; those belonging to the States west of Georgia were already home again. These men and officers were some of the pick and flower of the Confederate States armies; men who, in the four years' desperate struggle, having to fight every nationality under the sun, except the "heathen Chinee," were still volunteers. Who dare say, if 20,000 such men had re-enforced the troops of the Trans-Mississippi Department, what the result might have been? With the war going on, with its immense expenditure of treasure, the Northern debt, January, 1866, could not have been much under $5,000,000,000, with the inevitable immense depreciation of its paper currency, would not the commercial North beenhave been [sic] perforce compelled to cry, "Halt?"