Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 09.djvu/565

556 Both sections were traveling in the same financial rut; but the Southern money traveled downward the faster.

The soldiers jingling their silver dollars on every road told the tale of the disbursement of the little Treasury, and I found on my return the wildest rumors through the country as to the amount it had contained. Five million dollars was the smallest amount mentioned.

Federal detectives were swarming along the route we had traveled, hunting papers, the Treasury and "the last man who had it in charge," "for an immense amount must have been secreted somewhere; $5,000,000 to $15,000,000 could not vanish in the air in a day."

But the undersigned wasn't eager to make new acquaintances, and wasn't then signing himself "Acting Treasurer, C. S." An impression has prevailed with some that on that last day great demoralization, confusion and panic existed. Such was not so. The soldiers were orderly, and though the town was filled with men under no command, there was no rioting or violence, though the citizens feared something of the kind. In the hearts of the educated and the thinking there was a hush of deep emotion, and it seemed to me as if a gloomy pall hung in the atmosphere repressing active expression. As it was realized that a government which had been strong and loved, the exponent of all their hopes and wishes, was, perhaps, dying the death before their eyes, that whatever might be accomplished "over the river," all east of it for a possibly long future was to be abandoned to the conqueror, with all the unnumbered woes which that implied—an agony too great for words, with the bitterness of an almost despair filling all hearts,—I rode out into the darkness that night as if from a death-bed.

You have before you a plain, unvarnished statement of the last days; the personal pronoun has been used more than I could have wished but it was unavoidable. The skecthsketch [sic] might have been studded with incidents of the "retreat from Richmond," interesting perhaps to those who followed the "Starry Cross" to that bitter end, but this article is already too long for newspaper publication. The old Confederates brought nothing out of the war, save honor; for God's sake! and the precious memory of the dead, let us preserve that untarnished, and defend it from slanderous insinuations. To do my part, I have spoken. Ex-Captain P. A. C. S., and ex-Acting Treasurer C. S. A.