Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 29.djvu/63

 The Trial* mul Trial of Jrft'rr*:>n Dftri*. 47

" Everything is on the lookout for J. D. His cavalry is dissolved, and he is a fugitive, but in what direction is not known." (104 War of the Rebellion, p. 666.)

On the nth of May, 1865, Lieut. -Colonel B. D. Pritchard, com- manding the Fourth Michigan Cavalry, reported that at daylight on the loth, at Irwinville, Ga., about seventy-five miles from Macon, he had captured Mr. Davis with his family, his wife's sister and brother, Mr. Reagan, his Postmaster-General, Mr. Burton N. Har- rison, -his private secretary, Colonel William Preston Johnston, and Colonel Lubbock, of his staff, and Lieutenant Hathaway; together with five wagons and three ambulances. Colonel Pritchard merely announced the fact, and though he had a whole day to hear the p-ossip of the memorable occasion, he made no reference to the false report that Mr. Davis was caught in the endeavor to escape in his wife's clothes.

That story was made up by a newspaper correspondent, but cir- culation was given to it by Major-General J. H. Wilson, who, in his official report to Mr. Stanton, the Secretary of War, on the i4th of May, makes the statement, saying he derived it from " the captors." Colonel Pritchard, however, makes no such statement in his pub- lished official report and correspondence.

Mr James H. Parker, of Elburnville, Pa., who was one of the squad who arrested Mr. Davis, and the first to recognize him, pub- lished in the Portland (Maine) Argus, while Davis was still in con- finement, a full denial of the whole story. He says that some news- paper correspondent fabricated it, and that it was regarded merely as a joke in the command. He writes :

"She (Mrs. Davis) behaved like a lady, and he as a gentleman, though manifestly he was chagrined at being taken into custody. Our soldiers behaved like gentlemen, as they were, and our officers like honorable, brave men, and the foolish stories that went the newspaper rounds were all false. * * * I defy anybody to find a single officer or soldier who was present at the capture of Jefferson Davis, who will say, upon -honor, that he was disguised in woman's clothes, or that his wife acted in any way unladylike and undignified on the occasion."

Mr. T. H. Peabody, a lawyer of St. Louis, and one of the captors, in a speech made before a Grand Army Post, a few days after Mr. Davis' death, also denied the whole story.

The Secretary of War, however, rolled the statement under his