Sharyn Mccrumb_Elizabeth MacPherson_07 by MacPherson's Lament Page B

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 enemytroops 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, obeyingwhatever 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 ofthe 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