Part 98 (2/2)
”Oh, may G.o.d in His goodness keep you safe, my own. Maggie says she has your prayer book safe. May G.o.d keep you, my old and only love, as ever, devotedly,
”Your own,
”Winnie.”
He had not seen his wife and babies since they left Richmond. The conduct of the soldiers determined his course. He turned to Reagan:
”This move will probably cause me to be captured or killed. You are not bound to go with me--but I must protect my family.”
”I go with you, sir--” was the prompt response.
The soldiers were dismissed and the money still remaining in the Treasury divided among them. A picked guard of ten men rode with the fallen Chieftain in search of his loved ones.
They joined Mrs. Davis after a hard ride and found her camp threatened by marauders. He traveled with her two days and, apparently out of danger, she begged him to leave her and make good his escape. He finally agreed to do this and with Reagan, the members of his staff and Burton Harrison, his Secretary, started for the Florida coast.
The day was one of dismal fog and rain and the party lost the way, turning in a circle, and at sunset met Mrs. Davis and her company at the fork of the road near the Ocmulgee River.
The President and staff traveled with his wife next day and made twenty-eight miles. At Irwinsville their presence was betrayed to the Federal cavalry, his camp surrounded by Colonel Pritchard, and the Confederate President and party arrested.
The soldiers plundered his baggage, tore open his wife's trunks and scattered her dresses. In one of these trunks they found a pair of new hoopskirts which Mrs. Davis had bought but never worn. An enterprising newspaper man immediately invented and sent broadcast the story that he had been captured trying to escape in his wife's hoopskirts. His enemies refused to hear any contradiction of this invention. It was too good not to be true. They clung to it long after Colonel Pritchard and every man present had given it the lie.
They had traveled a day's journey toward Macon, the headquarters of General Wilson, when an excited man galloped into the camp waving over his head a printed slip of paper.
”What is it?” Davis asked of his guard.
The guard seized and read the slip and turned to the Confederate Chieftain and his wife.
”Andrew Johnson's proclamation offering a reward of $100,000 for the capture of Jefferson Davis as the murderer of Abraham Lincoln!”
A cry of anguish came from the faithful wife.
The leader touched her shoulder gently.
”Hush, my dear. The miserable scoundrel who wrote that proclamation knew that it is false. He is the one man in the United States who knows that I preferred Abraham Lincoln in the White House to him or any other man the North might elect. Such an accusation must fail--”
The wife was not comforted.
”These men may a.s.sa.s.sinate you!”
The soldiers crowded about their defenseless prisoner and heaped on him the vilest curses and insults. He made no answer. The far-away look in his eagle eye told them only too plainly that he did not hear.
Colonel Pritchard in his manly way made every effort to protect him from insult. Within a short distance of Macon, the prisoners were halted and their escort drawn up in line on either side of the road. Colonel Pritchard had ridden into Macon for a brigade to escort his captives through the streets of the city.
The soldiers again cursed and jeered. The children climbed into their father's arms, kissed and hugged him tenderly and put their little hands over his ears that he should not hear what they said.
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