Description:

Davis Jefferson



Capture of Jefferson Davis, Broadside Announcement!  Accompanied by CDV of Same


“JEFF. DAVIS CAPTURED!”

 

This broadside from the Western Reserve Chronicle of Warren, Ohio, consists of a telegram from Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton to General John A. Dix in New York, forwarding a dispatch from Brevet Major General James H. Wilson in Macon, Georgia, with the news that Confederate President Jefferson Davis had been captured.

 

[JEFFERSON DAVIS.] Printed Broadside, Western Reserve Chronicle, May 14, 1865, Warren, Ohio. 1 p., 4.875" x 9". Repair on verso to center fold. Accompanied by a Carte-de-Visite sepia print depicting the scene, 2.25” x 4”.

 

Excerpt

“I have the honor to report that at daylight on the 10th. inst., Col. Pritchard commanding 4th Michigan Cavalry, captured Jefferson Davis and family, with Reagan, Post Master General, Col. Harrison, private Secretary, Col. Johnson, Aid de Camp, Col. Morris, Col. Lubbeck, Lieut. Hathaway and others. Col. Pritchard surprised their camp at Irwinsville, Irwin Co., Georgia, seventy-five miles south-east of this place. They will be here to-morrow night, and will be forwarded under strong guard without delay.”

 

Historical Background

When General Ulysses S. Grant’s forces completed the envelopment of Petersburg in early April 1865, Confederate President Jefferson Davis (1808-1889) and his cabinet fled to Danville, Virginia, where they remained for a week. Around April 12, Davis received word that General Robert E. Lee had surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia on April 9, and Davis fled further south to Greensboro, North Carolina. On May 2, new President Andrew Johnson offered a reward of $100,000 for the capture of Davis, believed to be part of a plot to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln. By May 5, 1865, Davis met with his cabinet for the last time in Washington, Georgia, where they officially dissolved the Confederate government.

 

Five days later, Davis, his wife Varina Davis, and their children were captured by Union forces near the hamlet of Irwinville, 150 miles further south, having traveled more than 600 miles from Richmond, in their attempt to reach Florida and flee abroad. A detachment of the 4th Michigan Cavalry, commanded by Lt. Col. B. D. Pritchard, and a portion of the 1st Wisconsin Cavalry, commanded by Henry Harnden approached Davis’s camp from different directions and engaged in a brief exchange of gunfire that left two Michigan troopers dead and several wounded and three Wisconsin troopers wounded.

 

In an attempt to escape to his horse, Davis had worn a “waterproof,” an overcoat worn by both men and women, over his uniform and had a shawl over his head to disguise himself. Davis’s disguise led to the persistent myth that he tried to escape dressed in women’s clothing or even one of his wife’s dresses and petticoats. Artists of all types imaginatively portrayed Davis in a dress in more than twenty different lithographs published in the immediate aftermath of the capture as a way to mock and shame the former Confederate president.

 

By May 19, 1865, Davis was imprisoned at Fortress Monroe on the coast of Virginia. After two years of imprisonment, Davis was released on bail of $100,000, posted by such prominent citizens as publisher Horace Greeley, shipping magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, and abolitionist Gerrit Smith. Davis went to Quebec, then Cuba and Europe, but returned to the United States in 1869.

 

In the broadside, the editors of the Western Reserve Chronicle in Warren, Ohio, acknowledge Camp and Russel of the Atlantic & Great Western Telegraph Line for sending the dispatch to them.



Jefferson Davis (1808-1889) was born in Kentucky and graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 1828. After service under Zachary Taylor in the Black Hawk War, Davis married the future president’s daughter, Sarah Knox Taylor, in 1835, but she died three months after their wedding. Davis established a plantation in Mississippi and became a Democratic politician. In 1844, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, and a year later, married Varina Howell. Davis resigned his seat in Congress and raised a volunteer regiment for the Mexican War. He returned to politics after the war and served as a U.S. Senator (1845-1852, 1857-1860), and as Secretary of War (1853-1857). A moderate, he initially opposed secession, but when Mississippi seceded in January 1861, Davis resigned from the Senate and returned to Mississippi to raise troops. A month later, the Montgomery Convention named him as provisional president of the Confederacy, until he was elected to a six-year term as president in November 1861, and inaugurated on February 22, 1862. Davis took a direct role in the management of military affairs and worked with the Confederate Congress to expand the powers of the Confederate government, including conscription, impressment, and suspension of habeas corpus, which prompted some states’ rights opposition to his administration. After the fall of Richmond, Union troops captured a fleeing Davis in Georgia. He was imprisoned for two years at Fort Monroe, Virginia, charged with treason. He was never brought to trial and was eventually released. He published his two-volume memoir, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, in 1881.

 

 


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