Charlotte: Last Capital of the Confederacy?

Confederate President Jefferson Davis rode into Charlotte, North Carolina on horseback with a contingent of Rebel cavalrymen 1,000 strong on the afternoon of April 18, 1865. For the next seven days, Charlotte would be the last Capital of the dying Confederacy in all but name. It was not a role Charlotte relished and it never claimed the title then or later, but the Confederate Cabinet held its last full meeting there.

JEFFERSON DAVIS

General Robert E. Lee had surrendered The Army of Northern Virginia April 9th at Appomatox Court House. Davis, his Cabinet, and what remained of the Confederate government fled south, elements of Sherman’s army pursuing. Davis harbored a vain hope he might yet hook up with General Kirby Smith’s TransMississippi Army of 30,000 men and preserve some semblance of a Confederacy.

The rebel government’s records, 83 boxes weighing ten tons, the Confederate Seal, made of silver and weighing three pounds, the Confederate Treasury, and his wife and children preceded Davis to Charlotte. The wives of Generals Jackson, Johnson, and Hill all sought refuge there as well.

Mrs. Davis had written her husband a letter from Charlotte that LeGette Blythe and Charles Brockman quote at length in their 1961 history of Mecklenburg County, Hornet’s Nest.

“My own dear Bunny,” she addresses him. “The news of Richmond came upon me like the abomination of desolation… Since your arrival at Danville, VA, we have nothing except the wildest rumors, all, however, discouraging.” She reported to her husband that “I cannot judge the moral effect of the fall of Richmond. The people here were about as low as they could be before, as I infer from little things.”

Mrs. Davis, her contingent of Naval cadets and the Confederate Treasury would leave Charlotte before Davis arrived.

A soldier in advance of the coming deluge of refugees wrote in his diary that “Charlotte is a sweet town, and spring in all her loveliness is here, breathing freshness and fragrance through the rose-bordered streets.”

That was about to change drastically.

Nearly every sizable town on the route of Davis’ flight suffered a similar fate. He followed the rail line that ran like an artery from Richmond through Danville, VA, and Greensboro through Charlotte to Columbia, SC.

Davis and his party stopped briefly in Greensboro, which, the daily newspaper reported: “is no longer the beautiful, quiet place of yore. Tramp, tramp, tramp is heard all hours of the day and night; horses dash constantly through streets swimming in mud. The men of General Lee’s army are coming in rapidly, broken down, ragged, hungry and careworn. The streets are crowded with these desperate soldiers, made restless by their final defeat.”

General Joseph Johnston, commanding the sole remaining Confederate Army of any size in the East, had made a last stand against Sherman’s advancing Federals at Bentonville, NC, March 19-21. His 20,000 troops, most of them veterans of other Confederate armies, attacked one arm of Sherman’s troops on the road to Bentonville with some success on the 19th.

Some histories report the Rebs were “demoralized troops,” but a historian of the battle told us “Wade Hampton’s and Joe Wheeler’s cavalry treated Billy Yank rudely on the 19th. The fighting on the 20th was as vicious as Cold Harbor.”

About the Battle of Cold Harbor:

Cold Harbor: Grant and Lee,
May 26-June 3, 1864

Not War but Murder:
Cold Harbor 1864

Other histories of the Civil War's final days note that the ragged Confederate troops put up a spirited fight even though most southerners "surrendered in their hearts" when Lee gave up the Army of Northern Virginia, according to Cornellia Phillips Spencer in her memoir of "The Last 90 Days of the Civil War."

The Federals dug in, however, and by the next day Sherman’s reinforcements arrived. They crashed through Johnston’s left. He managed to escape with what remained of the broken army the night of March 21, so little a force to be reckoned with now that Sherman declined to follow. He was then more intent on joining Grant to help finish Lee, which Johnston had hoped to prevent by his attack.

Wounded men from this, the only major North Carolina land battle, crowded into virtually every empty space in towns and cities within traveling distance, including Charlotte.

The Charlotte Bulletin warned those leaving their homes to “go to the country,” because all the buildings in the town were full beyond capacity. Long lines of tents surrounded the town. Storefronts and hotels became hospitals. Over one hundred wounded Confederates never left Charlotte and are buried in section of Elmwood Cemetery Uptown.

Mecklenburg County had sent nearly every eligible male citizen to fight in Confederate armies, and 800, about a third, would not return.

A few days after Jefferson Davis and his entourage arrived, an eyewitness wrote: “the town was filled with unattached officers, disbanded and straggling soldiers, the relics of the naval force, fleeing officials and small change of the Richmond bureau.” Forces in the city included a detachment of young naval cadets assigned to accompany Mrs. Davis. Up to this point, Charlotte’s inland location had protected it from directly experiencing the worst devastation of this terrible war.

Confederate Navy Yard in Charlotte

Early in the war, the Confederates moved the Navy Yard from Norfolk to Charlotte to take advantage of its relatively protected position and rail connections to the shore. The Navy Yard, located off Trade Street, not far from Tryon, made ordinance: round shot, propeller shafts, gun carriages, and other equipment for gunboats. It also made repair parts for locomotives, mining, textile and farm machinery. Employing 1500 in its smithy, foundry, machine shops, laboratory and other departments, the Confederate Navy Yard formed the basis of the manufacturing center Charlotte would become following the war.

A powder mill near Tuckasegee Ford had blown up twice during the war with numerous casualties, and in January 1865 a fire razed the Quartermaster’s Warehouse in Charlotte, destroying an estimated $10 million in Confederate supplies.

Still, compared to the murderous fighting in Northern Virginia or the burning, looting and pillaging of Sherman’s March through Georgia and South Carolina, the Charlotte region was relatively untouched.

People Panicked

Now, at war’s end, however, the fighting approaching their own doors terrified people in the region.

Sherman’s men had just wrecked havoc on South Carolina, Sherman himself sanctioning a severe “punishment” for the state that had begun the Rebellion. The Federal troops looted and burned Columbia, and even in those days, word traveled.

Local historian and Sons of Confederate Veterans member Selby Daniels says, “People panicked. They threw their silver down wells to keep it out of the hands of Sherman’s troops.” Several days before Davis arrived in Charlotte, Stoneman’s Union cavalry cut the railroad lines at Salisbury. The same line still ran south to Columbia.

But Confederate Attorney General George Davis found that “Charlotte was not as ready to become the Confederate Capital as he had hoped it would be,” according to one history of the time. He thought the lodgings provided President Davis and his three aides were shabby. Major General John Echols had done his best to find housing for the President and Cabinet, but even his six-foot-four, 250-pound frame failed to make the job easy.

Union General Stoneman had threatened to burn the house of any man who gave Davis shelter, and Davis himself was about the only person left who thought the South had much resistance left to offer.

Taken to the door of the Lewis F. Bates home at Fourth and Tryon Streets, where Echols had arranged for him to stay on his April 18th arrival, Davis dismounted and found the door locked. A neighbor, Colonel William Johnson offered a brief speech welcoming him to Charlotte.

A small crowd gathered and several of the cavalrymen who had accompanied Davis called for a speech. Earlier, in Danville, VA, Davis had told the citizens only “their resolve” was necessary to continue the struggle, but here he was more subdued.

Davis said: “My friends, I thank you for this evidence of your affection. If I had come as the bearer of good news, if I had come to announce the success of our arms, and at the head of a triumphant army, this is nothing more than I should have expected. But coming to you as I do to tell you of a very great disaster, coming as I do to tell you that our national affairs have reached a very low point of depression; coming I may say as a refugee from the capital of the country, this demonstration of your love fills me with feelings too deep for expression. This has been a war of the people, for the people, and I have simply been their executive.”

Still ready to argue his cause, Davis continued, “I have had but one purpose to serve, one mission to fulfill, the preservation of the true principles of Constitutional freedom.”

A Calamity for the South

While he spoke, John C. Courtnay came from the telegraph office and handed him a message. Davis held it until he finished speaking then read it silently. Observers saw his expression change.

“This is an extraordinary event. Can it be true? It is dreadful,” he said and handed the telegram from General Breckinridge to a citizen who read it aloud.

It told of President Lincoln’s assassination. In his second inaugural address, Lincoln had spoken of “binding up the nation’s wounds” with “malice toward none and with charity towards all.” By now, even Davis had realized Lincoln was no longer the enemy.

An observer reported most people there who heard the telegram read thought the assassination was “a calamity for the South.”

At dawn on April 19, the day after Davis arrived in Charlotte, 250 of Stoneman’s raiders skirmished with North Carolina troops near Gastonia, but evaded contact with General Samuel Ferguson’s brigade of Confederate cavalry from Charlotte.

Robert E. Lee

The Union troops instead surprised the garrison guarding the Fort Mill Railroad Bridge. The defenders fought a pitched two-hour battle, but the Federals drove them back and burned the 1,225 foot long wooden bridge that crossed the Catawba River near Nation’s Ford, effectively destroying Charlotte’s rail link to the rest of the world.

It was the closest the fighting would come to Charlotte, but no one there knew it at the time.

The Sunday after his arrival, Davis and his party attended services at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church on North Tryon. The church, filled with generals, government officials and other notables, an observer said, had a “congregation the like of which Charlotte never saw before and will doubtless never see again.” The Rev. George M. Everhart preached on the “folly and wickedness of President Lincoln’s assassination.”

The preacher observed that “anarchy threatened the whole American continent with its outbreak of passion, madness, crime and outrage.” Afterwards, Davis wore something of a smile as he said to Colonels Johnson and Harrison, “I think he preached at me. He seems to think I had something to do with the assassination.”

Unfortunately, the U.S. Government had the same thought and aggressively pursued Davis.

Davis and the Cabinet held a series of stormy meetings in which they discussed the generous terms Sherman had offered Johnston to surrender his remaining troops. “Almost no one but Davis thought there was any chance for the South left at this point,” says Selby Daniels.

Still, Davis argued for continuing the fight. The meetings were held in the Bank of North Carolina building on South Tryon between Trade and Fourth Streets, and in the Phifer house on North Tryon, where Secretary of the Treasury Trenholm was ill.

Davis was not completely alone in his sentiments. Lt. General Wade Hampton questioned the terms of Johnston’s surrender and argued the case of joining up with Kirby Smith’s TransMississippi Army and proceeding to Mexico. Davis battled to keep his disintegrating government intact, but the Cabinet meeting held on April 26 was the last at which all the members were present.

On April 26, Johnston surrendered to Sherman at the Bennett Place, just outside Durham, NC, effectively ending the war in the South. Nearly 90,000 troops were paroled and released to return to their homes.

Davis remained firm in his determination to offer resistance to the Federals and mapped out plans for the continued retreat of the Confederate government through South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi to Texas and finally Mexico.

Other Cabinet members were astonished at his resolve. Atty. General Davis, who had thought Charlotte would be receptive to becoming the Confederacy’s last Capital, resigned to remain in the city with his motherless children.

Later that day, Davis and the other five members of his Cabinet left. A long wagon train of baggage, supplies and archives trailed out of the city. With it went the remaining Confederate treasury, which some sources say was as much as $250,000 in gold but others set at only $35,000, guarded by a troop of loyal Kentucky cavalrymen.

Federals would finally capture Davis May 5 in Georgia. It is thought the Confederate gold was distributed equally among the cavalry troops who remained with Davis until the end.

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Events Culminated Rapidly

In the minutes of the Charlotte Board of Commissioners March 23, 1865, its last meeting before these events, the town clerk, Thomas Dewey wrote a summary of events that remains poignant in its concise recording of the final days of the Confederacy in Charlotte.

It reads: “Events culminated so rapidly. Most of the store houses in town were filled with sick Confederate soldiers sent from Virginia and elsewhere to get out of the way of the advancing Yankee army. The town books and papers were sent off to the County. The clerk betook himself to the woods with valuables of the Bank of North Carolina. Richmond fell, Lee’s Army surrenders. Johnston’s Army surrenders. The Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his Cabinet held their last meetings in the Branch Bank building in Charlotte then departed southwards and the Confederacy was at an end.”

In Charlotte, the doors to all government warehouses were thrown open to keep their contents out of Yankee hands.

In his memoirs, General Josiah Gorgas, Confederate Chief of Ordinance at the Navy Yard in Charlotte, recalls the drunken cavalryman who claimed two objects, a sextant and a mariner’s compass. He held them up and declared, “I’m going to use them to navigate my way back to Texas!”

When Captain Morris C. Runyan led Company G, 9th New Jersey Volunteers, into Charlotte May 7, his troops were uneasy and even a bit frightened to be so deep in what was so recently enemy territory. Their fears were unfounded. The populace was actually happy to have order restored.

Besides, as one history reports, the Union troops had money and spent it, a sure way to make friends in Charlotte, even then.

This article was published in a different form in Charlotte Magazine. This version, copyright 2004 by Allan Maurer.

Acknowledgments: The author thanks Dr. James Sasser, retired CPCC history professor; Mr. Selby Daniels, who preserved many primary historical materials relating to this period; and Mr. David Tooley, President of the San Diego Civil War Roundtable and scholar of the Bentonville battle, for their invaluable help in preparing this article. William C. Davis' "An Honorable Defeat, The Last Days of the Confederate Government," is now the standard work on the subject. Cornelia Phillips Spencer's "Last 90 Days of the Civil War," and other works cited in the text were also consulted.