Pursuit:. Clint Johnson
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a profit.
If the cabinet could survive Atlantic storms in a small boat and reach a neutral country like Bermuda or the Bahamas, they could then board safer, foreign-flagged ships bound for Europe. Or if they still felt loyalty to Davis and the Confederacy, they could risk their freedom by following him and boarding a blockade-runner that would make for Alabama and Texas. One possibility that could have crossed Davis’s mind was reaching and boarding the CSS Stonewall, a French-built, iron-hulled raider that was supposed to be on its way across the Atlantic to Havana, Cuba. No Union wooden blockading ship would have been able to stand against the Stonewall, a ship designed to break the Union blockade. All Davis would have known on April 2 was that the Stonewall should be at sea on its way to Cuba.
But Davis did not try for the shorter escape route toward the Carolina coast. The option Davis apparently chose without conferring with his cabinet was a combination land and sea escape. He chose a longer route that would take them even further from the coast, first into upstate South Carolina and then into Georgia with coastal Florida assumed as the final destination.
The longer route seemed plausible. Florida was still mostly unmolested by Union forces. The third state to secede from the Union had been a blockade-runner’s haven early in the war. But since it was also the smallest of the Confederate states in population, fewer than 45,000 people, there had been little buildup of prewar infrastructure such as railroads or even large towns or ports, so large quantities of supplies could not be brought into Florida and then easily shipped north. The blockade-runners based in Florida were mostly small boats and schooners that could carry a few bales of cotton to Cuba or the Bahamas while carrying loads of lead and arms back to the peninsula that local forces would use.
However, while Florida did not have large blockade-runners, it did have the longest coastline of any state in the Union or the Confederacy at nearly 2,300 miles. Hidden along both the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico coast were scores of inlets and rivers that were too numerous for the United States Navy to patrol continuously. With prior word sent ahead by courier, loyal Confederates could have prepared large boats and small ships for the Confederate cabinet’s use.
But, the escape plan would take weeks to effect, even if nothing went wrong. If the cabinet could successfully avoid Union capture by taking trains south through North Carolina, switching to wagons and horses through unoccupied upstate South Carolina, and then going through unoccupied upstate Georgia, there was a chance they could stay ahead of any pursuing Union troops and disappear into Florida’s still unoccupied panhandle. From north Florida, they would make their way through the upper center of the state before splitting off into one of two directions, either to the southeast below Union-occupied St. Augustine on the east coast or to the southwest toward the Gulf of Mexico on the west coast.
Heading southeast to Florida’s Atlantic coast was the less desirable direction. While the Union blockade on that side of the state was light because there were few coastal towns below St. Augustine that could have engaged in blockade-running, there would also be fewer people living near the coast who could be called on to help with the escape. Leaving for Alabama from Florida’s Atlantic coast would also have added hundreds of miles and days of risky ocean sailing before Davis could reach Mobile.
Leaving from Florida’s west coast had its own problems, principally that those waters were more heavily guarded because Union ships blanketed the Gulf to capture blockade-runners trying to use Mobile and Galveston. Still there was opportunity there. While Florida’s small, blockade-running port of Cedar Key had been captured in 1862, the coastline north of Cedar Key was still in Confederate hands and actively used for making salt that was shipped to Confederate armies. This part of the coast bending upward and westward was just too long for the Union navy to patrol fully. Florida natives living close to the coast and still loyal to the Confederacy would know where boats and ships capable of open-sea travel would be hidden up small creeks and canals. If the cabinet’s boat could hug the coast disguised as a fishing vessel, they could escape detection all the way to finding Taylor’s army.
The hard part facing the cabinet was getting to Florida. The state line lay 600 miles from Richmond. The sparsely settled Gulf Coast, the ideal starting point for a voyage to Mobile, was another 150 miles beyond the border. An unimpeded, continuous trek by train, wagon, and horse would take nearly a month.
One wild card was available in the deck of the last game the Confederacy was playing that could be thrown on the table by the Union at any time. If it landed close to him, Davis would have to fold.
That wild card was the month-long, 6,000-man cavalry raid of Union major general George Stoneman who had left Knoxville, Tennessee on March 25 and who was now somewhere in the North Carolina mountains. Stoneman’s horse soldiers were burning Confederate warehouses and factories. No one in the Confederacy had any idea where Stoneman’s men might turn up or how quickly. Both Grant’s and Sherman’s armies were tied down by slow-walking infantry, but Stoneman’s cavalry could cover up to 50 miles in a day. If a Union telegram or a courier reached Stoneman detailing that Davis and the cabinet were moving south and had not yet even entered North Carolina, an interception would have been possible.
If Davis had given any thought or planning to how quickly the cabinet would move from one location to another, he kept it to himself. All his cabinet and the public knew was that they would be leaving Richmond on the night of April 2. The cabinet gathered at the rail station around 6:00 p.m., along with scores of Richmonders, all of whom heard that the cabinet was leaving the city and who hoped that they too would be able to take a refugee train out of town. It soon became clear to the citizens, however, that only two trains would be leaving the city that night. Only important government employees would be joining the cabinet’s flight. Average citizens would have to face whatever wrath the Yankees intended to inflict on the city.
There were some thirty locomotives left in the city by the end of the war but few that were fully operational. Most had been taken out of service due to lack of parts. The best locomotives and rolling stock had already been evacuated or captured by Union cavalry raiders. The one selected for evacuating the cabinet seemed to be the best of the worst left in Richmond. Its wood-fueled firebox leaked, as did its boiler, meaning it took longer to make enough steam to pull any cars. Under normal circumstances the locomotive assigned to pull the cars carrying the cabinet would have been dismantled for parts, but the railroad president had no choice. It would have to be pressed into service to rescue the Confederate government. A second engine was found to pull the treasury train loaded with the gold and bills that had been gathered from Richmond’s banks.
Perhaps surprisingly, no military escort was gathered to protect the train on which the Confederate nation’s most important officials would be traveling.
While either Davis or Breckinridge could have ordered an escort to be put together, Lee, who sent the telegram suggesting the cabinet leave Richmond, never offered any of his 30,000 troops scattered between Richmond and Petersburg for the job. All of Lee’s messages to his generals in Richmond revolved around how they should rendezvous with the rest of the Army of Northern Virginia leaving Petersburg somewhere to the west of both cities.
Lee knew that Davis and the others would be using the railroad line as an escape route as Breckinridge had asked him in one telegram how much longer the Danville Railroad would be open.
“I think the Danville Road will be safe until tomorrow,” was Lee’s terse if indefinite reply in his only known telegram that seemed to have anything to do with the pending evacuation of the cabinet.
In reality, Lee had no idea if the Danville Railroad was safe. His troops had lost control of Five Forks and Sutherland Station in successive days. By midnight on April 2, a time when the cabinet train might be passing through Amelia Court House, no one in the Confederate army could guarantee that Union cavalry would not be astride the Danville tracks, waiting to see what they could capture from any trains passing their way. On the morning of April 2, the way toward the Danville line was wide open if the Federals chose to move on it.
With his lines broken at Petersburg, Lee did not have time to contemplate the fate of his boss, President Davis. Lee just wanted to evacuate his army. Lee’s last telegram to Breckinridge read: “All troops will be directed to Amelia Court House,” a railroad station some