The Civil War ended for most Americans in April 1865. The war and its various aspects continue to capture the interest and imagination of many Americans who are fascinated by the battles, leaders, and strategies displayed during that conflict. Mysteries endure, too, including the ultimate disposition of the Confederate Treasury. One of the greatest mysteries involves Chester County, South Carolina, which has intrigued generations of historians and treasure-seekers since.
Sunday, April 2, 1865, was a beautiful spring day in Richmond. The Confederate capital was outwardly calm despite rumors of impending evacuation. Many of the government leaders were attending church, although the booming of distant cannons could be heard from the direction of Petersburg. President Jefferson Davis was in his usual pew at fashionable St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. Mrs. Davis and her four small children had left Richmond on the last day of March 1865 to seek refuge farther south at Charlotte, North Carolina. In the middle of the service at St. Paul’s, an army messenger brought an urgent dispatch to the President from General Lee, advising him that the lines around Petersburg were crumbling and Richmond must be abandoned immediately. President Davis quietly left the church, walked to his office, and sent for the members of his Cabinet. The President announced that Richmond was to be abandoned that night, and department heads were instructed to supervise the packing of valuable records and have them delivered to the depot of the Richmond & Danville Railroad. Secretary Trenholm was not well and assigned the responsibility for packing the bullion in the Treasury to the senior teller, Walter Philbrook. There were gold pieces, Mexican silver dollars, silver bricks, and gold bars. It was not much, approximately $527,000, but it represented all that remained of the Confederacy’s wealth and included $200,000 of private gold and silver holdings of the Richmond banks (note that the actual numbers are not known; some have speculated that those numbers could have been in the millions). The treasure was packed in sacks and boxes and loaded onto a special train to transport the President and his Cabinet to Danville, Virginia.
Captain Parker was ordered to seek greater security for the treasure further south and was directed to deposit the gold and silver in the mint at Charlotte, North Carolina. The midshipmen left Danville by train on April 6th and arrived in Greenville, North Carolina, the next day. On orders from the Cabinet, Parker left gold valued at about $75,000 at a Greenville bank; $35,000 was for the future use of the Cabinet, and $40,000 was for payment to General Joseph Johnston’s Army of Tennessee. The midshipmen reached Charlotte on April 8th and deposited the balance of the treasure. Parker attempted to report by telegraph that his responsibility of delivering the treasure was complete. However, Parker was unable to get a message through, and upon investigation was amazed to discover that General Stoneman and 6,000 Federal cavalry had raided Salisbury shortly after the treasure train passed through the area. Parker felt the treasure would not be safe in Charlotte as the midshipmen and local guards would be no match for the strong detachment of veteran Federal cavalry, which scoured the countryside.
Varina Davis and her children left Charlotte for safety concerns en route to Chester. There were no trains out of Chester, so the midshipmen made up a wagon train and repackaged the gold and silver in kegs and small boxes. It is alleged that Mrs. Davis stayed overnight at the hotel on the hill. Other reports suggest that Mrs. Davis, her children, and the midshipmen found an ambulance and traveled on until they found shelter later that night in a nearby church.
Some reports indicate that the treasure train continued to reach other parts of South Carolina before it entered Georgia, until a famous document discovered at a train depot in Chester suggested otherwise. “The Confederate Constitution of 1861, along with other boxes, was discovered by Felix G. Defontaine, a newspaper correspondent during the war, in April of 1865. The boxes, abandoned by fleeing troops, contained records of the Confederate government, which was being sent south after the evacuation of Richmond. The prizes among the records that DeFontaine recovered were the two Constitutions of the Confederacy, Provisional and Permanent. DeFontaine sold the manuscript copy at auction in 1883” (www.sciway.net).
Jefferson Davis was captured on May 10, 1865, near Irwinville, Georgia. He only had a few dollars in his pocket at the time. What happened to the treasure? Was it offloaded near Chester with fear of meeting Union troops, or did it reach Georgia? The biggest clue to solving the mystery may be centered around the boxes of documents left behind at the train station in Chester. Why would they leave documents as valuable as gold behind and flee? Perhaps you could be standing on one of the biggest mysteries in history.
Written By: John G. Clark Jr
Image Credit: John G. Clark Jr.