What Happened to the Lost Confederate Gold? As the records of the American Civil War increasingly fade into obscurity, many wartime

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1 Lowry 1 Ben Lowry Ms. Dasher AP English Literature and Composition 28 November 2017 What Happened to the Lost Confederate Gold? As the records of the American Civil War increasingly fade into obscurity, many wartime stories have grown prone to turning into myths. These accounts see the warping of facts, either intentional or not, altering the overall structure of the narratives. One such tale is the location of the treasury contents of the Confederate States of America (C.S.A) after the United States captured Richmond, Virginia, the Confederate capital, on April 1, Numerous unsubstantiated locations exist as potential sites of where the treasury may lie; however, none of these reports have ever been verified. Consequently, determining the whereabouts of the treasury that consistently agrees with the route that the Confederate government took as it fled Richmond the night of April 2 has been the priority of those captivated by the tale. To gather information for this complex topic, a myriad of sources was used. When distinguishing between sources, two categories emerged: primary sources and secondary sources. For the primary sources, manuscripts written by individuals who witnessed the dispersal of the treasury helped establish the finer details in the travels. Examples of primary sources used in this project include a journal from Washington, Georgia, local Eliza Frances Andrews, a document from Confederate captain William Harwar Parker, a record from Acting Treasurer Micajah Clark, and a railroad map created in 1861, the year the Civil War started. These sources helped finalize the definitive route the treasury took to South Carolina, the contents of the treasury at each stop, and the dates the treasury stayed at each city, among other information. Where the

2 Lowry 2 primary sources detail finer facts, the secondary sources recount the broader facts that add cohesion to the paper. The rest of the sources employed in this paper would fall under the secondary source classification and bolstered the objective factual content in the paper, although sometimes these sources reached for their conclusion as to where the treasury contents ended up. Through the research, the exact route of the treasury and where the money disappeared remains unclear. Below North Carolina, the treasury was transferred from the railroad cars to offroad wagon trains multiple times, preventing the exact route of the treasury from being known; however, the information learned paints a clear picture as to the general understanding of what happened to the Richmond treasury. While the treasury proceeded farther south from Richmond to the final stop of Washington, Georgia, the riches and treasures were buried for potential later use, disbursed to troops, dispersed among high-ranking cabinet members, and hijacked during a raid until the treasury was supposedly empty by May 5. After Union forces reached Richmond, the hasty process to evacuate the treasury from Virginia culminated in the burial of a tremendous amount of coins in Danville, Virginia. Since the Union army reached Richmond so unexpectedly, the Confederate government was not prepared to flee. In fact, according to Mark Waters, the exact amount of the treasury was not documented before leaving Richmond (2). From analysis of future payouts, estimates of the treasury beforehand exist. These estimates value the treasury to contain fifty casks of Mexican Silver Dollars worth about $200,000, various other silver coins worth at most $157,253, and the treasury itself of containing up to $527,023 before leaving Richmond (Millet 50-51). Although that amount might not seem like much, when adjusted for inflation, that figure swells to about $10 million today (Waters 2). Traveling alongside the treasury included $450,000 in coins and species checks from banks located in Richmond ( Confederate Gold ). In charge of the treasury

3 Lowry 3 was C.S.A captain William Harwar Parker, whose order was to convey it to Danville (Parker 350). Once the treasury left Richmond and arrived in Danville, Virginia, one of the substantial deposits occurred. Before the treasury continued their southward trek, thirty-nine of the fifty casks of Mexican Silver Dollars were buried somewhere in Danville, shrinking the amount left in the treasury by an estimated $156,000 (Millet 93). Due to the monetary impact of the burial, when counted before departing from Danville, the treasury contained merely $327, (Waters 3). Even though the original orders for Parker commanded him to deliver the treasury to only Danville, a strong Union presence close to the city led to the treasury being transported further south through the Carolinas. While the treasury traveled through various cities in both North Carolina and South Carolina, some of the gold was paid to the Confederate soldiers. The cities that saw the gold in the two states in chronological order are Greensboro, North Carolina; Charlotte, North Carolina; Chester, South Carolina; Newberry, South Carolina; and Abbeville, South Carolina. Despite arriving in Greensboro on April 7 and staying just a day, a hefty portion of the treasury, about $39,000, was paid out to troops under the command of C.S.A Major General Joseph E. Johnston (Waters 3). This payout revealed a major flaw that from henceforth would routinely plague the Confederate officials: disorganization. To grant soldiers money, the president, Jefferson Davis, had to authorize the request. Davis stated that he never approved the hefty sum while Johnston claimed Davis sent him two papers to verify the transaction (Jones ). Regardless of whether the transaction was authorized or not, this payment was the sole one in Greensboro as the treasury left a day later. After traveling through Salisbury, the caravan arrived in Charlotte. According to Captain Parker, Charlotte was originally the final stop, but first he had to telegraph Confederate officials in Salisbury that the treasury had been deposited in the branch mint in

4 Lowry 4 Charlotte. Finding the wires cut, Parker assumed that the Union general George Stoneman had captured Salisbury and would soon arrive at Charlotte searching for the gold; therefore, Parker decided to withdraw the treasury further south and into safer land, presumably Macon, Georgia (Parker 355). As a result, Parker ordered the loading of the treasury back onto the train and the movement of the treasury by railroad through Chester and Newberry to reach Abbeville, the last city on that railroad line. There, the decision to travel further south led to the creation of wagon trains to transport the treasury through dirt roads and the backcountry to reach the final official state in the route: Georgia. During the last few days of the Confederate government, the treasury relocated numerous times as the officials adjusted the route to minimize confrontations with Union troops. Because of the route readjustments, the treasury ended up taking a convoluted, circular path. Starting at Abbeville, the treasury went through Washington, Georgia, to Augusta, Georgia, before backtracking to Abbeville through Washington. Then, the treasury doubled back to Washington, where the government then dissolved on May 4, a little more than a month after the exodus began (Waters 7). After arriving in Washington the first time, the party learned that Macon, the destination decided on in Charlotte, was captured; therefore, they decided to go to Augusta, Georgia (Waters 4). According to Eliza Frances Andrews, the rumor circulating throughout the town is that the treasury contained three hundred thousand dollars in specie, showing that the evacuation of the treasury was common knowledge throughout the Confederacy, foreshadowing future troubles in protecting the contents of the treasury from bandits ( ). After realizing that Augusta might fall soon as well, the caravan chose to return to Abbeville to mull over options with Davis, who the party believed had arrived in the town earlier. At Abbeville, Davis and the other officials agreed to return to Washington for the third and last time. By this point,

5 Lowry 5 the soldiers guarding the convoy, indignant at not receiving their perceived portion of the treasury, started to demand a part of the money. On May 4, $108, of the treasury was paid out to some of the soldiers protecting the caravan (Jones 126). Reaching Washington for the last time on May 4, the treasury had reached its last stop, commencing a flurry of payments to soldiers, commanders, and officials throughout the Confederacy (Jones ). One significant payment included the transfer of a portion of the treasury to naval official James Semple with the order to travel to Savannah and ship the gold to overseas accounts in Liverpool, England (Millett 147). With this payment to Semple (eventually determined to be $86,000), nothing was reported to remain in the treasury, bringing the travels of the treasury to a close (Clark). When answering the question as to what happened with the lost Confederate gold, one must realize that no definitive answer exists. Cities, not just throughout the southeastern United States, but instead the whole North American continent may have, at one point, seen a portion of the treasury pass through their borders. Even though the Confederate government dissolved in Washington, confirmed reports of further treasury activity endured. On May 24, 1865, a cache of bank assets traveling alongside the treasury was broken into at Chennault Plantation near Danville, Georgia, leading to $250,000 of the $450,000 in assets being stolen, with just $110,000 ever recovered (Jones 9). Later, Semple wound up disobeying his orders, spending some of the gold as far north as New York City and Montreal. Even the assumed accurate first-person accounts leave more questions than answers. When Clark announced that the treasury was empty, he did not consider both Confederate accounts in other countries and a cache of $35,000 in Florida that was hidden ( Georgia Odyssey ). Where this unaccounted money lies, no one

6 Lowry 6 knows for sure. Despite capturing the imagination of thousands across the world, there is no way of knowing what happened to the lost Confederate gold.

7 Lowry 7 Works Cited Andrews, Eliza Frances. The War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl, Documenting the American South, U of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Accessed 14 Sept Clark, Micajah. "The Last Days of the Confederate Treasury and What Became of Its Specie." Southern Historical Society Papers, Tufts University. Perseus Digital Library. Accessed 15 Sept Davis, Robert Scott. "The Georgia Odyssey of the Confederate Gold." Georgia Historical Quarterly, vol. 86, no. 4, Winter2002, p EBSCOhost. Davis, Robert S. "Confederate Gold." New Georgia Encyclopedia. 06 June Web. 04 October Hall, Edward S, and H.H. Lloyd & Co. Lloyd's new military map of the border & southern states; drawn by Edward S. Hall. New York, Map. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, Jones, Robert. Lost Confederate Gold. Kennesaw, Robert C. Jones, Millet, Wesley, and Gerald White. The Rebel and the Rose. Nashville, Cumberland House Publishing, Parker, William Harwar. Recollections of a Naval Officer, Internet Archive. Accessed 25 Sept Waters, Marshall P., 3. "Confederate Treasury-the Final Disposition." Surratt Courier, Sept. 2007, pp Washington Wilkes. Accessed 14 Sept