With regard to the first of these statements, it need only be said that the gold which was taken was in charge of Mr. Trenholm, the Secretary of the Treasury. How and where he "packed" it, I am not informed; but it is not at all likely that it was packed among the President's "baggage."
As to the other point, waiving all question of the nobility or ignobility of the Confederate President and Cabinet, considered as freight, it is enough to say that they traveled by a passenger train, not adapted nor employed for carrying provisions; and moreover, that, if supplies had been sent by this or any other train to Amelia Courthouse, a village on the Richmond and Danville railroad, they were no doubt sent through it, on the way to Richmond. The Commissary-General of the Confederate army has shown in a recent publication (Southern Historical Society Papers for March, 1877), that no requisition for supplies to be sent to Amelia Courthouse was ever received by him or his assistants, and that the Secretary of War had no knowledge of any such. Mr. Harvie, the president at that time of the Danville road, also testifies (Ibid.), that ample supplies could have been sent to Amelia Courthouse for an army twice the size of Lee's, but that neither he nor the superintendent had any notice that they were wanted there. General Wilson qualifies this particular statement by the vague limitation, "it is said," but the on dit seems to be entitled to little more credit than if it had been his own assertion.
Passing over all subordinate and incidental matters we come, in the next paragraph, to a yet more astounding historic revelation, as follows:
"It is stated upon what appears to be good authority, that Davis had, many weeks before Lee's catastrophe, made 'the most careful and exacting preparations for his escape, discussing the matter fully with his Cabinet in profound secrecy, and deciding that, in order to secure the escape of himself and principal officers, the Shenandoah should be ordered to cruise off the coast of Florida to take the fugitives on board.' These orders were sent to the rebel cruiser many days before Lee's lines were broken. It was thought that the party might make an easy and deliberate escape in the way agreed upon, as the communications with the Florida coast were at that time scarcely doubtful, and once on the swift-sailing Shenandoah, the most valuable remnant of the Anglo-Confederate navy, 'they might soon obtain an asylum on a foreign shore.'"
