June 11, 1865---The Great Treasury Raid

JUNE 11, 1865:                    

The Great Treasury Raid:

Amelia Barr, a 35-year-old woman living in Austin, Texas decries the chaos that has engulfed her State, telling her diary, 

“Confederate soldiers, without officers or orders, are coming in every hour, and there is nothing but plunder and sack going on—and the citizens are as bad as the soldiers.”

Still unsure whether they will be pardoned or hanged as traitors, most Confederate officials in Texas, down to the local town Sheriffs, have decamped for parts unknown, leaving Texas in chaos. And since few of Kirby Smith’s men actually surrendered after his surrender, big Texas is full of armed men in gray who, unchallenged, are committing crimes ranging from pickpocketing to rape and murder.

Since all the State officials in the Capitol Building have fled, the building is standing open and empty, its contents ripe for the picking. Land deeds are stolen and new signatures forged. Banknotes are pocketed. Criminal records are expunged by being thrown in heaps into the streets. Jailed men are freed by the looters, and they join in the looting. And the State’s great Treasury Vault is broken open this day.

Although the robbers try very hard to be secretive, their efforts to break the Vault attract the attentions of George R. Freeman and Nathan Shelley, two paroled Confederates who have recently formed a Night Watchman group in Austin. They quickly sound the alarm, ringing the bell at the First Baptist Church. This alerts the other Night Watchmen, who gather, and in a posse move on the Treasury Vault. They manage to kill one lookout, but the shooting alerts the thieves in the Vault, who flee into the night with $250,000.00 (2015 value)  in gold coins. The robbers are never caught and the money is never recovered.