May 6, 1865---"This is not the fate to which I invited us . . ."

MAY 6, 1865:    

“This is not the fate to which I invited us” --- Jefferson Davis, in a letter to his wife 

I

Formal and punctilious to the last, Jefferson Davis, the “President of The Confederacy” --- now an empty title --- issues Executive Orders detailing the management and handling of the remnants of Confederate national property. Among the Orders is one directing that the remaining specie in the Confederate treasury is to be loaded aboard a ship and taken to the British West Indies for transshipment to Liverpool, where it is to be invested (presumably by James Dunwoody Bulloch) against the day that the Confederacy is formally re-established. How the precious metals are to find a ship, whether they did, and whether the money is sitting in a British bank in some “lost” account to this day is not known.

Stephen Mallory, now former Secretary of the Confederate Navy, is seeking his refugee family in the boiling pot that is Georgia in transition from war to peace. Judah P. Benjamin and John C. Breckinridge are heading for Florida. Separately, with Benjamin a day ahead, they follow nearly the same route for much of the way. Davis is still planning on traveling to the Trans-Mississippi --- he has no idea that Taylor and Maury have surrendered, cutting off his overland escape route. 

II

President Andrew Johnson appoints Major General David Hunter, Major General Lew Wallace, Brevet Major General August V. Kautz, Brigadier General Albion P. Howe, Brigadier General Robert S. Foster, Brevet Brigadier General Cyrus B. Comstock, Brigadier-General T. M. Harris, Brevet Colonel Horace Porter, Lieutenant Colonel David R. Clendenin, and Brigadier General Joseph Holt, Judge-Advocate-General, as members of the Military Commission that will try the Lincoln conspirators.  The group becomes known as the “Hunter Commission.”

III

James Arwood U.S.A., becomes (arguably) the last man to die in the Civil War east of the Mississippi River when his unit, the 2^nd North Carolina (U.S.) clashed with Thomas’ Legion (C.S.) at White Sulphur Springs (now Waynesville), in western North Carolina.