been taken by the State, went with it, somewhat on the idea of flotsam, where in a shipwreck, every one is entitled to all he saves.

This $230,000 was captured at Washington, Georgia, and was covered into the treasury of the United States, where it now is. Of the Confederate coin, $39,000 was left with Gen. Johnston, at Greensboro, as his military chest, and was divided by him to his troops, each receiving $1.15, without regard to rank-the only pay most of them had received for a year. The rest was paid out to troops at Washington, Georgia, by order of Mr. Davis, and Gen. Breckenridge, Secretary of War; by M. H. Clark, Esq., acting Treasurer of the Confederate States.*

Gen. Johnston, therefore, was in error when he stated, long afterward, that President Davis had a large amount, or any amount, of Confederate gold with him-just as Stanton was mistaken when he believed that his General, second in rank in his army, was capable of being bribed, and had in fact been bribed, by Mr. Davis, to let him escape.

If anything is certain in this world it is that Davis's soul was too great, and his nature too lofty to be capable of such an idea. He would have died in his tracks before he would have offered a bribe to his enemy to induce him betray his duty.

This may be a strained sense of chivalry, but President Davis possessed it, held to it, lived on, and died by it.

*Memoirs of Davis, Vol. II, p. 868.

No power could make him condone, ignore, or do a

foul thing.

The cruelest Diow that ever was struck at him, was the dastardly charge of Andrew Johnson and Stanton, of complicity with the assassination of Lincoln. As he Isaid with keen bitterness: "There is one man in the United States who knows the falsity of that charge absolutely, and that is the man who made it, for he knows that I greatly prefer Lincoln for President to him."

A

CHAPTER XVII.

THE YEARS OF RE-CONSTRUCTION.

FTER Johnston had discharged his duty to his soldiers, by securing to each one the written promise of Gen. Sherman for protection, he started them homeward under the command of their own Division and Brigade Generals.

Sherman was moving North for his grand review at Washington, having left Schofield with his corps to command the Department of North Carolina.

Schofield set the sxample, and every man under him behaved with the most chivalric courtesy to the heartbroken people they had conquered. He supplied rations and transportation for the march of the paroled Confederates returning home. Where railroads were in operation, Federal Quartermasters gave them orders to be carried over the railroads to their homes on the nearest point by rail to them.

Thus Texans, Arkansians, and Missourians were sent thousands of miles at the expense of the Federal Government, and it may be recorded that during the whole year 1865, from the 1st of May, when the paroles were signed, peace and order, good-will and kind offices, reigned in all the conquered States. As long as the soldiers controlled things, everything went on well. It was only when the politicians began to divide the plunder of the conquest, and allot the prize money, that the suffering was ten-fold aggravated.

The surrender at Durham's had left Gen. Johnston without one cent in the world. The scant savings of a life in the old army had been left in the North and were all gone. Mrs. Johnston had a small property from her father's estate, which was in the hands of her family, in California, or in Maryland, and that alone was saved from the wreck. Gen. Johnston made a point, all his life, to preserve his wife's property, for her alone-under her entire control, free from any interference by him at all. All he had to do with it was to see that it was safe. The Southern people had nothing to offer him but their love. They gave that unstinted. He was made president of a railroad in Arkansas. But that did not materalize; and he was chosen as president of the National Express Company, an enterprise organized under the laws of Virginia, to engage in the business of quick transportation of parcels. This was unsatisfactory, and, in a short time, he gave that up and became the agent of the London, Liverpool & Globe Insurance Co., and the New York Life Insurance Co., for the Gulf States, with headquarters at Savannah. He made his residence there, and pushed the business in which he was engaged with great energy and intelligence. His reputation aided in making the enterprise a success, and he lived for several years in that city which was devoted to him and his wife.

But Mrs. Johnston's health, which had been failing for years, made a more northern climate necessary, and besides, he wanted to get back to his Mother Virginia, and, in 1876, he removed to Richmond.

Virginia was just then recovering from the throes of the struggle for the possession of her government. and the preservation of her civilization.

The

Richmond District had been represented satisfactorily in Congress for several terms by Gilbert C. Walker, a Northern man, who had been elected by the white people of Virginia their first governor under the re-constructed government.

After governor Walker's term expired, he was rewarded for the admirable manner in which he had performed his executive duties by being chosen to represent the Metropolitan District of Virginia in Congress.

In 1877, there were several aspirants for his place, but the old soldiers concluded that they had the right to represent that district, and that Gen. Johnston was the proper man to represent them.

Col. Archer Anderson, his former chief-of-staff, was selected to sound the General as to whether such a candidacy would be agreeable to him. The movement was without his knowledge, and was absolutely voluntary, and in no way, direct or indirect, had he anything to do with it. Col. Anderson reported as his opinion that the General would be much gratified at such a proof of the love and respect of Virginians, as a tender of the nomination would be.

The next step was to get the ambitious aspirants out of the way, so as to prevent all competition, and a card was drawn up requesting General Johnston to allow his name to be used as the Democratic candidate for