The soldiers plundered his baggage, tore open his wife's trunks and scattered her dresses. In one of these trunks they found a pair of new hoopskirts which Mrs. Davis had bought but never worn. An enterprising newspaper man immediately invented and sent broadcast the story that he had been captured trying to escape in his wife's hoopskirts. His enemies refused to hear any contradiction of this invention. It was too good not to be true. They clung to it long after Colonel Pritchard and every man present had given it the lie.
They had traveled a day's journey toward Macon, the headquarters of General Wilson, when an excited man galloped into the camp waving over his head a printed slip of paper.
"What is it?" Davis asked of his guard.
The guard seized and read the slip and turned to the Confederate Chieftain and his wife.
"Andrew Johnson's proclamation offering a reward of $100,000 for the capture of Jefferson Davis as the murderer of Abraham Lincoln!"
A cry of anguish came from the faithful wife.
The leader touched her shoulder gently.
"Hush, my dear. The miserable scoundrel who wrote that proclamation knew that it is false. He is the one man in the United States who knows that I preferred Abraham Lincoln in the White House to him or any other man the North might elect. Such an accusation must fail—"
The wife was not comforted.
"These men may assassinate you!"