Upon awakening, Mr. Clay’s first effort was to forward to Richmond to the care of Colonel Clay, to be held until his own arrival in the capital, a small hand-trunk addressed to Judah P. Benjamin, and to General Lee, his restored pet; his second, to find me. This accomplished, it was his intention to proceed at once to Richmond, to deliver in person his State papers, the most important of which he had carried in an oil-silk bag suspended about his neck. To the complete frustration of his plans, however, my hapless husband found the railway route between Augusta, where he supposed me to be, and Charleston, now effectually closed. It was by a roundabout road, therefore, made partly by carriage, that he reached the desired point on the seventh of February, only to learn of my departure a few days before under the escort of General Cobb. By the 10th, when Mr. Clay arrived at last in Macon, he had informed himself of the grave plight of our armies, and of the lamentable political differences existing in the capital, to which Colonel Clay, in his letter to me, had alluded. A few hurried conferences with General Cobb and others, and together we took our departure for Richmond. Everything which might become an impediment to the rough travel that lay before us was dispensed with, even my invaluable maid, Emily, being left behind at the home of Major Whittle. We proceeded first to Washington, Georgia, going, upon our arrival, to the home of General Toombs, where was sojourning Mr. Stephens, our Vice-President. The hearts of all were heavy as the gentlemen conferred together upon the outlook of our country and arms. Letters from Richmond which reached our hands at this point were excited in tone, and added to our apprehension and sorrow.
“On every side,” wrote our sister, “the city rings with the cries of Rachels weeping for their children!”
“Don’t come to Richmond!” urged Colonel Clay, “[or] if you think it necessary to come on, do so at once; don’t delay. Leave sister; don’t undertake to bring her in the present uncertain condition of the railroad connections between here and the Georgia line.... Our armies have been dwindling, until none is large enough to withstand an attack in the open field. There is a collapse in every department, and, worse than all, there is an utter lack of confidence by the people, in the administration, in Congress, and in the success of the cause itself.... Campbell will go out. He cannot see any benefit to be derived from his longer continuance in office as the drudge of the War Department, especially when the Treasury is bankrupt, and Congress cannot devise a new scheme for reëstablishing faith in the currency. That department is $400,000,000 in arrears, it is said. I know it is enormously in debt to the War Department ($32,000,000), and that the Quartermaster General and the Commissary General cannot obtain the means to pay current expenses. If we cannot have transportation and bread for the soldiers in the field, to say nothing of clothing and pay, ... what becomes of our army?... As I see the present and argue thence what the future has in store for us, ... I see nothing but defeat and disaster and ruin!”
Characterised throughout his life by a punctilious observance of everything which in his eyes appeared a duty, Mr. Clay was not to be deterred by even such grave news from carrying out his intention to deliver in person, to the President and Mr. Benjamin, an account of his stewardship in Canada. Late in February, therefore, he resumed his journey, mounted upon General Toomb’s grey mare, and accompanied by the General’s man, Wallace. He had not proceeded far, however, when, overtaken by an illness, the result of his exposure at Charleston, he was obliged to return to Washington. A month elapsed ere he was able again to set out for Richmond, the city which was so soon to be the theatre of our national collapse.
The roads now, in many places, were impassible. The number of Union soldiers was increasing daily in the States which Mr. Clay must cross in his northward journey. My husband, with his precious documents, would have been a rich prize to any who might have seized him. Through many vicissitudes he made his cautious way toward the capital, securing a horse, when he could, or a mule team, or following the railroad tracks where necessary. Much of the journey he made alone, but he sometimes found himself in company, and that not always wholly desirable. On one occasion he fell in with two straggling Confederate soldiers, and, being near the home of a distant kinsman, Robert Withers, upon the arrival of the trio he asked Mr. Withers’ hospitality for them all. Consent was promptly forthcoming, but my husband’s feelings were somewhat less cordial toward his whilom companions when one was allotted to him as a bedfellow. “Had to sleep with ——,” reads his diary, “much to my dread of camp-itch!”
Eight days were consumed in that journey to the capital, by this time the scene of an excitement truly anarchistic. Mr. Clay was probably the last man in the Confederate service to seek to enter Richmond. The trend of Confederate travel just then was in an opposite direction.
Making at once for Colonel Clay’s headquarters, my husband secured the trunk destined for Mr. Benjamin, to whom he shortly afterward transferred his papers. The transaction was a hurried one, and Mr. Clay pushed on to the apartment of Mr. Davis. In after days I often heard him describe the scene which there met him. He found the President engaged in hastily packing a valise, his clothing and papers scattered in little heaps about. I think he assisted his hapless friend in these preparations. An hour or two later and Mr. Clay was en route for Danville, on the last of the over-laden trains to draw out from the once dear but now desolated city. Of the sad journey of the President through the Carolinas, with his company of legislative friends, of which, for a portion of the way, my husband was one, I remember no particulars. I recall a hasty return to Macon, where Mr. Clay joined me, whence we hurried on in a few days to the home of former Senator B. H. Hill, at Lagrange, in western Georgia. The remembrance of the days that immediately succeeded the evacuation of Richmond, followed, as that event was, by the murder of Abraham Lincoln, is a confused one. A kind of horror seized my husband when he realised the truth of the reports that reached us of this tragedy. At first he had refused to credit them. “It’s a canard!” he said; but when, at last, he could no longer doubt, he exclaimed: “God help us! If that be true, it is the worst blow that yet has been struck at the South!”
CHAPTER XIX
C. C. Clay, Jr., Surrenders to General Wilson
Upon leaving the home of General Toombs, we proceeded directly to that of Senator Hill, where shortly were gathered ex-Secretary of our Navy and Mrs. Mallory, Mr. and Mrs. Semmes, of Louisiana, and Senator Wigfall. We were an anxious circle, our hearts heavy with the constantly increasing testimony to our great disaster, and our minds alert to measure the ways and means of our future course. My husband and Mr. Wigfall had already determined to seek the other side of the Mississippi, there to join the gallant Kirby Smith, and make a last stand for our cause; or, if needs must be, to press on to Texas. Day by day disturbing news reached us concerning the whereabouts of Mr. Davis and his party, now making their sorry flight toward the coast of Florida, fugitives from the Federal authorities.
A Northerner would have found us a wonderful nest of “rebels,” could he have looked in upon the group that one evening surrounded the table in the library of the Hill residence, upon which was spread the map of Georgia. The gentlemen were seated, the ladies standing behind them. Every eye was bent upon the road which our host was pointing out.