At midnight on the day of the evacuation the President and his Cabinet left Richmond for Danville. He still believed that Lee might cut his way through Grant\'s lines and join his army with Johnston\'s in North Carolina. Lee had restored Johnston to command of the small army that yet survived in opposition to Sherman. He had hopes that Johnston\'s personal popularity with the soldiers might in a measure restore their spirits.

The President established his temporary Capital at Danville. G. W. Sutherlin placed his beautiful home at his disposal. Communications with Lee had been cut and the wildest rumors were afloat. Davis wrote his last proclamation urging his people to maintain their courage.

In this remarkable document he said:

"I announce to you, my fellow countrymen, that it is my purpose to maintain your cause with my whole heart and soul. I will never consent to abandon to the enemy one foot of the soil of any of the States of the Confederacy.

"If by stress of numbers, we should be compelled to a temporary withdrawal from the limits of Virginia or any other border State, we will return until the baffled and exhausted enemy shall abandon in despair his endless and impossible task of making slaves of a people resolved to be free.

"Let us, then, not despair, my countrymen, but, relying on God, meet the foe with fresh defiance, and with unconquered and unconquerable hearts."

So Washington spoke to his starving, freezing little army at Valley Forge in the darkest hour of our struggle for independence against Great Britain. With the help of France Washington succeeded at last.

Davis was destined to fail. No friendly foreign power came to his aid. His courage was none the less sublime for this reason.

Lee\'s skeleton army surrendered to Grant at Appomattox, and Davis hurried to Greensboro where Johnston and Beauregard were encamped with twenty-eight thousand men. Two hundred school girls marched to the house in Danville and cheered him as he left.

Mrs. Sutherlin in the last hour of his stay asked for a moment of his time.

He ushered her into his room with grave courtesy.

"Dear Madam," he began smilingly, "you have risked your home and the safety of your husband to honor me and the South. I thank you for myself and the people. Is there anything I can do to show how much I appreciate it?"

"You have greatly honored us by accepting our hospitality," was the quick cheerful answer. "We shall always be rich in its memory. I have but one favor to ask of you—"

"Name it—"

She drew a bag from a basket and handed it to him.

"Accept this little gift we have saved. It will help you on your journey. It\'s only a thousand dollars in gold—I wish it were more."

The President\'s eyes grew dim and he shook his head.

"No—no—dear, dear Mrs. Sutherlin. Your needs will be greater than mine. Besides, I have asked all for the cause—nothing for myself—nothing!"

He left Danville with heart warmed by the smiles and cheers of two hundred beautiful girls and the offer of every dollar a patriotic woman possessed.

He had need of its memory to cheer him at Greensboro. Here he felt for the first time the results of the malignant campaign which Holden\'s Raleigh Standard had waged against him and his administration. So great was the panic and so bitter the feeling which Holden\'s sheet had roused that it was impossible for the President and his Cabinet to find accommodations in any hotel or house. He was compelled to camp in a freight car.

It remained for a brave Southern woman to resent this insult to the Chieftain. When Mrs. C. A. L\'Hommedieu learned that the President was in town, housed in a freight car and shunned by the citizens, she sent him a note and begged him to make her house his home and to honor her by commanding anything in it and all that she possessed.

The leader was at this moment preparing to leave for Charlotte and had to decline her generous and brave offer. But he was deeply moved. He stopped his work to write her a beautiful letter of thanks.

His interview with Johnston and Beauregard was strained and formal. Johnston\'s army in its present position in the hands of a resolute and daring commander could have formed a light column of ten thousand cavalry and cut its way through all opposition to the Mississippi River. Knowing the character of his General so well he had small hopes.

After receiving the report of the condition of the army the President called his Cabinet to consider what should be done.

Johnston sat at as great a distance from Davis as the room would permit.

The President reviewed briefly the situation and turned calmly to Johnston:

"General, we should like now to hear your views."

The reply was given with brutal brevity and in tones of unconcealed defiance and hatred.

"Sir," the great retreater blurted out, "my views are that our people are tired of war, feel themselves whipped and will not fight."

A dead silence followed.

The President turned in quiet dignity to Beauregard:

"And what do you say, General Beauregard?"

"I agree with what General Johnston has said," he replied.

There was no appeal from the decision of these two commanders in such an hour. The President dictated a letter to General Sherman suggesting their surrender and outlining the advantageous terms which the Northern Commander accepted.

And then the Confederate Chieftain received a message so amazing he could not at first credit its authority.

A courier from Sherman conveyed the announcement to Johnston that Davis might leave the country on a United States vessel and take whoever and whatever he pleased with him.

The answer of Jefferson Davis was characteristic.

"Please thank General Sherman for his offer and say that I can do no act which will put me under obligations to the Federal Government."

Sherman had asked Lincoln at their last interview whether he should capture Davis or let him go.

A sunny smile overspread the rugged features of the National President:

"That reminds me," he said, "of a temperance lecturer in Illinois. Wet and cold he stopped for the night at a wayside inn. The landlord, noting his condition, asked if he would have a glass of brandy.

"\'No—no—\' came the quick reply. \'I am a temperance lecturer and do not drink—\' he paused and his voice dropped to a whisper—\'I would like some water however—and if you should of your own accord, put a little brandy in it unbeknownst to me—why, it will be all right.\'"

Sherman was trying to carry out the wishes of the man with the loving heart.

At Charlotte Davis was handed a telegram announcing the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. His thin fate went death white. Handing the telegram to his Secretary, he quietly said:

"I am sorry. We have lost our noblest and best friend in the court of the enemy."

He immediately telegraphed the news to his wife who had fled further south to Abbeville, South Carolina. Mrs. Davis burst into tears on reading the fatal message. Her woman\'s intuition saw the vision of horror which the tragedy meant to her and to her stricken people.

The President left Charlotte with an escort of a thousand cavalrymen for Abbeville. His journey was slow. The wagons were carrying all that remained of the Confederate Treasury with the money in currency from the Richmond banks which had been entrusted to the care of the Secretary of the Treasury.

Davis stopped at a little cabin on the roadside and asked the lady who stood in the doorway for a drink of water.

She turned to comply with his request.

While he was drinking a baby barely able to walk crawled down the steps and toddled to him.

The mother smiled.

"Is this not President Davis?" she asked tremblingly.

"It is, Madam," he answered with a bow.

She pointed proudly to the child:

"He\'s named for you!"

The President drew a gold coin from his pocket and handed it to the mother.

"Please keep it for my little namesake and tell him when he is old enough to know."

As he rode away with Reagan, his faithful Postmaster General, he said:

"The last coin I had on earth, Reagan. I wouldn\'t have had that but for the fact I\'d never seen one like it and kept it for luck."

"I reckon the war\'s about finished us," the General replied.

"Yes," Davis cheerfully answered. "My home is a wreck. Benjamin\'s and Breckinridge\'s are in Federal hands. Mallory\'s fine residence at Pensacola has been burned by the enemy. Your home in Texas has been wrecked and burned—"

He paused and drew from his pocketbook a few Confederate bills.

"That is my estate at the present moment."

He received next day a letter from his wife which greatly cheered him:

"Abbeville, S. C., April 28, 1865.
"My dear old Husband:

"Your very sweet letter reached me safely by Mr. Harrison and was a great relief. I leave here in the morning at 6 o\'clock for the wagon train going to Georgia. Washington will be the first place I shall unload at. From there we shall probably go on to Atlanta or thereabouts, and wait a little until we hear something of you. Let me beseech you not to calculate upon seeing me unless I happen to cross your shortest path toward your bourne, be that what it may.

"It is surely not the fate to which you invited me in the brighter days. But you must remember that you did not invite me to a great hero\'s home but to that of a plain farmer. I have shared all your triumphs, been the only beneficiary of them, now I am claiming the privilege for the first time of being all to you, since these pleasures have passed for me.

"My plans are these, subject to your approval. I think I shall be able to procure funds enough to enable me to put the two eldest to school. I shall go to Florida if possible and from thence go over to Bermuda or Nassau, from thence to England, unless a good school offers elsewhere, and put them to the best school I can find, and then with the two youngest join you in Texas—and that is the prospect which bears me up, to be once more with you if need be—but God loves those who obey Him and I know there is a future for you.

"Here they are all your friends and have the most unbounded confidence in you. Mr. Burt and his wife have urged me to live with them—offered to take the chances of the Yankees with us—begged to have little Maggie—done everything in fact that relatives could do. I shall never forget all their generous devotion to you.

"I have seen a great many men who have gone through—not one has talked fight. A stand cannot be made in this country! Do not be induced to try it. As to the trans-Mississippi, I doubt if at first things will be straight, but the spirit is there, and the daily accretions will be great when the deluded of this side are crushed between the upper and nether millstones. But you have not tried the \'strict construction\' fallacy. If we are to require a C............