To Danville – April 3, 1865

The Flight of Jefferson Davis

President Jefferson Davis and members of his cabinet left Richmond sometime between 10:00 and midnight on April 2, 1865. They traveled on a special train via the Richmond & Danville Railroad (R&D RR) – the only railroad remaining operable from the Confederate capitol. Many historians agree the train was pulled by the engine “Charles Seddon,” but as with most information about Davis’s flight, that name is uncertain. 

The Charles Seddon

After the Civil War, the R&D expanded aggressively laying new track and purchasing other railroads. By 1890, it had grown to over 3,300 miles of track but was on shaky financial footing. In 1894, the R&D and other lines emerged from a reorganization as the Southern Railway. The Richmond & Danville was no more.  The Southern Railway became the Norfolk Southern in 1982.

Much has been written about the Confederate government’s 1865 trip on the R&D. Perhaps the most complete account is Jefferson Davis’s Flight from Richmond by John Stewart. My purpose was not to add to that detail. Instead, I wanted to follow Jefferson Davis and, to the extent possible, see what he saw in 1865.

The tracks of the R&D are still in place west from Richmond to southwest of Keysville (just over halfway to Danville), from Clover to South Boston, and from Ringgold to Danville. Except for a few miles southwest of Keysville operated by the Buckingham Branch Railroad, the tracks are owned and operated by Norfolk Southern. In every location I visited with tracks in place they were shiny suggesting they are currently used.

Railroads always have stations – a location where trains come to a stop perhaps for fuel or water. Some stations have depots – one or more buildings for use by passengers and for handling freight. R&D locomotives were wood fired and stopped often for supplies of wood and water. Depots were often targets of Union raiders seeking to disrupt the Confederacy’s transportation system.

Manchester Depot

Every train stopped in the City of Manchester – once the county seat of Chesterfield County but now incorporated into the City of Richmond. There is a Southern Railway station there on Hull Street, but it isn’t near the R&D tracks. The depot appears to be from the 20th century and is now the Richmond Railroad Museum.  The museum is open only on Saturdays and Sundays and I was traveling on Wednesday. Jefferson Davis would not have been here.

The next stop of any certainty by the Presidential train was Moseley Depot in Powhatan County some 22 miles down the tracks. There is no evidence of a station or community today except for a Moseley Road paralleling the tracks for about 700 feet. Less than a mile past Moseley the tracks change general direction from west to south / southwest.

The rails continue to Chula in Amelia County. There are some older homes there. Reportedly, Chula depot was destroyed by Union forces in 1864 but was soon rebuilt.

About three miles further on, in the community of Winterham, U.S. 360 begins to follow the route of the R&D. Drivers on 360 will often see the rails over the next 40 miles.

The next station with a depot, 36 miles from Richmond, was Amelia Courthouse. In The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Davis himself reports that no stop was made at Amelia.

Jetersville

Rather, the train stopped at Jetersville about seven miles on – then a comfortable village with several stores and a depot. One store, possibly from 1865, remains next to the tracks. Two days later, General Lee’s retreating army followed the same route from Amelia Courthouse to Jetersville.  He encountered Union forces here forcing him to turn north toward Amelia Springs and Farmville.

Burkeville, in Nottoway County, was the junction of the R&D and South Side (Petersburg and Lynchburg) Railroad making it a special target for Union raiders. The President’s train pulled in just before sunrise at about 5:00 a.m. for wood and water. Here the Presential party left the train for the first time to see the raiders’ ruins. 

Present Burkeville Depot

Burkeville presently has a beautiful depot, but it was constructed in 1915 and moved across the railroad tracks to its present location in 2001. 

The Norfolk Southern leaves the tracks of the R&D here to follow the old South Side Railroad toward Appomattox and Lynchburg.

The hamlet of Green Bay also had a depot destroyed by raiders in 1864 and quickly rebuilt. The Presidential train did not stop here. Interestingly, Green Bay has a beautiful, trussed bridge of uncertain age over the tracks of the Buckingham Branch Railroad – the former R&D.

Present Keysville Depot

While there is no record of the Presidential train stopping here, Keysville is still a delightful little town with a block-long main street. The town once centered on its railroads – the R&D mainline and an R&D spur to Clarkesville built in 1875. The depot is likely from the very early 1900s and stood in for depots in Eastport, Maine, and Warm Springs, Georgia, in the 1976 filming of the TV movie Eleanor and Franklin.  The Keysville station retains its water tower.

Charlotte Hotel

Across from the depot is the 1907 Charlotte Hotel. This and two other hotels were busiest when gold and copper were discovered in the area. The gold didn’t amount to much. The copper played out in the early 1920s.

Lt. John S. Wise

The rails of the R&D in Clover exist primarily to serve the coal-fired Clover Power Station near the Staunton River.  In 1865, Clover certainly had a depot and the Presidential train stopped for wood and water. In an account that some say is unreliable, Lt. John Wise, stationed in Clover, stepped aboard the train to chat with his brother-in-law Dr. Alexander Garnett – physician to the President.  During this visit, Wise noted that the President’s face showed physical and mental exhaustion.

We learn of Lt. Wise again as the messenger between Davis in Danville and Lee in Appomattox just a few days later, a well-documented account.

About two miles before reaching South Boston, the presidential train was delayed by a wreck. The train ahead of the President derailed following the collapse of the floor in a boxcar. Five lives were lost.

South Boston certainly had a depot by 1854 as it was the end of the R&D Railroad at that time. It is also the end of the line today as the trains from Clover proceed north on the tracks at this point.  It is not known whether the Presidential train made a stop at that depot adjacent to the Dan River and the covered bridge across the Dan. 

Present South Boston Depot

South Boston has a depot today built along the tracks of the Lynchburg & Durham Railroad (now Norfolk Southern) by 1917. This depot is far from the R&D rails.

Sutherlin was a station but there was no known depot. Later, in 1878, the narrow-gauge Milton & Sutherlin Railroad terminated here.  Sutherlin is presently the eastern terminus of the Ringgold Rail Trail on the railbed of the R&D. 

Ringgold Freight Depot

Ringgold, just five miles from Danville, had a freight depot in 1865 but no passenger accommodations. Today that depot it is the western terminus of the Ringgold Rail Trail. Norfolk Southern operates just west of Ringgold to Danville serving local industries.

On the afternoon of April 3, 1865, after about 18 hours of travel, the Presidential train crossed the Dan River on its wooden trestle and arrived at the Danville depot. The depot too was a wooden structure. It was immediately adjacent to Craghead Street – in front of today’s station. 

Sutherlin Mansion

Danville’s Mayor Walker organized an official welcoming committee. President Davis was escorted to the stately home of Major W. T. Sutherlin near the outskirts of town. He stayed until April 10 before continuing his flight south.

In Richmond – April 2, 1865

The Flight of Jefferson Davis

Much of the history of Jefferson Davis’s flight from Richmond on April 2, 1865, until his capture in Irwinville, Georgia, on May 10 is imprecise. There was no one whose purpose was to record the actions or the location of the Confederate President. What we have is often from the diaries and recollections of those around him – and from his own writings completed many years later in 1881. This post is about the first day of his flight.

All who were in Richmond on Sunday morning, April 2, described the day as “bright.” Some said beautiful, clear, balmy, or springlike. One chronicler even said peaceful, though that seems unlikely with the skirmishes occurring in nearby Petersburg. For my visit in August 2022, the day was oppressively hot and humid.

On April 2, Davis left the Executive Mansion, now referred to as the White House of the Confederacy, in time for the 11:00 service at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. The church was about six blocks away. 

The Executive Mansion was erected in 1818 at the corner of 12th and K streets – now 1201 East Clay Street.  It was built by Dr. John Brokenbrough, president of the Bank of Virginia. The mansion was updated just before 1861 by merchant Lewis Crenshaw adding its third floor, gas lighting, and a bathroom. 

Acquired by the Commonwealth of Virginia for use by the President, the mansion was near the edge of the city in the posh Court End neighborhood. It had commanding views of valleys to the north and east as well as Shockoe along the James River to the south. I had expected some of the same, but instead found the mansion on a tiny plot of land surrounded by the high-rise hospital of Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). I’m sure President Davis would have found the parking garage quite interesting.

The Clay Street side of the mansion is Federal and, in my view, not very attractive. The rear, however, has an attractive columned portico. Across a small courtyard there is a welcome center and gift shop located in a VCU building.

During Reconstruction, the mansion served as a military headquarters. It was returned to the Commonwealth in 1870 when it became the Central Public School. When the city proposed to replace the building with a new school, local ladies formed the Confederate Memorial Literary Society and received the house from the city in 1894. They opened the home as the Confederate Museum in 1896. In 1976, a new museum opened and restoration of the mansion to the time of the President’s occupancy was begun. It reopened to the public in 1988 in its present form. 

That form is quite accurate with rugs and carpets recreated from the many descriptions of the mansion by contemporary visitors.  Much of the furniture is original as it was the property of the Commonwealth, not the Davis family. My tour guide was entertaining and supplemented his presentation with a folder of original photographs. Tour reservations are required.

Like President Davis, I left the mansion to go to St. Paul’s Episcopal Church at the corner of Grace and Ninth Streets.  The Greek Revival building was consecrate in 1845.  The style complements the Thomas Jefferson designed temple-form Virginia Capitol across Ninth Street. The church is open for prayer and meditation from 10:00 to 4:00 daily. It also has an underground parking garage.

At the time the Davis family was in Richmond, it was customary for parishioners to buy or rent their pews. Davis had pew #63. He shared that pew with Robert E. Lee when General Lee was in the city.  That pew remains available to visitors, and I took the opportunity to sit there for my meditation.

In 2015, the congregation removed all symbols related to “the lost cause.”  This included several plaques and changes to some stained-glass windows. There is no visible evidence of Davis’s membership or attendance. The church and Richmond in general are becoming more and more devoid of their history.

While in pew #63 on April 2, 1865, Davis received a telegram from General Lee announcing his withdrawal from Petersburg and the need to evacuate Richmond. According to Davis, he then arose, went to his office, assembled his cabinet, and instructed them to be ready to leave that night at 8:00. 

The Confederacy’s Executive Office Building was at 1000 East Main Street with Davis’s office on the third floor. That same building is now the Lewis F. Powell, Jr., United States Courthouse. (Powell was a Supreme Court Justice at the time of Roe v. Wade.)

Davis then returned to the Executive Mansion to pack his personal belongings and make final arrangements for the contents of the house. He reportedly left for the Richmond and Danville Railroad (R&D RR) Station at dusk – about 7:00.

Richmond presently has an historic train station – the Main Street Station and Trainshed. It is a familiar sight to anyone traveling I-95 North through Richmond. But that building was not erected until 1901. 

Finding the site of the R&D station proved a bit of a challenge, especially because the fleeing Confederates burned the adjoining area, the depot, and parts of the railroad bridge.

Old maps suggest the R&D depot was on Virginia Street just 100 feet or so from the James River. That site that now contains a high-rise condo. The R&D also had freight yards a little further along 14th Street. It seems the Southern Railroad, the R&D’s successor, erected a newer building on that site, shown below.

The actual time the Presidential train left Richmond for Danville is uncertain. While an 8:00 departure was planned, the crush of people and the many last-minute details slowed things down. Some say actual departure was at 10:00 while others say 11:00 or even midnight. Due to the poor condition of the railroad and frequent stops, the President did not arrive in Danville until late the following afternoon. 

Richmond to Danville by car takes less than three hours. My trip took much longer as I searched for the remnants of the R&D RR.