WASHINGTON, May 5.
The following statement, dated yesterday on the
Rappahannock, has reached Washington:
A colored many came in to-day from the other side of the
river, and represented himself as Jeff. Davis’ coachman. From an examination of him this is probably
true. He reports scraps of conversation,
overheard whilst driving Mr. and Mrs. Davis in the carriage, and between Mr.
Davis and those who came to see him. Mr.
Davis and Gen. J. E. Johnson [sic] had a heated discussion about the latter’s
retreat from Manassas:– Davis disapproved of it and ordered Johnson to make a
stand at Gordonsville, Johnson declined to do this, and offered to resign, but
he was indisposed to go to Yorktown.
Mrs. Davis said she thought it was very bad in Johnson to be unwilling
to help General Magruder.
The coachman overheard a conversation between Johnson and
Mrs. Davis, the former saying if he had not left Manassas McClellan would have
come out against him, and cut him all to pieces. Mrs. Davis read an article in the Examiner to her husband, stating that it
was part of the Yankees’ plans that Gens. Banks and McDowell were to form a
junction in Louisa or Caroline county, and move down on Richmond. Davis remarked that he thought that was so,
but his generals would take care of them.
The coachman represent that Mrs. Davis said that the
Confederacy was about played out and that if N. O. was really taken, she had no
longer any interest in the matter, as all she had was there; if that was a
great pity that they had ever attempted to hold Virginia and other non-cotton
growing States; and that she said to Mrs. Dr. Gwinn, daughter of Col. Jas.
Taylor, U. S. commissary of subsistence, who was very anxious to get to
Washington, where she has one of her children, not to give herself any trouble,
but only to stay where she was and when the Yankees came to Richmond she should
go.
The coachman says that Mr. and Mrs. Davis have all their
books, clothing and pictures packed, ready to move off. That there is much outspoken Union feeling in
Richmond; That having been a waiter in a hotel there, he knows all the Union
men of the place, and that the Yankees are looked at with more pleasure by the
whites than even the colored people.
Confederate money is not taken when it can be avoided. Mrs. Davis herself was refused when she
offered a ten dollar Confederate note.
Many of the Richmond people which the Union troop[s to come
as they are half starved. The bank and
government property is all packed up for removal to Danville, near the N. C.
line. Gen. Johnson did not think they
would succeed at Yorktown. The coachman
overheard the rebel officers say if they fail at Yorktown and New Orleans they
would leave Virginia.
– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette,
Davenport, Iowa, Tuesday Morning, May 6, 1862, p. 1
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