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Jefferson Davis's Flight from Richmond: The Calm Morning, Lee's Telegrams, the Evacuation, the Train, the Passengers, the Trip, the Arrival in Danvill
Jefferson Davis's Flight from Richmond The Calm Morning Lee's Telegrams the Evacuation the Train the Passengers the Trip the Arrival in Danvill Author:John Stewart The night of April 2, 1865, is among the most storied and eventful in American history. In the space of a few hours Richmond, the Confederate capital, was evacuated and burned, the government fled, slavery was finished in North America, Union forces entered the city and the outcome of the Civil War was effectively sealed. No official documents ... more »tell the story because the Confederate government was on the run. First there were newspaper accounts--mostly confused--then history books based on those accounts. But most of what we know about the fall of Richmond comes from "eyewitnesses" like Confederate Navy Secretary Stephen Mallory, whose tale became history. A great deal of what has been presented over the years by historians has been plagiarized, invented or misconstrued, and nearly all we know of Jefferson Davis' flight from Richmond to Danville is wrong. This book closely examines all relevant source material--much of it newly discovered by the author--as well as the writers, diarists and eyewitnesses themselves in constructing a minutely detailed new account that comes closer to what Abraham Lincoln had in mind when he said, "History is not history unless it is the truth."« less