A $100,000 Reward

A $100,000 Reward. "...a perceptible change...". After capturing Confederate President Jefferson Davis, his family, staff and escort just north of Irwinville, Georgia near dawn on Wednesday, May 10, 1865, Union Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin D. Pritchard and his 135-man detachment of the 4th Michigan Cavalry Regiment began riding north. Their orders from Union Brigadier General James H. Wilson were to bring their prisoners to Macon, Wilson's headquarters. They camped the night of May 10th at Abbeville, before continuing north on the morning of the 11th with additional members of their regiment who had been searching elsewhere for Davis. They reached Big Creek during the afternoon, approximately four miles south of Hawkinsville. The Michigan men had passed south through Hawkinsville in search of Davis three days earlier and had spent the night of May 8-9 camped at approximately this same location. Here on the 11th Pritchard and his troopers were met by the rest of their brigade, riding south from Macon to join them. From them Pritchard learned of a $100,000 reward for the capture of Davis and other Confederate leaders suspected of being involved in the assassination of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln.

Colonel Pritchard showed a poster advertising the reward to Jefferson Davis, who read it calmly. But to his wife Varina, Davis said, "The miserable scoundrel who issued that proclamation knew better than these men that it was false." Davis was referring to President Lincoln's successor, President Andrew Johnson. Confederate Colonel Burton N. Harrison, Davis's personal secretary, watched his chief read the document "with a composure unruffled by any feeling other than scorn." Davis remembered that news of the reward caused "vociferous demonstrations of exultation" by his captors. Mrs. Davis added, "There was a perceptible change in the manner of the soldiers from this time, and the jibes and insults heaped upon us… were hard to bear."

Despite the arrival of his full brigade and a higher ranking officer, Colonel Pritchard and his regiment retained control of their captives when they continued riding north toward Macon the next day, May 12th. A soldier in the column mounted the reward proclamation on a flagpole and carried it along their route within sight of Varina Davis and her children. Both Davis's also heard Federal troopers singing "We'll Hang Jeff Davis from a Sour Apple Tree." Despite Jefferson Davis's appeal to Pritchard, who attempted to control the behavior of his men, the taunts, jibes and threats continued. Years later Varina Davis still found it distressing to recall the "horrors and sufferings of that journey."

[photo caption] , Regimental flag of the Federal 4th Michigan Calvary. (Michigan State Capitol Commission)