Michigan cavalry captured Confederate President Jefferson Davis this day in 1865

[struggle4progress]

By Brandon Champion
on May 09, 2016 at 8:04 AM
updated May 09, 2016 at 8:11 AM

ALLEGAN, MI – One-hundred and fifty-one years ago this week, Brev. Brig. Gen. Benjamin Dudley Pritchard and the 4th Michigan Cavalry effectively ended the Civil War.

It was May 10, 1865 when the unit commanded by the Allegan native captured the fugitive Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America, outside Irwinville, Ga.

It's an event that many historians consider to be the ultimate end of the Civil War conflict. Richmond had fallen, Robert E. Lee had had surrendered at on April 9 and only a few remote Confederate outposts remained armed and ready ...

After some brief shooting between the 4th Michigan and another Union regiment -- the 1st Wisconsin - both of whom thought they were firing upon the enemy, a disguised Davis emerged from a tent with his wife wearing a robe and a shawl ...

http://www.mlive.com/news/muskegon/index.ssf/2016/05/michigan_calvary_captured_conf.html

[Hoyt]

1. Almost wish they'd lynched him and carved his likeness on Stone Mountain, rather the the current

pantheon to the Confederacy.

[1939]

2. In actuality

The federal government did not want Davis to be captured. They were hoping he would go to Texas and from there escape to exile in Europe. David captured meant that they had to consider bringing him to trial and him being to raise constitutional arguments about the legality of secession from a voluntary union in the trial. That was the reason that he was imprisoned for a while at
Ft Monroe and then released and no trial was ever held. Any trial would have been a show trial with a lot of pettifogging by the defense about the "legality of secession".

Jeff Daivs surrender was pretty much a non-event. The Confederate government had been leaking cabinet members since they left Richmond. Postmaster General Reagan was the Secretary of about six departments when Davis was captured. The actual end of the war was when Gen Kirby Smith surrendered the Trans-Mississippi Department and the slaves there were freed (Juneteenth?). The last Confederate military force to surrender was the force under the Cherokee General BG Stand Watie in the Indian Territory.