There are all kinds of stories and legends floating around about $110 million dollars in gold and silver from the Confederate treasury being buried at the end of the Civil War.
It is considered one of the Civil War’s great mysteries. People ranging from historians to reality television shows have searched for this missing treasure. As farfetched as it sounds, there is a real basis for this legend and the answer to the location of much if not all of the silver may be found in the museum at the Columbus home of Confederate General Stephen D. Lee.
The story begins near the end of the Civil War when just before the fall of Richmond, the gold and silver in the Confederate treasury was loaded on a train and into wagons and sent south for safe keeping. It was said to have been millions of dollars in Confederate gold — $450,000 in gold from a Richmond bank and 39 kegs containing about 39,000 Mexican 8 reale or silver dollar coins.
There are several different versions of what happened to those millions of dollars in gold and silver. However, all the stories have the same beginning. Around April 2nd 1865, President Jefferson Davis and the Confederate cabinet were advised by Gen Robert E. Lee that Richmond was about to fall and that they needed to evacuate immediately or risk capture. They fled Richmond but not before having all the gold and silver removed from the vaults of the Confederate treasury.
Davis and his cabinet officers left on a special train headed to Danville, Virginia. Their train was closely followed by a second train carrying the government’s gold and silver. The trains stopped in Danville and here the stories vary. In several versions the gold and silver continued south by wagon. However, one version of the story has a little-known group the “Knights of the Golden Circle” hiding the silver near Danville to protect it so that when the South rose again it would be available to fund the new government.
Another story has most of the silver and gold being loaded onto wagons and continuing south with Jefferson Davis. Davis was captured in Georgia by the 4th Michigan Cavalry on May 10. However, when he was captured, there were only a few dollars in gold or silver coins with him and his guard of Confederate soldiers. There was no sign of any Confederate gold or silver or even of what had happened to it.
In 2010 the History Channel carried a program titled “Confederate Gold”. It was based on “one of the Civil War’s most enduring legends” about how millions of dollars in gold and silver from the Confederate treasury had been hidden by “a shadowy Confederate group known as the Knights of the Golden Circle.” That group was said to have left a key to the treasure’s location in a secret coded message. The program followed a group of treasure hunters attempting to decode the message and locate the lost Confederate gold and silver.
A history blog by Civil War author and historian Michael C. Hardy fills out the story of the 39 kegs of Mexican silver coins.
When the silver coins reached Danville, they were delivered to Confederate Gen Joseph E. Johnston. He decided to use the coins to pay his soldiers, who had not been paid in weeks and probably then in soon to be worthless Confederate paper money.
The mystery of the missing Confederate silver turns out to be no great mystery. It was Gen Johnston realizing the war was over and on his own authority using the Confederate government’s silver to provide some long overdue pay to its soldiers.
And what does the S. D. Lee home and museum have to do with all of this. In the museum is a shadow box containing the buttons from Gen Stephen D. Lee’s uniform. Also in the box is an 1857 Mexican 8 Reales silver Liberty Cap coin and a note that says “DOLLAR RECEIVED BY STEPHEN DILL LEE, LIEUT. GEN. C. S. A. AT HIGH POINT, N. C. 1865 at the surrender of Johnston’s army, the only specie paid him during the civil war. These buttons were cut from his uniform by his wife, in obedience to an order of the Provost Marshal at Columbus, Miss., after the surrender.”
There on display in the Lee Home is one of the Mexican silver coins which tells the real story of the missing multi-million dollar silver treasure. The 39 kegs of silver coins were not buried or hidden, they were used to pay Confederate soldiers who had not been paid in weeks.
This search for the missing Confederate silver caught my attention in a personal way. When I was about 10 or 11 years old my great uncle John Lucian Ward gave me a badly worn Mexican Liberty Cap 8 reales coin. He said he always carried it in his pocket as it had been passed to him as a good luck piece and he wanted me to have it. Seeing the coin at the Lee home reminded me of the coin I had been given. Both coins are the same Mexican liberty Cap 8 reales coin though on mine the date has been worn away. That type of Mexican coin was minted from 1824 to 1897.
In my family tree I have a great great great uncle George Huffman who surrendered with Stephen D. Lee in North Carolina in 1865 and would have received one of the 8 reales coins. He was in the 24th Miss Infantry Regt which included companies from Chickasaw, Lowndes, Monroe, Oktibbeha, and Noxubee counties. Several other regiments that surrendered with Johnston also had companies from this area who would have received silver 8 reales coins. I wonder if any more of these historic coins have survived in the Columbus area.
George Huffman is probably not where my coin came from but then again John Lucian and George knew each other, were related by marriage, and lived near each other in Chickasaw County. I can imagine George Huffman giving the coin to a young John Lucian because he had an interest in history and telling him it was a good luck piece to treasure. Though Uncle Lucian never told me exactly where it came from, he had carried it in his pocket for many years and the coin had some special meaning to him. It was because of my interest in history he wanted me to have it and treasure it too. Treasures don’t have to be gold or silver. Sometimes the most valuable treasures are memories.
Thanks to Carolyn Kaye and Gary Lancaster for helping with research and at the Lee Home.
Rufus Ward is a local historian.
Rufus Ward is a Columbus native a local historian. E-mail your questions about local history to Rufus at [email protected]
