Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 9.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

[211] Davis, until I met him some years afterwards in Louisville; for I got back to Louisville, Kentucky, from Greensboro, North Carolina, by this circuitous rout, to-wit: From Greensboro to Charlotte N. C. on horseback, camping out at night on account of the large number in our party; from Charlotte to Chester S. C, by rail, carrying our horses on the cars; from Chester via Newberry, where I bought a horse for $7,000, to Augusta, Georgia, on horseback, before reaching which we were met by the horrible intelligence of the assassination of President Lincoln; stopping at the Planters' House, where I first paid $50, then $100, and before I left only $2.50 a day for board, and where I ordered of a merchant tailor a pair of cassimere pantaloons, for which I paid him $1,000; from Augusta again on horseback to Halifax county, Virginia, passing through South Carolina--where I ate of the first and only piece of kid I ever saw served upon a table as diet — and while passing through which an old lady told me she understood that Mr. Lincoln was in a stage with his wife going to the theatre when he was killed; from Halifax county, where I gave my horse away, to which county I had come directly from the generous home of my friends, Mr.Kean and Mrs. Elisha Kean, in Pittsylvania, with whom I had spent about ten days, and bidding adieu to my dear friends, the Barkesdales, I proceeded by rail to Richmond, from Richmond by steamboat to Baltimore, thence by rail to Washington city, thence by rail to Cincinnati, and thence by a steamboat, commanded by the unfortunate Captain Godman, to Louisville, where I landed on the morning of the 19th of June, 1865, about two and a half months after the evacuation of Richmond, and nearly four years after I had left home to take part with my own people in resisting wrongful and unjust aggression, that people having made a gallant and heroic defense, but having been compelled to succumb to the overwhelming numbers and power of the Northern people, aided, as the latter were, by pretty much all the European nations; thus concluding a long, devastating and cruel war, for which, in my opinion, the North was wholly responsible, which saddled upon the people of this country a gigantic national debt, which for generations unborn will probably not be paid, making the people to groan under such burthens of taxation as were never before known in this country, introducing such all-pervading corrupt practices in the administration of the General Government as appalled the civilized world, and clothing the political party in office with such vast powers as to make it impossible for the people to install in office a President of their own choice after they had elected him.