Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 5.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

“By ‘one man’ ” rejoined Wilson, “I presume you mean some one particular man?” “I do,” answered Mr. Davis; “I mean the man [Andrew Johnson] who signed the proclamation; for he knows that I would a thousand times rather have Abraham Lincoln to deal with, as President of the United States, than to have him.” This was said with the full expectation that it would be reported.

The statement that he expressed apprehensions of the charge of treason, as one which it would give him “trouble to disprove,” is manifestly absurd. For two years of imprisonment, and another year while on bail, the most strenuous efforts of Mr. Davis and his friends were to bring this charge of treason to the issue of a trial. This issue the Government of the United States never dared to make, but, after delays and postponements from time to time, under various pretexts, finally dismissed the charge with a nolle prosequi.

The remark about Colonel Pritchard is not correctly stated. No expression of a choice of custodians or request of any sort was made by Mr. Davis, who, from the time of his capture to that of his release, adhered to the determination to ask nothing of his captors; nor did he say or intimate to General Wilson that he had shown any lack of “dignity and self-possession,” or express “regret” for anything said or done at the time of his capture.

There are so many other misstatements in General Wilson's narrative that it would be a waste of time to point out and contradict them. With regard to one only of them, I may say that, in the light-or rather under the shadow — of the incomparable fictitiousness already exposed, it would be a sort of injustice to the people of Georgia to give any attention to what General Wilson would have us believe of their lack of sympathy with their President and his family in the hour of calamity.

To revert for a moment to the foolish and malignant “petticoat story,” which, with some modification of its original draft, Gen. Wilson has attempted, at this late day, and in opposition to the slowly-returning tide of peace and good will, to revive and reconstruct; it has no support from any contemporary official statement that has been given to the public. It has been repeatedly and positively denied by eye-witnesses on both sides. One such denial by a Federal soldier, which was published in a Northern paper a few years ago, and has been copied more than once since its