May 10, 1865

Jefferson Davis

Union cavalry captures Jefferson Davis near Irwinville

The only soldiers killed at Davis's capture were Union cavalrymen, shot by other Union cavalrymen in the dark.

A mile and a half north of Irwinville

Early on 10 May 1865, Union cavalry converged on Jefferson Davis's camp about a mile and a half north of Irwinville, Georgia. A detachment of the 4th Michigan Cavalry under Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin D. Pritchard captured him and his party.

The 4th Michigan and the pursuing 1st Wisconsin Cavalry mistook each other for Confederates in the darkness and exchanged fire, killing two Union soldiers and wounding four. Davis's remaining escort of seventeen cavalrymen fired no shots.

A cloak and a shawl, not a hoopskirt

Davis was apprehended while trying to get away with a waterproof garment and his wife's shawl over him. Varina Davis said she had thrown them over her husband as the troops approached.

The later claim that he was taken disguised in a woman's dress was an embellished story, widely circulated in Northern satire. The surviving garments and accounts establish a cloak and a shawl, not the hoopskirt and bonnet of the caricatures.

What the capture did not settle

The prisoners were taken toward Macon, where the Wisconsin and Michigan commands arrived on 13 May. A $100,000 federal bounty had been announced for Davis, and Union accounts afterwards disputed how credit and reward should be split between the two regiments.

It did not dissolve the Confederate government. That group had already broken up at Washington, Georgia, on 5 May, and only the postmaster general, John H. Reagan, was still with Davis at the camp.

Nor did it open Reconstruction, whose measures predated the arrest — Congress had created the Freedmen's Bureau on 3 March 1865.

Sources

Researched 24 Aug 2026 7 sources not yet audited

How this was checked

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What the sources leave uncertain

The date, location, capturing regiment, and fact of Davis's arrest are solid.
Eyewitnesses disagreed about his intent and clothing. The physical garments and accounts establish a waterproof cloak or raglan and a shawl, but not the hoopskirt-and-bonnet disguise popularized in Northern satire.
Union accounts disputed how credit and the federal reward should be divided between Pritchard's 4th Michigan and Harnden's 1st Wisconsin.