A Forgotten Anniversary? The Escape and Capture of Jefferson Davis

A Forgotten Anniversary? The Escape and Capture of Jefferson Davis

The small town of Irwinville, Georgia would become the setting for one of the greatest and perhaps overlooked episodes of the sesquicentennial story.  In a piece announcing the victorious capture of Davis in Harper’ Weekly, a Union officer commented on the night of May 11, 1865, “a fight ensued, both parties exhibiting the greatest determination…the captors report that he (Davis) hastily put on one of his wife’s dresses and started for the woods, closely followed by our men, who at first thought him a woman, but seeing his boots while he was running, they suspected his sex at once.” And so begins the legend of Davis the cross-dresser.

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