A Confederate Family Reunion in Abbeville GA - Part 2

Following our lunch with my cousins and placing a Confederate Battle Flag on my great grandfather Joseph Rhodes grave, we made our way back thru Abbeville GA.  Abbeville is the county seat of Wilcox county and we stopped the car across the street from the court house building.  I noticed a Civil War monument thru the trees.  The inscription on it reads, " It is a duty we give to posterity to see that our children shall know the virtues and become worthy of their sires."  A similar message as is contained in Stephen D. Lee's Charge to the Sons of Confederate Veterans.  There were also two historical markers there in the lawn of the library there across Hwy 129 from the courthouse.  I had never previously taken note of these despite having passed this way countless times when I visited my grandmother every summer as an adolescent.  I had no idea that Abbeville held such an infamous place in history for it was here that President Jefferson Davis camped for the night, just the day before he was captured by Union troops as he fled Richmond after Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia and the Confederate capital lay defenseless.  President Davis planned to travel down towards the Gulf of Mexico and then westward in the hopes of coordinating a resistance with the forces of the Confederate Army of Trans-Mississippi to prolong the War and force a negotiated peace, a settlement with the United States government. The markers provide details of these last days of the Davis Presidency found in this quiet small south Georgia town.

Confederate Memorial across from the Wilcox County Courthouse in Abbeville GA

Historical Marker in the Library Mawn across from the Courthouse in Abbeville

Wilcox County Courthouse and a Second Historical Marker in Abbeville