Missing Confederate Gold: Myth or Fact?

I was asked the other day, “Where did the story about lost Confederate gold get started?”

Good question. 

We’re talking about something that has reached mytho-legendary status in the U.S.  It’s been used in movies (Sahara, National Treasure: Book of Secrets, Timecop, and the classic The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly); literature (Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind and it’s MGM movie adaptation); and, interestingly enough, two foreign comic books series (Tex from Italy and the Franco-Belgian Blueberry).  The idea that Confederate gold took flight at the end of the Civil War from the invading Yankees has become so inextricably linked with that time.

But as with any legend, there is or are some kernels of fact.

In 1862, with the Union naval flotilla approaching New Orleans, banks in the city, at the advice of the Confederate government, began dispersing their gold and silver specie to safe locations.  The Bank of Louisiana dispatched some three million dollars worth of gold and silver to Columbus, Georgia where they were put into the charge of W.H. Young, President of the Bank of Columbus. 

On the 11^th of October, 1862, General P.G.T. Beauregard, in command of Confederate troops in South Carolina, was directed by the Confederate Secretary of War to seize the specie and deliver it to a Confederate depository in Savannah.  Beauregard executed the questionable orders and completed his task, depriving Louisiana depositors of their money.  The exact whereabouts of the gold and silver from the Bank of Louisiana is unknown but most likely was used (illegally) by the Confederate Government to pay war expenses. 

Another, and more enticing possibility, comes at the end of the war, when chaos was the order of the day.  In April, 1865, after the Petersburg defenses fell and Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia retreated down the Appomattox River, the Confederate Government and what remained in the coffers of the Confederate Treasure and the independent banks in Richmond, was sent into flight south along a similar route as that taken by Jefferson Davis and entourage.  As this “treasure” made its way through the beleaguered South away from the Yankees, some of it was used to pay those soldiers it encountered:  $39,000 here in North Carolina; $108,000 there in the Savannah River area; another $40,000 there in Augusta, Georgia. 

Of the remaining Confederate funds left, $86,000 was entrusted to a Confederate office who was to take the money and entrust it into Confederate accounts abroad, presumably for the continuation of the Southern fight for independence.  That was May 4, 1865.  What became of that money has never been known.  Other funds that left Richmond included a large amount from the Richmond banks, which was captured May 10, 1865 by the 4^th Michigan Cavalry only to be stolen on May 25, 1865 by a group of men outside the Chennault Plantation in Danburg, Georgia.  Of nearly $250,000 taken in that impromptu raid, just under half of it – $111,000 – was recovered.  The rest vanished.

A few Confederate officers, most notably Generals John B. Magruder and Joseph Shelby, did make it to Mexico after the Civil War where they would remain for a short time before returning to the United States.  It would not impossible to imagine a few more having done the same, since 600 men from Shelby’s command followed him across the Rio Grande.  (Shelby’s unit, nicknamed “The Undefeated,” inspired the 1969 John Wayne – Rock Hudson movie of the same name.) 

It would not be difficult to imagine that maybe, just maybe, some of that gold worked its way south toward or into Mexico and disappeared.  Not too hard, really. 

American History is filled with such interesting little facts.

http://southernsentinel.wordpress.com/the-lost-confederate-treasure/

http://books.google.com/books?id=0mdKAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA23&dq=%22When+New+Orleans+was+about+to+be+evacuated%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=TN8rUvL3LYH68gS5-YGoBQ&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22When%20New%20Orleans%20was%20about%20to%20be%20evacuated%22&f=false

http://www.history.com/news/history-lists/6-soldiers-who-refused-to-surrender