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 May 5, 1865 marks the
date of an historic
but largely forgotten event in Georgia—the last
meeting held, and the last order given, by the
Confederate government, before it passed into
history.
That Last Order was
given to my maternal ancestor, Major Raphael Jacob
Moses, of Columbus, who was known as “the father of
Georgia’s peach industry”.
General Robert E.
Lee had surrendered about three weeks earlier, on April
9, 1865 and the Civil War had basically ended.
The Confederate government's last official meeting
was held in Washington, Georgia (Wilkes County),
and included President Jefferson Davis and a few of
his cabinet officers, fleeing the pursuing Yankee
troops trying to arrest them.
Moses was given
possession of the Confederacy's last supply of
bullion—$40,000 of silver and/or gold bullion,
worth perhaps $750,000 today. He
was ordered to
deliver it to help the thousands of defeated rebel
soldiers straggling home, many in sore need of help—shoeless, hungry, sick, exhausted, in tattered
uniforms.
This was no easy task for Moses, amidst the anarchy
of defeat, orderly government and military discipline
having collapsed, and lawless mobs of unruly, sometimes
drunken former soldiers searching desperately for food
and money.
Moses gathered some
brave soldiers to help protect the bullion from mobs
of armed men who were trying to seize it, and
succeeded in carrying out his orders.
“The Atlanta
Journal” of 6 February, 1927, reproduced Moses’
receipt for the delivery of the bullion, calling it
“…the last official writing ever issued by the
Confederate administration …As historic a curiosity
as the world affords, this last flicker of a mammoth
revolution.”
The complete story
is told in Mel Young's
Last Order of the Lost Cause, and Robert
Rosen's authoritative,
The Jewish Confederates.
Moses was a fifth
generation South Carolinian who in 1849 moved to
Columbus, Georgia, where he was a lawyer, planter,
and owner of a plantation he named “Esquiline.”
Moses’ English
ancestors came to America during colonial days, one
of them being his great, great grandfather Dr.
Samuel Nunez. He is credited with saving the
newly-established, mosquito-infested colony of
Savannah, Georgia from being wiped out in 1733 by a
“fever,” then thought to be yellow fever but which
was probably malaria. Moses’ mother is said to have
traced her ancestry back to Dr. Luria, the court
physician to Spanish rulers Ferdinand and Isabella.
Moses described himself as “a descendant of Abraham, of
the Tribe of Judah.”
Moses pioneered the
commercial growing of peaches and plums in Georgia,
so it could thus be said that he is a major reason
Georgia is called The Peach State.
Moses is reputed to have been
the first planter to ship and sell peaches outside
of the South, in 1851, before there was any through
connection by railroad. James C. Bonner’s “A History
of Georgia Agriculture, 1732-1860,” credits Moses with
being the first to succeed in preserving the flavor of
shipped peaches, by packing them in a champagne baskets
instead of pulverized charcoal.
He knew well and
wrote in his memoirs about General Robert E. Lee
(whom he was with at Gettysburg) and other major
Confederate figures. The renowned historian Douglas Southall
Freeman, in his authoritative Lee's Lieutenants
called Moses "...the best commissary officer of like
rank in the Confederate service."
As General James
Longstreet's chief commissary officer, Moses
participated in most of the major battles in the
East, and was responsible for supplying and feeding
up to 54,000 troops and support personnel, including
porters, teamsters, and other non-combatants. General Lee had forbidden him
from entering private homes in search of supplies in
raids into Union territory (such as the incursions
into Pennsylvania), even when food and other
provisions were in painfully short supply.
Often while seizing
supplies, Moses encountered considerable hostility
and abuse from the local women, which he always
endured in good humor, and it became a source of
much teasing from his fellow officers:
Moses always acted honorably, compassionately, and as
a gentleman. Once, when a distraught woman approached
Moses and pleaded for the return of her pet heifer that
had been caught up in a cattle seizure, he
graciously acceded.
The contrast is
striking between the humane Confederate policies and
those of the North, wherein Union generals Grant,
Sherman, and Sheridan regularly burned and looted
homes, farms, courthouses, churches, libraries, and
entire cities full of civilians, such as Atlanta and
Columbia, South Carolina, and most everything of
value in between.
Moses' three sons
also fought for the South, and one was killed at
Seven Pines in May, 1862 after performing acts of
amazing valor – Lt. Albert Moses Luria, at age 19,
the first Jewish Confederate to fall in battle. The
last Confederate Jew to be killed was Major Moses'
nephew, Joshua Lazarus Moses, of Sumter, South
Carolina, the brother of my great grandfather. Josh
was killed in the battle of Fort Blakeley, Alabama,
a few hours after Lee surrendered, firing the last
guns in defense of Mobile. In this battle, Josh's
brothers Perry and Horace were respectively wounded
and captured.
Moses and his more
than two dozen family members who fought for the
South typified the many brave and beleaguered
Confederate soldiers who served their country,
facing overwhelming odds, with loyalty and valor.
That terrible war ended fourteen decades ago, but the memory of those brave soldiers lives
on.
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