Kirby's Augusta:The Confederate Gold

Kirby's Augusta:The Confederate Gold

After the War Between the States, Augustans not only spent much time remembering the Lost Cause, they also enjoyed searching for its lost gold.

The hunt for the Confederate gold, spirited out of Richmond at war’s end in a secret wagon train and carted into South Carolina, across the Savannah River into Georgia, possibly to Wilkes County and then maybe, just maybe … over to Augusta … WHERE IT became the stuff of legends.

Many of them dutifully reported, speculated, sworn to, and sworn about in story after story in The Augusta Chronicle.

Confederate gold, where is it?

The better question is more likely, Where isn’t it?

Even into the 1930s, the pages of The Augusta Chronicle included stories of impromptu inner city treasure hunts sparked by a variety of rumors that someone had found part of a hoard hastily hidden from the Yankees.

Generally, it went like this. An individual or his friends would get a tip or a hunch that some vacant plot held the secret wealth of an old merchant or plantation owner, and out would come the shovels.

Before you knew it, others hurried to the scene and began to dig, and another gold rush was under way.There was even a system and custom to such pursuits.

For one thing, legend held the treasures were watched over by ghostly spirits. If anyone heard of a spot or location where a ghost was possibly seen (and there seem to have been several reported in The Chronicle) suspicion was they were guarding the gold.There were also certain words or chants that some said had the power to coax the wealth out of the ground.

What do you think?

Well, I am a rational man, and in formal logic, we often resort to the device called Ockham’s Razor to settle such conundrums: Essentially, the simplest solution is usually the answer.

That’s why I go back to 1872 and this story in The Augusta Chronicle under the headline ” What Became of the Confederate Gold.”

“An interesting letter from Col. R.J. Moses, clearing up the mystery that has long hung around the disposition of the gold belonging to the Confederacy,is published in several of our exchanges. A small portion of it, it appears, was converted into rations for the returning soldiers … while the bulk of it was turned over to the Federal Quartermaster at Augusta for a similar appropriation …”

There’s an old newspaper saying that if you have a factual — yet dull — explanation and a mystery, print the mystery.

Maybe, that’s what happened.