the South would be able to achieve its independence, but at last he realized defeat was imminent and fled from Richmond. On May 10, 1865, federal troops captured him at Irwinville, Georgia. From 1865 to 1867 he was imprisoned at Fortress Monroe, Virginia. Davis was indicted for treason in 1866 but the next year was released on a bond of $100,000 signed by the American newspaper publisher Horace Greeley and other influential Northerners. In 1868 the federal government dropped the case against him. From 1870 to 1878 he engaged in a number of unsuccessful business enterprises; and from 1878 until his death in New Orleans, on December 6, 1889, he lived near Biloxi, Mississippi. His grave is in Richmond, Virginia. He wrote The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (1881). Soon after his inauguration as provisional president on February 18, 1861, Davis appointed his first cabinet; each of the six members represented a different state. The first task of the administration was to prepare for the impending conflict. Between December 30, 1860, and February 18, 1861, the Confederates had seized 11 federal forts and arsenals from South Carolina to Texas and harassed Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. Lincoln, in his inaugural address on March 4, 1861, rejected the right of secession but attempted to conciliate the South. Negotiations for the relief of Fort Sumter failed, and on April 12 the bombardment of the fort began. Three days later Lincoln announced that an insurrection had occurred, and he called for volunteers. The number of states in the Confederacy was increased to 11 by the secession of Virginia in April and of Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina in May. The provisional Confederate Congress, which had met for four sessions between February 4, 1861 and February 17, 1862, was replaced by a permanent legislature on February 18, 1862. The Confederate capital was moved on May 24, 1861 from Montgomery to ...
