President of the Confederate States of America of additional wagons, ambulances, and carriages, also carrying some Confederate archives papers and the C.S.A. Treasury banknotes and remnants of gold/silver bullion. The last official Cabinet meetings of the Presidential Cabinet of the Confederate States took place at Charlotte, on April 24, and 26, then later on May 4; when President Davis left Washington, Georgia, the party consisted only of his aides and Postmaster General Reagan. Elements of the United States Cavalry / Union Army captured Davis and his companions at an encampment near Irwinville, Georgia on May 10, 1865. Jefferson Davis was imprisoned at Fort Monroe, by the Hampton
Confederate States of America and states' rights. Historian Emory Thomas assessed the Confederacy's self-image by studying the correspondence sent by the Confederate government in 1861–62 to foreign governments. He found that Confederate diplomacy projected multiple contradictory self-images: In what later became known as the Cornerstone Speech, C.S. Vice President Alexander H. Stephens declared that the "cornerstone" of the new government "rest[ed] upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery – subordination to the superior race – is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based