George Alfred Trenholm (February 25, 1807 - December 9, 1876) was businessman, financier, politician, and slaveowner who strongly supported the Confederate States of America and became its Secretary of the Treasury during the final year of the American Civil War.
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Early and family life
George Alfred Trenholm was born in Charleston, South Carolina to Elizabeth Irene de Greffin Trenholm and her merchant husband, William Trenholm on February 25, 1807. His maternal grandfather, Comte de Greffin, was a major plantation owner in Haiti. His paternal grandfather, William Trenholm (1737-1822), was born in Yorkshire, England but lived and worked in Charleston most of his adult life, although he was forced to leave during the American Revolutionary War due to his Loyalist sympathies (living in New York, Holland and Santo Domingo) but ultimately returned to Charleston for his final 37 years and introduced his son William (1772-1824) into the family business. When his father died, George Trenholm left school and went into business, as discussed below.
George Alfred Trenholm married Anna Helen Holmes on April 3, 1828. Her father John Holmes, owned a plantation on Johns Island, South Carolina outside Charleston. The couple had thirteen children, although five (including their first four) died in infancy. In 1860, their daughters Emily (b. 1839), Anna (b. 1842), Eliza (b. 1848), Christiana (b. 1851) and sons Alfred (b. 1844), Frances (b. 1846), Edwin (b. 1850) lived with their parents, as did his mother in law, and his married eldest son William Trenholm (b. 1846) and his wife and their young sons.
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Career
George Trenholm, aged 16 years, began working for a major cotton broker, John Fraser and Company in Charleston. He rose to become a partner, and by 1853 led the company. Fraser died in 1854 and it became Frasier and Trenholm. By 1860 Trenholm had become one of the wealthiest men in the South (if not the United States), owning real estate worth $90,000 and personal property (including slaves) valued at about $35,000. His financial investments included steamships, hotels, wharves, cotton and plantations. About 39 enslaved persons lived with Trenholm's family in Charleston. Trenholm was also director of the Bank of Charleston and of a South Carolina railroad.
Trenholm was first elected as a Democrat to the South Carolina legislature in 1852 and served until 1856. After President Lincoln's election, Trenholm strongly supported secession.
American Civil War
When the Civil War broke out after the South Carolina guns forced the surrender of Fort Sumpter, Trenholm immediately moved his company's head office from New York to the Bahamas and Bermuda. He was appointed to South Carolina's State Marine Battery Commission, where he oversaw construction of the Confederate ironclad Chicora. Trenholm also personally financed a twelve-vessel flotilla for Charleston's defense.
Trenholm also grew even wealthier as his 60 ships ran the Union blockade. The ships carried cotton, tobacco and turpentine and brought back coal, iron, salt, guns and ammunition. Josiah Gorgas, the Confederate chief of ordnance, estimated that by March 1863, Trenholm's company had made $9,000,000 by blockade running. His company - now called Fraser, Trenholm and Company - became the Confederate government's overseas banker. The office in Liverpool arranged cotton sales and financed its own fleet. The U.S. consul in Liverpool, Thomas Dudley, estimated Trenholm's fleet imported $4.5 million of cotton into Great Britain, although Confederate President Jefferson Davis vetoed Trenholm's suggestion that the Confederacy buy decommissioned British East India Company ships for $10 million. Trenholm and his Liverpool-based partner Charles K. Prioleau (son of a Charleston lawyer) worked with fellow American James Dunwoody Bulloch as Confederate foreign agents in Britain to manage their arrangements, especially shipping munitions home. Britain depended on cotton exports, and continuing cotton exports to Britain helped the Confederacy not only financially, but also shaped British public opinion toward the Confederate cause.
Trenholm also again served in the South Carolina legislature from 1860-1863. In January 1864, his daughter Emily married Confederate scout William Miles Hazzard, who would be deeded Annandale plantation and then Beneventum plantation shortly after the war's end.
Confederate Treasury Secretary Christopher Memminger, a fellow Charlestonian and friend, used Trenholm as an unofficial adviser for almost four years. When Memminger resigned on July 1, 1864 (due to public outcry after he issued millions of Confederate bank notes at one-third the value of the old ones), and moved back to North Carolina, Trenholm succeeded him. He was formally appointed on July 18, 1864. Trenholm was a more charismatic figure than his predecessor, and this and constant published updates helped him with press relations as well as the Confederate Congress. Trenholm had a "never give up the ship" personality, but could do little to stop the financial havoc as the rebel government grew insolvent and printing money caused inflation. Trenholm advocated direct taxation, reducing the circulation of paper currency, further public subscriptions for war bonds and purchasing blockade-runners (rather than continuing to rely on private shippers as he had been), but the Confederate Congress refused to pass those measures. He also signed off on payments for Southern spies, including operations in Canada and Washington, D.C., as well as for the defense of Richmond, Virginia, where he moved after severing ties with his businesses. Trenholm also arranged for a large loan to the Confederate government from a French consortium, but the proceeds arrived too late to assist their war effort.
Trenholm's lavish entertaining in Richmond (at the house which later became the Valentine Museum), and paying for a massive Christmas dinner (postponed until New Year's Day 1965) endeared him to Richmond's elite. On February 6, 1865, the Confederate Congress proposed to Jefferson Davis that he fire his entire cabinet except for Trenholm. Davis declined, but Secretary of War James A. Seddon resigned and was replaced by General John C. Breckinridge.
Flight from Richmond
During the war's final days, Trenholm arranged for the Confederate treasury, archives and bullion owned by it and Richmond banks to be transported out of the imperiled city into North Carolina by train guarded by Captain William Howard Parker and Confederate naval midshipmen. The bullion and specie was later estimated to be worth anywhere between a quarter to a half million dollars. The last published account of it involved $86,000 in specie in the false bottom of a carriage and entrusted to James A. Semple, a Naval paymaster and son-in-law of ex-President John Tyler, who was supposed to take it to Liverpool to pay Confederate accounts. Secretary of State Judah Benjamin also used a $1,500 gold warrant signed by Trenholm to secure his passage on a boat to Britain. Other accounts trace $40,000 used by Major Raphael J. Moses (General Longstreet's commissary officer) to assist Confederate veterans struggling to return to their homes. Some believe Trenholm ordered the bullion dumped off railroad bridges on the journey described below (noting his son William patented a hydroscope for finding lost items in the water after the war), or smuggled to England by Sylvester Mumford (who later returned to to Georgia, where it became an endowment to educate orphans), or taken to Canada.
Trenholm sent his daughters out of the Richmond Friday with Varina Davis by train, escorted by midshipman James Morris Morgan (who would later marry one of the Trensholm daughters. The women rode to Charlotte, North Carolina and then a rented house in Abbeville, South Carolina, where they met their brother William and his family. Though ill (compounded by self-medication by peach brandy shared with fellow travelers and morphine), Trenholm (with his wife as his nurse, the only woman among 30 male officials) evacuated Richmond Sunday night April 5, 1865 on the same train for Danville, Virginia as the rest of the Confederate government. Days later, he was transported by ambulance to another train, which transported the Confederate government into North Carolina, where they learned President Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated on April 14. Eventually, the Confederate government, including Trenholm, reached Fort Mill, South Carolina. Upon hearing of General Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House, Virginia on April 9, the local commander in Charlotte, North Carolina, General John Echols, had offered his troops the choice of surrendering or continuing to fight. Half his cavalry and almost all infantry left for home, with only 1,000 men following General Echols to meet with President Jefferson Davis and the remaining Confederate cabinet members in Fort Mill. Trenholm then asked President Davis to accept his resignation, citing his ill health, and Davis accepted with his thanks on April 27, 1865.
Imprisonment and parole
Trenholm had six rice plantations to manage in Georgetown County, South Carolina alone, having bought many in 1863 before assuming his public role. He traveled from Abbeville to South Carolina College in Columbia, South Carolina for the wedding of his son Frank to Mary Elizabeth Burroughs in the college president's house on June 1, 1865. Then Trenholm and his wife and daughters moved into their newly purchased estate, now named DeGreffin near Columbia, South Carolina, which Union troops had burned it in a raid. They left the Abbeville house to William and his family.
Around June 12, Union officer had asked Trenholm to come to them to answer questions. Escorted by his future son-in-law James M. Morgan (or by his son William under alternate accounts) and carrying a bag of gold pieces, Trenholm drove to Orangeburg, South Carolina and took the train to Charleston, where he was arrested at the depot and escorted to jail by Negro troops on June 13 and accused of making off with millions in Confederate assets. He was soon joined in jail by Trenholm, Fraser & Co. manager Theodore Dehon Wagner. Trenholm was later briefly imprisoned at Hilton Head, South Carolina, but General Quincy Gillmore, who knew Trenholm and of his kindnesses toward Union prisoners during the war, as well as saw his physical disability, then issued him a written parole back to his home and the corporate limits of Columbia, South Carolina on June 25. Gillmore was then relieved of that command, and Trenholm rearrested, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton suspecting him of involvement in President Lincoln's assassination.
In July, Union officers had arrested blockade runners Theodore Jervey and A.S. Johnson. Trenholm was re-arrested on July 12 and imprisoned at Fort Pulaski near Savannah, Georgia. He was allowed guests, which came to include many former high Confederate officials. Fellow prisoners included James A. Seddon, David Yulee, R.M.T. Hunter, former Florida governor A. K. Allison, Charles Clark of Mississippi, A. G. Magrath, and assistant Secretary of War, James A. Campbell--all of whom were allowed liberty around the island after giving their parole of honor on August 21.
Postwar business, charity and politics
Pardoned by President Andrew Johnson and ordered release on October 11, 1865 (along with Clark, Campbell, Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens, and Postmaster John H. Reagan of Texas), Trenholm returned to his business. Manager James Welsman had been pardoned in August and on September 29, President Johnson had ordered property returned to Charleston firms, including Trenholm's, over the objection of Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs. Nonetheless, U.S. lawyers filed suit in Britain against the firm's assets and several principals, including T.D. Wagner and Charles Prioleau. The Federal Government sought Canada as reparations for damages caused by British firms acting on behalf of the Confederacy, but settled claims including $3million for damages to U.S. shipping by the British built CSS Alabama. His son Fred Trenholm sailed home from England to attend his sister Helen's wedding to James Morris Morgan. Trenholm also created trusts and deeded plantations to his children and their spouses, although many properties were confiscated by the federal government based on the firm's failure to pay customs duties on items imported by the blockade runners.
Trenholm's cotton brokerage firm went bankrupt in 1867, but successfully reorganized as George A. Trenholm & Son, and took advantage of the state's postwar phosphate mining boom. He was elected a director of the Blue Ridge Railroad in 1868; the railroad planned to link Charleston and the American Midwest, but went bankrupt due to embezzlement by an official who escaped northward.
After the war, Trenholm became known for his philanthropy in the South Carolina Low County, to blacks as well as whites. He wrote in 1865 that emancipation of blacks was necessary, and argued for their uplift. Many South Carolinians were unhappy with Congressional Reconstruction and governor Robert Kingston Scott, who trebled the state debt but survived an impeachment vote. Voters again elected Trenholm to the South Carolina legislature in 1874, and he died in office. Months later, South Carolinians elected Democrat (and former Confederate General) Wade Hampton governor, and no Republican would win that office again for decades.
Death and legacy
Trenholm died in Charleston on December 9, 1876, and was buried in Magnolia Cemetery. The Library of Congress holds the Confederate Treasury's records, many created by Trenholm.
North Carolina erected a historical highway marker near his estate Solitude, where he and Memminger spent summers during his final years. Trenholm is the great-great-grandfather of Virginia politician Charles S. "Chuck" Robb.
Gone with the Wind
Many believe that Trenholm was the inspiration for the character of Rhett Butler in Margaret Mitchell's novel, Gone with the Wind.
See also
- Blockade runners of the American Civil War
- James Dunwoody Bulloch
References
External links
- Listing of business records of Fraser, Trenholm & Company, 1860-1877
Bibliography
- Bulloch, James D. (2001). The Secret Service of the Confederate States in Europe. New York: Random House International. ISBN 0-679-64022-3.
- Nepveux, Ethel Trenholm Seabrook (1973). George Alfred Trenholm and the Company That Went to War. Anderson, South Carolina: The Author. ISBN 0-9668843-1-0.
- Nepveux, Ethel Trenholm Seabrook (1999). George A. Trenholm, Financial Genius of the Confederacy. Anderson, South Carolina: The Author. ISBN 0-9668843-1-0.
- Patrick, Rembert W. (1944). Jefferson Davis and His Cabinet. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. pp. 234-243.
- Spence, E. Lee (1995). Treasures of the Confederate Coast: The "Real Rhett Butler" & Other Revelations. Miami: Narwhal Press. ISBN 1-886391-01-7.
- Spencer, Warren F. (1983). The Confederate Navy In Europe. University, Alabama: University of Alabama Press. ISBN 0-8173-0861-X.
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