The John Taylor Wood Correspondence consists of ten letters written by John Taylor Wood between April and July of 1865. Nine of the letters were written to his wife, Lola, who was living in and around Richmond at the time; the tenth item is a small note requesting that enclosed letters be forwarded to Lola. Wood was the nephew and military aide to Confederate President Jefferson Davis. His letters chronicle his flight with Davis from Richmond to points further south and later, his establishing a home in Halifax. Wood was captured with Davis and others in May of 1865, but was able to bribe a captor and flee to Cuba. He made his way from Havana to Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, in June, where Lola and their two children eventually met him.

The majority of Wood’s date to April of 1865 and include news of himself, his uncle, and the officers around them. He shared opinions on his fellow officers and Confederates, whose loyalty begins to wane before his, as he wrote on April 24th from Charlotte, North Carolina:

If I have understood correctly the terms of the negotiation now pending it is a eventual surrender of what we have been contending for during the past four years, our independence: I care not what side issues may be granted. or what else they may concede, with out freedom it amounts to nothing. If I know myself, I never will consent to these terms & Uncle never will, but we are almost alone. Cabinet ministers, generals, soldiers, citizens & indeed 99 out of a hundred are in favor of these.

He tells Lola of their travels further south and write extensively about their children, how she should read his letters to them (in particular their eldest, Zachary Taylor Wood), and how much he misses them. He also keeps her updated on the whereabouts of family and friends, when he knows it. Shortly after the last letter written in April, Wood was captured with Davis in Georgia. As the story goes, with his uncle’s permission, he bribed a Union officer to escape, and was able to flee to Cuba. In a small note, dated June 1865, he wrote to a friend, Jim (referenced later), asking him to forward an enclosed letter to Lola.

The last two letters were written in mid-July from Montreal. Both talk about his own travels through Canada from Halifax to Montreal (though they would eventually settle in Halifax). He also writes on rumors of his own escape:

I hope my name will not appear again at present in the papers, I am sorry to see it & will avoid it if possible, I am almost tempted to assume some other name, but will not do it, I have done nothing yet to be ashamed of. However I am told there is an account of my escaping from a Yankee Cruiser in some of the papers, where I am represented as having shown false or bogus papers and thus avoided capture, I have not seen it, but it is not necessary to tell you dear that it is not true.

Part of the penultimate letter surrounds logistics and plans for her travels to meet him and both of the final letters contain much of his concerns for her welfare and that of the children.

Transcripts of the letters are included with the collection.