Before midnight on May 2, 1865, Confederate President Jefferson Davis left Abbeville, South Carolina, with government officials, cabinet members, his personal staff, a 2,500-man cavalry escort, and a long wagon train carrying about $250,000 in gold and silver and other valuables from the Confederate Treasury. Shortly after dawn the party reached the Savannah River and, finding a military pontoon bridge prepared for them still undiscovered by nearby Federal troops, crossed into Georgia at Hester's Ferry. After crossing, Davis and his staff stopped at a farmhouse for breakfast and to rest their horses before continuing to Washington, Georgia, while Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin departed separately by horse and buggy. Secretary of War John C. Breckinridge, coming behind with the Treasury wagons, confronted unrest among many cavalrymen, especially South Carolinians, who wanted to go home instead of crossing into Georgia and feared for their safety and lack of pay. After trying to steady them with an appeal to their duty and honor, Breckinridge used more than $108,000 in Treasury silver to pay the troops, ordering paymasters at Mrs. Susan Moss's home to count out coins and distribute them through a window. As news spread, the crowd grew, and nearly 4,000 soldiers received between $25 and $32 each in silver, including some Federal soldiers posing as Confederates. One box of jewelry and other valuables was left behind; Mrs. Moss hid it outside, but Federal troops soon confiscated it. Breckinridge then continued with only a few hundred Confederate soldiers, mostly Kentuckians, to Washington, where Davis had already arrived.