After Union Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin D. Pritchard and his one hundred thirty-five-man detachment of the 4th Michigan Cavalry Regiment captured Confederate President Jefferson Davis, his family, staff, and escort just north of Irwinville, Georgia, near dawn on Wednesday, May 10, 1865, they began riding north under orders from Union Brigadier General James H. Wilson to bring their prisoners to Macon. After camping that night at Abbeville, they continued north on May 11 with additional members of their regiment and reached Big Creek, about four miles south of Hawkinsville, where Pritchard and his troopers were met by the rest of their brigade riding south from Macon. There Pritchard learned of a $100,000 reward for the capture of Davis and other Confederate leaders suspected of involvement in the assassination of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, and he showed the reward poster to Davis, who read it calmly. Varina Davis recalled Jefferson Davis saying that the man who issued the proclamation knew it was false, referring to President Andrew Johnson, while Confederate Colonel Burton N. Harrison remembered Davis reading it with composure and scorn. Jefferson Davis later remembered that the news of the reward brought exultation from his captors, and Varina Davis said the soldiers' manner changed and their jibes and insults became hard to bear. When the prisoners were taken north toward Macon on May 12, Colonel Pritchard and his regiment still retained control of them despite the arrival of his full brigade and a higher-ranking officer. A soldier carried the reward proclamation on a flagpole within sight of Varina Davis and her children, and both Davises heard Federal troopers singing "We'll Hang Jeff Davis from a Sour Apple Tree." Although Jefferson Davis appealed to Pritchard and Pritchard tried to restrain his men, the taunts, jibes, and threats continued, and years later Varina Davis still remembered the horrors and sufferings of the journey.