On May 4, 1865, Jefferson Davis arrived in Washington, Georgia, 178 miles northeast of the park, where he performed his last duties as President of the Confederate States of America. Shortly afterward, with a small staff and escort, he departed en route to the trans-Mississippi Department, where, supported by Confederate forces not yet surrendered, he hoped to negotiate a just peace. After a difficult journey by way of Sandersville, Dublin, and Abbeville, he camped a mile north of Irwinville, in the present Jefferson Davis Memorial State Park, unaware that in Dublin the 1st Wisconsin Cavalry, U.S., had found his trail and begun pursuit. At dawn on May 10, his camp was surrounded by men of the 1st Wisconsin and 4th Michigan cavalry regiments, U.S., and he became a state prisoner, his hopes for a new nation, in which each state would exercise without interference its cherished Constitutional rights, forever dead.