In June of 1862, one month after the passing of the Ranger Act, Jeff Thompson complained to Jefferson Davis that he had been forced to turn away many potential recruits because they had been ?..induced to believe that they are to be a band of licensed robbers, and they are not the men to care whether it be friend or foe they robbed.?

This sentiment among the guerrillas was shown to be in effect in northern Alabama when a Confederate officer on furlough was attacked and robbed by a gang of partisans, ?..most of whom I knew before the war.?At the same time a Union general was asking for ?..a sufficient force of cavalry to pursue and utterly destroy them.?[The guerrilla bands].

Naturally, this type of activity generated endless stories of unrecovered treasure caches in the years immediately following the war. A great many of these stories are pure speculation, but a significant number must be true ?or at least very close to the truth. This was demonstrated in 1942 when four ?oungsters?uncovered a Civil War era cache containing $5,850 worth of gold coins at Florence in Lauderdale County.

The U.S. Treasure Atlas states that an additional $450,000 worth of gold coins was buried in the area around Florence during the Civil War. Anyone interested in a serious history of partisan warfare in Lauderdale County might wish to try Wade Pruitt?, Bugger Saga: The Civil War Story of Guerrilla and Bushwhacker Warfare in Lauderdale County, Alabama, P. Vine Press, 1978.

Maybe the next pot of Civil War gold found in Alabama will be discovered by ?ldsters.?

Civil War treasure trio

2. While researching Civil War-era treasure sites in Alabama, one inevitably encounters a trio of treasure stories so similar that it is almost impossible to escape the conclusion that elements of one have been borrowed from another. It is equally impossible for a general researcher like myself to make a determination as to which is the most valid. However, local researchers often have access to information that is not available in the large data banks and big city libraries that are the domain of the general researcher. So I present all three stories as equals, even though common sense dictates that all these cannot be equally true.

In 1860, a Confederate Army sergeant was transporting a chest of gold and silver coins contributed to the Confederate cause by southern patriots to the nearest rail station via horse-drawn wagon. While crossing a ford in a river near Gordo in Pickens County, the wagoneer was ambushed by four outlaws who shot him dead. The exchange of gunfire caused the horses to bolt, and the chest of coins fell into the river. The outlaws searched but could not find it, and as far as is known the treasure still rests somewhere on the bottom of the unnamed river near Gordo.

A second version of this story places the chest containing $30,000 worth of gold and silver coins in the hands of a tax collector in Marengo County. In this version the attempted robbery, which also takes place in 1860, occurs at a ford of the Tombigbee River south of Myrtlewood. Once again, the wagoneer is killed but the bandits are unable to locate the strongbox which has fallen into the river in the confusion.

A third and more complex version of the story takes place near the end of the Civil War. In this version, a wealthy planter named Charles Hansen and two disguised Confederate soldiers are trying to get the treasure wagon to General Hood in Columbia, Tenn., when it became mired in a bog hole near Athens in Limestone County. While they are attempting to free the wagon, a party of Union scouts arrive on the scene and a gun battle erupts. In this version two chests of treasure are dumped into the mud and Hansen and one wounded Union scout escape. Hansen reaches the home of a fellow planter to tell the tale; but while returning to the scene with an assistant, he blunders into another union patrol and is killed. Once again, searchers were unable to relocate the treasure and it is still missing today.

I suppose that it is possible that during the chaos surrounding the Civil War that three wagon loads of treasure collected for the Confederate cause in Alabama were upset and sank into the mud during an ambush, but intuition says that odds are against it. It is more reasonable to assume that at least one of these stories borrowed some of its elements from the others. A determination as to which story or stories are actually supported by the facts can only be made after many hours of patient local research ?or by actually finding the treasure. The site of the bog hole treasure was about four miles north of Athens. Good luck!

Treasure wagon cache

3. There is another story of a wagon load of Confederate gold and silver being lost, but in this case the treasure was deliberately buried. The treasure wagon was en route from west Texas to Savannah, Ga., in 1864 when it was attacked by Union soldiers east of Tallahassee, Ala., in Elmore County. During the fighting the gold and silver was buried along a small creek about a mile southeast of Tallahassee. Some sources place the treasure along a sharp bend in the creek, while others use a fence line as a marker. Of course, it wouldn? be a treasure story if the Confederates won the engagement and then dug up their gold. They were soundly beaten and only a handful of the Confederate escort escaped with their lives.

The survivors dutifully reported the loss to officials in Savannah, but at that late date scant attention was paid to the loss of a single shipment of gold. However, I am told that there is a brief mention of this incident in the Confederate Archives at Richmond. Various estimates place the treasure in the $200,000 to $285,000 range.

Bad luck and buried treasure

4. One thing my research into various treasure stories has taught me is never to bury treasure before a battle. It is an absolute, sure-fire way to guarantee getting one? self killed during the conflict. In fact, judging by the number of people who seem to die after assisting in the caching of treasure prior to any kind of a gun fight, it is obviously much safer to be third on a match or to have two black cats cross your path while walking under a ladder.

For instance, in December of 1864, when word was received that Colonel Joseph Sanders and his army of bandits, misfits, and deserters was on its way to attack the village of Newton in Dale County, three of the town? leading citizens were selected to bury the box of gold coins in the courthouse which constituted the public treasury. Sanders attacked and was repulsed by the vigilant Newtonians, reportedly with only four fatalities being sustained by the townsfolk. Unfortunately, three of the four were the very ones who had hidden the box of gold, and the public treasury was never recovered.

Hardy Clement's gold

5. At the outset of the Civil War, wealthy plantation owner Hardy Clements buried a cache estimated at about $100,000 in gold on the grounds of his estate on the banks of the Big Sandy Creek near Coling in Tuscaloosa County. Clements died in 1863 without revealing the exact location of his cache.

Please Note: It is the responsibility of the treasure hunter to gain permission before detecting.

SOURCES:

Grant, Carl E. ?artisan Warfare: Model 1861-1864.?Military Review magazine, No. 8, Nov., 1958.

Henson, Michael Paul. ?labama: The Heart of Dixie Holds Gold.?Lost Treasure magazine, Nov., 1990.

Sutherland, Daniel E. ?ithout Mercy and Without the Blessing of God.?North and South magazine, Vol. 7, Sept., 1998.