George Alfred Trenholm (February 25, 1807 – December 9, 1876) was a South Carolina businessman, financier, politician, and slaveholding planter who owned several plantations and strongly supported the Confederate States of America. He was appointed as its Secretary of the Treasury during the final year of the American Civil War.Downey, "George Alfred Trenholm", South Carolina EncyclopediaAppleton's Cyclopedia, vol. VI, p 159
His merchant firm was estimated to have made $9 million by blockade running with its 60 ships during the war. Although he was imprisoned briefly after the war and suffered economic setbacks, Trenholm prospered. In the postwar years, Trenholm was a prominent philanthropist, aiding black and white South Carolinians. He also served on railroad and bank boards. He was elected to state office again in 1874 and died in office.
He was one of the few Confederate cabinet members who returned to political office in the United States after the Civil War.
Early and family life George Alfred Trenholm was born on February 25, 1807, in Charleston, South Carolina to Elizabeth Irene (de Greffin) Trenholm and her merchant husband, William Trenholm. His maternal grandfather, Comte de Greffin, was a major plantation owner in Saint Domingue (before the slave revolution; it is now Haiti). His paternal grandfather, William Trenholm (1737-1822), was born in Yorkshire, England, but he lived and worked in Charleston most of his adult life. He was forced to leave during the American Revolutionary War due to his Loyalist sympathies and business associations. He lived in New York, the Netherlands, and Santo Domingo, but returned to Charleston in 1785, shortly after the war's end, and lived there for another 37 years. He introduced his son William (1772-1824) into the family business. When his father died, George Trenholm left school and went into business.
At age 21, George Alfred Trenholm married Anna Helen Holmes on April 3, 1828. Her father, John Holmes, owned a plantation on Johns Island, South Carolina. The couple had thirteen children; five (including their first four) died in infancy. In 1860, their daughters Emily (b. 1839), Anna (b. 1842), Eliza (b. 1848), Christiana (b. 1851), and sons Alfred (b. 1844), Frances (b. 1846), Edwin (b. 1850) were still living with their parents. Also in the household were their married eldest son William Trenholm (b. 1846), his wife, their young sons, and Anna's mother.1860 U.S. Federal Census for Charleston, South Carolina ward 6
Career At 16, George Trenholm had begun working for a major cotton broker, John Fraser and Company in Charleston. He rose to become a partner, and by 1853, when he was 46, he led the company. Fraser died in 1854, and it became Fraser and Trenholm. By 1860 Trenholm became one of the wealthiest men in the Southern United States, owning real estate worth $90,000 () and personal property (including enslaved people) valued at about $35,000 ().1860 U.S. Federal Census for Ward 6, Charleston, South Carolina. His financial investments included steamships, hotels, wharves, cotton and plantations. Trenholm's family enslaved about 39 persons as domestic staff1860 U.S. Federal Census--Slave Schedule for Ward 6, Charleston, South Carolina. The federal census is taken by geographic locale. South Carolina's state slave schedules are unavailable online; no source is given for one estimate of Trenholm's slaveholdings as "thousands", but 230 were recorded at Annandale in the 1850s, a plantation he bought in 1863. Trenholm was also director of the Bank of Charleston and a South Carolina railroad.
A member of the Democratic Party, Trenholm was elected to the South Carolina legislature in 1852 and served until 1856. After President Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860, Trenholm strongly supported the secession of the Confederacy, which South Carolina led among the top six of the major slave states.
American Civil War When the American Civil War broke out, Trenholm immediately moved his company's head office from New York to the Bahamas and Bermuda. He was appointed to South Carolina's State Marine Battery Commission, where he oversaw the construction of the Confederate ironclad Chicora. Trenholm personally financed the construction of a twelve-vessel flotilla for Charleston's defense.
Trenholm's wealth increased as his 60 commercial ships ran the U.S. Navy blockade. The ships carried cotton, tobacco, and turpentine to England and brought back coal, iron, salt, guns, and ammunition. Josiah Gorgas, the Confederate chief of ordnance, estimated that by March 1863, Trenholm's company had made $9 million (equivalent to $ million in ) by blockade running.James C. Clark, Last Train South: The Flight of the Confederate Government from Richmond (McFarland & Company, Inc. 1984), p. 32 His company - now called Fraser, Trenholm and Company - became the Confederate government's overseas banker."Fraser, Trenholm and Company", Exhibit, Liverpool Museum The office in Liverpool arranged cotton sales and financed its own fleet.Patrick 1944, pp. 236–237. The U.S. consul in Liverpool, Thomas Dudley, estimated Trenholm's fleet imported $4.5 million of cotton into Great Britain. However, Confederate President Jefferson Davis vetoed Trenholm's suggestion that the Confederacy buy decommissioned British East India Company ships for $10 million.
Trenholm and his Liverpool-based partner Charles K. Prioleau (son of a Charleston lawyer) worked with fellow American James Dunwoody Bulloch as Confederate foreign agents in Britain to manage their arrangements, especially shipping munitions home. Britain depended on the South's cotton exports. Continuing cotton exports to Britain helped the Confederacy financially and shaped British public opinion toward the Confederate cause.
Trenholm served again in the South Carolina legislature from 1860 to 1863. In 1863, he purchased the Annandale Plantation from Andrew Johnstone; located south of Georgetown, it was a highly successful rice operation that had worked 230 enslaved people in the 1850s.
In January 1864, Trenholm's daughter Emily married William Miles Hazzard, a Confederate scout. Trenholm deeded the Annandale and Beneventum plantations to Hazzard shortly after the war's end, trying to protect them from potential confiscation by the United States government.
Confederate Treasury Secretary Christopher Memminger, a fellow Charlestonian and friend, used Trenholm as an unofficial adviser for almost four years. When Memminger resigned on July 1, 1864 (due to public outcry after he issued millions of Confederate bank notes at one-third the value of the old ones), and moved back to Flat Rock, North Carolina, Trenholm succeeded him. He was formally appointed on July 18, 1864. Trenholm was a more charismatic figure than his predecessor. Together with his constant published updates, he had better press relations and contact with the Confederate Congress.Patrick 1944, pp. 237–238. Trenholm had a "never give up the ship" personality but could do little to stop the financial havoc as the rebel government grew insolvent and printing money caused inflation.Clark pp. 32-33 Trenholm advocated direct taxation, reducing the circulation of paper currency, further public subscriptions for war bonds, and purchasing blockade runners (rather than continuing to rely on private shippers), but the Confederate Congress refused to pass those measures.
He signed off on payments for Confederate spies, including operations in Canada and Washington, D.C., as well as for the defense of Richmond, Virginia. He moved to the Confederate capital after severing ties with his businesses in Charleston. Trenholm arranged for a large loan to the Confederate government from a French consortium, but the proceeds arrived too late to assist their war effort.
Trenholm's lavish entertaining in Richmond (at the house that later became the Valentine Museum) and paying for a massive Christmas dinner (postponed until New Year's Day 1865) endeared him to Richmond's elite. On February 6, 1865, the Confederate Congress proposed to President Jefferson Davis that he fire his entire cabinet except for Trenholm. Davis declined, but Secretary of War James A. Seddon resigned and was replaced by General John C. Breckinridge.
Flight from Richmond During the war's final days, Trenholm arranged for the Confederate treasury, archives, and bullion owned by it and Richmond banks to be transported from the imperiled capital into North Carolina by a train guarded by Captain William Howard Parker and Confederate naval midshipmen. The bullion and specie were later estimated to be worth between a quarter to a half million dollars.Nelson Lankford, Richmond Burning: The Last Days of the Confederate Capital (Viking 2002) p. 90 The last published account of it reported $86,000 in specie hidden in the false bottom of a carriage and entrusted to James A. Semple, a Naval paymaster and son-in-law of ex-President John Tyler. He was supposed to take it to Liverpool to pay Confederate accounts. Secretary of State Judah Benjamin used a $1,500 gold warrant signed by Trenholm to secure his passage on a boat to Britain.
Other accounts trace $40,000 used by Major Raphael J. Moses (General Longstreet's commissary officer) to assist Confederate veterans struggling to return home. Some believe Trenholm ordered the bullion dumped off railroad bridges on the journey described below (noting his son William patented a hydroscope for finding lost items in the water after the war), or had money smuggled to England by Sylvester Mumford (who later returned to Georgia, where it became an endowment to educate orphans), or taken to Canada.
Trenholm sent his daughters out of Richmond on Friday, April 3, 1865, with First Lady Varina Davis by train, escorted by midshipman James Morris Morgan (who would later marry one of the Trenholm daughters). The women rode to Charlotte, North Carolina and then reached a rented house in Abbeville, South Carolina, where they met their brother William Trenholm and his family. Though ill, George Trenholm (with his wife as his nurse, the only woman among 30 male officials) evacuated Richmond on Sunday night, April 5, 1865, bound for Danville, Virginia, on the same train as the rest of the Confederate government. He was said to have self-medicated with peach brandy, shared with fellow travelers, and morphine.Lankfort, p. 91
Days later, Trenholm was transported by ambulance to another train carrying the Confederate government into North Carolina, where they learned President Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated on April 14. Eventually, the Confederate government, including Trenholm, reached Fort Mill, South Carolina. Upon hearing of General Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House, Virginia on April 9, the local commander in Charlotte, North Carolina, General John Echols, had offered his troops the choice of surrendering or continuing to fight. Half his cavalry and almost all infantry left for home. Only 1,000 men followed General Echols to meet with President Jefferson Davis and the remaining Confederate cabinet members in Fort Mill. Trenholm asked President Davis to accept his resignation, citing his ill health, and Davis accepted with his thanks on April 27, 1865.Patrick 1944, p. 242.
Imprisonment and parole Trenholm had six rice plantations to manage in Georgetown County, South Carolina, having bought many in 1863 before assuming his public role. He traveled from Abbeville to South Carolina College in Columbia, South Carolina for the wedding on June 1, 1865 of his son Frank to Mary Elizabeth Burroughs in the house of the college president. Trenholm, his wife, and daughters moved into their newly purchased estate, now named DeGreffin, near Columbia, South Carolina. U.S. Army troops had burned it in a raid. They left the Abbeville house to William and his family.Clark p. 83