On April 27 Mr. Davis and his twenty-one year old daughter, Winnie, left Beauvoir for Montgomery in the special railroad car, which had brought Mayor Reese and prominent citizens to accompany them. Maggie Hayes, the Davis' eldest daughter, had come to Beauvoir for the celebration and brought her two little girls and the baby boy, Addison Jefferson. But at the very last hour, she and Mrs. Davis had to forego the trip, because he was stricken with what turned out to be scarlet fever.

As Davis's train drew into Montgomery it was greeted by the boom of cannon and "the old familiar yell of the Southern multitude." The thousands of people crowding about the station made it difficult for the ex-President and Georgia's General John B. Gordon, who was his special escort, to reach their carriage drawn by four white horses. When the Exchange Hotel was reached, the crowd had swelled in volume until the streets and squares were "a sea of faces." As the carriage drew up in front of the entrance a huge motto "Our Hero" caught Davis's glance. And just as he alighted a set piece of fireworks extending nearly across the square flashed in flame the words "Welcome, Our Hero!"

It had been just a quarter of a century since Jefferson Davis had first slept in Room 101 on the night before his inauguration. His welcome had been even more wildly demonstrative now, in April, 1886, than in February, 1861, when William Yancey had introduced him in the memorable words, "The hour and the man have met." Tragic years had intervened since Davis had dreamed of a nation of freedom with the old State sovereignty.