William M. Gwin - Later Life

Later Life

Gwin returned east to New York on the same ship as Edwin Vose Sumner (commander of the Union Army's Department of the Pacific) and Mikhail Bakunin - an acquaintance of Joseph Heco. Sumner organized Gwin's arrest along with two other secessionist sympathizers but President Abraham Lincoln intervened for his release. Gwin sent his wife and one of his daughters to Europe returning himself to his plantation in Mississippi. The plantation was destroyed in the war and Gwin, a daughter, and son fled to Paris. In 1864 he attempted to interest Napoleon III in a project to settle American slave-owners in Sonora, Mexico. Despite a positive response from Napoleon III, the idea was rejected by his protégé, Maximilian I, who feared that Gwin and his southerners would take Sonora for themselves. After the war, he returned to the United States and gave himself up to General Philip Sheridan in New Orleans. General Sheridan granted his original request for release to rejoin his family, who had also returned, but that was countermanded by President Andrew Johnson, who was on the outs with Sheridan.

Gwin retired to California and engaged in agricultural pursuits until his death in New York City in 1885. He was interred in Mountain View Cemetery, Oakland, California.