Charles Carleton Coffin

April, 1865.

There was no longer the semblance of a Confederacy. Jeff Davis and Breckenridge were fugitives, without country or home. The Rebel army was flying. Richmond was in flames. The Rebellion had gone down in a night,—in darkness as it originated, and as it ought to die.

At three o'clock, Monday morning, an explosion took place which shook Richmond to its foundations, and made even the beds in the hospital at City Point heave as if by an earthquake. It was occasioned by the blowing up of the Rebel ironclads. Semmes was again without a command, for the Rebel navy was no more. If not swept from the ocean by Union cruisers, as the Alabama was by the Kearsarge, it was crushed by the ponderous blows of Grant and his victorious legions, as the result of his successes in the field. The shock roused the army from slumber. The hosts surrounding Petersburg needed no other reveille. The soldiers were on their feet in an instant, and General Wilcox (commanding the first division of the Ninth Corps) accepted it as a signal to advance. He was lying east of the city, his right resting on the Appomattox. His men sprang forward, but found only deserted works. The last body of Rebels—the lingerers who were remaining to plunder the people of Petersburg—took to their heels, and the division entered the town without opposition.

The entire army was in motion. Engineers hurried up with pontoons, strung them across the Appomattox, and Grant began the pursuit. I entered the town soon after sunrise, and found troops pouring in from all quarters, cheering, swinging their caps, helping themselves to tobacco, rushing upon the double-quick, eager to overtake Lee.

The colored population thronged the streets, swinging their old hats, bowing low, and shouting "Glory!" "Bless de Lord!" "I's been a praying for dis yere to happen, but didn't 'spect it quite so soon." "It is ges like a clap of thunder," said an old negro.

"I's glad to see you. I'm been trying and wishing and praying dat de Lord would help me get to de Yankees, and now dey has come into dis yere city," said another. The citizens of the place, also, were in the streets, amazed and confounded at what had happened. Provost General Macy, of Massachusetts, established a guard to prevent depredations and to save the army from demoralization. The Rebels, before retreating, destroyed their commissary stores and set all the tobacco warehouses on fire. I took a hurried survey of the Rebel works in front of Fort Steadman, and found them very strong. The ground was honeycombed by the shells which had been thrown from the mortars of the Ninth Corps.

General Grant was early in the town, cool, calm, and evidently well pleased with the aspect of affairs; and President Lincoln, who was at City Point, visited Petersburg during the day. He went up in a special car. The soldiers at Meade Station caught a sight of him, and cheered most heartily. He acknowledged the enthusiasm and devotion of the soldiers by bowing and thanking them for the glorious achievement of their arms. On Friday he looked care-worn, but the great victory had smoothed the deep wrinkles on his brow.

Reaching City Point at noon, I was soon in the saddle, galloping towards Richmond; crossing the Appomattox at Broadway, riding to Varina, crossing the James on the pontoons, and approaching the city by the New Market road, overtaking a division of the Twenty-Fifth Corps on the outskirts of the city. It was a hard, exhausting ride. Two miles out from the city my horse fell, and I found myself turning a summersault into the ditch; without broken bones, however, but I was obliged to moderate my speed for the remainder of the distance.

Before entering upon the narrative of my own observations, let us take a look at events transpiring in the city on Sunday.

"We are," said the Sentinel of Saturday evening, "very hopeful of the campaign which is opening, and trust that we are to reap a large advantage from the operations evidently near at hand.... We have only to resolve that we never will surrender, and it will be impossible that we shall ever be taken."

"My line is broken in three places, and Richmond must be evacuated," was Lee's despatch to Jeff Davis. The messenger found him in Rev. Dr. Minnegerode's church. He read the despatch, hurried to the Executive Mansion, passed up the winding stairway to his business apartment, sat down by a small table, wrote an order for the removal of the coin in the banks to Danville, for the burning of the public documents, and for the evacuation of the city. Mrs. Davis had left the city several days previous.

Rev. Dr. Minnegerode, before closing the forenoon service, gave notice that General Ewell desired the local forces to assemble at 3 P. M. There was no evening service. Ministers and congregations were otherwise employed. Rev. Mr. Hoge, a fierce advocate for slavery as a beneficent institution, packed his carpet-bag. Rev. Mr. Duncan was moved to do likewise. Mr. Lumpkin, who for many years had kept a slave-trader's jail, had a work of necessity on this Lord's day,—the temporal salvation of fifty men, women, and children! He made up his coffle in the jail-yard, within pistol-shot of Jeff Davis's parlor window, and a stone's throw from the Monumental Church. The poor creatures were hurried to the Danville depot. This sad and weeping fifty, in handcuffs and chains, was the last slave coffle that shall tread the soil of America.

Slavery being the corner-stone of the Confederacy, it was fitting that this gang, keeping step to the music of their clanking chains, should accompany Jeff Davis, his secretaries Benjamin and Trenholm, and the Reverend Messrs. Hoge and Duncan, in their flight. The whole Rebel government was on the move, and all Richmond desired to be. No thoughts now of taking Washington, or of the flag of the Confederacy flaunting in the breeze from the dome of the national Capitol! Hundreds of officials were at the depot, waiting to get away from the doomed city. Public documents, the archives of the Confederacy, were hastily gathered up, tumbled into boxes and barrels, and taken to the trains, or carried into the streets and set on fire. Coaches, carriages, wagons, carts, wheelbarrows, everything in the shape of a vehicle, was pressed into use. There was a jumble of boxes, chests, trunks, valises, carpet-bags,—a crowd of excited men sweating as never before: women with dishevelled hair, unmindful of their wardrobes, wringing their hands, children crying in the crowd, sentinels guarding each entrance to the train, pushing back at the point of the bayonet the panic-stricken multitude, giving precedence to Davis and the high officials, and informing Mr. Lumpkin that his niggers could not be taken. O, what a loss was there! It would have been fifty thousand dollars out of somebody's pocket in 1861, and millions now of Confederate promises to pay, which the hurrying multitude and that chained slave gang were treading under foot,—trampling the bonds of the Confederate States of America in the mire, as they marched to the station; for the oozy streets were as thickly strewn with four per cents, six per cents, eight per cents, as forest streams with autumn leaves.

"The faith of the Confederate States is pledged to provide and establish sufficient revenues for the regular payment of the interest, and for the redemption of the principal," read the bonds; but there was a sudden eclipse of faith, a collapse of confidence, a shrivelling up like a parched scroll of the entire Confederacy, which was a base counterfeit of the American Union it sought to overturn and supplant, now an exploded concern, and wound up by Grant's orders, its bonds, notes, and certificates of indebtedness worth less than the paper on which they were printed.

Soon after dark the commissaries, having loaded all the army wagons with supplies, began the destruction of what they could not carry away. In the medical purveyor's department were several hundred barrels of whiskey, which were rolled into the street and stove in by soldiers with axes. As the liquor ran down the gutter, officers and soldiers filled their flasks and canteens, while those who had no canteen threw themselves upon the ground and drank from the fiery stream. The rabble with pitchers, basins, dipped it up and drank as if it were the wine of life. The liquor soon began to show its effects. The crowd became a mob, and rushed upon the stores and government warehouses. The soldiers on guard at first kept them at bay, but as the darkness deepened the whiskey-maddened crowd became more furious. By midnight there was a grand saturnalia. The flour in the government stores was seized. Men were seen rolling hogsheads of bacon through the streets. Women filled their aprons with meal, their arms with candles. Later in the night the floating dÉbris of the army reached the city,—the teamsters, servants, ambulance-drivers, with stragglers from the ranks, who pillaged the stores. First attacking the clothing, boot, and hat stores, then the jewellers' shops and the saloons, and lastly the dry-goods establishments. Costly panes of glass were shivered by the butts of their muskets, and the reckless crowd poured in to seize whatever for the moment pleased their fancy, to be thrown aside the next instant for something more attractive.

"As I passed the old market-house," writes a Rebel soldier, "I met a tall fellow with both arms full of sticks of candy, dropping part of his sweet burden at every step."

"Stranger," said he, "have you got a sweet tooth?"

"I told him that I did not object to candy."

"Then go up to Antoni's and get your belly full, and all for nothing."

"A citizen passed me with an armful of hats and caps. 'It is every man for himself and the Devil for us all to-night,' he said, as he rushed past me."[97]

The train which bore Jeff Davis from the city left at eight o'clock in the evening. He took his horses and coach on board for a flight across the country, in case Sheridan stopped the cars. He was greatly depressed in spirits, and his countenance was haggard and care-worn. At the station there was a crowd of men who had fawned upon him,—office-holders, legislators, and public-spirited citizens who had made great sacrifices for the Rebellion,—who, now that they wished to obtain standing room upon the train, found themselves rudely thrust aside by the orders of the President. They were of no more account than the rest of the excited populace that knew Davis but to execrate him.

In the Sabbath evening twilight, the train, with the fugitive government, its stolen bullion, and its Doctors of Divinity on board, moved out from the city.

At the same hour the Governor of Virginia, William Smith, and the Legislature, embarked in a canal-boat, on the James River and Kanawha Canal, for Lynchburg. On all the roads were men, women, and children, in carriages of every description, with multitudes on horseback and on foot, flying from the Rebel capital. Men who could not get away were secretly at work, during those night-hours, burying plate and money in gardens; ladies secreted their jewels, barred and bolted their doors, and passed a sleepless night, fearful of the morrow, which would bring in the despised "Vandal horde of Yankee ruffians"; for such were the epithets they had persistently applied to the soldiers of the Union throughout the war.

But the government was not quite through with its operations in Richmond. General Ewell remained till daylight on Monday morning to clear up things,—not to burn public archives in order to destroy evidence of Confederate villany, but to add to the crime already committed another so atrocious that the stanchest friends of the Confederacy recoiled with horror even from its contemplation.

It was past midnight when the Mayor learned that Ewell had issued orders for firing the government buildings and the tobacco warehouses. He sent a deputation of prominent citizens to remonstrate. They were referred to Major Melton, who was to apply the torch.

"It is a cowardly pretext on the part of the citizens, trumped up to save their property for the Yankees," said he.

The committee endeavored to dissuade him from the act.

"I shall execute my orders," said he.

They went to General Ewell, who with an oath informed them that the torch would be applied at daylight. Breckenridge was there, who said that it would be a disgrace to the Confederate government to endanger the destruction of the entire city. He was Secretary of War, and could have countermanded the order. Will not history hold him accountable?

To prevent the United States from obtaining possession of a few thousand hogsheads of tobacco, a thousand houses were destroyed by fire, the heart of the city burnt out,—all of the business portion, all the banks and insurance-offices, half of the newspapers, with mills, depots, bridges, founderies, workshops, dwellings, churches,—thirty squares in all, swept clean by the devouring flames. It was the final work of the Confederate government. Inaugurated in heat and passion, carried on by hate and prejudice, its end was but in keeping with its career,—the total disregard of the rights of person and property.

In the outskirts of the city, on the Mechanicsville road, was the almshouse, filled with the lame, the blind, the halt, poor, sick, bed-ridden creatures. Ten rods distant was a magazine containing fifteen or twenty kegs of powder, which might have been rolled into the creek near at hand, and was of little value to a victorious army with full supplies of ammunition; but the order of Jeff Davis to blow up the magazines was peremptory and must be executed.

"We give you fifteen minutes to get out of the way," was the sole notice to that crowd of helpless beings lying in their cots, at three o'clock in the morning. Men and women begged for mercy; but their cries were in vain. The officer in charge of the matter was inexorable. Clotheless and shoeless, the inmates ran in terror from the spot to seek shelter in the ravines; but those who could not run while the train to fire it was being laid, rent the air with shrieks of agony. The match was applied at the time. The concussion crushed in the broad side of the house as if it had been pasteboard. Windows flew into flinders. Bricks, stones, timbers, beams, and boards were whirled through the air. Trees were twisted off like withes in the hands of a giant. The city was wrenched and rocked as by a volcanic convulsion. The dozen poor wretches whose infirmities prevented their leaving the house wore horribly mangled; and when the fugitives who had sought shelter in the fields returned to the ruins they found only the bruised and blackened remains of their fellow-inmates.

Let us take a parting glance at the Rebel army as it leaves the city.

The day is brightening in the east. The long line of baggage-wagons and the artillery has been rumbling over the bridges all night. The railroad trains have been busy in conveying the persons and property of both the government and the people; but the last has departed, and still a disappointed crowd is left at the depot. The roads leading west are filled with fugitives in all sorts of vehicles, and on horseback and on foot.

Men are rolling barrels of tar and turpentine upon the bridges. Guards stand upon the Manchester side to prevent the return of any soldier belonging to Richmond. Custis Lee's division has crossed, and Kershaw's division, mainly of South Carolinians, follows. The troops march silently; they are depressed in spirit. The rabble of Manchester have found out what fine times their friends in Richmond are having, and old women and girls are streaming across the bridges laden with plunder,—webs of cloth, blankets, overcoats, and food from the government storehouses. The war-worn soldiers, ragged and barefoot, behold it, and utter curses against the Confederate government for having deprived them of clothing and food.

General Ewell crosses the bridge, riding an iron-gray horse. He wears an old faded cloak and slouch hat. He is brutal and profane, mingling oaths with his orders. Following him is John Cabel Breckenridge, the long, black, glossy hair of other days changed to gray, his high, broad forehead wrinkled and furrowed. He is in plain black, with a talma thrown over his shoulders. He talks with Ewell, and gazes upon the scene. Suddenly a broad flash of light leaps up beyond the city, accompanied with a dull, heavy roar, and he sees the air filled with flying timbers of the hospital, whose inmates, almost without warning, and without cause or crime, are blown into eternity.

The last division has crossed the river. The sun is up. A match is touched to the turpentine spread along the timbers, and the bridges are in flames; also the tobacco warehouses, the flouring-mills, the arsenals, and laboratory. The Rebel troops behold the conflagration as they wind along the roads and through the green fields towards the southwest, and memory brings back the scenes of their earlier rejoicing. It is the 2d of April, four years lacking two weeks since the drunken carousal over the passage of the ordinance of Secession.

Ruins of Richmond.

It was a little past four o'clock when Major A. H. Stevens of the Fourth Massachusetts cavalry, and Provost Marshal of the Twenty-Fifth Army Corps, with detachments from companies E and H, started upon a reconnoissance of the enemy's intrenchments. He found them evacuated and the guns spiked. A deserter piloted the detachment safely over the torpedoes which had been planted in front of them. A mile and a half out from the city, Major Stevens met a barouche and five men mounted bearing a white flag. The party consisted of the Mayor, Judge Meredith of the Confederate States Court, and other gentlemen, who tendered the surrender of the city. He went into the city and was received with joy by the colored people, who shouted their thanks to the Lord that the Yankees had come. He proceeded to the Capitol, ascended the roof, pulled down the State flag which was flying, and raised the guidons of the two companies upon the building.

The flames were spreading, and the people, horror-struck and stupefied by the events of the night, were powerless to arrest them. On, on, from dwelling to warehouse, from store to hotel, from hotel to banks, to the newspaper offices, to churches, all along Main Street from near the Spottswood Hotel to the eastern end of the town; then back to the river, to the bridges across the James, up to the large stone fire-proof building, erected by the United States for a post-office, full of Confederate shinplasters, around this, on both sides of it, up to Capitol Square, the flames roared and leaped and crackled, consuming all the business part of the city. In the arsenal were several thousand shells, which exploded at intervals, throwing fragments of iron, burning timbers, and blazing brands and cinders over the surrounding buildings, and driving the people from their homes.

Major Stevens ordered the fire-engines into position, posted his soldiers to preserve order, and called upon the citizens to work the engines, and did what he could to stop the progress of the devouring element.

General Weitzel triumphantly entered the city at eight o'clock, the colored soldiers singing the John Brown song. With even ranks and steady step, colors waving, drums beating, bands playing, the columns passed up the streets, flanked with fire, to the Capitol. Then stacking their guns, and laying aside their knapsacks, they sprang to the engines, or mounted the roofs and poured in buckets of water, or tore down buildings, to stop the ravages of the fire kindled by the departing Rebels,—emulating the noble example of their comrades in arms at Charleston; like them manifesting no vindictiveness of spirit, but forgetting self in their devotion to duty, forgetting wrong and insult and outrage in their desire to serve their oppressors in their hour of extremity.

The business portion was a sea of flame when I entered the city in the afternoon. I tried to pass through Main Street, but on both sides the fire was roaring and walls were tumbling. I turned into a side street, rode up to the Capitol, and then to the Spottswood Hotel. Dr. Reed's church in front was in flames. On the three sides of the hotel the fire had been raging, but was now subdued, and there was a fair prospect that it would be saved.

"Can you accommodate me with a room?"

"I reckon we can, sir, but like enough you will be burnt out before morning. You can have any room you choose. Nobody here."

I registered my name on a page which bore the names of a score of Rebel officers who had left in the morning, and took a room on the first floor, from which I could easily spring to the ground in case the hotel should be again endangered by the fire.

Throwing up the sash I looked out upon the scene. There were swaying chimneys, tottering walls, streets impassable from piles of brick, stones, and rubbish. Capitol Square was filled with furniture, beds, clothing, crockery, chairs, tables, looking-glasses. Women were weeping, children crying. Men stood speechless, haggard, wobegone, gazing at the desolation.

In Charleston the streets echoed only to the sound of my own footsteps or the snarling of hungry curs. There I walked through weeds, and trod upon flowers in the grassy streets; but in Richmond I waded through Confederate promises to pay, public documents, and broken furniture and crockery.

Granite columns, iron pillars, marble faÇades, broken into thousands of pieces, blocked the streets. The Bank of Richmond, Bank of the Commonwealth, Traders' Bank, Bank of Virginia, Farmers' Bank, a score of private banking-houses, the American Hotel, the Columbian Hotel, the Enquirer and the Dispatch printing-offices, the Confederate Post-Office Department, the State Court-House, the Mechanics' Institute, all the insurance offices, the Confederate War Department, the Confederate Arsenal, the Laboratory, Dr. Reed's church, several founderies and machine-shops, the Henrico County Court-House, the Danville and the Petersburg depots, the three bridges across the James, the great flouring-mills, and all the best stores of the city, were destroyed.

Soldiers from General Devens's command were on the roof of the Capitol, Governor's house, and other buildings, ready to extinguish the flames. The Capitol several times caught fire from cinders.

"If it had not been for the soldiers the whole city would have gone," said a citizen.

The colored soldiers in Capitol Square were dividing their rations with the houseless women and children, giving them hot coffee, sweetened with sugar,—such as they had not tasted for many months. There were ludicrous scenes. One negro had three Dutch-ovens on his head, piled one above another, a stew-pan in one hand and a skillet in the other. Women had bags of flour in their arms, baskets of salt and pails of molasses, or sides of bacon. No miser ever gloated over his gold so eagerly as they over their supply of provisions. They had all but starved, but now they could eat till satisfied.

How stirring the events of that day! Lee retreating, Grant pursuing; Davis a fugitive; the Governor and Legislature of Virginia seeking safety in a canal-boat; Doctors of Divinity fleeing from the wrath they feared; the troops of the Union marching up the streets; the old flag waving over the Capitol; Rebel ironclads blowing up; Richmond on fire; the billows rolling from square to square, unopposed in their progress by the bewildered crowd; and the Northern Vandals laying down their arms, not to the enemy in the field, but the better to battle with a foe not more relentless, but less controllable with the weapons of war. Weird the scenes of that strange, eventful night,—the glimmering flames, the clouds of smoke hanging like a funeral pall above the ruins, the crowd of homeless creatures wandering the streets.

"Such resting found the soles of unblest feet!" In the morning I visited the Capitol building, which, like the Confederacy, had become exceedingly dilapidated, the windows broken, the carpets faded, the paint dingy.

General Weitzel was in the Senate Chamber issuing his orders; also General Shepley, Military Governor, and General Devens.

The door opened, and a smooth-faced man, with a keen eye, firm, quick, resolute step, entered. He wore a plain blue blouse with three stars on the collar. It was the hero who opened the way to New Orleans, and who fought the battle of the Mobile forts from the masthead of his vessel,—Admiral Farragut. He was accompanied by General Gordon of Massachusetts, commanding the Department of Norfolk. They heard the news Monday noon, and made all haste up the James, landing at Varina and taking horses to the city. It was a pleasure to take the brave Admiral's hand, and answer his eager questions as to what Grant had done. Being latest of all present from Petersburg, I could give him the desired information. "Thank God, it is about over," said he of the Rebellion.

It was a little past noon when I walked down to the river bank to view the desolation. While there I saw a boat pulled by twelve rowers coming up stream, containing President Lincoln and his little son, Admiral Porter, and three officers. Forty or fifty freedmen—sole possessors of themselves for twenty-four hours—were at work on the bank of the canal, under the direction of a lieutenant, securing some floating timber; they crowded round the President, forgetting work in their wild joy at beholding the face of the author of the great Emancipation Proclamation. As he approached I said to a colored woman,—

"There is the man who made you free."

"What, massa?"

"That is President Lincoln."

"Dat President Linkum?"

"Yes."

She gazed at him a moment in amazement, joy, rapture, as if in supernal presence, then clapped her hands, jumped and shouted, "Glory! glory! glory!"

"God bless you, Sah!" said one, taking off his cap and bowing very low.

"Hurrah! hurrah! President Linkum hab come! President Linkum hab come!" rang through the street.

The lieutenant found himself without men. What cared those freedmen, fresh from the house of bondage, for floating timber or military commands? Their deliverer had come,—he who, next to the Lord Jesus, was their best friend! It was not a hurrah that they gave so much as a wild, jubilant cry of inexpressible joy.

They pressed round the President, ran ahead, and hovered upon the flanks and rear of the little company. Men, women, and children joined the constantly increasing throng. They came from all the streets, running in breathless haste, shouting and hallooing, and dancing with delight. The men threw up their hats, the women waved their bonnets and handkerchiefs, clapped their hands, and shouted, "Glory to God! glory! glory! glory!"—rendering all the praise to God, who had given them freedom, after long years of weary waiting, and had permitted them thus unexpectedly to meet their great benefactor.

"I thank you, dear Jesus, that I behold President Linkum!" was the exclamation of a woman who stood upon the threshold of her humble home, and with streaming eyes and clasped hands, gave thanks aloud to the Saviour of men.

Another, more demonstrative, was jumping and swinging her arms, crying, "Bless de Lord! Bless de Lord! Bless de Lord!" as if there could be no end of her thankfulness.

No carriage was to be had, so the President, leading his son, walked to General Weitzel's head-quarters,—Jeff Davis's mansion. Six sailors, wearing their round blue caps and short jackets and baggy pants, with navy carbines, formed the guard. Next came the President and Admiral Porter, flanked by the officers accompanying him, and the writer, then six more sailors with carbines,—twenty of us in all.

The walk was long, and the President halted a moment to rest. "May de good Lord bless you, President Linkum!" said an old negro, removing his hat and bowing, with tears of joy rolling down his cheeks. The President removed his own hat and bowed in silence: it was a bow which upset the forms, laws, customs, and ceremonies of centuries of slavery. It was a death-shock to chivalry, and a mortal wound to caste. Recognize a nigger! Disgusting. A woman in an adjoining house beheld it, and turned from the scene with unspeakable contempt. There were men in the surging mass who looked daggers from their eyes, and felt murder in their hearts, if they did not breathe it from their lips. But the hour of sacrifice had not yet come; the chosen assassin was not there; the crowning work of treason and traitors yet remained to be performed. Not the capital of the defunct slave Confederacy, but of the restored nation, was to be the scene of the last brutal act in the tragedy of horrors perpetrated in the name of Christianity. The great-hearted, noble-minded, wise-headed man, whom Providence had placed in the Executive chair to carry successfully through the bloody war of freedom against slavery to its glorious consummation, passed on to the mansion from whence the usurping President had fled.

When the soldiers saw him amid the noisy crowd they cheered lustily. It was an unexpected ovation. Such a welcome, such homage, true, heartfelt, deep, impassioned, no prince or prelate ever received.

The streets becoming impassable on account of the increasing multitude, soldiers were summoned to clear the way. How strange the event! The President of the United States—he who had been hated, despised, maligned above all other men living by the people of Richmond—was walking its streets, receiving every evidence of love and honor! How bitter the reflections of that moment to some who beheld him, who remembered, perhaps, that day in May, 1861, when Jefferson Davis entered the city,—the pageant of that hour, his speech, his promise to smite the smiter, to drench the fields of Virginia with richer blood than that shed at Buena Vista! How that part of the promise had been kept; how their sons, brothers, and friends had fallen; how all else predicted had failed; how the land had been filled with mourning; how the State had become a desolation; how their property, wealth, had disappeared! They had been invited to a gorgeous banquet; the fruit was fair to the eye, golden and beautiful, but it had turned to ashes. They had been promised a high place among the nations. Cotton was the king of kings; and England, France, and the whole civilized world would bow in humble submission to his majesty. That was the promise; but now their king was dethroned, their government overthrown, their President and his cabinet vagrants. They had been promised affluence, Richmond was to be the metropolis of the Confederacy, and Virginia the all-powerful State of the new nation. How terrible the cheat! Their thousand-dollar bonds were not worth a penny. A million dollars would not purchase a dinner. Their money was valueless, their slaves were freemen, the heart of their city was in ashes. They had been deluded in everything. Those whom they had most trusted had most abused their confidence; and at last, in the most unfeeling and inhuman manner, had fired their dwellings, destroying property they could no longer use or levy upon, thus adding arson and robbery to the already long list of their crimes.

The people of Richmond were in despair, having no means for present subsistence, or to rebuild or commence business again. All their heroism, hardship, suffering, expenditure of treasure, and sacrifice of blood had availed them nothing. There could be no comfort in their mourning, no alleviation to their sorrow. All had been lost in an unrighteous cause, which God had not prospered, and no satisfaction could be derived from their participation in it. For try to deceive themselves as they might into a belief that the conflict was unavoidable by the encroachments of the North upon the South, they could but remember the security and peace they enjoyed in the Union, little of which they had felt or dared hope for in their Utopian scheme of slavery.

At length we reached the house from which Jeff Davis had so recently departed, where General Weitzel had established his head-quarters. The President entered and sat wearily down in an arm-chair which stood in the fugitive President's reception-room. General Weitzel introduced the officers present. Judge Campbell entered. At the beginning of the war he was on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States, afterwards espoused Secession, and was appointed assistant Secretary of War under Seddon. He was tall, and looked pale, care-worn, agitated, and bowed very low to the President, who received him with dignity, and yet cordially.

President Lincoln, accompanied by Admiral Porter, General Weitzel, and General Shepley, rode through the city, escorted by a squadron of cavalry, followed by thousands of colored people, shouting "Glory to God!" They had seen great hardship and suffering. A few were well dressed. Some wore pants of Union blue and coats of Confederate gray. Others were in rags. The President was much affected as they crowded around the carriage to touch his hands, and pour out their thanks. "They that walked in darkness had seen a great light." Their great deliverer was among them. He came not as a conqueror, not as the head of a mighty nation,—

"Not with the roll of the stirring drum,
Nor the trumpet that sings of fame,"—

but as a plain, unpretending American citizen, a representative republican Chief Magistrate, unheralded, almost unattended, with "malice towards none, with charity for all," as he had but a few weeks previously proclaimed from the steps of the Capitol at Washington.

He visited Libby prison, breathed for a moment its fetid air, gazed upon the iron-grated windows and the reeking filth upon the slippery floors, and gave way to uncontrollable emotions.

Libby Prison! What horrors it recalls! What sighs and groans! What prayers and tears! What dying out of hope! What wasting away of body and mind! What nights of darkness settling on human souls! Its door an entrance to a living charnel-house, its iron-barred windows but the outlook of hell! It was the Inferno of the slave Confederacy. Well might have been written over its portal, "All hope abandon, ye who enter here."

Visiting the prison the next morning, I found it occupied by several hundred Rebels, who were peering from the grated windows, looking sadly upon the desolation around them. A large number were upon the roof, breathing the fresh air, and gazing upon the fields beyond the James, now green with the verdure of spring. Such liberty was never granted Union prisoners. Whoever approached the prison bars, or laid his hand upon them, became the victim of a Rebel bullet.

There was a crowd of women with pails and buckets at the windows, giving the prisoners provisions and talking freely with their friends, who came not only to the windows, but to the door, where the good-natured sentinel allowed conversation without restraint.

The officer in charge conducted our party through the wards. The air was saturated with vile odors, arising from the unwashed crowd,—from old rags and dirty garments, from puddles of filthy water which dripped through the floor, ran down the walls, sickening to all the senses. From this prison fifteen hundred men were hurried to the flag-of-truce boat on Sunday, that they might be exchanged before the evacuation of the city. Many thousands had lived there month after month, wasting away, starving, dying of fever, of consumption, of all diseases known to medical science,—from insanity, despair, idiocy,—having no communication with the outer world, no food from friends, no sympathy, no compassion,—tortured to death through rigor of imprisonment, by men whose hearts grew harder from day to day by the brutality they practised.

"Please give me a bit of bread, Aunty, I am starving," was the plea one day of a young soldier who saw a negro woman passing the window. He thrust his emaciated hand between the bars and clutched the bit which she cheerfully gave him; but before it had passed between his teeth he saw the brains of his benefactress spattered upon the sidewalk by the sentinel!

Although the city was in possession of the Union forces, there were many residents who believed that Lee would retrieve the disaster.

"I was sorry," said a citizen, "to see the Stars and Stripes torn down in 1861. It is the prettiest flag in the world, but I shed tears when I saw it raised over the Capitol of Virginia on Sunday morning."

"Why so?" I asked.

"Because it was done without the consent of the State of Virginia."

"Then you still cling to the idea that a State is more than the nation."

"Yes; State rights above everything."

"Don't you think the war is almost over,—that it is useless for Lee to contend further?" "No. He will fight another battle, and he will win. He can fight for twenty-five years in the mountains."

"Do you think that men can live in the mountains?"

"Yes; on roots and herbs, and fight you till you are weary of it, and whip you out."

A friend called upon one of the most aristocratic families of the place. He found that men and women alike were exceedingly bitter and defiant. They never would yield. They would fight through a generation, and defeat the Yankees at last.

They were proud of the Old Dominion, the mother of States and of Presidents, proud of their ancestry, of the chivalry of Virginia, and gave free expression to their hatred.

Having heard that a brigade of colored troops had been enlisted in Richmond for the Rebel army, I made inquiries to ascertain the facts. All through the war the Rebel authorities had engaged a large number of slaves as teamsters and laborers. The immense fortifications thrown up around Richmond, Yorktown, Petersburg, Wilmington, Charleston, and Savannah were the work of slaves. The Rebels said that slavery, instead of being a weakness, was an element of strength. Slaves built the fortifications and raised the corn and wheat, which enabled the Confederacy to send all of its white fighting population to the field. But the fighting material was used up. Men were wanted. An unsparing conscription failed to fill up the ranks. Then came the agitation of the question of employing negro soldiers.

General Lee advocated the measure. "They possess," said he, "all the physical qualifications, and their habits of obedience constitute a good foundation for discipline. I think those who are employed should be freed. It would neither be just nor wise, in my opinion, to require them to serve as slaves. The best course to pursue, it seems to me, would be to call for such as are willing to come,—willing to come, with the consent of their owners. An impressment or draft would not be likely to bring out the best class, and the use of coercion would make the measure distasteful to them and to their owners."

The subject was debated in secret session in Congress, and a bill enacted authorizing their employment.

A great meeting was held in the African church to "fire the Southern heart," and speeches were made. A recruiting-office was opened. The newspapers spoke of the success of the movement. Regiments were organizing.

"I fear there will soon be a great scarcity of arms when the negroes are drilled," wrote the Rebel war clerk in his diary on the 11th of March; and five days later, on the 17th, "We shall have a negro army. Letters are pouring into the department from men of military skill and character, asking authority to raise companies, battalions, and regiments of negro troops. It is the desperate remedy for the very desperate case, and may be successful. If three hundred thousand efficient soldiers can be made of this material, there is no conjecturing when the next campaign may end."

A week later the colored troops had a parade in Capitol Square. There were so few, that the war clerk said it was "rather a ridiculous affair."

"How many colored men enlisted?" I asked of a negro.

"'Bout fifty, I reckon, sir. Dey was mostly poor Souf Carolina darkies,—poor heathen fellers, who didn't know no better."

"Would you have fought against the Yankees?"

"No, sir. Dey might have shot me through de body wid ninety thousand balls, before I would have fired a gun at my friends."

"Then you look upon us as your friends?"

"Yes, sir. I have prayed for you to come; and do you think that I would have prayed one way and fit de other?"

"I'll tell you, massa, what I would have done," said another, taking off his hat and bowing: "I would have taken de gun, and when I cotched a chance I'd a shooted it at de Rebs and den run for de Yankees."

This brought a general explosion from the crowd, and arrested the attention of some white men passing.

We were in the street west of the Capitol. I had but to raise my eyes to see the Stars and Stripes waving in the evening breeze. A few paces distant were the ruins of the Rebel War Department, from whence were issued the orders to starve our prisoners at Belle Isle, Salisbury, and Andersonville. Not far were the walls of Dr. Reed's church, where a specious Gospel had been preached, and near by was the church of Dr. Minnegerode. The street was full of people. I was a stranger to them all, but I ventured to make this inquiry,—

"Did you ever see an Abolitionist?"

"No, massa, I reckon I neber did," was the reply.

"What kind of people do you think they are?"

"Well, massa, I specs dey is a good kind of people."

"Why do you think so?"

"'Case when I hear bad white folks swearing and cursing about 'em, I reckon dar must be something good about 'em."

"Well, my friends, I am an Abolitionist; I believe that all men have equal rights, and that I have no more right to make a slave of you than you have of me."

Every hat came off in an instant. Hands were reached out toward me, and I heard from a dozen tongues a hearty "God bless you, sir!"

White men heard me and scowled. Had I uttered those words in Richmond twenty-four hours earlier I should have had no opportunity to repeat them, but paid for my temerity with a halter or a knife; but now those men who stretched out their hands to me would have given the last drop of their blood before they would have seen a hair of my head injured, after that declaration.

The slaves were the true loyal men of the South. They did what they could to help put down the Rebellion by aiding Union prisoners to escape, by giving trustworthy information. The Stars and Stripes was their banner of hope. What a life they led! I met a young colored man, with features more Anglo-Saxon than African, who asked,—

"Do you think, sir, that I could obtain employment in the North?"

"What can you do?"

"Well, sir, I have been an assistant in a drug store. I can put up prescriptions. I paid forty dollars a month for my time before the Confederate money became worthless, but my master thought that I was going to run away to the Yankees, and sold me awhile ago; and he was my own father, sir."

"Your own father?"

"Yes, sir! They often sell their own flesh and blood, sir!" Among the correspondents accompanying the army was a gentleman connected with the Philadelphia Press, Mr. Chester, tall, stout, and muscular. God had given him a colored skin, but beneath it lay a courageous heart. Visiting the Capitol, he entered the Senate chamber and sat down in the Speaker's chair to write a letter. A paroled Rebel officer entered the room.

"Come out of there, you black cuss!" shouted the officer, clenching his fist.

Mr. Chester raised his eyes, calmly surveyed the intruder, and went on with his writing.

"Get out of there, or I'll knock your brains out!" the officer bellowed, pouring out a torrent of oaths; and rushing up the steps to execute his threat, found himself tumbling over chairs and benches, knocked down by one well-planted blow between his eyes.

Mr. Chester sat down as if nothing had happened. The Rebel sprang to his feet and called upon Captain Hutchins of General Devens's staff for a sword.

"I'll cut the fellow's heart out," said he.

"O no, I guess not. I can't let you have my sword for any such purpose. If you want to fight, I will clear a space here, and see that you have fair play, but let me tell you that you will get a tremendous thrashing," said Captain Hutchins.

The officer left the hall in disgust. "I thought I would exercise my rights as a belligerent," said Mr. Chester.

I ascended the steps of the Capitol and stood on the roof of the building to gaze upon the panorama, hardly surpassed in beauty anywhere,—a lovely combination of city, country, valley, hill, plain, field, forest, and foaming river. The events of four years came to remembrance. First, the secession of the state on the 17th of April, 1861, by the convention which sat with closed doors in the hall below, the threats of violence uttered against the Union delegates from the western counties, the wild tumult of the "People's Convention," so called, in Metropolitan Hall,—a body of Jacobins assembling to browbeat the convention in the Capitol; and when the ordinance was passed, the appearance of John Tyler, once President of the United States, with Governor Wise, among the fire-eaters, welcomed with noisy cheers; it seemed as if I could hear the voice of Tyler as he said that Virginia and the people of the South had submitted to aggression till secession was a duty, and that the Almighty would smile upon the work of that day. They were the words of a feeble old man, whose every official act was in the interest of slavery. Vehement the words of Wise, who imagined that the Yankees had seized one of his children as a hostage for himself.

"If they suppose," said he, "that hostages of my own heart's blood will stay my hand in a contest for the maintenance of sacred rights, they are mistaken. Affection for kindred, property, and life itself sink into insignificance in comparison with the overwhelming importance of public duty in such a crisis as this."

Mason, the lordly senator, and Governor Letcher, the drunken executive of the State, also addressed the crazy crowd, fired to a burning heat of madness by passion and whiskey.

On that occasion the Confederate flag was raised upon the flagstaff springing from the roof of the Capitol, although the State had not joined the Confederacy. The people were to vote on the question, and yet the Convention had enjoined that the act of secession should be kept a secret till Norfolk Navy Yard and Harper's Ferry Arsenal could be seized.[98] The newspapers of Richmond had no announcement to make the next morning that the State was no longer a member of the Union. What honorable, high-minded, "chivalrous" proceedings!

Then came the volunteers thronging the streets. Professor Jackson (Stonewall) was drilling the cadets. Three days after the passage of the ordinance of secession, troops were swarming in the yard around the Capitol, and A. H. Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederacy, and Ex-President Tyler, and the drunken Letcher were negotiating an alliance offensive and defensive between the sovereign State of Virginia and the States already confederated to establish a slaveholding republic.

Next in order was the arrival of Jeff Davis and the perambulating government of the Confederacy, to tarry a few days in Richmond before proceeding to Washington. Davis and his followers made boastful promises of what they could and would do, breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the hated Yankees. Then the hurly-burly,—the rush of volunteers, the arrival of troops, welcomed with cheers and smiles, the streets through which they passed strewn with flowers by the ladies of Richmond. The Confederate Congress and heads of departments came,—Stephens, Toombs, Cobb, Floyd, Wigfall, Memminger, Mallory,—with thousands of place-hunters, filling the city to overflowing, putting money into the pockets of the citizens,—not gold and silver, but Confederate currency, to be redeemed two years after the ratification of the treaty of peace with the United States. Beauregard, the rising star of the South, came from Charleston, to reap fresh laurels at Manassas. Richmond was solemn on that memorable Sabbath, the 21st of June, 1861, for through the forenoon the reports were that the Yankees were winning the day; but at night, when the news came from Davis that the "cowardly horde" was flying, panic-stricken, to Washington, how jubilant the crowd!

A year later there were pale faces, when the army of McClellan swept through Williamsburg. Jeff Davis packed up his furniture, and made preparations to leave the city. There was another fright when the Rebels came back discomfited from Fair Oaks.

From the roof of the Capitol anxious eyes watched the war-clouds rolling up from Mechanicsville and Cold Harbor. Those were mournful days. Long lines of ambulances, wagons, coaches, and carts, filled with wounded, filed through the streets. How fearful the slaughter to the Rebels in those memorable seven days' fighting! Deep the maledictions heaped upon the drunken Magruder for the carnage at Malvern Hill.

Beneath the roof on which I stood Stuart, Gregg, and Stonewall Jackson,—dead heroes of the Rebellion,—had reposed in state, mourned by the weeping multitude.

Before me were Libby Prison and Belle Isle. What wretchedness and suffering there! Starvation for soldiers of the Union, within sight of the fertile fields of Manchester, waving with grain and alive with flocks and herds! Nearer the Capitol was the mansion of Jeff Davis, the slave-trader's jail and the slave-market. What agony and cries of distress within the hearing of the Chief Magistrate of the Confederacy, as mothers pressed their infants to their breasts for the last time.

In front of the Capitol was the stone building erected by the United States, where for four years Jeff Davis had played the sovereign, where Benjamin, Memminger, Toombs, Mallory, Sedden, Trenholm, and Breckenridge had exercised authority, dispensing places of profit to their friends, who came in crowds to find exemption from conscription. Beyond, and on either side, was the forest of blackened chimneys, tottering walls, and smoking ruins of the fire which had swept away the accumulated wealth of years in a day. How terrible the retribution! Before the war there was quiet in the city, but there came a reign of terror, when ruffians ruled, when peaceful citizens dared not be abroad after dark. There was sorrow in every household for friends fallen in battle, and Poverty sat by many a hearthstone.

Hardest of all to bear was the charity of their enemies. Under the shadow of the Capitol the Christian and Sanitary Commissions were giving bread to the needy. Standing there upon the roof I could look down upon a throng of men, women, and children receiving food from the kind-hearted delegates, upon whose lips were no words of bitterness, but only the song of the angels,—"Peace on earth, good-will to men!"