Depreciation of Confederate Currency--Rigor of
Conscription--Dissatisfaction with the Confederate Government--Lee
General-in-Chief--J.E. Johnston Reappointed to Oppose Sherman's
March--Value of Slave Property Gone in Richmond--Davis's Recommendation
of Emancipation--Benjamin's Last Despatch to Slidell--Condition of the
Army when Lee took Command--Lee Attempts Negotiations with
Grant--Lincoln's Directions--Lee and Davis Agree upon Line of
Retreat--Assault on Fort Stedman--Five Forks--Evacuation of
Petersburg--Surrender of Richmond--Pursuit of Lee--Surrender of
Lee--Burning of Richmond--Lincoln in Richmond
From the hour of Mr. Lincoln's reëlection the Confederate cause was
doomed. The cheering of the troops which greeted the news from the North
was heard within the lines at Richmond and at Petersburg; and although
the leaders maintained their attitude of defiance, the impression
rapidly gained ground among the people that the end was not far off. The
stimulus of hope being gone, they began to feel the pinch of increasing
want. Their currency had become almost worthless. In October, a dollar
in gold was worth thirty-five dollars in Confederate money. With the
opening of the new year the price rose to sixty dollars, and, despite
the efforts of the Confederate treasury, which would occasionally rush
into the market and beat down the price of gold ten or twenty per cent.
a day, the currency gradually depreciated until a hundred for one was
offered and not taken. It was natural for the citizens of Richmond to
think that monstrous prices were being extorted for food, clothing, and
supplies, when in fact they were paying no more than was reasonable. To
pay a thousand dollars for a barrel of flour was enough to strike a
householder with terror but ten dollars is not a famine price. High
prices, however, even if paid in dry leaves, are a hardship when dry
leaves are not plentiful; and there was scarcity even of Confederate
money in the South.
At every advance of Grant's lines a new alarm was manifested in
Richmond, the first proof of which was always a fresh rigor in enforcing
the conscription laws and the arbitrary orders of the frightened
authorities. After the capture of Fort Harrison, north of the James,
squads of guards were sent into the streets with directions to arrest
every able-bodied man they met. It is said that the medical boards were
ordered to exempt no one capable of bearing arms for ten days. Human
nature will not endure such a strain as this, and desertion grew too
common to punish.
As disaster increased, the Confederate government steadily lost ground
in the confidence and respect of the Southern people. Mr. Davis and his
councilors were doing their best, but they no longer got any credit for
it. From every part of the Confederacy came complaints of what was done,
demands for what was impossible to do. Some of the States were in a
condition near to counter-revolution. A slow paralysis was benumbing the
limbs of the insurrection, and even at the heart its vitality was
plainly declining. The Confederate Congress, which had hitherto been the
mere register of the President's will, now turned upon him. On January
19 it passed a resolution making Lee general-in-chief of the army. This
Mr. Davis might have borne with patience, although it was intended as a
notification that his meddling with military affairs must come to an
end. But far worse was the bitter necessity put upon him as a sequel to
this act, of reappointing General Joseph E. Johnston to the command of
the army which was to resist Sherman's victorious march to the north.
Mr. Seddon, rebel Secretary of War, thinking his honor impugned by a
vote of the Virginia delegation in Congress, resigned. Warnings of
serious demoralization came daily from the army, and disaffection was so
rife in official circles in Richmond that it was not thought politic to
call public attention to it by measures of repression.
It is curious and instructive to note how the act of emancipation had by
this time virtually enforced itself in Richmond. The value of slave
property was gone. It is true that a slave was still occasionally sold,
at a price less than one tenth of what he would have brought before the
war, but servants could be hired of their nominal owners for almost
nothing--merely enough to keep up a show of vassalage. In effect, any
one could hire a negro for his keeping--which was all that anybody in
Richmond, black or white, got for his work. Even Mr. Davis had at last
become docile to the stern teaching of events. In his message of
November he had recommended the employment of forty thousand slaves in
the army--not as soldiers, it is true, save in the last extremity--with
emancipation to come.
On December 27, Mr. Benjamin wrote his last important instruction to
John Slidell, the Confederate commissioner in Europe. It is nothing less
than a cry of despair. Complaining bitterly of the attitude of foreign
nations while the South is fighting the battles of England and France
against the North, he asks: "Are they determined never to recognize the
Southern Confederacy until the United States assent to such action on
their part?" And with a frantic offer to submit to any terms which
Europe might impose as the price of recognition, and a scarcely veiled
threat of making peace with the North unless Europe should act speedily,
the Confederate Department of State closed its four years of fruitless
activity.
Lee assumed command of all the Confederate armies on February 9. His
situation was one of unprecedented gloom. The day before he had reported
that his troops, who had been in line of battle for two days at
Hatcher's Run, exposed to the bad winter weather, had been without meat
for three days. A prodigious effort was made, and the danger of
starvation for the moment averted, but no permanent improvement
resulted. The armies of the Union were closing in from every point of
the compass. Grant was every day pushing his formidable left wing nearer
the only roads by which Lee could escape; Thomas was threatening the
Confederate communications from Tennessee; Sheridan was riding for the
last time up the Shenandoah valley to abolish Early; while from the
south the redoubtable columns of Sherman were moving northward with the
steady pace and irresistible progress of a tragic fate.
A singular and significant attempt at negotiation was made at this time
by General Lee. He was so strong in the confidence of the people of the
South, and the government at Richmond was so rapidly becoming
discredited, that he could doubtless have obtained the popular support
and compelled the assent of the Executive to any measures he thought
proper for the attainment of peace. From this it was easy for him and
for others to come to the wholly erroneous conclusion that General Grant
held a similar relation to the government and people of the United
States. General Lee seized upon the pretext of a conversation reported
to him by General Longstreet as having been held with General E.O.C. Ord
under an ordinary flag of truce for the exchange of prisoners, to
address a letter to Grant, sanctioned by Mr. Davis, saying he had been
informed that General Ord had said General Grant would not decline an
interview with a view "to a satisfactory adjustment of the present
unhappy difficulties by means of a military convention," provided Lee
had authority to act. He therefore proposed to meet General Grant "with
the hope that ... it may be found practicable to submit the subjects of
controversy ... to a convention of the kind mentioned"; professing
himself "authorized to do whatever the result of the proposed interview
may render necessary."
Grant at once telegraphed these overtures to Washington. Stanton
received the despatch at the Capitol, where the President was, according
to his custom, passing the last night of the session of Congress, for
the convenience of signing bills. The Secretary handed the telegram to
Mr. Lincoln, who read it in silence. He asked no advice or suggestion
from any one about him, but, taking up a pen, wrote with his usual
slowness and precision a despatch in Stanton's name, which he showed to
Seward, and then handed to Stanton to be signed and sent. The language
is that of an experienced ruler, perfectly sure of himself and of his
duty:
"The President directs me to say that he wishes you to have no
conference with General Lee, unless it be for capitulation of General
Lee's army, or on some minor or purely military matter. He instructs me
to say that you are not to decide, discuss, or confer upon any political
questions. Such questions the President holds in his own hands, and
will submit them to no military conferences or conventions. Meanwhile,
you are to press to the utmost your military advantages."
Grant answered Lee that he had no authority to accede to his
proposition, and explained that General Ord's language must have been
misunderstood. This closed to the Confederate authorities the last
avenue of hope of any compromise by which the alternative of utter
defeat or unconditional surrender might be avoided.
Early in March, General Lee visited Richmond for conference with Mr.
Davis on the measures to be adopted in the crisis which he saw was
imminent. He had never sympathized with the slight Congress had intended
to put upon Mr. Davis when it gave him supreme military authority, and
continued to the end to treat his President as commander-in-chief of the
forces. There is direct contradiction between Mr. Davis and General Lee
as to how Davis received this statement of the necessities of the
situation. Mr. Davis says he suggested immediate withdrawal from
Richmond, but that Lee said his horses were too weak for the roads in
their present condition, and that he must wait. General Lee, on the
other hand, is quoted as saying that he wished to retire behind the
Staunton River, from which point he might have indefinitely protracted
the war, but that the President overruled him. Both agreed, however,
that sooner or later Richmond must be abandoned, and that the next move
should be to Danville.
But before he turned his back forever upon the lines he had so stoutly
defended, Lee resolved to dash once more at the toils by which he was
surrounded. He placed half his army under the command of General John B.
Gordon, with orders to break through the Union lines at Fort Stedman
and take possession of the high ground behind them. A month earlier
Grant had foreseen some such move on Lee's part, and had ordered General
Parke to be prepared to meet an assault on his center, and to have his
commanders ready to bring all their resources to bear on the point in
danger, adding: "With proper alacrity in this respect I would have no
objection to seeing the enemy get through." This characteristic phrase
throws the strongest light both on Grant's temperament, and on the
mastery of his business at which he had arrived. Under such generalship,
an army's lines are a trap into which entrance is suicide.
The assault was made with great spirit at half-past four on the morning
of March 25. Its initial success was due to a singular cause. The spot
chosen was a favorite point for deserters to pass into the Union lines,
which they had of late been doing in large numbers. When Gordon's
skirmishers, therefore, came stealing through the darkness, they were
mistaken for an unusually large party of deserters, and they
over-powered several picket-posts without firing a shot. The storming
party, following at once, took the trenches with a rush, and in a few
minutes had possession of the main line on the right of the fort, and,
next, of the fort itself. It was hard in the semi-darkness to
distinguish friends from foes, and for a time General Parke was unable
to make headway; but with the growing light his troops advanced from
every direction to mend the breach, and, making short work of the
Confederate detachments, recaptured the fort, opening a cross-fire of
artillery so withering that few of the Confederates could get back to
their own lines. This was, moreover, not the only damage the
Confederates suffered. Humphreys and Wright, on the Union left, rightly
assuming that Parke could take care of himself, instantly searched the
lines in their front to see if they had been essentially weakened to
support Gordon's attack. They found they had not, but in gaining this
knowledge captured the enemy's intrenched picket-lines in front of them,
which, being held, gave inestimable advantage to the Union army in the
struggle of the next week.
Grant's chief anxiety for some time had been lest Lee should abandon his
lines; but though burning to attack, he was delayed by the same bad
roads which kept Lee in Richmond, and by another cause. He did not wish
to move until Sheridan had completed the work assigned him in the
Shenandoah valley and joined either Sherman or the army at Petersburg.
On March 24, however, at the very moment Gordon was making his plans for
next day's sortie, Grant issued his order for the great movement to the
left which was to finish the war. He intended to begin on the
twenty-ninth, but Lee's desperate dash of the twenty-fifth convinced him
that not a moment was to be lost. Sheridan reached City Point on the
twenty-sixth. Sherman came up from North Carolina for a brief visit next
day. The President was also there, and an interesting meeting took place
between these famous brothers in arms and Mr. Lincoln; after which
Sherman went back to Goldsboro, and Grant began pushing his army to the
left with even more than his usual iron energy.
It was a great army--the result of all the power and wisdom of the
government, all the devotion of the people, all the intelligence and
teachableness of the soldiers themselves, and all the ability which a
mighty war had developed in the officers. In command of all was Grant,
the most extraordinary military temperament this country has ever seen.
The numbers of the respective armies in this last grapple have been the
occasion of endless controversy. As nearly as can be ascertained, the
grand total of all arms on the Union side was 124,700; on the
Confederate side, 57,000.
Grant's plan, as announced in his instructions of March 24, was at first
to despatch Sheridan to destroy the South Side and Danville railroads,
at the same time moving a heavy force to the left to insure the success
of this raid, and then to turn Lee's position. But his purpose developed
from hour to hour, and before he had been away from his winter
headquarters one day, he gave up this comparatively narrow scheme, and
adopted the far bolder plan which he carried out to his immortal honor.
He ordered Sheridan not to go after the railroads, but to push for the
enemy's right rear, writing him: "I now feel like ending the matter....
We will act all together as one army here, until it is seen what can be
done with the enemy."
On the thirtieth, Sheridan advanced to Five Forks, where he found a
heavy force of the enemy. Lee, justly alarmed by Grant's movements, had
despatched a sufficient detachment to hold that important cross-roads,
and taken personal command of the remainder on White Oak Ridge. A heavy
rain-storm, beginning on the night of the twenty-ninth and continuing
more than twenty-four hours, greatly impeded the march of the troops. On
the thirty-first, Warren, working his way toward the White Oak road, was
attacked by Lee and driven back on the main line, but rallied, and in
the afternoon drove the enemy again into his works. Sheridan, opposed by
Pickett with a large force of infantry and cavalry, was also forced
back, fighting obstinately, as far as Dinwiddie Court House, from which
point he hopefully reported his situation to Grant at dark. Grant, more
disturbed than Sheridan himself, rained orders and suggestions all
night to effect a concentration at daylight on that portion of the enemy
in front of Sheridan; but Pickett, finding himself out of position,
silently withdrew during the night, and resumed his strongly intrenched
post at Five Forks. Here Sheridan followed him on April 1, and repeated
the successful tactics of his Shenandoah valley exploits so brilliantly
that Lee's right was entirely shattered.
This battle of Five Forks should have ended the war. Lee's right was
routed; his line had been stretched westward until it broke; there was
no longer any hope of saving Richmond, or even of materially delaying
its fall. But Lee apparently thought that even the gain of a day was of
value to the Richmond government, and what was left of his Army of
Northern Virginia was still so perfect in discipline that it answered
with unabated spirit every demand made upon it. Grant, who feared Lee
might get away from Petersburg and overwhelm Sheridan on the White Oak
road, directed that an assault be made all along the line at four
o'clock on the morning of the second. His officers responded with
enthusiasm; and Lee, far from dreaming of attacking any one after the
stunning blow he had received the day before, made what hasty
preparations he could to resist them.
It is painful to record the hard fighting which followed. Wright, in his
assault in front of Forts Fisher and Walsh, lost eleven hundred men in
fifteen minutes of murderous conflict that made them his own; and other
commands fared scarcely better, Union and Confederate troops alike
displaying a gallantry distressing to contemplate when one reflects
that, the war being already decided, all this heroic blood was shed in
vain. The Confederates, from the Appomattox to the Weldon road, fell
slowly back to their inner line of works; and Lee, watching the
formidable advance before which his weakened troops gave way, sent a
message to Richmond announcing his purpose of concentrating on the
Danville road, and made preparations for the evacuation which was now
the only resort left him.
Some Confederate writers express surprise that General Grant did not
attack and destroy Lee's army on April 2; but this is a view, after the
fact, easy to express. The troops on the Union left had been on foot for
eighteen hours, had fought an important battle, marched and
countermarched many miles, and were now confronted by Longstreet's fresh
corps behind formidable works, while the attitude of the force under
Gordon on the south side of the town was such as to require the close
attention of Parke. Grant, anticipating an early retirement of Lee from
his citadel, wisely resolved to avoid the waste and bloodshed of an
immediate assault on the inner lines of Petersburg. He ordered Sheridan
to get upon Lee's line of retreat; sent Humphreys to strengthen him;
then, directing a general bombardment for five o'clock next morning, and
an assault at six, gave himself and his soldiers a little of the rest
they had so richly earned and so seriously needed.
He had telegraphed during the day to President Lincoln, who was still at
City Point, the news as it developed from hour to hour. Prisoners he
regarded as so much net gain: he was weary of slaughter, and wanted the
war ended with as little bloodshed as possible; and it was with delight
that he summed up on Sunday afternoon: "The whole captures since the
army started out gunning will not amount to less than twelve thousand
men, and probably fifty pieces of artillery."
Lee bent all his energies to saving his army and leading it out of its
untenable position on the James to a point from which he could effect a
junction with Johnston in North Carolina. The place selected for this
purpose was Burkeville, at the crossing of the South Side and Danville
roads, fifty miles southwest from Richmond, whence a short distance
would bring him to Danville, where the desired junction could be made.
Even yet he was able to cradle himself in the illusion that it was only
a campaign that had failed, and that he might continue the war
indefinitely in another field. At nightfall all his preparations were
completed, and dismounting at the mouth of the road leading to Amelia
Court House, the first point of rendezvous, where he had directed
supplies to be sent, he watched his troops file noiselessly by in the
darkness. By three o'clock the town was abandoned; at half-past four it
was formally surrendered. Meade, reporting the news to Grant, received
orders to march his army immediately up the Appomattox; and divining
Lee's intentions, Grant also sent word to Sheridan to push with all
speed to the Danville road.
Thus flight and pursuit began almost at the same moment. The
swift-footed Army of Northern Virginia was racing for its life, and
Grant, inspired with more than his habitual tenacity and energy, not
only pressed his enemy in the rear, but hung upon his flank, and
strained every nerve to get in his front. He did not even allow himself
the pleasure of entering Richmond, which surrendered to Weitzel early on
the morning of the third.
All that day Lee pushed forward toward Amelia Court House. There was
little fighting except among the cavalry. A terrible disappointment
awaited Lee on his arrival at Amelia Court House on the fourth. He had
ordered supplies to be forwarded there, but his half-starved troops
found no food awaiting them, and nearly twenty-four hours were lost in
collecting subsistence for men and horses. When he started again on the
night of the fifth, the whole pursuing force was south and stretching
out to the west of him. Burkeville was in Grant's possession; the way to
Danville was barred; the supply of provisions to the south cut off. He
was compelled to change his route to the west, and started for
Lynchburg, which he was destined never to reach.
It had been the intention to attack Lee at Amelia Court House on the
morning of April 6, but learning of his turn to the west, Meade, who was
immediately in pursuit, quickly faced his army about and followed. A
running fight ensued for fourteen miles, the enemy, with remarkable
quickness and dexterity, halting and partly intrenching themselves from
time to time, and the national forces driving them out of every
position; the Union cavalry, meanwhile, harassing the moving left flank
of the Confederates, and working havoc on the trains. They also caused a
grievous loss to history by burning Lee's headquarters baggage, with all
its wealth of returns and reports. At Sailor's Creek, a rivulet running
north into the Appomattox, Ewell's corps was brought to bay, and
important fighting occurred; the day's loss to Lee, there and elsewhere,
amounting to eight thousand in all, with several of his generals among
the prisoners. This day's work was of incalculable value to the national
arms. Sheridan's unerring eye appreciated the full importance of it, his
hasty report ending with the words: "If the thing is pressed, I think
that Lee will surrender." Grant sent the despatch to President Lincoln,
who instantly replied:
"Let the thing be pressed."
In fact, after nightfall of the sixth, Lee's army could only flutter
like a wounded bird with one wing shattered. There was no longer any
possibility of escape; but Lee found it hard to relinquish the illusion
of years, and as soon as night came down he again began his weary march
westward. A slight success on the next day once more raised his hopes;
but his optimism was not shared by his subordinates, and a number of his
principal officers, selecting General Pendleton as their spokesman, made
known to him on the seventh their belief that further resistance was
useless, and advised surrender. Lee told them that they had yet too many
men to think of laying down their arms, but in answer to a courteous
summons from Grant sent that same day, inquired what terms he would be
willing to offer. Without waiting for a reply, he again put his men in
motion, and during all of the eighth the chase and pursuit continued
through a part of Virginia green with spring, and until then unvisited
by hostile armies.
Sheridan, by unheard-of exertions, at last accomplished the important
task of placing himself squarely on Lee's line of retreat. About sunset
of the eighth, his advance captured Appomattox Station and four trains
of provisions. Shortly after, a reconnaissance revealed the fact that
Lee's entire army was coming up the road. Though he had nothing but
cavalry, Sheridan resolved to hold the inestimable advantage he had
gained, and sent a request to Grant to hurry up the required infantry
support; saying that if it reached him that night, they "might perhaps
finish the job in the morning." He added, with singular prescience,
referring to the negotiations which had been opened: "I do not think Lee
means to surrender until compelled to do so."
This was strictly true. When Grant replied to Lee's question about
terms, saying that the only condition he insisted upon was that the
officers and men surrendered should be disqualified from taking up arms
again until properly exchanged, Lee disclaimed any intention to
surrender his army, but proposed to meet Grant to discuss the
restoration of peace. It appears from his own report that even on the
night of the eighth he had no intention of giving up the fight. He
expected to find only cavalry before him next morning, and thought his
remnant of infantry could break through while he himself was amusing
Grant with platonic discussions in the rear. But on arriving at the
rendezvous he had suggested, he received Grant's courteous but decided
refusal to enter into a political negotiation, and also the news that a
formidable force of infantry barred the way and covered the adjacent
hills and valley. The marching of the Confederate army was over forever,
and Lee, suddenly brought to a sense of his real situation, sent orders
to cease hostilities, and wrote another note to Grant, asking an
interview for the purpose of surrendering his army.
The meeting took place at the house of Wilmer McLean, in the edge of the
village of Appomattox, on April 9, 1865. Lee met Grant at the threshold,
and ushered him into a small and barely furnished parlor, where were
soon assembled the leading officers of the national army. General Lee
was accompanied only by his secretary, Colonel Charles Marshall. A short
conversation led up to a request from Lee for the terms on which the
surrender of his army would be received. Grant briefly stated them, and
then wrote them out. Men and officers were to be paroled, and the arms,
artillery, and public property turned over to the officer appointed to
receive them.
"This," he added, "will not embrace the side-arms of the officers, nor
their private horses or baggage. This done, each officer and man will
be allowed to return to their homes, not to be disturbed by United
States authority so long as they observe their parole and the laws in
force where they may reside."
General Grant says in his "Memoirs" that up to the moment when he put
pen to paper he had not thought of a word that he should write. The
terms he had verbally proposed were soon put in writing, and there he
might have stopped. But as he wrote a feeling of sympathy for his
gallant antagonist came over him, and he added the extremely liberal
terms with which his letter closed. The sight of Lee's fine sword
suggested the paragraph allowing officers to retain their side-arms; and
he ended with a phrase he evidently had not thought of, and for which he
had no authority, which practically pardoned and amnestied every man in
Lee's army--a thing he had refused to consider the day before, and which
had been expressly forbidden him in the President's order of March 3.
Yet so great was the joy over the crowning victory, and so deep the
gratitude of the government and people to Grant and his heroic army,
that his terms were accepted as he wrote them, and his exercise of the
Executive prerogative of pardon entirely overlooked. It must be noticed
here, however, that a few days later it led the greatest of Grant's
generals into a serious error.
Lee must have read the memorandum with as much surprise as
gratification. He suggested and gained another important
concession--that those of the cavalry and artillery who owned their own
horses should be allowed to take them home to put in their crops; and
wrote a brief reply accepting the terms. He then remarked that his army
was in a starving condition, and asked Grant to provide them with
subsistence and forage; to which he at once assented, inquiring for how
many men the rations would be wanted. Lee answered, "About twenty-five
thousand"; and orders were given to issue them. The number turned out to
be even greater, the paroles signed amounting to twenty-eight thousand
two hundred and thirty-one. If we add to this the captures made during
the preceding week, and the thousands who deserted the failing cause at
every by-road leading to their homes, we see how considerable an army
Lee commanded when Grant "started out gunning."
With these brief and simple formalities, one of the most momentous
transactions of modern times was concluded. The Union gunners prepared
to fire a national salute, but Grant forbade any rejoicing over a fallen
enemy, who, he hoped, would be an enemy no longer. The next day he rode
to the Confederate lines to make a visit of farewell to General Lee.
They parted with courteous good wishes, and Grant, without pausing to
look at the city he had taken, or the enormous system of works which had
so long held him at bay, hurried away to Washington, intent only upon
putting an end to the waste and burden of war.
A very carnival of fire and destruction had attended the flight of the
Confederate authorities from Richmond. On Sunday night, April 2,
Jefferson Davis, with his cabinet and their more important papers,
hurriedly left the doomed city on one of the crowded and overloaded
railroad trains. The legislature of Virginia and the governor of the
State departed in a canal-boat toward Lynchburg; and every available
vehicle was pressed into service by the frantic inhabitants, all anxious
to get away before their capital was desecrated by the presence of
"Yankee invaders." By the time the military left, early next morning, a
conflagration was already under way. The rebel Congress had passed a
law ordering government tobacco and other public property to be burned.
General Ewell, the military commander, asserts that he took the
responsibility of disobeying the law, and that they were not fired by
his orders. However that may be, flames broke out in various parts of
the city, while a miscellaneous mob, inflamed by excitement and by the
alcohol which had run freely in the gutters the night before, rushed
from store to store, smashing in the doors and indulging all the
wantonness of pillage and greed. Public spirit was paralyzed, and the
whole fabric of society seemed crumbling to pieces, when the convicts
from the penitentiary, a shouting, leaping crowd of party-colored
demons, overcoming their guard, and drunk with liberty, appeared upon
the streets, adding their final dramatic horror to the pandemonium.
It is quite probable that the very magnitude and rapidity of the
disaster served in a measure to mitigate its evil results. The burning
of seven hundred buildings, comprising the entire business portion of
Richmond warehouses, manufactories, mills, depots, and stores, all
within the brief space of a day, was a visitation so sudden, so
unexpected, so stupefying, as to overawe and terrorize even wrong-doers,
and made the harvest of plunder so abundant as to serve to scatter the
mob and satisfy its rapacity to quick repletion.
Before a new hunger could arise, assistance was at hand. General
Weitzel, to whom the city was surrendered, taking up his headquarters in
the house lately occupied by Jefferson Davis, promptly set about the
work of relief; organizing efficient resistance to the fire, which, up
to this time, seems scarcely to have been attempted; issuing rations to
the poor, who had been relentlessly exposed to starvation by the action
of the rebel Congress; and restoring order and personal authority. That
a regiment of black soldiers assisted in this noble work must have
seemed to the white inhabitants of Richmond the final drop in their cup
of misery.
Into the capital, thus stricken and laid waste, came President Lincoln
on the morning of April 4. Never in the history of the world did the
head of a mighty nation and the conqueror of a great rebellion enter the
captured chief city of the insurgents in such humbleness and simplicity.
He had gone two weeks before to City Point for a visit to General Grant,
and to his son, Captain Robert Lincoln, who was serving on Grant's
staff. Making his home on the steamer which brought him, and enjoying
what was probably the most satisfactory relaxation in which he had been
able to indulge during his whole presidential service, he had visited
the various camps of the great army in company with the general, cheered
everywhere by the loving greetings of the soldiers. He had met Sherman
when that commander hurried up fresh from his victorious march, and
after Grant started on his final pursuit of Lee the President still
lingered; and it was at City Point that he received the news of the fall
of Richmond.
Between the receipt of this news and the following forenoon, but before
any information of the great fire had reached them, a visit was arranged
for the President and Rear-Admiral Porter. Ample precautions were taken
at the start. The President went in his own steamer, the _River Queen_,
with her escort, the _Bat_, and a tug used at City Point in landing from
the steamer. Admiral Porter went in his flag-ship, the _Malvern_, and a
transport carried a small cavalry escort and ambulances for the party.
But the obstructions in the river soon made it impossible to proceed in
this fashion. One unforeseen accident after another rendered it
necessary to leave behind even the smaller boats, until finally the
party went on in Admiral Porter's barge, rowed by twelve sailors, and
without escort of any kind. In this manner the President made his advent
into Richmond, landing near Libby Prison. As the party stepped ashore
they found a guide among the contrabands who quickly crowded the
streets, for the possible coming of the President had been circulated
through the city. Ten of the sailors, armed with carbines, were formed
as a guard, six in front and four in rear, and between them the
President, Admiral Porter, and the three officers who accompanied them
walked the long distance, perhaps a mile and a half, to the center of
the town.
The imagination can easily fill up the picture of a gradually increasing
crowd, principally of negroes, following the little group of marines and
officers, with the tall form of the President in its center; and, having
learned that it was indeed Mr. Lincoln, giving expression to joy and
gratitude in the picturesque emotional ejaculations of the colored race.
It is easy also to imagine the sharp anxiety of those who had the
President's safety in charge during this tiresome and even foolhardy
march through a city still in flames, whose white inhabitants were
sullenly resentful at best, and whose grief and anger might at any
moment culminate against the man they looked upon as the incarnation of
their misfortunes. But no accident befell him. Reaching General
Weitzel's headquarters, Mr. Lincoln rested in the mansion Jefferson
Davis had occupied as President of the Confederacy, and after a day of
sight-seeing returned to his steamer and to Washington, to be stricken
down by an assassin's bullet, literally "in the house of his friends."