Four Years in Rebel Capitals Part 42

During all this fitful suspense there was no general fight along the lines, and from time to time hope would flicker up, and for the moment throw the shadows into shape of a possible victory--a saving blow for the storm-racked ship of state, now her decks had been cleared for desperate action. Then it would down, down again, lower than before.

With the end of March the enemy made new combinations. His whole disjointed attacks had been against the South Side road, the main artery of supply and retreat. He had ceased organized attacks on the works, and sought only to strike the communications. Now, Sheridan, with a formidable force, was sent to Five Forks; and Richmond heard, on the first day of April, of desperate fighting between him and Pickett.

Next morning, the 2d April, rose as bright a Sunday as had shone in all Richmond that spring. The churches were crowded, and plainly-dressed women--most of them in mourning--pa.s.sed into their pews with pale, sad faces, on which grief and anxiety had both set their handwriting. There were few men, and most of these came in noisily upon crutches, or pale and worn with fever.

It was no holiday gathering of perfumed and bedizened G.o.dliness, that Sunday in Richmond. Earnest men and women had come to the house of G.o.d, to ask His protection and His blessing, yet a little longer, for the dear ones that very moment battling so hotly for the worshipers.

In the midst of a prayer at Dr. Hoge's church, a courier entered softly, and advancing to Mr. Davis, handed him a telegram. Noiselessly, and with no show of emotion, Mr. Davis left the church, followed by a member of his staff. A moment after another quietly said a few words to the minister; and then the quick apprehensions of the congregation were aroused. Like an electric shock they felt the truth, even before Dr.

Hoge stopped the services and informed them that Richmond would be evacuated that night; and counseled they had best go home and prepare to meet the dreadful to-morrow. The news spread like wildfire. Grant had struck that Sunday morning--had forced the lines, and General Lee was evacuating Petersburg!

The day of wrath had come.

Hastily the few remaining necessaries of the several departments were packed, and sent toward Danville, either by railroad or wagon. Ordnance supplies, that could not be moved, were rolled into the ca.n.a.l; commissary stores were thrown open, and their h.o.a.rded contents distributed to the eager crowds. And strange crowds they were. Fragile, delicate women staggered under the heavy loads they bore to suffering children at home; the pale wife clutched hungrily at the huge ham, or the bag of coffee, for the wounded hero, pining at home for such a delicacy. Children were there with outstretched hands, crying for what they could carry; and h.o.a.ry-headed men tugged wearily at the barrels of pork, flour, or sugar they strove to roll before their weak arms.

Later in the evening, as the excitement increased, fierce crowds of skulking men, and coa.r.s.e, half-drunken women, gathered before the stores. Half-starved and desperate, they swore and fought among themselves over the spoils they seized. Orders had been given to destroy the whisky at once; but, either from lingering tenderness, or from the hurry of the movement, they were only partially obeyed.

Now the uncontrolled swarms of men and women--especially the wharf rats at Rockett's where the navy storehouses were--seized the liquor and became more and more maddened by it. In some places where the barrels were stove, the whisky ran in the gutters ankle deep; and here half-drunken women, and children even, fought, to dip up the coveted fluid in tin pans, buckets, or any vessel available.

Meanwhile, preparation went on rapidly; the President and Cabinet left for the South--General Breckinridge, Secretary of War, alone remaining to direct the details of evacuation. Everything was ready for the few remaining troops to withdraw, leaving the works on the northern side of the James unoccupied, before daylight. Then the officer with the burning party went his rounds, putting the torch to every armory, machine-shop and storehouse belonging to the Government. By midnight these had begun to burn briskly; one lurid glare shot upward to the sky, from the river; then another and another. The gunboats had been fired, and their crews, pa.s.sing to the sh.o.r.e equipped for camp, followed the line of the retreating army up the river bank.

Who, that was in it, will ever forget that bitter night? Husbands hastily arranged what plans they might, for the safety of families they were forced to leave behind; women crept out into the midnight, to conceal the little jewelry, money or silver left them, fearing general sack of the city and treachery of even the most trusted negroes. For none knew but that a brutal and drunken mob might be let loose upon the hated, long-coveted Capital, in their power at last! None knew but that the black rule of Butler might be re-enacted--excelled; and women--who had sat calm and restful, while the battle of Seven Pines and the roar of Seven Days, and the later Cold Harbor, shook their windows--now broke down under that dreadful parting with the last defenders of their hearths! Death and flame they had never blanched before; but the nameless terrors of pa.s.sing under the Yankee yoke vanquished them now.

Pitiful were leave-takings of fathers with their children, husbands with new-made brides, lovers with those who clung to them in even greater helplessness. Ties welded in moments of danger and doubt--in moments of pleasure, precious from their rarity--all must be severed now, for none knew how long--perhaps forever! For man, nor woman, might pierce the black veil before the future. Only the vague oppression was there, that all was over at last; that days to come might mean protracted, b.l.o.o.d.y mountain warfare--captivity, death, separation eternal!

So men went forth into the black midnight, to what fate they dreamed not, leaving those loved beyond self to what fate they dared not dream!

But even in that supreme hour--true to her nature and true to her past--the woman of Richmond thought of her hero-soldier; not of herself. The last crust in the home was thrust into his reluctant hand; the last bottle of rare old wine slyly slipped into his haversack.

Every man in gray was a brother-in-heart to every woman that night!

Long after midnight, I rode by a well-remembered porch, where all that was brightest and gayest of Richmond's youth had pa.s.sed many happy hours. There was Styles Staple; his joyous face clouded now, his glib tongue mute--with two weeping girls clinging to his hands. Solemnly he bent down; pressed his lips to each pure forehead, in a kiss that was a sacrament--threw himself into their mother's arms, as she had been his own as well; then, with a wrench, broke away and hurled himself into saddle. There was a black frown on Staple's face, as he rode up by me; and I heard a sound--part sob; more heart-deep oath--tear out of his throat. If the Recording Angel caught it, too, I dare swear there was no record against him for it, when--thirty hours later--he answered to his name before the Great Roll-Call! For no more knightly lips will ever press those pure brows; no more loyal soul went to its rest, out of that dire retreat.

Two hours after midnight, all was ready; and all was still, save the m.u.f.fled roll of distant wagons and, here and there, the sharp call of a bugle. Now and again, the bright glare, above the smoke round the whole horizon, would pale before a vivid, dazzling flash; followed by swaying tremble of the earth and a roar, hoa.r.s.ely dull; and one more ship of the little navy was a thing of the past.

Later still came to the steady tramp of soldiers--to be heard for the last time in those streets, though its echo may sound down all time!

The last scene of the somber drama had begun; and the skeleton battery-supports filed by like specters, now in the gloom, now in the glare of one of the hundred fires. No sound but the m.u.f.fled word of command came from their ranks; every head was bowed and over many a cheek--tanned by the blaze of the fight and furrowed by winter night-watches--the first tear it had ever known rolled noiselessly, to drop in the beloved dust they were shaking from their feet.

Next came gaunt men, guiding half-starved horses that toiled along with rumbling field-pieces; voiceless now and impotent, as once, to welcome the advancing foe. And finally the cavalry pickets came in, with little show of order; pa.s.sed across the last bridge and fired it behind them.

Over its burning timbers rode General Breckinridge and his staff;--the last group of Confederates was gone;--Richmond was evacuated!

_Dies irae--dies illa!_

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.

AFTER THE DEATH BLOW WAS DEALT.

Just as dawn broke through the smoke-eddies over the deserted Capital, the morning after its evacuation, two carriages crept through the empty streets, toward the fortifications. In them--grave-faced and sad--sat the Mayor of Richmond and a committee of her council, carrying the formal surrender to the Federal commander on the northern bank of the James.

Many a sad, a few terrified, faces peered at them through closed shutters; but the eager groups about the fires, striving still to secure sc.r.a.ps from the flames, never paused for a glance at the men who bore the form of the already accomplished fact.

Before long, eager watchers from Chimborazo Heights saw bluecoats rise dim over the distant crest. Then came the clatter of cavalry, sabers drawn and at a trot; still cautiously feeling their way into the long-coveted stronghold. Behind followed artillery and infantry in compact column, up the River Road, through Rockett's to Capitol Square.

There they halted; raised the Stars-and-stripes on the staff from which the Stars-and-bars had floated--often in their very sight--for four weary, bitter years!

It was a solemn and gloomy march; little resembling the people's idea of triumphal entry into a captured city. The troops were quiet, showing little elation; their officers anxious and watchful ever; and dead silence reigned around them, broken only by the roar and hiss of flames, or the sharp explosion as they reached some magazine. Not a cheer broke the stillness; and even the wrangling, half-drunken b.u.mmers round the fires slunk sullenly away; while but few negroes showed their faces, and those ashen-black from indefinite fear; their great mouths gaping and white eyes rolling in curious dread that took away their faculty for noise.

By the time Weitzel's brigade of occupation had been posted--and several regiments ma.s.sed on the Capitol--the fire had become general.

Intending only to destroy munitions and supplies of war--the firing party had been more hasty than discreet. A strong breeze sprang up, off the river, and warehouse followed warehouse into the line of the flames. Old, dry and crammed with cotton, or other inflammable material, these burned like tinder; and at many points, whole blocks were on fire.

A dense pall of smoke hovered low over the entire city; and through it shone huge eddies of flames and sparks, carrying great blazing planks and rafters whirling over the shriveling buildings. Little by little these drew closer together; and by noon, one vast, livid flame roared and screamed before the wind, from Tenth street to Rockett's; licking its red tongue around all in its reach and drawing the hope--the very life of thousands into its relentless maw!

Should the wind shift, that rapidly-gaining fire would sweep uptown and devour the whole city; but, while the few men left looked on in dismayed apathy, deliverance came from the enemy. The regiments in Capitol Square stacked arms; were formed into fire-squads; and sped at once to points of danger. Down the deserted streets these marched; now hidden by eddying smoke--again showing like silhouettes, against the vivid glare behind them. Once at their points for work, the men went at it with a will; and--so strong was force of discipline--with no single attempt at plunder reported!

Military training never had better vindication than on that fearful day; for its bonds must have been strong indeed, to hold that army, suddenly in possession of city so coveted--so defiant--so deadly, for four long years.

Whatever the citizens may vaguely have expected from Grant's army, what they received from it that day was aid--protection--safety! Demoralized and distracted by sorrow and imminent danger; with almost every male absent--with no organization and no means to fight the new and terrible enemy--the great bulk of Richmond's population might have been houseless that night, but for the disciplined prompt.i.tude of the Union troops. The men worked with good will; their officers, with ubiquitous energy. If the fire could not be stayed, at any particular point, a squad entered each house, bore its contents to a safe distance; and there a guard was placed over them.

Sad and singular groups were there, too. Richmond's best and tenderest nurtured women moved among their household G.o.ds, hastily piled in the streets, selecting this or that sacred object, to carry it in their own hands--where? Poor families, utterly beggared, sat wringing their hands amid the wreck of what was left, homeless and hopeless; while, here and there, the shattered remnant of a soldier was borne, on a stretcher in kindly, if hostile, hands, through clouds of smoke and mourning relatives to some safer point.

Ever blacker and more dense floated the smoke-pall over the deserted city; ever louder and more near roared the hungry flames. And constantly, through all that dreadful day, the _whoo!_ of sh.e.l.ls from magazines, followed by the thud of explosion, cut the dull roar of the fire. For--whether through negligence or want of time--charged sh.e.l.ls of all sizes had been left in the many ordnance stores when the torch was applied. These narrow brick chambers--now white hot and with a furnace-blast through them--swept the heaviest sh.e.l.ls like cinders over the burning district. Rising high in air, with hissing fuses, they burst at many points, adding new terrors to the infernal scene; and some of them, borne far beyond the fire's limit, burst over the houses, tearing and igniting their dry roofs.

Slowly the day, filled with its hideous sights and sounds, wore on; and slowly the perseverance of man told against the devouring element. The fire was, at last, kept within its own bounds; then gradually forced backward, to leave a charred, steaming belt between it and the unharmed town. Within this, the flames still leaped and writhed and wrangled in their devilish glee; but Richmond was now comparatively safe, and her wretched inhabitants might think of food and rest. Little had they recked of either for many a dread hour past!

The provost-marshal, that unfailing adjunct to every occupation, had fixed his office at the court-house. There a mixed and singular crowd waited gloomily, or jostled eagerly, for speech of the autocrat of the hour. Captured officers stood quietly apart, or peered out earnestly through the smoke drifts, while their commitments to Libby Prison were made out; anxious and wan women, of every sphere in life, besieged the clerk preparing "protection papers;" while a fussy official, of higher grade, gave a.s.surance to every one that guards should be placed about their homes. For the deserted women of Richmond dreaded not only the presence of the victorious enemy, but also that of the drunken and brutalized "b.u.mmers" and deserters who stayed behind their own army.

The guards were really stationed as promptly as was practicable; the fire-brigade men were sent to quarters; pickets in blue patroled the outskirts; and, by nightfall, the proud Capital of the Southern Confederacy was only a Federal barrack!

For two days after their entrance the Union army might have supposed they had captured a city of the dead. The houses were all tightly closed, shutters fastened and curtains drawn down; and an occasional blue-coated sentry in porch, or front yard, was the sole sign of life.

In the streets it was little different. Crowds of soldiers moved curiously from point to point, large numbers of negroes mixing with them--anxious to a.s.sist their new found brotherhood, but wearing most awkwardly their vested rights. Here and there a gray jacket would appear for a moment--the pale and worn face above it watching with anxious eyes the unused scene; then it would disappear again. This was all. The Federals had full sweep of the city--with its silent streets and its still smoking district, charred and blackened; where, for acre after acre, only fragments of walls remained, and where tall chimney stacks, gaunt and tottering, pointed to heaven in witness against the useless sacrifice.

For two days this lasted. The curious soldiers lounged about the silent town, the burned desert still sent up its clouds of close, fetid smoke; the ladies of Richmond remained close prisoners. Then necessity drove them out, to seek food, or some means to obtain it; to visit the sick left behind; or to make charitable visits to those who might be even less provided than themselves.

Clad almost invariably in deep mourning--with heavy veils invariably hiding their faces--the broken-hearted daughters of the Capital moved like shadows of the past, through the places that were theirs no longer. There was no ostentation of disdain for their conquerors--no a.s.sumption of horror if they pa.s.sed a group of Federals--no affected brushing of the skirt from the contact with the blue. There was only deep and real dejection--sorrow bearing too heavily on brain and heart to make an outward show--to even note smaller annoyances that might else have proved so keen. If forced into collision, or communication, with the northern officers, ladies were courteous as cold; they made no parade of hatred, but there was that in their cold dignity which spoke plainly of impa.s.sable barriers.

And, to their credit be it spoken, the soldiers of the North respected the distress they could but see; the bitterness they could not misunderstand. They made few approaches toward forcing their society--even where billeted in the houses of the citizens, keeping aloof and never intruding on the family circle.

For several days the water-approaches to the city could not be cleared from the obstructions sunk in them; all railroad communication was destroyed, and the whole population was dependent upon the slender support of the wagon trains. Few even of the wealthiest families had been able to make provision ahead; scarcely any one had either gold, or greenbacks; and suffering became actual and pinching. Then came the order that the Federal commissary was to issue rations to those needing them. Pinching themselves, as they did; preferring to subsist on the slenderest food that would sustain life, to accepting the charity of the enemy--many of those suffering women were driven by sheer hunger--by the threatened starvation of their children, or of the loved wounded ones near them--to seek the proffered bounty. They forced their way into the surging, fighting crowd of greasy and tattered negroes, of dark-faced "b.u.mmers" and "loyal" residents--and they received small rations of cornmeal and codfish; bearing them home to be eaten with what bitter seasoning they might of tears from pain and humiliation.

The direst dest.i.tution of the war had been nothing to this. With their own people around them, with hope and love to sustain them, the women of Richmond did not wince under the pinch of want. But now, surrounded by enemies, with not a pound of flour, or a cent of currency, actual starvation--as well as humiliation--stared them in the face. The few who went to draw rations, sat down in blank despair. They _could not_ make up their minds to go again. The fewer still, who had the least surplus from immediate wants, distributed it freely; and a cup of sugar from a slender stock was bartered here for a few slices of the h.o.a.rded ham, or a pound or two of necessary meal.

Meantime, sutlers, peddlers and hucksters swarmed in like locusts, on the very first steamers up the river. They crowded Broad street, the unburned stores on Main, and even the alleyways, with great piles of every known thing that could be put up in tin. They had calculated on a rich harvest; but they had reckoned without their host. There was no money in Richmond to spend with them; and after a profitless sojourn, they took up their tin cans, and one by one returned North--certainly wiser and, possibly, better men. It was peculiar to note the universality of southern sympathy among these traders. There was scarcely one among them who didn't think the war "a darned shame;" they were intensely sympathetic and all came from South of the Pennsylvania line. But the supporters, either of their principles, or their trade, were the few lucky negroes who could collect "stamps," in never so small qualities; and to such the sutlers were a joy forever.

Shut off entirely from any communication with their retreating troops and mingling so little with their captors, Richmond people got only most startling and unreliable rumors from the army. Clinging, with the tenacity of the drowning, to the least straw of hope, they would not yet give up utterly that army they had looked on so long as invincible--that cause, which was more than life to them! Though they knew the country around was filled with deserters and stragglers; though the Federals had brigades lying round Richmond in perfect idleness--still for a time the rumor gained credit that General Lee had turned on his pursuer, at Amelia Court House, and gained a decisive victory over him. Then came the more positive news that Ewell was cut off with 13,000 men; and, finally, on the 9th of April, Richmond heard that Lee had surrendered. Surely as this result should have been looked forward to--gradually as the popular mind had been led to it--still it came as a blow of terrific suddenness. The people refused to believe it--they said it was a Yankee trick; and when the salute of one hundred guns rang out from forts and shipping, they still said, bitterly, it was a ruse to make them commit themselves.

Gradually they came to accept the inevitable; and, as the last ray of hope died out, its place was filled with the intense yearning to know the fate of those lost and loved ones--to know if they had died at the bitter ending, or lived to be borne away into captivity. Forgetting pride, hostility--all but their anxiety for those so precious to them now--the women caught at every shred of information; questioned ignorant soldiers eagerly; and listened patiently to the intelligible news the officers were only too willing to give. And at last these rumors a.s.sumed tangible form--there was no longer any room to doubt.

General Lee, weakened by desertion and breaking down of his men--by General Ewell's capture and by the sense of hopelessness of further resistance, had on the morning of the 9th of April, surrendered 24,000 men--including the volunteer citizens, and the naval brigade of all the Richmond ship's-crews--and with them 8,000 muskets! Such, too, was the condition of the horses that the Federals refused even to drive them away from their stands. Little need, indeed, had there been for those extra brigades around the city.