into account the moral effect of the loss of the Confederate capital, and to calculate the easy transition in such circumstances from despondency to despair.

Several weeks before the catastrophe the Richmond Examiner had used the following almost prophetic language: "The evacuation of Richmond would be the loss of all respect and authority towards the Confederate Government, the disintegration of the army, and the abandonment of the scheme of an independent Southern Confederation. Each contestant in the war has made Richmond the central object of all its plans and all its exertions. It has become the symbol of the Confederacy. Its loss would be material ruin to the cause, and, in a moral point of view, absolutely destructive, crushing the heart and extinguishing the last hope of the country. Our armies would lose the incentive inspired by a great and worthy object of defence. Our military policy would be totally at sea; we should be without a hope or an object; without civil or military organization; without a treasury or a commissariat; without the means of keeping alive a wholesome and active public sentiment; without any of the appliances for supporting a cause depending upon a popular faith and enthusiasm; without the emblems or the semblance of nationality."

These sad but intelligent anticipations were now to be vividly realized. The disintegration of Lee's army commenced with its withdrawal from the Richmond and Petersburg lines.

In his last telegram to Richmond from Petersburg, Sunday evening, the 2d of April, General Lee stated that some time during the night he would fall back behind the Appomattoxthat is, to the north bank of that stream, to prevent being flanked. The Appomattox rises in Appomattox County, eighty miles west of Petersburg, flows northeast to Matoax Station, on the Danville Railroad, twenty-seven miles from Richmond, and thence southeast to City Point. When Lee sent his tele gram above alluded to, his troops were holding a semicircular line south of the river, and including Petersburg; his left resting on the Appomattox, his right on the Southside Railroad, some fifteen miles west of the town. The Yankee armies were pressing his whole line, Sheridan being on his extreme right. During Sunday night he got across the Appomattox, and com

menced to push up the north bank of that stream. The Yankee forces were hurried up the Southside Railroad to Burkesville Junction to cut him off. Sheridan made direct pursuit, with the double object of harassing the rear of the retreating columns, and cutting off such troops as were retreating from Richmond and attempting to join Lee.

Grant was possessed of the interior or shorter lines to Burkesville. He might thus hope to cut off Lee's retreat from Danville or from Lynchburg. Indeed, there appeared but one way for Lee to escape-namely, a tremendous run up the bank of the Appomattox, to reach the Southside Railroad at Farmville, destroying the bridges in his rear. Even this chance Sheridan was sanguine of cutting off.

On the 5th of April, Sheridan made an important capture of prisoners, guns, and wagons. It appears that Lee's army was moving as rapidly west as his limited transportation and the demoralized condition of his troops would permit, on the road between Amelia Court-house and Jetersville. The Yankee cavalry having gained possession of the Danville Railroad some time previous, were not long in discovering his whereabouts. Sheridan immediately sent Davies' brigade around on his left flank; and although they were repulsed and driven back upon the infantry, it was not until they had taken several hundred prisoners, five guns, and a number of wagons.

On the evening of the 5th of April, a portion of the advance of Grant's army was at Burkesville Station (the junction of the Southside and Danville railroads). Sheridan, with the main body of his cavalry, at three P. M. of that day, was at Jetersville, on the Danville road, a station forty-three miles from Richmond. Lee, at the same date, with the remnants of his army, was at Amelia Court-house, a point thirty-six miles from Richmond, and seven miles north of Sheridan's advance.

In this situation Sheridan telegraphed to Grant: "I feel confident of capturing the entire Army of Northern Virginia, if we exert ourselves. I see no escape for Lee."

On the 6th, at daylight, General Meade, with the Second, Fifth, and Sixth corps, was at Burkesville Station, Lee being near Amelia Court-house; the Yankee forces were south and west of him. Sheridan's advance was at Jetersville; and, as it moved towards Amelia Court-house, its left stretched well out

towards Painesville, a point about ten miles northwest of Amelia Court-house, and directly on the line of Lee's retreat towards the Appomattox.

It seemed as if Sheridan's position at Jetersville, with his left across the line of Lee's westward march to the Appomattox, would compel Lee to stand still. Hence the enemy's movement towards the Appomattox was given up, and the men were faced about and moved northeast, towards Amelia Court-house, expecting to fight Lee there. Lee, however, was already on his way from the court-house towards the river; and when this became known, the direction of the enemy's movement was changed once more.

On the evening of the 6th, two divisions of the Sixth Army Corps came up with Lee's retreating columns at the intersection of the Burkesville Station road with the road upon which they were moving. Some desultory fighting ensued. Sheridan telegraphed: "If the thing is pressed, I think Lee will surrender." He claimed already to have captured Generals Ewell, Kershaw, Button, Corse, De Bare, and Custis Lee, several thousand prisoners, fourteen pieces of artillery, with caissons, and a large number of wagons.

The position into which the remnant of Lee's army had now been forced was one from which it was impossible to extricate it without a battle, which it was no longer capable of fighting. His army lay massed a short distance west of Appomattox Court-house; his last avenue of escape towards Danville, on the southwest, was gone; he was completely hemmed in. Meade was in his rear on the east, and on his right flank north of Appomattox Court-house; Sheridan had headed him off completely, by getting between him and Lynchburg; General Ord was on the south of the court-house, near the railroad; the Yankee troops were in the most enthusiastic spirits, and what remained of the Army of Northern Virginia was plainly doomed.

SURRENDER OF THE ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA.

The line of Lee's retreat afforded ample evidence of the excessive, frightful demoralization of his army. It was strewn

with arms and accoutrements, with abandoned caissons, with knapsacks, blankets, and clothing-in short, with whatever could be most readily cast away in flight. The whole intervening country was tracked by deserters returning in squads to their homes; and who, anticipating a surrender of the army, were anxious to avoid what they supposed would be the conditions of such an event. The extent of this desertion was without precedent. Lee's whole army had almost ran through his fingers. He had had on the lines he had abandoned between twenty-seven and twenty-eight thousand men; at Appomattox Court-house he had scarcely ten thousand men for a battle, and actually surrendered less than eight thousand.* On the Petersburg lines Pickett's division had been roughly estimated at eight thousand men. It surrendered only forty-five muskets. Such were the moral effects of the fall of Richmond, and such the necessities which brought with it the terrible consequence of the surrender of what had been by far the most formidable army the Confederates had ever had in the field.

There can be no doubt in history that General Lee, in taking his army away from Richmond and Petersburg, had decided, in his own mind, upon the hopelessness of the war, and had predetermined its surrender. The most striking proof of this is, that on his retreat there was no order published against straggling a thing unprecedented in all deliberate and strategic retreats and nothing whatever done to maintain discipline. The men were not animated by the style of general orders usual on such occasions. They straggled and deserted almost at will. An idea ran through the Virginia troops that with the abandonment of Richmond the war was hopeless, and that they would be justified in refusing to fight outside the limits of their State. Nothing was done to check the notorious

* The looseness of historical statement in the North with reference to the war is very remarkable. We must expect exaggeration and brag in Yankee newspapers; but in the magazine, pamphlet, report, and those deliberate forms of literature, which stand between the daily paper and the bound volume, some effort at accuracy of statement is to be expected. Yet we see in the columns of a popular Northern magazine that Lee surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse fifty thousand men! And this absurd statement is quite as likely to go into Yankee history as any other absurd piece of statistics about the extent and glory of Yankee conquests.

circulation of this notion in the army. The Virginia troops scattered off to their homes at almost every mile of the route. We have seen that Pickett was left with only a handful or men. Some of the brigade commanders had not hesitated to advise their men that the war was virtually over, and that they had better go home and "make crops."

1

But there are other proofs, besides the omission of the measures against straggling usual on retreats, that General Lee had prevised a surrender of his army. He carried off from Petersburg and Richmond all the transportation of his army, sufficient, perhaps, for one hundred thousand men, certainly largely in excess of the actual needs of the retreat. The excessive number of Virginia troops who were permitted to drop out of the ranks and return to their homes, shows very well that there was no firm purpose to carry the war out of the limits of that State. Prisoners taken on the retreat invariably reported that the army was soon to be halted for a surrender; and General Custis Lee, when captured by the enemy, is alleged to have made the same revelation of his father's designs.

While the pursuit of Lee's army by Grant's overwhelming forces was still in progress, the following correspondence ensued between the two commanders:

I.

GENERAL R. E. LEE, Commanding C. S. A.:

APRIL 7, 1865.

GENERAL-The result of the last week must convince you of the hopelessness of further resistance on the part of the Army of Northern Virginia in this struggle. I feel that it is so, and regard it as my duty to shift from myself the responsibility of any further effusion of blood, by asking of you the surrender of that portion of the Confederate Southern army, known as the Army of Northern Virginia.

Very respectfully,

Your obedient servant,

U. S. GRANT,

Lieut.-Gen. commanding Armies of the United States.