enemy's ships and took all his forts. It was the last of Farragut's splendid services to the country. He was worn out and asked to

be relieved. In September of the same year he was offered the command of an expedition against Wilmington in North Carolina, which still remained to be reduced; but, on account of the state of his health, he felt obliged to decline. Upon his retirement from active service, he was received by the people with the greatest and most sincere enthusiasm. The government in his honor created the new rank of vice-admiral, to which he was appointed; and afterwards in 1866 it promoted him to the still higher rank of admiral. He retired to private life in 1868; and on August 14, 1870, he died, full of honors, at Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The expedition against Wilmington, after his declination, was committed to a combined land and naval force under General Alfred H. Terry and Admiral David D. Porter; and the place succumbed to their attacks on January 16, 1865.

The fall of Wilmington practically closed up the Confederacy to blockade runners and completely isolated it. The "anaconda" had now, so to speak, got it entirely infolded; and all that remained was to crush the life out of it. On January 15, the day before the fall of Wilmington, Sherman commenced his march northward from Savannah. His movement with his large army through South Carolina compelled the evacuation and abandonment of Charleston and other places within reach of his strong force. The Confederate general Johnston, who was again in command of an army, attempted at several places to check his advance and turn him aside; but in vain. Notwithstanding some fighting, Sherman pushed on to Goldsboro in North Carolina. Leaving his army at that point, he ran down to the coast and, taking a steamer, proceeded to the James river, where he met Lincoln and Grant and arranged with them a plan of future operations. Sheridan had just been leading a large cavalry force up the Shenandoah valley and had come around to Grant's headquarters south of Petersburg, having all along his march done great damage to the Confederates and utterly cut off their communications in the rear of Richmond.

Lee's situation was now almost desperate. His communications having been cut off, he determined to abandon Richmond

25 VOL. IV.

and Petersburg and make an effort to join Johnston, who had retreated from his last encounter with Sherman to Raleigh in North Carolina. With this purpose in view, intending to move by the way of Danville, he made a determined attack upon the Union lines at Fort Steadman on the east side of Petersburg; but the effort failed and the Confederates were repulsed with heavy loss. About the same time, Grant pushed his lines further to the southwest of Petersburg. On April 1, Sheridan, who commanded the advance, attacked the Confederates at Five Forks about fifteen miles southwest of Petersburg; destroyed the railroads running towards Lynchburg and Raleigh, and managed to maintain his position there. Lee thereupon, for fear of being outflanked, extended his lines further west and thereby weakened his center. Grant observing this, on the morning of April 2, made a general and combined assault and forced his way within the lines of the Confederate defenses at Petersburg. Lee at once retreated with the intention of making a final effort to join Johnston; while the advance of the Union army marched into Richmond. As it did so, the Confederate authorities, having first set fire to everything that would burn, made their exit and escaped to Danville. Grant, instead of losing any time at either Petersburg or Richmond, pressed on in pursuit of Lee. He had so many troops and had so disposed them that the Confederate army was hemmed in, without possibility of advancing further, at Appomattox Court House. And it was there, on April 9, 1865, that Lee surrendered.

As this surrender was regarded as substantially the end of the war, the terms offered by Grant and accepted by Lee were very liberal. All private property belonging to soldiers or officers was to be retained by them, not even excepting their horses; and officers as well as men were at once set free on their parole-it being at the same time understood that as long as they remained quiet and law-abiding they would not be disturbed. In the meanwhile Sherman had been making his preparations to advance upon and attack Johnston. But as soon as the news of Lee's surrender reached the still opposing forces, negotiations were opened; and on April 26 Johnston capitulated on substantially the same terms granted to Lee. There were still a few other Confederate forces in the field; but they all surrendered upon hearing of

Appomattox. And thus closed the great civil war-one of the greatest military and naval conflicts the world has ever known, engaging about two million two hundred thousand men, twothirds of them on the Union side, and costing, in addition to hundreds of thousands of lives, so many thousands of millions of money and property as to be practically incalculable. Politically it was the logical end of the struggle, which had commenced many years before and entered upon one of its main phases with the admission of California into the Union in 1850. Much remained to be done; but the underlying cause, slavery-in the vain attempt of perpetuating which the Confederacy had ruined itself and occasioned so much loss to others-was forever destroyed, never to raise its hideous front again.

THE

CHAPTER II.

LOW (CONTINUEd).

HE attention of the people of California was so much absorbed by the war, and public sentiment was so overwhelmingly in favor of supporting the administration in its efforts to crush out rebellion, that little or no doubt existed as to the result in the state of the presidential election of 1864. A Union state convention had been held at San Francisco on March 24 of that year and delegates elected and sent to the national convention of the Union party, which was to meet at Baltimore on June 7, with instructions to vote for Lincoln. The news of the work of that convention, renominating Lincoln for president and nominating Andrew Johnson for vice-president, was received at San Francisco on June 9 and gave general satisfaction throughout the state. Subsequently Donald C. McRuer, William Higby and John Bidwell were nominated on the Union side for congress. On the other hand, the Democratic state convention met at San Francisco on May 10 and chose delegates to the Democratic national convention, which was to meet at Chicago on July 5; and on August 31 news was received of the nominations by it of George B. McClellan for president and George H. Pendleton for vice-president; and soon afterwards Joseph B. Crockett, James W. Coffroth and Jackson Temple were nominated for congress on the Democratic side.

It was one of the doctrines of the Democratic party at that time, and urged with great persistence in the platform adopted by their state convention, that the war was conducted by the abolitionists-conducted not in a manner to restore the Union, nor with any expectation that it would have such a result, but simply to abolish slavery and then revolutionize the government so as to establish a centralized power utterly subversive of the constitu

tional rights of the states. This idea, though entirely without foundation, furnished the Democratic politicians with an opportunity of making very intemperate harangues, which were perhaps not very dangerous, but General Irvin McDowell, who had been placed in command of the United States forces and was charged with preserving and protecting the public peace on the Pacific, thought otherwise. He accordingly arrested a number of them for treasonable expressions and threw them into Fort Alcatraz. Among others he on July 25, 1864, arrested Charles L. Weller, brother of John B. Weller and chairman of the Democratic state committee, for remarks made at a political meeting. These arrests, and particularly that of Weller, inflamed the Democracy to a high pitch; and they became very warm and in some cases violent. But whatever McDowell may have intended, the administration had no desire to engage in prosecutions for treason. After Weller had remained a month in Alcatraz and entirely cooled off, a motion was made by his counsel in the United States circuit court for a grand jury to investigate any charges that might be preferred against him. The next day, on further information of the purposes of the government, the motion was withdrawn; and a few days afterwards, August 18, Weller was released upon giving a bond in the sum of twenty-five thousand dollars to bear true allegiance to the United States.

Another affair occurred about the same time, in the interior of the state, which caused great excitement. It is not likely that the Confederacy or the Democracy as such had anything to do with it; but for a while many persons supposed they had, and great indignation was expressed. On the night of June 30, 1864, the stage from Virginia City in Nevada to Sacramento was attacked by a number of men about thirteen miles above Placerville and robbed of a large amount of bullion belonging to Wells, Fargo & Co. The robbers, who proved to be members of a conspiracy gotten up in Santa Clara county for the purpose of enlisting soldiers against the government, pretended to be emissaries of the Confederacy; and, when they seized Wells, Fargo & Co.'s bullion, they gave to the stage driver a written receipt to the effect that it was received for fitting out recruits enlisted in California and purporting to be signed by R. Henry Ingram, a cap