CHAPTER XLII.

PUBLIO FEELING IN RICHMOND AFTER EVACUATION DAY.-PRESIDENT DAVIS' PROCLAMATION AT DANVILLE.-NEW AND SANGUINE THEORY OF CONFEDERATE DEFENCE.-MORAL EFFECT OF THE FALL OF RICHMOND.-RETREAT AND FINAL SURRENDER OF LEE'S ARMY.-CROSSING OF THE APPOMATTOX.-EXPLOSION OF MAGAZINES.-THE WAGON-TRAIN FROM RICHMOND. Order of granT'S PURSUIT.-GEN. LEE'S NEW HOPES. THEY ARE DASHED AT AMELIA COURT-HOUSE. THE CONFEDERATES IN A STARVING CONDITION.-LEE ABANDONS THE ROUTE TO DANVILLE AND MAKES FOR LYNCHBURG, BY WAY OF FARMVILLE.—SUFFERINGS ON THE MARCH.-DEMORALIZATION OF THE TROOPS.-SOME SPIRITED EPISODES.THE ACTION OF SAILORS' OREEK. THE CONFEDERATES IN THE VICINITY OF FARMVILLE.— AFFAIRS WITH THE ENEMY.-THE CONFEDERATES RETREAT TO APPOMATTOX COURT-HOUSE WITHOUT MOLESTATION.-SENSE OF RELIEF AMONG THE TROOPS.-OMINOUS SOUNDS OF CANNON. THE EXIT TO LYNCHBURG CLOSED BY SHERIDAN.-DESPERATE ADVENTURE OF GORDON'S CORPS.-THE RECOIL.-A FLAG OF TRUCE ON THE SCENE.-CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN GENS. GRANT AND LEE, LEADING TO THE SURRENDER OF THE ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA. THE CONFERENCE AT M'LEAN'S HOUSE. GEN. LEE ANNOUNCING THE TERMS OF SURRENDER.-A TOUCHING SCENE AT HIS HEADQUARTERS.-GEN. LEE'S FAREWELL ADDRESS TO HIS ARMY.-MAGNANIMOUS AND DELICATE BEHAVIOUR OF GRANT.GEN. LEE'S RETURN TO HIS HOME.-GREAT EXULTATION AT WASHINGTON. SECRETARY STANTON'S CONGRATULATIONS.-SCENE AT THE PRESIDENT'S HOUSE.-CHARACTERISTIO SPEECH AND LAST JOKE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

THE Federal occupants of Richmond no doubt thought the people very submissive to the new authority. They saw no sign of violence, and they heard no expression of defiance. The population of Richmond moved mechanically before their new masters. But there was, for some days, an undercurrent of eager, excited thought which the Federals did not per ceive; citizens whispered among themselves, and went around the streetcorners to relate in low tones to each other some rumour eagerly grasped for the new hope it contained. Thus it was told in whispers that Gen. Lee had won a great victory on his retreat, that Johnston had struck Sherman a mortal blow, or that some other extravagant event had happened, some sudden relief of the falling fortunes of the Confederacy. It is not easy for men to descend at once to the condition of despair.

PRESIDENT DAVIS' LAST PROCLAMATION.

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But even outside the circle of absurd rumours, there were intelligent minds in Richmond that still entertained lingering hopes of the cause of the Confederacy. The foundation of these hopes was small, but not altogether visionary. There was a chance that Lee might get off his army safely, and effect a successful retreat; he might unite with Johnston; and, although driven from Virginia, the armies of the Confederacy might reopen Georgia and the Carolinas, and place the Government nearer its resources of subsistence, with the control of a territory practically much larger than that in the Richmond jurisdiction.

These things were possibilities, very small and very remote. It was learned through Northern newspapers, circulated in Richmond, that President Davis, who had reached Danville, had issued there the following proclamation:

DANVILLE, VA., April 5, 1865.

The General-in-Chief found it necessary to make such movements of his troops as to uncover the capital. It would be unwise to conceal the moral and material injury to our cause resulting from the occupation of our capital by the enemy. It is equally unwise and unworthy of us to allow our own energies to falter, and our efforts to become relaxed under reverses, however calamitous they may be. For many months the largest and finest army of the Confederacy, under a leader whose presence inspires equal confidence in the troops and the people, has been greatly trammelled by the necessity of keeping constant watch over the approaches to the capital, and has thus been forced to forego more than one opportunity for promising enterprise. It is for us, my countrymen, to show by our bearing under reverses how wretched has been the self-deception of those who have believed us less able to endure misfortune with fortitude than to encounter dangers with courage.

We have now entered upon a new phase of the struggle. Relieved from the necessity of guarding particular points, our army will be free to move from point to point, to strike the enemy in detail far from his base. Let us but will it, and we are free.

Animated by that confidence in your spirit and fortitude which never yet failed me, I announce to you, fellow-countrymen, that it is my purpose to maintain your cause with my whole heart and soul; that I will never consent to abandon to the enemy one foot of the soil of any of the States of the Confederacy. That Virginia-noble Statewhose ancient renown has been eclipsed by her still more glorious recent history; whose bosom has been bared to receive the main shock of this war; whose sons and daughters have exhibited heroism so sublime as to render her illustrious in all time to come-that Virginia, with the help of the people, and by the blessing of Providence, shall be held and defended, and no peace ever be made with the infamous invaders of her territory.

If by the stress of numbers we should ever be compelled to a temporary withdrawal from her limits, or those of any other border State, we will return until the baffled and exhausted enemy shall abandon in despair his endless and impossible task of making slaves of a people resolved to be free.

Let us, then, not despond, my countrymen, but, relying on God, meet the foe with fresh defiance, and with unconquered and unconquerable hearts.

JEFFERSON DAVIS.

This proclamation was the last effusion of the sanguine temperament

of the Confederate President. It gave a new colour to the evacuation of Richmond. But the hopeful and ingenious minds which constructed the new theory of Confederate defence had failed to take in a most important element in the consideration-the moral effect of the fall of Richmond. They did not reflect that this city had been for four years the central object of all the plans and exertions of the war; they did not understand that it had become to the popular mind the symbol of the Confederacy; and they could not realize that when Richmond fell the cause lost in the estimation of the army and people the emblem and semblance of nationality and all appliances for supporting the popular faith and enthusiasm. But the sequel was to develop and demonstrate all these consequences, and the last hopes of the Confederacy were to be speedily extinguished.

RETREAT AND FINAL SURRENDER OF LEE'S ARMY.

In his last despatch from Petersburg, Gen. Lee had stated that some time during the night of the 2d April, he would fall back behind the Appomattox. He was then holding a semicircular line, the left resting on the Appomattox, narrowly including Petersburg; while his extreme right, which Sheridan was still pressing, was in the vicinity of the Southside Railroad, some fifteen miles west of the town. It appears that the enemy already imagined that he had cut off the troops on the right, supposing that they could not cross the river except through Petersburg; but in this he was mistaken. When night closed, the air was luminous with the steady glare of the burning warehouses in Petersburg. For several hours cannonading was kept up; but about midnight the Confederates began their retreat. By three o'clock in the morning, Gordon's whole corps, except a few pickets and stragglers, was safely across the river, and the bridge on fire.

As the troops from Petersburg got across the river, the heavily-charged magazine of Cummin's battery of siege guns blew up, lighting the deep darkness of the night with its fierce and vivid glare, and then shaking the earth like the shock of an earthquake. Fort Clifton's magazine in a moment followed, and then the explosion was taken up all along the line to Richmond. The scene was fierce and imposing. The retreating army left the light and pierced the midnight darkness. At each step some new explosion would sound in their ears. The whole heavens in their rear were lit up in lurid glare, and added intensity to the blackness before their eyes.

On leaving Petersburg, Gordon's corps took the river road; Mahone, with his division, and all other troops on the south side of the James, the middle road, and Ewell and Elzey, with the Richmond garrison, and other

troops, the road nearest the James River. During the day following the evacuation of Petersburg, the Confederates made good progress, their route unimpeded by wagons and artillery. But after the junction of Gordon's corps with Mahone and Ewell, with thirty miles of wagons, containing the special plunder of the Richmond departments, they went at a rate so distressingly slow, that it was apparent that an enterprising enemy would have little trouble in overtaking them.

But the day passed without any attack of the enemy, and without the appearance of any considerable body of his forces. So far the retreat had been an occasion of reassurance; it had been effected safely; and with the additions made to the Petersburg section of troops from the Richmond lines and from Lee's extreme right, which had crossed the Appomattox above Petersburg, that resourceful commander had now well in hand more than twenty thousand troops. Gen. Lee had clearly seen that his retreat would put the enemy to the necessity of breaking up into bodies of one or two army corps, with a view to a vigorous pursuit. On the morning of the 3d, Grant commenced pursuit. Its order, calculated on the clear assumption that Lee would move for the Danville road, was as follows: Sheridan to push for the Danville road, keeping near the Appomattox; Meade to follow with the Second and Sixth corps; and Ord to move for Burkesville along the Southside road, the Ninth corps stretching along the road behind him. It was certainly a well-planned pursuit; but it involved the possibility that Lee might fall on the enemy in detail; it was a question of the rapidity of movements and combinations, in which, although Grant held the interiour line, his adversary was not in a hopeless situation; for Lee, even if forced from the Danville road, might take up an eccentric line, make a race to Farmville, there cross the Appomattox once more, and, by destroying the bridges after him, escape into the mountains beyond Lynchburg.

With spirits visibly reassured, the retreating army reached Amelia Court-house in the morning of the 4th. But a terrible disappointment awaited it there. Several days before, Gen. Lee had despatched most distinct and urgent orders that large supplies of commissary and quartermaster's stores should be sent forward from Danville to Amelia Courthouse. But the authorities in Richmond bungled the command; and the train of cars loaded with these supplies ran through to relieve the evacuation of the capital, without unloading the stores at Amelia Court-house. Gen. Lee found there not a single ration for his army. It was a terrible revelation. To keep life in his army, he would have to break up half of it into foraging parties to get food; the country was scant of subsistence, a tract of straggling woods and pine barrens; and soon the pangs of hunger would tell upon the flagging spirits of his men, and consume the last hope. Meanwhile the forced delay of his army at Amelia Court-house gave

Sheridan, who was pursuing with his cavalry, and the Fifth corps, time to strike in upon the Confederate line of retreat. In the afternoon of the 4th he was reported at Jetersville, on the Danville Railroad, seven miles south west of Amelia Court-house. But it was no longer a question of battle with Gen. Lee; the concern was now simply to escape. His men were suffering from hunger; half of them had been sent or had straggled in quest of food; soldiers who had to assuage their craving by plucking the buds and twigs of trees, were scarcely to be blamed for courting capture; and thus with his army in loose order, in woful plight, diminishing at every step, Gen. Lee determined to try the last desperate chance of escape, and to penetrate the region of hills in the direction of Farmville, hoping to avail himself of these positions of defence.

On the 5th he took up this line of retreat; but the locomotion of his army was no longer what it had been. The troops went wearily along, averaging hardly half a mile an hour. It was with some satisfaction that they saw the wagons which had so effectually clogged their march begin to cast up their plunder. Jaded horses and mules refused to pull; demoralized and badly-scared drivers, with straining eyes and perspiring bodies, plied their whips vigorously to no effect; difficult places in the road were choked with blazing wagons, fired to save their contents from the enemy; there were deafening reports from ammunition exploding and shells bursting, when touched by the flames; and on this line of terrible retreat, behind and on either flank, there was a running fight through every hour of the day. At every hill divisions would alternately halt, and form linse of battle and check the pursuers. As soon as proper disposition had been made on the next line of hills the rear division would move off and pass the others, only to form again at the next suitable defensive position. Thus toiled on the retreating army. Hundreds of men dropped from exhaustion; thousands threw away their arms; the demoralization appeared at last to involve the officers; they did nothing to prevent straggling; and many of them seemed to shut their eyes on the hourly reduction of their commands, and rode in advance of their brigades in dogged indifference.

But in the jaded, famishing crowd there was yet left something of the old spirit which had made the Army of Northern Virginia famous throughout the world, and inscribed its banners with the most glorious names of the war. Its final retreat was not to be without its episodes of desperate and devoted courage.

On the 6th, the enemy having changed the order of pursuit to conform to Lee's new movement, Sheridan, with his cavalry, struck in upon the Confederate line of retreat just south of Sailors' Creek, a small tributary of the Appomattox. Ewell's corps, consisting of about four thousand two hundred men, was called upon to support Pickett, who, with his division reduced to about eight hundred men, was being sorely pressed by