CHAPTER XLI
THE FALL OF RICHMOND
The conspirators who had complained most bitterly of Davis for the appointment of Lee to the command of the army before Richmond when McClellan was thundering at its gates, now succeeded in passing through the Confederate Congress a bill to create a military dictatorship which they offered to the man for whose promotion they had condemned the President.
Lee treated this attempt to strike the Confederate Chieftain over his head with the contempt it deserved. Davis laughed at his enemies by the most complete acceptance of their plans.
His answer to Senator Barton's committee was explicit.
"I have absolute confidence in General Lee's patriotism and military genius. I will gladly coöperate with Congress in any plan to place him in supreme command."
Lee refused to accept the responsibility except with the advice and direction of the President, and the conspiracy ended in a fiasco.
From the moment Sherman's army pierced the heart of the South the Confederate President saw with clear vision that the cause of Southern independence was lost. Lee's army must slowly starve. His one supreme purpose now was to fight to the last ditch for better terms than unconditional surrender which would mean the loss of billions in property and the possible enfranchisement of a million slaves.
That Lincoln was intensely anxious to stop the shedding of blood he knew from more than one authentic source. It was rumored that the Northern President was willing to consider compensation for the slaves. An army of a hundred thousand determined Southern soldiers led by an indomitable general could fight indefinitely. That it was of the utmost importance to the life of the South to secure a surrender which would forbid the enfranchisement of the slaves and the degradation of an electorate to their level, Davis saw with clear vision. From the North now came overtures of peace. Francis P. Blair asked for permission to visit Richmond.
Blair proposed to end the war by uniting the armies of the North and South for an advance on Mexico to maintain the Monroe Doctrine against the new Emperor whom Europe had set upon a throne in the Western Hemisphere.
The Confederate President received his proposals with courtesy.
"I have tried in vain, Mr. Blair," he said gravely, "to open negotiations with Washington. How can the first step be taken?"
"Mr. Lincoln, I am sure, will receive commissioners--though he would give me no assurance on that point. We must stop this deluge of blood. I cherish the hope that the pride and honor of the Southern States will suffer no shock in the adjustment."
The result of this meeting was the appointment by Davis of three Commissioners to meet the representatives of the United States. Alexander H. Stephens, R. M. T. Hunter and Judge John A. Campbell were sent to this important conference. For some unknown reason they were halted at Fortress Monroe and not allowed to proceed to Washington. A change had been suddenly produced in the attitude of the National Government. Whether it was due to the talk of the men in Richmond who were trying to depose Davis or whether it was due to the fall of Fort Fisher and the closing of the port of Wilmington, the last artery which connected the Confederacy with the outside world, could not be known.
The Confederate Commissioners were met by Abraham Lincoln himself and his Secretary of State, William H. Seward, in Hampton Roads. The National Government demanded in effect, unconditional surrender.
Davis used the indignant surprise with which this startling announcement was received in Richmond and the South to rouse the people to a last desperate effort to save the country from the deluge which the Radical wing of the Northern Congress had now threatened--the confiscation of the property of the whites and the enfranchisement of the negro race. In his judgment this could only be done by forcing the National Government through a prolongation of the war to pledge the South some measure of protection before they should lay down their arms.
Mass meetings were held and the people called to defend their cause with their last drop of blood. The President made a speech that night to a crowd in the Metropolitan Hall on Franklin Street in Richmond which swept them into a frenzy of patriotic passion. Even his bitterest enemy, the editor of the _Examiner_, was spellbound by his eloquence.
When he first appeared on the speakers' stand and lifted his tall thin figure, gazing over the crowd with glittering eye, a tremendous cheer swept the assembly. In that moment, he was the incarnate Soul of the South. The Chieftain of the men who wore the gray in this hour of solemn trial, stood before them with countenance like the lightning. Cheer on cheer rose and fell with throbbing passion.
A smile of strange prophetic sweetness lighted his pale haggard face. The ovation he received was the sure promise to his tired soul that when the passions and prejudices, the agony and madness of war had passed the people would understand all he had tried to do in their service. In that moment of divine illumination he saw his place in the hearts of his countrymen and was content.
He spoke with even restrained flow of words, with a mastery of himself and his audience that is the mark of the orator of the highest genius. His gestures were few. His low, vibrant, musical voice found the heart of his farthest listener. He swayed them with indescribable passion.
Into the faces of the foe who had demanded unconditional surrender he hurled the defiance of an unconquered and unconquerable soul. He closed with an historical illustration which lifted his audience to the highest reach of emotion. Kossuth had abandoned Hungary with an army of thirty thousand men in the field. The friends of liberty had never forgiven nor could forgive this betrayal.
"What shall we say," he cried, "of the disgrace beneath which we should be buried if we surrender with an army in the field more numerous than that with which Napoleon achieved the glory of France, an army standing among its homesteads, an army in which each individual is superior in warlike quality to the individual who opposes him!"
When the tumult and applause had died away did he realize in the secret places of his heart that the spirit of the South had been broken by the terrible experiences of four years of blood and fire and death? His iron will gave no sign. To him the manhood of the Southern soldier was unconquerable, his courage dauntless forever.
Six months after Sherman's sword had pierced the heart of the South from Atlanta, Lee's army in the trenches before Petersburg had reached the end of their endurance. Lee wired Davis that his thin line could hold back Grant's hosts but a few days and that Richmond must fall. His men were living on parched corn.
The President hurried to the White House and slipped his arm around his wife.
"You must leave the city, my dear."
"Please let me stay with you," she pleaded.
"Impossible," he answered firmly. "My headquarters must be in the saddle. Your presence here could only grieve and distress me. You can take care of our babies. I know you wish to help and comfort me. You can do this in but one way--go and take the children to a place of safety--"
He paused, overcome with emotion.
"If I live," he continued slowly, "you can come to me when the struggle is over, but I do not expect to survive the destruction of our liberties."
He drew his small hoard of gold from his pocket, removed a five-dollar piece for himself, and gave it all to his wife together with the Confederate money he had on hand.
"You must take only your clothing," he said after a moment's silence. "The flour and supplies in your pantry must be left. The people are in want."
He had arranged for his family to settle in North Carolina. The day before his wife left, he gave her a pistol and taught her trembling hands to load, aim and fire it.
"The danger will be," he warned, "that you may full into the hands of lawless bands of deserters from both armies who are even now pillaging and burning. You can at least, if you must, force your assailants to kill you. If you cannot remain undisturbed in your own land make for the coast of Florida and take a ship for a foreign country."
Their hearts dumb with despair, his wife and children boarded the train--or the thing that once had been a train--the roof of the cars leaked and the engine wheezed and moved with great distress.
The stern face of the Southern leader was set in his hour of trial. He felt that he might never again look on the faces of those he loved. His little girl clung convulsively to his neck in agonizing prayer that she might stay. The boy begged and pleaded with tears raining down his chubby face.
Just outside of Richmond the engine broke down and the heartsick family sat in the dismal day-coach all night. Sleepers had not been invented. They were twelve hours getting to Danville--a week on the way to Charlotte.
The reign of terror had already begun.
The President's wife avoided seeing people lest they should be compromised when the invading army should sweep over the State.
They found everything packed up in the house that had been rented, but Weill, the big-hearted Jew who was the agent, sent their meals from his house for a week, refusing every suggestion of pay. He offered his own purse or any other service he could render.
When Burton Harrison had seen them safely established in Charlotte he returned at once to his duties with the President in Richmond.
On the beautiful Sunday morning of April 2, 1865, a messenger hurriedly entered St. Paul's Church, walked to the President's pew and handed him a slip of paper. He rose and quietly left.
Not a rumor had reached the city of Lee's broken lines. In fact a false rumor had been published of a great victory which his starving army had achieved the day before.
The report of the evacuation of Richmond fell on incredulous ears. The streets were unusually quiet. Beyond the James the fresh green of the spring clothed the fields in radiant beauty. The rumble of no artillery disturbed the quiet. Scarcely a vehicle of any kind could be seen. The church bells were still ringing their call to the house of God.
The straight military figure entered the Executive office. A wagon dashed down Main Street and backed up in front of the Custom House door. Boxes were hurried from the President's office and loaded into it.
A low hum and clatter began to rise from the streets. The news of disaster and evacuation spread like lightning and disorder grew. The streets were crowded with fugitives making their way to the depot--pale women with disheveled hair and tear-stained faces leading barefooted children who were crying in vague terror of something they could not understand. Wagons were backed to the doors of every department of the Confederate Government. As fast as they could be loaded they were driven to the Danville depot.
All was confusion and turmoil. Important officers were not to be seen and when they were found would answer no questions. Here and there groups of mean-visaged loafers began to gather with ominous looks toward the houses of the better class.
The halls of the silent Capitol building were deserted--a single footfall echoed with hollow sound.
The Municipal Council gathered in a dingy little room to consider the surrender of the city. Mayor Mayo dashed in and out with the latest information he could get from the War Department. He was slightly incoherent in his excitement, but he was full of pluck and chewed tobacco defiantly. He announced that the last hope was gone and that he would maintain order with two regiments of militia.
He gave orders to destroy every drop of liquor in the stores, saloons and warehouses and establish a patrol.
The militia slipped through the fingers of their officers and in a few hours the city was without a government. Disorder, pillage, shouts, revelry and confusion were the order of the night. Black masses of men swayed and surged through the dimly-lighted streets, smashing into stores and warehouses at will. Some of them were carrying out the Mayor's orders to destroy the liquor. Others decided that the best way to destroy it was to drink it. The gutters ran with liquor and the fumes filled the air.
To the rear guard of Lee's army under Ewell was left the task of blowing up the vessels in the James, and destroying the bridges across the river. The thunder of exploding mines and torpedoes now shook the earth. The ships were blown to atoms and the wharves fired.
In vain the Mayor protested against the firing of the great warehouses. Orders were orders, and the soldiers obeyed. The warehouses were fired, the sparks leaped to the surrounding buildings and the city was in flames.
As day dawned a black pall of smoke obscured the heavens. The sun's rays lighted the banks of rolling smoke with lurid glare. The roar of the conflagration now drowned all other sounds.
The upper part of Main Street was choked with pillagers--men with drays, some with bags, some rolling their stolen barrels painfully up the hills.
A small squadron of Federal cavalry rode calmly into the wild scene. General Weitzel, in command of the two divisions of Grant's army on the north side, had sent in forty Massachusetts troopers to investigate conditions.
At the corner of Eleventh Street they broke into a trot for the Square and planted their guidons on the Capitol of the Confederacy.
Long before this advance guard could be seen in the distance the old flag of the Union had been flung from the top of the house on Church Hill. Foreseeing the fall of the city Miss Van Lew had sent to the Federal Commander for a flag. Through his scouts he had sent it. As Weitzel's two grand divisions swung into Main Street this piece of bunting eighteen feet long and nine feet wide waved from the Van Lew mansion on the hill above them.
Stretching from the Exchange Hotel to the slopes of Church Hill, down the hill, through the valley, and up the ascent swept this gorgeous array of the triumphant army, its bayonets gleaming in the sunlight, every standard, battle flag and guidon streaming in the sky, every band playing, swords flashing, and shout after shout rolling from end to end of the line.
To the roar of the flames, the throb of drum, the scream of fife, the crash of martial music, and the shouts of marching hosts, was added now the deep thunder of exploding shells in the burning arsenals.
A regiment of negro cavalry swept by the Exchange Hotel and as they turned the corner drew their sabers with a savage shout.
An old Virginian with white locks standing in the doorway of the hotel gazed on these negro troops a moment, threw his hands on high, and solemnly cried:
"Blow, Gabriel! Blow your trumpet--for God's sake blow!"
For hours the fire raged unchecked--burned until the entire business section of the city lay a smoldering heap of ashes. Crowds of men, women and children crowded the Capitol Square fighting with smoke and flying cinders for a breath of fresh air. Piles of furniture lay heaped on its greensward. Terror-stricken, weeping women had dragged it from their homes. In improvised tents made of broken tables and chairs covered with sheets and bedding hundreds of homeless women and children huddled.
As night fell the pitiful reaction came from the turmoil and excitement of the day. The quiet of a great desolation brooded over the smoking ruins.
In the rich and powerful North millions were mad with joy. In New York twenty thousand people gathered in Union Square and sang the Doxology.
Jennie Barton was in Richmond through it all and yet the tragedy made no impression on her heart or mind. A greater event absorbed her.
Dick Welford had hurried to Lee's army on the day following Socola's departure from Richmond. He wanted to fight once more. Through all the whirlwind of death and blood from the first crash with Grant in the Wilderness to his vain assaults on Petersburg he had fought without a scratch. His life was charmed. And then in the first day of the final struggle which broke the lines of Lee's starving army he fell, leading his men in a glorious charge. He reached the hospital in Richmond the day before the city's evacuation.
Jennie had watched by his bedside every hour since his arrival. But few words passed between them. She let him hold her hand for hours in silence, always looking, looking and smiling his deathless love.
He had not spoken Socola's name nor had she.
"It's funny, Jennie," he said at last, "I don't hate him any more--"
The girl's head drooped and the tears streamed down her checks.
"Please, Dick--don't--"
"Yes," he insisted, "I want to talk about it and you must hear me--won't you?"
"Of course, if you wish it," she answered tenderly.
"You see I don't hate these Yankee soldiers any more--anyhow. I saw too many of them die from the Wilderness to Petersburg--brave manly fellows. The fire of battle has burned the hate out of me. Now I just want you to be happy, Jennie dear, that's all--good-by--"
His hand slipped from hers and in a moment his spirit had passed.