McClellan had lost 15,000 men in the awful struggle of the last seven days, but the South had suffered more heavily, and Richmond was crowded with the wounded and dying. The President thanked the General in a letter, saying: “I am satisfied that yourself, officers, and men have done the best you could.”
It was not until three years after this--in April, 1865--that Richmond was evacuated by General Lee before Generals Grant and Sheridan. President Davis was in church when an orderly, splashed with mud, walked up the aisle and handed him a paper. In the first glance he saw that all was over, and a few hours after he was in full flight. On Monday morning Weitzel with his army, composed partly of coloured troops, marched into Richmond with bands playing. The city had been fired and the stores plundered. Main Street was in ruins, and the bridges over the river were broken. A thousand prisoners were taken and 500 pieces of artillery.
It is said that the coloured troops entered Richmond with proud gait and shouts of ecstasy, welcomed enthusiastically by their dusky brethren who thronged the streets. They laughed and shouted, prayed and wept, and kissed one another in a delirium of happiness. They thought that now at last the white races would acknowledge their equality; but the world has not yet got rid of its old prejudices, and their sun of happiness was doomed to suffer an eclipse. In a few days Lee surrendered. The Federals first heard the news from the cheers of the poor famished army of the South. Twenty-two thousand--all that was left of them--stacked their arms and filed past in a great and solemn silence. The cruel, devastating war was over. Now was seen the strange spectacle of the enemy sharing their rations with a conquered foe. They were no longer North and South now: they were all Americans--citizens once more of the United States, destined, perhaps, in a not distant future to teach Europe that peace is better than war, love is stronger than hate, God’s kingdom supreme over the transient empires of this little world.
The Germans invest Paris--Trochu’s sortie fails--The English ambulance welcomed--A Prince’s visit to the wounded--In the snow--Madame Simon--A brave Lieutenant--Piano and jam--The big guns begin--St. Denis--Old Jacob writes to the Crown Prince--A dramatic telegram--Spy fever--Journalists mobbed.
