A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [420]
In the commercial district, hardly a single pane of glass remained unbroken, and from Main Street to the canal nearly a thousand buildings were on fire. The bridges were also destroyed. This, together with the “roaring and crackling of burning houses … made up a scene that beggars description and which I hope never to see again,” wrote a departing Confederate officer; “a city undergoing pillage at the hands of its own mob, while the tramp of a victorious enemy could be heard at its gates!”26 Lawley was overwhelmed at the sight. For the past four years he had venerated the South; he had perjured himself on its behalf and had perpetuated a dream, only to watch helplessly now as it transmogrified into a nightmare. “Hell is empty, and all the devils are here,” he quoted from The Tempest.
Conolly returned to his hotel at sunrise, shoving aside anyone who attempted to get in his way. Hundreds of fires were still burning. He had almost reached the building when he heard a cry: “the Yankees, the Yankees.” The city’s bleary-eyed residents were astonished to see a combination of white and Negro regiments from the Union Army of the James—Butler’s old army—riding through the streets. Many were singing “John Brown’s Body” as they marched. The scene helped to make up Conolly’s mind to quit the Misses Enders, and by midmorning he was riding for Fredericksburg. Already a Federal flag was hanging from the rooftop of the Capitol. “The ensign of our subjugation,” lamented a female resident, but its appearance represented salvation just as much as disaster.27 The general leading the Federal entrance, Godfrey Weitzel, hurriedly ordered his officers to organize teams of firefighters. The hotels, the banks, the better class of shops, the warehouses, depots, and hundreds of private houses were either charred heaps of brick or empty edifices. Fifty-five blocks in the center of Richmond had disappeared, but Weitzel’s men saved many more.
Hundreds of families collected in Capitol Square, sitting in huddled groups with the detritus of destruction around them, waiting miserably for the Federals to take charge of their future. Hour by hour, order was gradually restored to the streets. By ten o’clock that night, when Charles Francis Adams, Jr., led the 5th Massachusetts Colored Cavalry into the city, an unofficial curfew made the place seem deserted. “To have led my regiment into Richmond at the moment of its capture is the one event which I should most have desired as the culmination of my life in the Army,” he admitted to his father. “For the first time I see the spirit of the Virginians, the whole people are cowed—whipped out.”28
Abraham Lincoln arrived at the city a few hours after Charles Francis Jr., on the morning of the fourth.29 The black population was anything but “whipped out.” They clustered about him, shouting ecstatically, touching his clothes, shaking his hand; he protested when some knelt down as he passed. Lincoln entered the Confederate White House and looked around Davis’s office, even sitting in his chair. He seemed tired and worn to those around him. Victory was at hand, but not yet in his hands—not until the surrender of Lee’s army, he reminded a Confederate delegation who called on him to discuss Virginia’s political future. During the afternoon, Lincoln toured hospitals and prisons, showing a gentle courtesy to Federals and rebels alike. He displayed a magnanimity toward the defeated Confederates that was conspicuously absent among his colleagues in the cabinet.
Lee would be able to keep fighting if he could reach North Carolina and consolidate his army with the