Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [466]
Lincoln and his lieutenant general conferred for about an hour and a half on the piazza in front of the house while curious citizens strolled by. Though no word had arrived yet from Richmond, Grant surmised that, with the fall of Petersburg, Lee had no choice but to evacuate the capital and move west along the Danville Road, hoping to escape to North Carolina, in which case the Federals would attempt to “get ahead of him and cut him off.” Grant had hoped to receive word of Richmond’s fall while still in the president’s company, but when no message arrived, he felt compelled to join his troops in the field.
Lincoln was back at City Point when news reached him that Union troops commanded by General Weitzel had now occupied Richmond. “Thank God that I have lived to see this!” he remarked to Admiral Porter. “It seems to me that I have been dreaming a horrid dream for four years, and now the nightmare is gone.”
For Jefferson Davis and the Confederate government, the nightmare was just beginning. Twenty-four hours earlier, the Confederate president had received the devastating news of Lee’s evacuation plans. Seated in his customary pew at St. Paul’s Church for the Sunday service, Davis had received “a telegram announcing that General Lee could not hold his position longer than till night, and warning [him] that we must leave Richmond, as the army would commence retreating that evening.”
“Thereupon,” an attendant at the service noted, Davis “instantly arose, and walked hurriedly down the aisle, beneath the questionings of all eyes in the house.” Summoning his cabinet to an emergency session, he made preparations for a special train to carry the leading officials and important government papers south and west to Danville, where a new capital could be established. As word of the evacuation of the troops spread, the citizenry panicked, and a general exodus began. In the tumult, a small fire, deliberately set to destroy the tobacco warehouses before the Federals arrived, raged out of control, burning “nearly everything between Main street and the river for about three-quarters of a mile.” All the public buildings in its path, including the offices of the Richmond Examiner and the Inquirer, were destroyed, leaving only the Customhouse and the Spotswood Hotel.
The news of Richmond’s capture on April 3, 1865, reached the War Department in Washington shortly before noon. When over the wire came the words “Here is the first message for you in four years from Richmond,” the telegraph operator leaped from his seat and shouted from the window, “Richmond has fallen.” The news quickly “spread by a thousand mouths,” and “almost by magic the streets were crowded with hosts of people, talking, laughing, hurrahing, and shouting in the fullness of their joy.” A Herald reporter noted that many “wept as children” while “men embraced and kissed each other upon the streets; friends who had been estranged for years shook hands and renewed their vows of friendship.”
Gathering at the War Department, the crowd called for Stanton, who had not left his post for several nights. “As he stood upon the steps to speak,” recalled his aide A. E. Johnson, “he trembled like a leaf, and his voice showed his emotion.” He began by expressing “gratitude to Almighty God for his deliverance of the nation,” then called for thanks “to the President, to the Army and Navy, to the great commanders by sea and land, to the gallant officers and men who have periled their lives upon the battle-field, and drenched the soil with their blood.” Stanton was “so overcome by emotion that he could not speak continuously,