The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume 3: Red River to Appomattox (174 page)

Except for his anger at the Federals for their shelling of the Turnbull house that morning, the southern commander kept his temper all through this long and trying day; save once. This once was when he received a wire from Davis in the capital, protesting that “to move tonight will involve the loss of many valuables, both for the want of time to pack and of transportation. Arrangements are progressing,” the President added, however, “and unless you otherwise advise, the start will be made.” Lee bristled at the implied rebuke — perhaps forgetting that five days ago he had promised Breckinridge a ten- or twelve-day warning — and ripped the telegram to pieces. “I am sure I gave him sufficient notice,” he said testily, and dictated a reply that left no doubt whatever about his intentions: “I think it is absolutely necessary that we should abandon our position tonight. I have given all necessary orders on the subject to the troops, and the operation, though difficult, I hope will be performed successfully.”

It was, and on schedule. Less than an hour after dark, Pendleton, close in rear of the Second Corps, began withdrawing the reserve artillery through the cobbled streets of Petersburg and then across the Appomattox bridges, followed by other batteries from all parts of the line. Field’s First Corps division led the infantry displacement under Longstreet, who had also been put in charge of those Third Corps units cut off east of this morning’s breakthrough. Assigned the rear-guard duty, Gordon pulled his three divisions back in good order, with little need for stealth and none at all for silence, since any noise his departing soldiers made was drowned by the nightlong roar of Union guns, firing all-out in apparent preparation for another dawn assault; an assault which, if made at all, would be made upon a vacuum. Beyond the river, approaching a road junction whose left fork Longstreet had taken to ease the crowding when his own corps took the right, Gordon came upon Lee, dismounted and holding Traveller’s rein in one gauntleted
hand. All the troops left in Petersburg at sundown — fewer than 15,000 of all arms — would pass this way, and the gray-bearded commander had chosen this as his post for supervising the final stage of the evacuation. About the same number of graybacks were in motion elsewhere, miles away in the chilly early-April darkness. Kershaw was with Ewell up in Richmond, withdrawing too by then, along with reservists from the capital fortifications, guncrews from the heavy batteries on James River, and even a battalion of sailors, homeless landsmen now that they had burned their ships to keep them out of enemy hands. Mahone was on the march from Bermuda Hundred, just to the north, and Anderson presumably was working his way west along the opposite bank of the Appomattox with the remnants of Johnson’s and Pickett’s divisions, as well as parts of Hill’s two, driven in that direction by the collapse of his line at daybreak, and Fitz Lee’s troopers. South of the river, from point to scattered point along the otherwise empty eight-mile curve of intrenchments, the pickets kept their shell-jarred vigil. Soon now they too would be summoned rearward and engineer details would carry out their work of demolition, first on the abandoned powder magazines and then on the bridges, which were to be fired when the last man crossed, leaving Petersburg to the bluecoats who, at a cost of well over 40,000 casualties, had been doing all they could to take it for the past two hundred and ninety-three days.

Lee did not wait for that. About an hour before midnight, having observed that both gray columns were well closed up as they slogged past him there in the fork of the two roads, he mounted and set out westward for Amelia Courthouse, just under forty miles away.

By that time, up in the capital, Davis and his cabinet were departing from the railway station where, two nights ago, he had seen his wife and children off for Charlotte, three hundred miles to the southwest. His own destination was Danville, half as far away, just short of the North Carolina line. That was to be the new seat of government at least until Lee and his army got there, en route to a combination with Johnston; at which time another shift would no doubt be required, though how far and in what direction — still within or else beyond the borders of the Old Dominion, every vestige of whose “sacred soil” would in the latter case be given over to the invader — no one could say at this stage of a crisis that had become acute some twelve hours earlier, when a War Department messenger brought to the presidential pew in St Paul’s Church, midway through the morning service, Lee’s telegram advising that “all preparation be made for leaving Richmond tonight.”

Nearby worshipers saw “a sort of gray pallor creep over his face” as he read the dispatch, then watched him rise and stride back down the aisle “with stern set lips and his usual quick military tread.” Some few rose to follow, knowing the summons must be urgent for him to leave
before taking Communion this first-Sunday; but for the most part, he said later, “the congregation of St Paul’s was too refined to make a scene at anticipated danger.” He went directly to the War Office to confer with Breckinridge and other cabinet members available at short notice on the Sabbath. One such was Judah Benjamin, who strolled over from his quarters on North Main, apparently unperturbed, “his pleasant smile, his mild Havana, and the very twirl of his slender gold-headed cane contributing to give casual observers an expression of casual confidence.”

Davis’s manner was almost as calm, though by no means as debonair, as he told the assembled ministers of the breaking of Lee’s line and the impending evacuation, then directed them to have their most valuable records packed for delivery to the Richmond & Danville Depot, where they would meet that evening for departure as a group. Special instructions for the Treasury Department covered the boxing of Confederate funds on hand — some $528,000 in double-eagle gold pieces, Mexican silver coins, gold and silver bricks and ingots — for shipment aboard a special train, with a guard of sixty midshipmen from their academy training vessel
Patrick Henry
. These last would of course be furnished by Mallory, who was also told to pass the word for Raphael Semmes to see to the destruction of this and all other ships of the James River Squadron, iron and wood; after which their crews would proceed to Danville for service under Lee.

Later that afternoon, his desk cleared and his office put in order for tomorrow’s faceless blue-clad occupant — Grant himself, for all he knew, or whoever else would command the occupation force — Davis set out through Capitol Square for the last of his familiar homeward walks to the White House, where he still had to pack for the journey south. More people were abroad today than usual, but they were strangely quiet, shocked by rumors that they and their city were about to be abandoned to the foe. Asked if it was true, he replied that it was, adding however that he hoped to return under better auspices. Some wept at the news, while others replaced false hope with resolution. “If the success of the cause requires you to give up Richmond, we are content,” one matron came out of her house to tell him as he walked by, and he afterwards declared that “the affection and confidence of this noble people in the hour of disaster were more distressing to me than complaint and unjust censure would have been.”

At the mansion there was much to do, including the disposition of certain effects he could not take with him yet did not want to have fall into enemy hands: the family cow, for instance, lent by a neighbor and now returned: a favorite easy chair, which he had carted to Mrs R. E. Lee’s home on Franklin Street with a message expressing hope that it would comfort her arthritis: an oil painting, “Heroes of the Valley,” and a marble bust of Davis himself, both turned over to a
friend who offered to put them where “they will never be found by a Yankee.” While a servant packed his valise he gave final instructions to the housekeeper, emphasizing that everything must be in decent order, swept and dusted, when the Federals arrived to take possession tomorrow morning. This done, he dressed carefully — trousers and waistcoat of Confederate gray, a dark Prince Albert frock coat, polished Wellingtons, a full-brimmed planter’s hat — brushed his hair and tuft of beard, and waited in his pale-rugged private office — long the terror of muddy-booted officers reporting from the field — for word that the special train was ready for boarding. Shortly after 8 o’clock it came. He went out the front door and down the steps, mounted his saddle horse Kentucky, and set out for the railway station beside the James on the far side of town.

The ride was just over half a mile through crowded streets, and his impressions now were very different from those he had received four hours ago, in the course of his walk home from Capitol Square. Numbed decorum had given way to panic, a hysteria that grew more evident as he drew near the river and the depot. Government warehouses stocked with rations for the anticipated siege were there, and word had spread that the food was to be distributed to the public, on a first-come first-served basis, before the buildings were destroyed along with whatever remained in them by the time the army left. Some among those gathered were marauders out for spoils in the business district, their number swollen by convicts who, deserted by their guards, had broken out of jail and were rifling shops for clothing to replace their prison garb; “a crowd of leaping, shouting demons,” one observer called these last, “in parti-colored clothes and with heads half-shaven.… Many a heart which had kept its courage to this point quailed at the sight.” All in all, another witness would declare, this was “the saddest of many of the sad sights of war — a city undergoing pillage at the hands of its own mob, while the standards of an empire were being taken from its capitol and the tramp of a victorious enemy could be heard at its gates.” Davis rode on, forcing his way through the throng, and finally reached the station. There the cabinet awaited his arrival; all but Breckinridge, who would remain behind to supervise the final stages of the evacuation, then follow Lee to observe and report on the military situation before rejoining his colleagues at Danville, or wherever they might be by then.

All got aboard the waiting coach, but there was another long delay while the treasure train, preceding them with its cargo of precious metals and its sixty nattily-uniformed midshipmen, cleared the southbound track and the bridge across the James. Glum but resigned, the ministers took their seats on the dusty plush. Trenholm, down with neuralgia and attended by his wife, the only woman in the party, had brought along a demijohn of peach brandy, presumably for medicinal purposes though
it helped to ease the tension all around: especially for Benjamin, who smiled in his curly beard as he spoke from his fund of historical examples of other national causes that had survived reverses even more dismal than the one at hand. Mallory however remained somber, aware that the flotilla he had improvised for the capital’s defense — three small ironclads and half a dozen wooden vessels — would be abolished, by his own orders, before dawn. By contrast, Attorney General George Davis was limited to theoretical regrets, his department having existed only on paper from the outset: and paper, unlike ships, could be replaced. Finally, at 11 o’clock — as Lee headed Traveller west from the road-fork on the near side of the Appomattox, twenty miles to the south — the train creaked out of the station. While the gaslit flare of Richmond faded rearward beyond the river, the fleeing President could reflect on the contrast between his departure tonight and his arrival, four bright springs ago, when the city had been festooned with flowers to bid him welcome. Whatever he was thinking, though, he kept his thoughts to himself. So did John Reagan, the selfmade Texan who had kept the mail in motion, if not on time, throughout the shrinking Confederacy all those years. He chewed morosely at his habitual quid, a colleague would recall, “whittling a stick down to the little end of nothing without ever reaching a satisfactory point.”

Behind them as the train crept southward, worn wheels clacking on worn track, Richmond trembled for the last time from the tramp of gray-clad soldiers through her streets; Ewell was leaving, and only a cavalry rear guard, a small brigade of South Carolina troopers, stood between the city and some 20,000 bluecoats confronting the unmanned fortifications north of the James. On their way through town, demolition squads set fire to tobacco warehouses near the river, while others stood by to put the torch to buildings stocked with munitions of all kinds. City officials protested, but to no avail; the army had its orders, and no ranking member of the government was available to appeal to, all having left by midnight except John A. Campbell, who was not available either; he had last been seen at sundown, talking rapidly to himself as he walked along 9th Street with two books under his arm. A south wind sprang up, spreading flames from the burning tobacco, and soon the great waterside flour mills were on fire. Around 2 o’clock, a huge explosion jolted the city with the blowing of a downstream magazine, followed presently by another, closer at hand, that shattered plate glass windows all over Shockoe Hill. This last was a sustained eruption, volcano-like in its violence, for its source was the national arsenal, reported to contain 750,000 loaded projectiles, which continued to go off for hours. “The earth seemed fairly to writhe as if in agony,” a diarist recorded; “the house rocked like a ship at sea, while stupendous thunders roared around.” When the three ironclads went, near Rocketts Landing shortly afterward, Semmes pronounced the spectacle “grand
beyond description,” especially the one produced by his flagship, C.S.S.
Virginia Number
2. “The explosion of her magazine threw all the shells, with their fuses lighted, into the air. The fuses were of different lengths, and as the shells exploded by twos and threes, and by the dozen, the pyrotechnic effect was very fine.” By then both railway bridges were long lines of fire, reflected in the water that ran beneath them. Only Mayo’s Bridge remained, kept open for the rear guard, though barrels of tar were stacked at intervals along it, surrounded by pine knots for quick combustion when the time came. At last it did. Shortly after dawn, having seen the last of his troopers across, the South Carolina brigadier rode out onto the span and touched his hat to the engineer in charge. “All over. Goodbye. Blow her to hell,” he said, and trotted on.