reap a large advantage from the operations evidently near at hand. . . . . We have only to resolve that we never will surrender, and it will be impossible that we shall ever be taken."

"My line is broken in three places, and Richmond must be evacuated," was Lee's despatch to Jeff Davis. The messenger found him in Rev. Dr. Minnegerode's church. He read the despatch, hurried to the Executive Mansion, passed up the winding stairway to his business apartment, sat down by a small table, wrote an order for the removal of the coin in the banks to Danville, for the burning of the public documents, and for the evacuation of the city. Mrs. Davis had left the city several days previous.

Rev. Dr. Minnegerode, before closing the forenoon service, gave notice that General Ewell desired the local forces to assemble at 3 P. M. There was no evening service. Ministers and congregations were otherwise employed. Rev. Mr. Hoge, a fierce advocate for slavery as a beneficent institution, packed his carpet-bag. Rev. Mr. Duncan was moved to do likewise. Mr. Lumpkin, who for many years had kept a slave-trader's jail, had a work of necessity on this Lord's day, the temporal salvation of fifty men, women, and children! He made up his coffle in the jail-yard, within pistol-shot of Jeff Davis's parlor window, and a stone's throw from the Monumental Church. The poor creatures were hurried to the Danville depot. This sad and weeping fifty, in handcuffs and chains, was the last slave coffle that shall tread the soil of America.

Slavery being the corner-stone of the Confederacy, it was fitting that this gang, keeping step to the music of their clanking chains, should accompany Jeff Davis, his secretaries Benjamin and Trenholm, and the Reverend Messrs. Hoge and Duncan, in their flight. The whole Rebel government was on the move, and all Richmond desired to be. No thoughts now of taking Washington, or of the flag of the Confederacy flaunting in the breeze from the dome of the national Capitol! Hundreds of officials were at the depot, waiting to get away from the doomed city. Public documents, the archives of the Confederacy, were hastily gathered up, tumbled into boxes and barrels, and taken to the trains, or carried into the streets and set on fire. Coaches, carriages, wagons, carts, wheelbarrows,

everything in the shape of a vehicle, was pressed into use. There was a jumble of boxes, chests, trunks, valises, carpetbags, a crowd of excited men sweating as never before: women with dishevelled hair, unmindful of their wardrobes, wringing their hands, children crying in the crowd, sentinels guarding each entrance to the train, pushing back at the point of the bayonet the panic-stricken multitude, giving precedence to Davis and the high officials, and informing Mr. Lumpkin that his niggers could not be taken. O, what a loss was there! It would have been fifty thousand dollars out of somebody's pocket in 1861, and millions now of Confederate promises to pay, which the hurrying multitude and that chained slave gang were treading under foot, trampling the bonds of the Confederate States of America in the mire, as they marched to the station; for the oozy streets were as thickly strewn with four per cents, six per cents, eight per cents, as forest streams with autumn leaves.

"The faith of the Confederate States is pledged to provide and establish sufficient revenues for the regular payment of the interest, and for the redemption of the principal," read the bonds; but there was a sudden eclipse of faith; a collapse of confidence, a shrivelling up like a parched scroll of the entire Confederacy, which was a base counterfeit of the American Union it sought to overturn and supplant, now an exploded concern, and wound up by Grant's orders, its bonds, notes, and certificates of indebtedness worth less than the paper on which they were printed.

Soon after dark the commissaries, having loaded all the army wagons with supplies, began the destruction of what they could not carry away. In the medical purveyor's department were several hundred barrels of whiskey, which were rolled into the street and stove in by soldiers with axes. As the liquor ran down the gutter, officers and soldiers filled their flasks and canteens, while those who had no canteen threw themselves upon the ground and drank from the fiery stream. The rabble with pitchers, basins, dipped it up and drank as if it were the wine of life. The liquor soon began to show its effects. The crowd became a mob, and rushed upon the stores and government warehouses. The soldiers on guard at first kept

them at bay, but as the darkness deepened the whiskey-maddened crowd became more furious. By midnight there was a grand saturnalia. The flour in the government stores was seized. Men were seen rolling hogsheads of bacon through the streets. Women filled their aprons with meal, their arms with candles. Later in the night the floating débris of the army reached the city, the teamsters, servants, ambulance-drivers, with stragglers from the ranks, who pillaged the stores. First attacking the clothing, boot, and hat stores, then the jewellers' shops and the saloons, and lastly the dry-goods establishments. Costly panes of glass were shivered by the butts of their muskets, and the reckless crowd poured in to seize whatever for the moment pleased their fancy, to be thrown aside the next instant for something more attractive.

"As I passed the old market-house," writes a Rebel soldier, "I met a tall fellow with both arms full of sticks of candy, dropping part of his sweet burden at every step."

"Stranger," said he, "have you got a sweet tooth?" "I told him that I did not object to candy."

"Then go up to Antoni's and get your belly full, and all for nothing."

"A citizen passed me with an armful of hats and caps. It is every man for himself and the Devil for us all to-night,' he said, as he rushed past me." *

The train which bore Jeff Davis from the city left at eight o'clock in the evening. He took his horses and coach on board for a flight across the country, in case Sheridan stopped the cars. He was greatly depressed in spirits, and his countenance was haggard and care-worn. At the station there was a crowd of men who had fawned upon him,-office-holders, legislators, and public-spirited citizens who had made great sacrifices for the Rebellion, who, now that they wished to obtain standing room upon the train, found themselves rudely thrust aside by the orders of the President. They were of no more account than the rest of the excited populace that knew Davis but to execrate him.

In the Sabbath evening twilight, the train, with the fugitive

* A Rebel Courier's Experience.