The banks were all open, and depositors were as busy as bees removing their specie deposits; and the directors were equally active in getting off their bullion. Hundreds of thousands of dollars of paper-money were destroyed, both State and Con federate. 4. Night came; and with it came confusion worse confounded. There was no sleep for human eyes in Richmond that night. The City Council had met in the evening, and resolved to destroy all the liquor in the city, to avoid the disorder consequent on the temptation to drink at such a time. About the hour of midnight the work commenced, under the direction of committees of citizens in all the wards. Hundreds of barrels of liquor were rolled into the street, and the heads knocked in. The gutters ran with a liquor-freshet, and the fumes filled and impregnated the air. Fine cases of bottled liquors were tossed into the street from third-story windows, and wrecked into a thousand pieces. 5. As the work progressed, some straggling soldiers, retreating through the city, managed to get hold of a quantity of the liquor. From that moment, law and order ceased to exist. Many of the stores were pillaged; and the sidewalks were encumbered with broken glass, where the thieves had smashed the windows in their reckless haste to lay hands on the plunder within. The air was filled with wild cries of distress, or the yells of roving pillagers. 6. But a more terrible element was to appear upon the scene. An order had been issued from General Ewell's headquarters, to fire the four principal tobacco warehouses of the city-namely, the public warehouse, situated at the head of the basin, near the Petersburg railroad dépôt; Shockoe warehouse, situated near the centre of the city, side by side with the Gallego flourmills; Mayo's warehouse; and Debrell's warehouse, on Carystreet, a square below Libby prison. 7. Late in the night, Mayor Mayo had dispatched, by a committee of citizens, a remonstrance against this reckless military order, which plainly put in jeopardy the whole business portion of Richmond. It was not heeded. Nothing was left for the citizens but to submit to the destruction of their property. The warehouses were fired. The rams on the James River were blown up. The Richmond, Virginia, and another one were all blown to the four winds of heaven. The Patrick Henry, a receiving-ship, was scuttled. Such shipping, very little in amount, as was lying at the Richmond wharves, was also fired, save the flag-of-truce steamer Allison. The bridges leading out of the city were also fired, and were soon wrapped in flames. 8. Morning broke upon a scene such as those who witnessed it can never forget. The roar of an immense conflagration sounded in their ears; tongues of flame leaped from street to street; and in this baleful glare were to be seen, as of demons, the figures of busy plunderers, moving, pushing, rioting, through the black smoke, and into the open street, bearing away every conceivable sort of plunder. The scene at the commissary dépôt, at the head of the dock, beggared description. Hundreds of government wagons were loaded with bacon, flour, and whiskey, and driven off in hot haste to join the retreating army. · 9. Thronging about the dépôt were hundreds of men, women, and children, black and white, provided with capacious bags, baskets, tubs, buckets, tin pans, and aprons; cursing, pushing, and crowding; awaiting the throwing open of the doors, and the order for each to help himself. About sunrise, the doors were opened to the populace; and a rush that almost seemed to carry the building off its foundation was made, and hundreds of thousands of pounds of bacon, flour, etc., were soon swept away by a clamorous crowd. Close of the War.-The surrender of Lee was soon followed by that of the other Confederate generals, and the great insurrection was at an end, having been crushed by a series of the most persevering and gigantic efforts ever put forth by any nation. Through all disasters and discouragements, the patriotic and high-minded president had resolutely striven to save the integrity of the country, and had won the esteem and affection of all by his conscientious devotion to this noble cause. Assassination of the President.-Having been re-elected president in the fall of 1864, he had served but a few weeks of his second term, when, in less than one week after Lee's surrender, he was assassinated by a desperado acting in sympathy with the Confederate cause (April 14). The intelligence of this sad event filled every loyal heart throughout the land with sorrow and dismay, and for several weeks all the great cities throughout the North were draped in badges and emblems of mourning. The funeral cortege was followed by hundreds of thousands of the citizens of the republic, as it wended its way from the capital to Springfield, the former home of the deceased president,—thenceforth to be rendered sacred as his burial-place. United States Sanitary Commission.-Dr. Bellows. [The efforts put forth by the North to sustain the Union cause in this great conflict were not confined to the Government or the army in the field. The patriotism and philanthropy of the people themselves, and particularly of the women, were splendidly illustrated by the organized measures taken to sustain the soldiers, by ministering, in the most efficient manner, to their necessities. Of these organizations, the Christian and Sanitary Commissions deserve particular mention. The latter, especially, was the most magnificent in its design and the most effective in its results. Foremost in the organization of this mighty engine of mercy, and taking the lead in its beneficent operations, was Rev. Henry W. Bellows, D.D., of New York City. Through his enlightened and largehearted policy, and by his tact, judgment, and address, this powerful instrumentality was enabled to carry into effect its vast scheme of patriotisni and humanity.] 1. IN April, 1861, at the very opening of the war, the women of New York city and the neighboring towns were organized into an association called "The Women's Central Association," to reduce to system and energy the scattered and almost frantic desires and efforts of the American women to aid in preparing soldiers for the exposures of the field. 2. A committee went to Washington, as the representatives of this association, to confer with the Medical Bureau and the Government, upon the most efficient method of rendering this aid. They discovered such a want of largeness of view in the Medical Bureau, and so little preparation against the perils of sickness and wounds, that they were seized with the conviction that only a national movement, uniting the women of the whole country in a common organization, which should have the countenance and semi-official support or acceptance of the Government, with a freedom of its own not accorded to official bureaux, could meet the case. 3. Mindful of what the Sanitary Commissions of England had done in the Crimea and in China, they resolved to attempt the same thing, although under totally different conditions. They proposed to the Government to appoint a Sanitary Com mission, to supplement the labors and duties of the Medical Bureau, and be the channel of the charity, nursing, and solicitude of the people at home for the soldiers in the field. 4. The idea met with little favor. It was resisted by the Medical Bureau, the War Department, and the Cabinet, as likely to breed jealousy, to introduce conflicting elements, to mix up irresponsible with official duties, and to be regarded as intrusive and offensive by the military authorities. But so great was the pressure of all sorts of local Societies of Relief, that the Government soon saw that its only choice was between one great nuisance, and a thousand small ones; that possibly the Sanitary Commission might not be as bad as it looked, and that, in any case, while it was plainly dangerous to chill the people's enthusiasm by denying a regular vent to it, the Sanitary Commission would probably show, in a six months' trial, how troublesome and useless it was, and then be got rid of, without censure. 5. By steady pressure, the committee persuaded the Government to accept their idea, and the Commission was authorized, and began existence, June 10th, 1861-but only on condition that the committee would select their fellow-laborers in it, and take charge of the work. The Sanitary Commission was to have free access to the army, hospitals, and field; the right of sanitary inspection of camps, and the general duty of advising the Medical Bureau, and all army officers, in what pertained to the health and comfort of the soldiers. 6. It organized with a board composed partly of civilians, medical men, and men of general experience, from various parts of the country, and partly of military men in the army. This Board opened its central office in apartments furnished by the Government at Washington. It had from ten to twenty hired medical men, whom it employed as inspectors, or heads of detachments for the distribution of relief, who were placed with every army-corps on the whole field, from the beginning to the end of the war. These skilled men had each his force of assistants, his sanitary-tent, and his continually re-enforced supply of medicines, clothing, and soldiers' comforts. 7. Necessary teams were either owned by the Commission, or furnished by the Government; and from great sub-central depots at Louisville, New Orleans, Washington, Frederick, and a dozen other places, they transported the supplies constantly accumulated there to the army. The railroads and the Quartermaster's department always did their best to forward sanitary stores. But it required a prodigious foresight to know just where they were likely to be most needed; and as the very business of the Commission was to be where the government supplies might fail; to have ready what they lacked; to supplement their defects, or to guess better where battles and sickness would occur-little help could be derived from government information. 8. The Commission had its own sources of intelligence, and its own outlook, and usually acted upon its own independent judgment, both as to the neighborhood where to be and as to the kind of relief it should supply. This field and relief work involved inspection of camps; opening of houses for stragglers and people turned prematurely from the army hospitals, to give out on their way to their regiments; relief in food and clothing to men who had lost their knapsacks and their right to rations by the fortunes of war; and a continued visitation of all army hospitals, regimental or general. The Sanitary Commission was the people's attorney, with its ears open to every just complaint, its hand open to every real want of the poor soldier. And it meant to be everywhere, where a single Union regiment was found, from Mason and Dixon's line to Florida and Texas. 9. It followed up the army when it advanced, and allowed no corps to move without its deputies, fully provided with relief, medical and sanitary. An average of two thousand soldiers were every night in its houses-who would have been tentless and homeless but for its extra providence. It had steamboats converted into floating hospitals, whereon the army lay nearnavigable streams. It brought home thousands of wounded in this manner from the James River and the Pamunkey,under the tenderest care. It was on four-fifths of all the seven hundred› |