Recollections of the Civil War / With the Leaders at Washington and in the Field in the Sixties

by Charles A. Dana

Weitzel told me that he had learned at three o'clock in the morning of Monday, April 3d, that Richmond was being evacuated. He had moved forward at daylight, first taking care to give his men breakfast, in the expectation that they might have to fight. He met no opposition, and on entering the city was greeted with a hearty welcome from the mass of people. The mayor went out to meet him to surrender the city, but missed him on the road.

I took a walk around Richmond that day to see how much the city was injured. The Confederates in retreating had set it on fire, and the damage done in that way was enormous; nearly everything between Main Street and the river, for about three quarters of a mile, was burned. The custom house and the Spotswood Hotel were the only important buildings remaining in the burned district. The block opposite the Spotswood, including the Confederate War Department building, was entirely consumed. The Petersburg Railroad bridge, and that of the Danville road, were destroyed. All the enemy's vessels, excepting an unfinished ram which had her machinery in perfect order, were burned. The Tredegar Iron Works were unharmed. Libby Prison and Castle Thunder had also escaped the fire.

Immediately upon arriving I began to make inquiries about official papers. I found that the records and documents of the departments and of Congress had generally been removed before the evacuation, and that during the fire the Capitol had been ransacked and the documents there scattered. In the rooms of the Secretary of the Senate and of the Military Committee of the House of Representatives in the State House we found some papers of importance. They were in various cases in drawers, and all in great confusion. They were more or less imperfect and fragmentary. In the State Engineer's office also there were some boxes of papers relating to the Confederate works on the Potomac, around Norfolk, and on the Peninsula. I had all of these packed for shipment, without attempting to put them in order, and forwarded at once to Washington.

General Weitzel told me that he had found about twenty thousand people in Richmond, half of them of African descent. He said that when President Lincoln entered the town on the 4th he received a most enthusiastic reception from the mass of the inhabitants. All the members of Congress had escaped, and only the Assistant Secretary of War, Judge John Archibald Campbell, remained in the fallen capital of the Confederacy. Most of the newspaper editors had fled, but the Whig appeared on the 4th as a Union paper, with the name of its former proprietor at its head. The night after I arrived the theater opened.

There was much suffering and poverty among the population, the rich as well as the poor being destitute of food. Weitzel had decided to issue supplies to all who would take the oath. In my first message to Mr. Stanton I spoke of this. He immediately answered: "Please ascertain from General Weitzel under what authority he is distributing rations to the people of Richmond, as I suppose he would not do it without authority; and direct him to report daily the amount of rations distributed by his order to persons not belonging to the military service, and not authorized by law to receive rations, designating the color of the persons, their occupation, and sex." Mr. Stanton seemed to be satisfied when I wired him that Weitzel was working under General Ord's orders, approved by General Grant, and that he was paying for the rations by selling captured property.

The important question which the President had on his mind when I reached Richmond was how Virginia could be brought back to the Union. He had already had an interview with Judge Campbell and other prominent representatives of the Confederate Government. All they asked, they said, was an amnesty and a military convention to cover appearances. Slavery they admitted to be defunct. The President did not promise the amnesty, but he told them he had the pardoning power, and would save any repentant sinner from hanging. They assured him that, if amnesty could be offered, the rebel army would be dissolved and all the States return.

On the morning of the 7th, five members of the so-called Virginia Legislature held a meeting to consider written propositions which the President had handed to Judge Campbell. The President showed these papers to me confidentially. They were two in number. One stated reunion as a sine qua non; the second authorized General Weitzel to allow members of the body claiming to be the Legislature of Virginia to meet in Richmond for the purpose of recalling Virginia's soldiers from the rebel armies, with safe conduct to them so long as they did and said nothing hostile to the United States. In discussing with me these documents, the President remarked that Sheridan seemed to be getting rebel soldiers out of the war faster than the Legislature could think.

The next morning, on April 8th, I was present at an interesting interview between General Weitzel and General Shepley, who had been appointed as Military Governor of Richmond, and a committee of prominent citizens and members of the Legislature. Various papers were read by the Virginian representatives, but they were told plainly that no propositions could be entertained that involved a recognition of the Confederate authorities. The committee were also informed that if they desired to prepare an address to the people, advising them to abandon hostility to the Government at once, and begin to obey the laws of the United States, they should have every facility for its circulation through the State, provided, of course, that it met the approval of the military authorities. The two Union generals said that if the committee desired to call a convention of the prominent citizens of the State, with a view to the restoration of the authority of the United States Government, they would be allowed to go outside the lines of Richmond for the purpose of visiting citizens in different parts of the State and inducing them to take part in a convention. Safe conduct was promised to them for themselves and such citizens as they could persuade to attend the convention. They were also told that if they were not able to find conveyances for themselves for the journey into the country, horses would be loaned to them for that purpose. All this, they were informed, was not to be considered as in any manner condoning any offense of which any individual among them might have been guilty.

Judge Campbell said that he had no wish to take a prominent part in the proceedings, but that he had long since made up his mind that the cause of the South was hopeless. He had written a formal memorial to Jefferson Davis, immediately after the Hampton Roads conference, urging him and the Confederate Congress to take immediate steps to stop the war and restore the Union. He had deliberately remained in Richmond to meet the consequences of his acts. He said that if he could be used in the restoration of peace and order, he would gladly undertake any labor that might be desired of him.