"Can you accommodate me with a room?"
"I reckon we can, sir, but like enough you will be burnt out before morning. You can have any room you choose. Nobody here."
I registered my name on a page which bore the names of a score of Rebel officers who had left in the morning, and took a room on the first floor, from which I could easily spring to the ground in case the hotel should be again endangered by the fire.
Throwing up the sash I looked out upon the scene. There were swaying chimneys, tottering walls, streets impassable from piles of brick, stones, and rubbish. Capitol Square was filled with furniture, beds, clothing, crockery, chairs, tables, looking-glasses. Women were weeping, children crying. Men stood speechless, haggard, wobegone, gazing at the desolation.
In Charleston the streets echoed only to the sound of my own footsteps or the snarling of hungry curs. There I walked through weeds, and trod upon flowers in the grassy streets; but in Richmond I waded through Confederate promises to pay, public documents, and broken furniture and crockery.
Granite columns, iron pillars, marble façades, broken into thousands of pieces, blocked the streets. The Bank of Richmond, Bank of the Commonwealth, Traders' Bank, Bank of Virginia, Farmers' Bank, a score of private banking-houses, the American Hotel, the Columbian Hotel, the Enquirer and the Dispatch printing-offices, the Confederate Post-Office Department, the State Court-House, the Mechanics' Institute, all the insurance offices, the Confederate War Department, the Confederate Arsenal, the Laboratory, Dr. Reed's church, several founderies and machine-shops, the Henrico County Court-House, the Danville and the Petersburg depots, the three bridges across the James, the great flouring-mills, and all the best stores of the city, were destroyed.
Soldiers from General Devens's command were on the roof of the Capitol, Governor's house, and other buildings, ready to extinguish the flames. The Capitol several times caught fire from cinders.
"If it had not been for the soldiers the whole city would have gone," said a citizen.
The colored soldiers in Capitol Square were dividing their rations with the houseless women and children, giving them hot coffee, sweetened with sugar,—such as they had not tasted for many months. There were ludicrous scenes. One negro had three Dutch-ovens on his head, piled one above another, a stew-pan in one hand and a skillet in the other. Women had bags of flour in their arms, baskets of salt and pails of molasses, or sides of bacon. No miser ever gloated over his gold so eagerly as they over their supply of provisions. They had all but starved, but now they could eat till satisfied.
How stirring the events of that day! Lee retreating, Grant pursuing; Davis a fugitive; the Governor and Legislature of Virginia seeking safety in a canal-boat; Doctors of Divinity fleeing from the wrath they feared; the troops of the Union marching up the streets; the old flag waving over the Capitol; Rebel ironclads blowing up; Richmond on fire; the billows rolling from square to square, unopposed in their progress by the bewildered crowd; and the Northern Vandals laying down their arms, not to the enemy in the field, but the better to battle with a foe not more relentless, but less controllable with the weapons of war. Weird the scenes of that strange, eventful night,—the glimmering flames, the clouds of smoke hanging like a funeral pall above the ruins, the crowd of homeless creatures wandering the streets.