“I don’t know. Everybody was paralyzed. It was a perfect panic. The Yankees coming! the city burning! our army on a retreat!—you’ve no idea of what it was. Nobody seemed to know what to do. God save us from another such time! It was bad enough Sunday. If the world had been coming to an end, there couldn’t have been more fright and confusion. I was watchman on this railroad bridge,—when there was a bridge here. I was off duty at midnight, and I went home and went to bed. But along towards morning my daughter woke me. ‘Father,’ says she, ‘the city’s afire!’ I knew right away what was the matter. The night was all lit up, and I could hear the roar of something besides the river. I run out and started for the bridge, but I’d got quite near enough, when the ammunition in the tobacco-warehouses begun to go off. Crack!—crack!—crack, crack, crack! One piece of shell whirred past my head like a pa’tridge. I didn’t want to hear another. I put home and went to getting my truck together, such as I could tote, ready to leave if my house went.”
Subsequently I conversed with citizens of every grade upon this exciting topic, and found opinions regarding it as various as the political views of their authors. Those aristocrats who went in for the war but kept out of the fight, and who favored the Davis government because it favored them, had no word of censure for the incendiaries.
“The burning of the city was purely accidental,” one blandly informed me.
“No considerable portion of it would have been destroyed if it hadn’t been for private marauding parties,” said another. “The city was full of such desperate characters. They set fires for the purpose of plundering. It was they, and nobody else, who shut off the water from the reservoirs.”
The laboring class, on the other hand, generally denounced the Confederate leaders as the sole authors of the calamity. It was true that desperadoes aided in the work, but it was after the fugitive government had set them the example.
Here is the opinion of a Confederate officer, Colonel D——, whom I saw daily at the table of the hotel, and with whom I had many interesting conversations.
“It is not fair to lay the whole blame on the Confederate government, although, Heaven knows, it was bad enough to do anything! The plan of burning the city had been discussed beforehand: Lee and the more humane of his officers opposed it; Early and others favored it; and Breckinridge took the responsibility of putting it into execution.”
Amid all these conflicting opinions there was one thing certain—the fact of the fire; although, had it not been written out there before our eyes in black characters and lines of desolation, I should have expected to hear some unblushing apologist of the Davis despotism deny even that.
And, whoever may have been personally responsible for the crime, there is also a truth concerning it which I hold to be undeniable. Like the assassination of Lincoln, like the systematic murder of Union prisoners at Andersonville and elsewhere,—like these and countless other barbarous acts which have branded the Rebel cause with infamy,—this too was inspired by the spirit of slavery, and performed in the interest of slavery. That spirit, destructive of liberty and law, and self-destructive at last, was the father of the rebellion and of all the worst crimes of its adherents. As I walked among the ruins, pondering these thoughts, I must own that my heart swelled with pride when I remembered how the fire was extinguished. It was by no mere chance that the panic-stricken inhabitants were found powerless to save their own city. That task was reserved for the Union army, that a great truth might be symbolized. The war, on the part of the North, was waged neither for ambition nor revenge; its design was not destructive, but conservative. Through all our cloudy mistakes and misdeeds shone the spirit of Liberty; and the work she gave us to do was to quench the national flames which anarchy had kindled, and to save a rebellious people from the consequences of their own folly.
Richmond had already one terrible reminiscence of a fire. On the night of the 26th of December, 1811, its theatre was burned, with an appalling catastrophe: upward of seventy spectators, including the Governor of the State, perishing in the flames. The fire of the 3d of April, 1865, will be as long remembered.