In January, Wilmington fell.
Toward the end of the same month, John M. Daniel was a second time seized with pneumonia, and took to his bed, from which he was never again to rise. He would see no one but his physician and a few chosen friends. All other persons were persistently denied admittance to his chamber. Lingering throughout the remainder of the winter, as spring approached, life seemed gradually leaving him. Day by day his pulse grew weaker. You would have said that this man was slowly dying with the cause for which he had fought; that as the life-blood oozed, drop by drop, from the bleeding bosom of the Southern Confederacy, the last pulses of John M. Daniel kept time to the pattering drops.
One morning, at the end of March, his physician came to see him, and found him lying on the outer edge of his bed. Not wishing to disturb him, the physician went to the window to mix a stimulant. All at once a noise attracted his attention, and he turned round. The dying man had, by a great effort, turned completely over, and lay on his back in the middle of the bed, with his eyes closed, and his arms folded on his breast, as though he were praying.
When the physician came to his bedside, he was dead.
It was four days before the fall of Petersburg and Richmond; and he was buried in Hollywood, just in time to escape the tramp of Federal feet around his coffin.
His prophecy and wish were thus fulfilled.{1}
{Footnote 1: These details are strictly accurate.}