The brilliant victory of Colquitt at Ocean Pond, of Forest at Fort Pillow, and other minor successes gained by the Confederate leaders added scarcely a transient ray of hope. Clouds of smoke by day, a pillar of fire by night, marked the advance of Sherman through Georgia. The most fruitful region of the South was left a charred and desolate ruin. Tilly, the Duke of Alva, nor Wallenstein ever left destruction so complete and irremediable as that which marked the path of that great soldier who declared war was hell and fully lived up to that harsh conviction.
After the fall of Savannah, the blue legions now irresistible, turned northward, and it became apparent that the vitals of the Confederacy lay between the two huge iron jaws of Grant’s and Sherman’s armies which were closing with a steady force that nothing could resist.
Day and night Grant rained his mighty sledge-hammer blows upon the defenses of the devoted capital, which Lee met and parried with the skill of consummate military genius. But the blade of the rapier was growing thinner and the time must come when it would break. Holding works forty miles in length with less than a thousand soldiers to the mile, he inflicted repulse after repulse until the Southern people came to regard him as invincible.
Even Mr. Davis, who was now almost constantly with his great Captain, seems to have shared the delusion, and despite his warnings that the end must soon come delayed his departure from Richmond.
At last on Sunday, April 2, 1865, a courier entered old St. John’s in the midst of services and handed the President a telegram. It was General Lee’s notice that he could no longer hold his lines. Mr. Davis quietly left the church, but all understood and soon a panic reigned in the quiet old city. This was increased by the terrific explosions that came from the river and arsenals where warships and military supplies were being destroyed. That night the fires from burning warehouses lighted the train that bore out of the doomed city the President and his cabinet and the archives of the fugitive government. Whether from the sparks of the burning arsenals or from the torches of incendiaries will never be known, but that night a fierce conflagration swept over the city, and when in the gray dawn of the next morning General Godfrey Weitzel’s cavalry rode through the smoldering streets and raised the stars and stripes over Virginia’s ancient and the Confederates’ recent capital, it floated over a scene of desolation only a little less complete than Napoleon beheld when he looked for the last time from the ancient Krimlin upon destroyed Moscow.
XXVIII. General Lee’s Surrender
History has fully recorded the last scenes of the heroic effort of the peerless Lee to fall back upon Danville and effect a junction with General Johnston and it is unnecessary here to relate how surrounded by overwhelming numbers and reduced to starvation he finally at Appomattox surrendered the remaining 7,500 of that superb army which, without doubt, had been the most magnificent fighting machine in the world’s history.
In the meantime the fugitive government reached Danville in a pouring rain. There were no accommodations for the officials, no place to install the executive machinery. General Breckenridge, sitting upon a camp stool in front of the damp dingy little station, studied a map and drew the lines along which Johnston and Lee should advance. The Secretary of State, reclining upon a knapsack, talked hopefully of the recognition that was certain to arrive from England and France in a few days. Mr. Reagan chewed a straw and said nothing. It was a dull day in the department of justice, and the Attorney-General paced the platform and looked thoughtfully toward Canada. At last it was decided to begin work and the clerks seated themselves around tables in the cars, and the government was soon once more issuing all kinds of orders. Mr. Davis, calm and tranquil as usual, had made up his mind never to surrender as long as resistance was possible unless he could secure favorable terms for his people. For himself he asked nothing, but he believed it his duty to continue the struggle until the fundamental principles of a free people should be secured for the South. This he did not doubt could be accomplished by the junction of Lee and Johnston. It was, of course, a great blow to his hopes when the news of Lee’s surrender reached him, but he belonged to that rare type of man whose courage and resolution grow stronger in the face of adversity. His only hope now lay in Johnston’s army, but with it he declared the South could conquer an honorable peace against the world in arms.