The fire was largely due to accident. In obedience to law, Confederate forces, in evacuating the city, fired tobacco warehouses, ordnance and other Government stores, gunboats in the James and bridges spanning the river. A wind, it is said, carried sparks towards the town, igniting first one building and then another; incendiarism lent aid that pilfering might go on in greater security through public disorder and distress.
MRS. JEFFERSON DAVIS
During the night detonations of exploding gunboats could be heard for miles, the noise and shock and lurid lights adding to the wretchedness of those within the city, and the anxieties of those who beheld its burnings from afar; among these, the advancing enemy, who was not without uneasy speculations lest he find Richmond, as Napoleon found Moscow, in ashes. General Shepley, U. S. A., has described the scene witnessed from his position near Petersburg, as a most beautiful and awful display of fireworks, the heavens at three o’clock being suddenly filled with bursting shells, red lights, Roman candles, fiery serpents, golden fountains, falling stars.
Nearly all the young men were gone; the fire department, without a full force of operatives, without horses, without hose, was unable to cope with the situation. Old men, women and children, and negro servants fought the flames as well as they could.
Friends and relatives who were living in Richmond then have told me about their experiences until I seem to have shared them. One who appears in these pages as Matoaca, gives me this little word-picture of the morning after the evacuation:
“I went early to the War Department, where I had been employed, to get letters out of my desk. The desk was open. Everything was open. Our President, our Government, our soldiers were gone. The papers were found and I started homeward. We saw rolls of smoke ahead, and trod carefully the fiery streets. Suddenly my companion caught my arm, crying: ‘Is not that the sound of cavalry?’ We hurried, almost running. Soon after we entered the house, some one exclaimed:
“‘God help us! The United States flag is flying over our Capitol!’
“I laid my head on Uncle Randolph’s knee and shivered. He placed his hand lightly on my head and said: ‘Trust in God, my child. They can not be cruel to us. We are defenseless.’ He had fought for that flag in Mexico. He had stood by Virginia, but he had always been a Unionist. I thought of New Orleans, Atlanta, Columbia.”
An impression obtained that to negro troops was assigned the honor of first entering Richmond, hauling down the Southern Cross and hoisting in its place the Stars and Stripes. “Harper’s Weekly” said: “It was fitting that the old flag should be restored by soldiers of the race to secure whose eternal degradation that flag had been pulled down.” Whether the assignment was made or not, I am unable to say; if it was, it was not very graceful or wise on the part of our conquerors, and had it been carried out, would have been prophetic of what came after—the subversion.