"Did traitors lurk in the rebel hold?
Had their hands grown stiff or their hearts grown cold?
I know not in sooth, but from yonder wall
There flashed no fire, there hissed no ball."
—Siege of Corinth.
and now we are up to the second line of works, they are silent and empty, and Gen. Hartranft, commanding the 3d Division of our Corps, jumps astride of the 8-inch Columbiad, which, a week or two before, had shelled his headquarters in the Avery House, and which he had sworn he would "straddle."
And now the fact becomes evident, Petersburg is evacuated. We break from line of battle into column, and dipping down into a ravine we see, as we mount the hill on the other side, the cockade city lying stretched out at our feet, the goal we have been striving for, for almost a year, is won, and Petersburg is ours.
It seems strange and dream-like, at first, to stand there and look down, at close quarters, on the spires and cupolas that for many a long month we have watched from a distance, and to trace their connections, with the buildings of which they formed a part, in reality, instead of only in imagination, as before.
Yes, there it lay before us looking, somehow, strangely civilized and peaceful with its old fashioned steep-roofed houses nestled down amongst the trees, the smoke from the chimneys curling upwards into the bright blue sky overhead—a crowd of darkies "Hurrahing and Hallelujahing" around us, accompanying their expressions of delight with a grotesque exhibition of antics and grimaces, and "Bressing de Lord and the Yankees," about alike, for the freedom that had this day come to them. And now as the light gets stronger, we see the colors of the 2d Michigan waving from the Court House, and the strains of a brass band come floating down the wind faint and indistinct in the distance. But a note here and there is sufficient to show that it is a salute to the flag that waves over the captured city, and, as the well-known strains of the "Star Spangled Banner" fall clearer and clearer on the ear, our own flags are "unfurled to the glad breeze of heaven," and a cheer goes up to greet them, that awakens the echoes of the city far and wide.
We sit down under the shade of the locust trees and discuss a hasty breakfast, when the word is given, "Fall in," and we march back to camp, to bid farewell to the spot that, for nearly six months, has been our only home, to pack up our Lares and Penates and transporting them, like Ulysses, (not Grant, but him of Troy) on our back, start off in pursuit of the rebel army, or wherever it may please Grant to send us.