For two days after their entrance the Union army might have supposed they had captured a city of the dead. The houses were all tightly closed, shutters fastened and curtains drawn down; and an occasional blue-coated sentry in porch, or front yard, was the sole sign of life. In the streets it was little different. Crowds of soldiers moved curiously from point to point, large numbers of negroes mixing with them—anxious to assist their new found brotherhood, but wearing most awkwardly their vested rights. Here and there a gray jacket would appear for a moment—the pale and worn face above it watching with anxious eyes the unused scene; then it would disappear again. This was all. The Federals had full sweep of the city—with its silent streets and its still smoking district, charred and blackened; where, for acre after acre, only fragments of walls remained, and where tall chimney stacks, gaunt and tottering, pointed to heaven in witness against the useless sacrifice.
For two days this lasted. The curious soldiers lounged about the silent town, the burned desert still sent up its clouds of close, fetid smoke; the ladies of Richmond remained close prisoners. Then necessity drove them out, to seek food, or some means to obtain it; to visit the sick left behind; or to make charitable visits to those who might be even less provided than themselves.
Clad almost invariably in deep mourning—with heavy veils invariably hiding their faces—the broken-hearted daughters of the Capital moved like shadows of the past, through the places that were theirs no longer. There was no ostentation of disdain for their conquerors—no assumption of horror if they passed a group of Federals—no affected brushing of the skirt from the contact with the blue. There was only deep and real dejection—sorrow bearing too heavily on brain and heart to make an outward show—to even note smaller annoyances that might else have proved so keen. If forced into collision, or communication, with the northern officers, ladies were courteous as cold; they made no parade of hatred, but there was that in their cold dignity which spoke plainly of impassable barriers.
And, to their credit be it spoken, the soldiers of the North respected the distress they could but see; the bitterness they could not misunderstand. They made few approaches toward forcing their society—even where billeted in the houses of the citizens, keeping aloof and never intruding on the family circle.
For several days the water-approaches to the city could not be cleared from the obstructions sunk in them; all railroad communication was destroyed, and the whole population was dependent upon the slender support of the wagon trains. Few even of the wealthiest families had been able to make provision ahead; scarcely any one had either gold, or greenbacks; and suffering became actual and pinching. Then came the order that the Federal commissary was to issue rations to those needing them. Pinching themselves, as they did; preferring to subsist on the slenderest food that would sustain life, to accepting the charity of the enemy—many of those suffering women were driven by sheer hunger—by the threatened starvation of their children, or of the loved wounded ones near them—to seek the proffered bounty. They forced their way into the surging, fighting crowd of greasy and tattered negroes, of dark-faced "bummers" and "loyal" residents—and they received small rations of cornmeal and codfish; bearing them home to be eaten with what bitter seasoning they might of tears from pain and humiliation.
The direst destitution of the war had been nothing to this. With their own people around them, with hope and love to sustain them, the women of Richmond did not wince under the pinch of want. But now, surrounded by enemies, with not a pound of flour, or a cent of currency, actual starvation—as well as humiliation—stared them in the face. The few who went to draw rations, sat down in blank despair. They could not make up their minds to go again. The fewer still, who had the least surplus from immediate wants, distributed it freely; and a cup of sugar from a slender stock was bartered here for a few slices of the hoarded ham, or a pound or two of necessary meal.
Meantime, sutlers, peddlers and hucksters swarmed in like locusts, on the very first steamers up the river. They crowded Broad street, the unburned stores on Main, and even the alleyways, with great piles of every known thing that could be put up in tin. They had calculated on a rich harvest; but they had reckoned without their host. There was no money in Richmond to spend with them; and after a profitless sojourn, they took up their tin cans, and one by one returned North—certainly wiser and, possibly, better men. It was peculiar to note the universality of southern sympathy among these traders. There was scarcely one among them who didn't think the war "a darned shame;" they were intensely sympathetic and all came from South of the Pennsylvania line. But the supporters, either of their principles, or their trade, were the few lucky negroes who could collect "stamps," in never so small qualities; and to such the sutlers were a joy forever.
Shut off entirely from any communication with their retreating troops and mingling so little with their captors, Richmond people got only most startling and unreliable rumors from the army. Clinging, with the tenacity of the drowning, to the least straw of hope, they would not yet give up utterly that army they had looked on so long as invincible—that cause, which was more than life to them! Though they knew the country around was filled with deserters and stragglers; though the Federals had brigades lying round Richmond in perfect idleness—still for a time the rumor gained credit that General Lee had turned on his pursuer, at Amelia Court House, and gained a decisive victory over him. Then came the more positive news that Ewell was cut off with 13,000 men; and, finally, on the 9th of April, Richmond heard that Lee had surrendered. Surely as this result should have been looked forward to—gradually as the popular mind had been led to it—still it came as a blow of terrific suddenness. The people refused to believe it—they said it was a Yankee trick; and when the salute of one hundred guns rang out from forts and shipping, they still said, bitterly, it was a ruse to make them commit themselves.
Gradually they came to accept the inevitable; and, as the last ray of hope died out, its place was filled with the intense yearning to know the fate of those lost and loved ones—to know if they had died at the bitter ending, or lived to be borne away into captivity. Forgetting pride, hostility—all but their anxiety for those so precious to them now—the women caught at every shred of information; questioned ignorant soldiers eagerly; and listened patiently to the intelligible news the officers were only too willing to give. And at last these rumors assumed tangible form—there was no longer any room to doubt. General Lee, weakened by desertion and breaking down of his men—by General Ewell's capture and by the sense of hopelessness of further resistance, had on the morning of the 9th of April, surrendered 24,000 men—including the volunteer citizens, and the naval brigade of all the Richmond ship's-crews—and with them 8,000 muskets! Such, too, was the condition of the horses that the Federals refused even to drive them away from their stands. Little need, indeed, had there been for those extra brigades around the city.
Then Richmond, sitting like Rachel in her desolation, waited for the return of her vanquished—heroes still to her. News came of the general parole; and every sound across the river—every cloud of dust at the pontoon bridge—was the signal for a rush to doorstep and porch. Days passed and the women—not realizing the great difficulties of transportation—grew impatient to clasp their loved ones once more to their hearts. False outcries were made every hour, only to result in sickening disappointment and suspense. At last the evening of the third day came and, just at dusk, a single horseman turned slowly into deserted Franklin street.