on the Appomattox, and from there to Amelia Court-House. The troops in the Richmond and Bermuda Hundred lines were notified to commence to withdraw at eight o'clock, pickets to stand until three A. M., and head for Goode's and Genito bridges on the Appomattox, thence to Amelia Court-House. In a dispatch to Breckenridge, Secretary of War, received at seven P. M., Lee said, “I have given all the orders to officers on both sides of the river and have taken every precaution that I can to make the movement successful. It will be a difficult operation, but I hope not impractical. The troops will all be directed to Amelia Court-House."

The delivery and promulgation of Lee's orders, at one of the posts on the James that Sunday night, well deserve mention; and may the spirit of the occasion, signalized by reverence and recognition of a Power above all powers, breathe, God willing, on this narrative to the end.

Major Stiles, commanding a battalion of artillery at Chaffin's Bluff, had stood, so he tells us in his sterling Four Years Under Marse Robert, a greater part of the day on the parapets of his works, listening to the guns at Petersburg. The guns he heard were on Gordon's front, for that brave man held his lines and fought Parke till the sun went down and the attack was given up. Their dull reverberations, rapid and continual, so foreboded adversity, that, before going to meet with his men for worship at

nightfall, in a dimly lighted little chapel which they had built during the winter, he told his adjutant to remain in the office, and if any orders came, to bring them to him at once. "I read with the men,' says the major, "the Soldier Psalm, the Ninetyfirst, and exhorted them in any special pressure that might come upon us in the near future, the 'terror by night' or the 'destruction at noonday,' to abide with entire confidence in that 'stronghold,' to appropriate that 'strength.'

999

The major says that, as he uttered these last words, a lad's open face with brimming eyes caught his attention and checked his speech momentarily. Just then the door opened, and there stood the adjutant with an official communication in his hand. Stiles asked him to stand for a moment where he was, and proceeded to tell the men what, he was satisfied, was the purport of the adjutant's message. The young major, for he was scarcely twenty-five years of age, then led them in prayer, imploring the "realization of what David had expressed in the psalm -for faith, for strength, for protection." After Amen had been said, all on bended knees and with heads bowed, — deep must have been its holy pause, the major rose and read Lee's orders. Softly, at the appointed hour, for our sentinels were within speaking distance, his men stole out of their works and, leaving their hollow tents standing, took up the march. Daylight, when it broke,

found them miles away in Chesterfield; and there they lay down and fell asleep in a grove. And I hope their slumber was sweet, and that the lad's eyes, if he had dreams, saw home or heaven.

By the time the dead hours of the night had come on, the Petersburg forces were well across the Appomattox and the sun was just peeping over the tree tops when the last of the Richmond troops, Gary's brigade of South Carolina cavalry, crossed Mayo's Bridge over the James.

V

THE abandonment of Richmond by the Confederate and state authorities, and by many of its prominent citizens, was marked by no such orderly and solemnly uplifting detail as distinguished the conduct of Major Stiles and his command. For some strange reason, little or no fortitude and self-possession were displayed. On the contrary, as soon as it was learned that the troops were to evacuate the lines that night, frantic with disappointment or dread, they began to pour toward the railway stations and the canal which, in those days, joined Richmond and Lynchburg, following the banks of the James, packing themselves and their belongings into the cars or on the sleepy boats, and by sundown all the roads leading south and west into the country, then veiling with twilight, were filled with groups of anxious travelers, some on foot, some on horseback, and many in vehicles, often hired at fabulous prices.

In all seriousness, how can this humiliating flight from the doomed city be accounted for? Was it because they feared that our troops, like some of those of Sherman's, would turn barbarians and disgrace themselves and their country by outrages on

persons and property? If so, that fear was groundless; those who entered were under the firm hands of the mild and upright Weitzel, and carried themselves with becoming humanity and dignity. Or was it because there had been dreams of trials for treason and visions of gallows? Let the answer be what it may, the scene was not heroic, and was unbecoming in its contrast with the fame of Richmond, the desperate stand at Antietam, the glorious charge of Pickett at Gettysburg, or the dead in Holywood. Let us not forget, however, that it was a day of panic, and be charitable; above all, to the hundreds of minor officials, clerks, and employees in the various civil and military departments, drawn from all over the South. For all of them, I have nothing but pity in their distress; many were poor, far from home, and had only done their humble, tread-mill duties. But for all those who by hook or by crook had managed to keep out of the ranks, and especially for the oratorical, passion-inflaming politicians, I have nothing, and they deserve nothing, but contempt. Who knows how much of the mutual rage and cruelty of individuals in both armies - for cruelty begets cruelty is attributable to the blistering, wounding speech, the habitual, unmitigated abuse of the entire North, accompanied by taunting sneers of that class before and during the War? In the final analysis,- let there be no mistake, to their repeated gaffs of crowing, battle-challenging