More than 700
buildings were feeding a conflagration at once terrible and magnificent
to behold, and no one was endeavoring to stay its advance. The negroes
were intoxicated with joy, and the whites with whiskey; the convicts
from the penitentiary had broken loose; a mob was breaking into houses
and stores and was pillaging madly. Erelong the Fifth Massachusetts
Cavalry, a negro regiment under Colonel C.F. Adams, Jr., paraded
through the streets, and then the Southern whites hid themselves within
doors to shun the repulsive spectacle. It may be that armed and hostile
negroes brought to them the dread terror of retaliation and massacre in
the wild hour of triumph. But if so, their fear was groundless; the
errand of the Northern troops was, in fact, one of safety and charity;
they began at once to extinguish the fires, to suppress the riot, and to
feed the starving people.
On the following day President Lincoln started on his way up the river
from City Point, upon an excursion to the rebel capital. Obstructions
which had been placed in the stream stopped the progress of his steamer;
whereupon he got into a barge and was rowed to one of the city wharves.
He had not been expected, and with a guard of ten sailors, and with four
gentlemen as comrades, he walked through the streets, under the guidance
of a "contraband," to the quarters of General Weitzel. This has been
spoken of as an evidence of bravery; but, regarded in this light, it
was only superfluous evidence of a fact which no one ever doubted; it
really deserves better to be called foolhardiness, as Captain Penrose,
who was one of the party, frankly described it in his Diary.
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