At quarter after eight o’clock, that same morning, General Weitzel, with a few attendants, rode into the streets of Richmond.  That place, however, was by no means deserted, but, on the contrary, it seemed Pandemonium.  The rebels had been blowing up and burning warships and stores; they had also gathered great quantities of cotton and tobacco into the public storehouses and had then set them on fire.  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.  The walk was a mile and a half long, and this gentleman says:  “I never passed a more anxious time than in this walk.  In going up [the river] ... we ran the risk of torpedoes and the obstructions; but I think the risk the President ran in going through the streets of Richmond was even greater, and shows him to have great courage.  The streets of the city were filled with drunken rebels, both officers and men, and all was confusion....  A large portion of the city was still on fire.”  Probably enough the impunity with which this great risk was run was due to the dazing and bewildering effect of an occasion so confused and exciting.  Meantime, Lee, abandoning Petersburg, but by no means abandoning “the Cause,” pushed his troops with the utmost expedition to gain that southwestern route which was the slender thread whence all Confederate hope now depended.  His men traveled light and fast; for, poor fellows, they had little enough to