Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

[702] of the Confederate President. It gave a new colour to the evacuation of Richmond. But the hopeful and ingenious minds which constructed the new theory of Confederate defence had failed to take in a most important element in the consideration — the moral effect of the fall of Richmond. They did not reflect that this city had been for four years the central object of all the plans and exertions of the war; they did not understand that it had become to the popular mind the symbol of the Confederacy; and they could not realize that when Richmond fell the cause lost in the estimation of the army and people the emblem and semblance of nationality and all appliances for supporting the popular faith and enthusiasm. But the sequel was to develop and demonstrate all these consequences, and the last hopes of the Confederacy were to be speedily extinguished.

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Retreat and final surrender of Lee's army.

In his last despatch from Petersburg, Gen. Lee had stated that some time during the night of the 2d April, he would fall back behind the Appomattox. He was then holding a semicircular line, the left resting on the Appomattox, narrowly including Petersburg; while his extreme right, which Sheridan was still pressing, was in the vicinity of the Southside Railroad, some fifteen miles west of the town. It appears that the enemy already imagined that he had cut off the troops on the right, supposing that they could not cross the river except through Petersburg; but in this he was mistaken. When night closed, the air was luminous with the steady glare of the burning warehouses in Petersburg. For several hours cannonading was kept up; but about midnight the Confederates began their retreat. By three o'clock in the morning, Gordon's whole corps, except a few pickets and stragglers, was safely across the river, and the bridge on fire.

As the troops from Petersburg got across the river, the heavily-charged magazine of Cummin's battery of siege guns blew up, lighting the deep darkness of the night with its fierce and vivid glare, and then shaking the earth like the shock of an earthquake. Fort Clifton's magazine in a moment followed, and then the explosion was taken up all along the line to Richmond. The scene was fierce and imposing. The retreating army left the light and pierced the midnight darkness. At each step some new explosion would sound in their ears. The whole heavens in their rear were lit up in lurid glare, and added intensity to the blackness before their eyes.

On leaving Petersburg, Gordon's corps took the river road; Mahone, with his division, and all other troops on the south side of the James, the middle road, and Ewell and Elzey, with the Richmond garrison, and other