April 3, 1865. |
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Davis earlier in the evening, just before he left, when a similar remonstrance was offered to him, that their statement that the burning of the warehouses would endanger the City, was “a cowardly pretext on the part of the citizens, trumped up to endeavor to save their property for the Yankees.”
Ewell had no alternative, as a soldier, but to obey; for the law, and the order from the “War Department,” were imperative.
The torch was applied by somebody.
At daybreak the warehouses were in flames.
The City was already on fire in several places.
The intoxicated Confederate soldiers, joined with many of the dangerous class of both sexes, had formed a marauding mob of fearful proportions, who broke open and pillaged stores, and committed excesses of every kind.
From midnight until dawn, the City was a pandemonium.
Here and there stores were set on fire.
The roaring mob released the prisoners from the jail and burned it. They set fire to the arsenal, and tried to destroy the Tredegar iron works.1 Early in the morning, one of the large Mills on the borders of the River was set on fire; and at about the same time, the doomed warehouses burst into flames.2 from these the conflagration spread rapidly, for the fire Department was powerless, and by the middle of the forenoon, a greater portion of the principal business part of the town was a blazing furnace.
while the terrible drama was in action, between midnight and dawn, the Confederate troops were making their way across the bridges, to the South side of the James River.
At about three o'clock, the magazine near the the almshouse was fired and blown up, with a concussion that shook the City to its foundations, and was heard and felt for many miles around.
This was soon followed by another explosion.
It was the blowing up of the Confederate ram, Virginia, below the City.
At seven o'clock in the morning,
the retreating troops were all across the stream, when the torch was applied to Mayo's bridge and the railway bridges, and they were burned behind the fugitives.
At about the same time, two more Confederate iron-clads (Fredericksburg and Richmond3) were blown up. The receiving-ship, Patrick Henry, was scuttled and sunk, and a number of small vessels, lying at Rocketts, were burned.
The bursting of shells in the arsenal, when the fire reached them, added to the horrors of the scene.
At noon, about seven hundred buildings in the business part of the City, including a Presbyterian church, were in ruins.
1 see page 36, volume II. “many buildings,” said General Ewell, “were fired by the mob, which I had carefully directed should be spared. Thus the arsenal was destroyed against My orders. A party of men who proceeded to burn the Tredegar iron works, were only deterred by General Anderson's arming his employees and threatening resistance. The small bridge on Fourteenth Street, over the canal, was burnt by incendiaries, who fired a barge above and pushed it against the bridge.” --Ewell's letter to the author.
2 General Ewell said: “I left the City about seven in the morning, and, as yet, nothing had been fired by My orders, yet the buildings and depot near the bridge were on fire, and the flames were so close as to be disagreeable as I rode by them.” --[letter of General Ewell to the author.] he also mentions seeing from the hills above Manchester, the flames burst through the roof of a fire-proof mill, “on the side farthest from the large warehouses ;” and he was informed that Mr. Crenshaw found his mill full of plunderers, who were about to burn it, and he saved it by giving them all the flour. Ewell was offered, by the “Ordnance Department,” turpentine to mix with the tobacco, to make it burn more fiercely, but he refused to use it because it would endanger the City. After considering all the facts and circumstances, the writer is impressed with the belief, that the humane Ewell never issued the prescribed order for firing the warehouses, but that the work was done by a less scrupulous hand, connected with the “War Department.” Ewell had specially advised care in keeping the fire-engines in order, in the event of a conflagration. “these,” he said, “were found to be disabled,” and Jones who was connected with the “War Department,” says, in his Diary, under date of April 3, “shells were placed in all the warehouses where the tobacco was stored, to prevent the saving of any.”
3 see note 8, page 531.
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