Adam Badeau, Military history of Ulysses S. Grant from April 1861 to April 1865. Volume 2

[542] friends who still hoped to join the fugitives; anxious even for the entrance of the national troops to put an end to the terrors of this awful night. One colonel in the rebel army made his way into Richmond after dark and was married, and then rejoined his command.

And thus amid acres of burning stores, and dwellings, and manufactories, and mills, and arsenals, and bridges, and vessels even; amid crowds of pillagers and fugitives, of slaves and soldiers, black and white; amid the crash of falling houses and exploding shells, under curtains of smoke that half obscured the blaze of the conflagration; amid rapine and riot and viler crimes—the city of Richmond fell.¹

Weitzel, meanwhile, had been on the alert all night, prepared to attack in the morning; but, about three A. M. on the 3rd, it became evident that the rebels were abandoning their lines. He immediately directed the troops to be wakened, and gave orders for a movement at daybreak, the pickets to advance at once and feel the enemy's position. Major General Devens,² commanding the Third division of the Twenty-fourth corps, was the first to report, at five o'clock, that his picket line had possession of the enemy's works. Upon this Weitzel sent two of his staff officers with a squadron of cavalry into Richmond, to preserve order until a larger force could arrive; while two divisions of infantry and all the