The people of Richmond during the late battle.
A negro, who ran away from this city during the battle of Saturday, tells a new associate of his at the
White House (a Yankee newspaper correspondent) that the people were on that day all on the tops of the houses and that they expected to see the
Yankees driven into the river.
When, however, they saw our troops running back towards
Richmond, he adds that the whole city was in a most awful state of alarm.
The correspondent writes this to the
Herald, and the
Herald puts it in print.
We have no doubt the negro was here, for many persons did go up on the
Capitol and other high places, to see if the battle field could be seen.
The rest, however, is a cheer fabrication — we suspect a fabrication of the
Yankee correspondent, not of the negro.
The people of
Richmond were, certainly, in painful suspense during the battle, and naturally enough, for many of them — most of them — had relatives and friends in the army.
But that there was any fear, anything approaching a panic, is absolutely false.
We do not believe that any city, since the world began, ever - ducted itself with so much composure, so much composure, so much quiet dignity.
The prayers of all, of course, were for the success of our brave troops, but there was scarcely a man of a woman who had any doubt about it. They all reckoned upon their valor and patriotism, and they reckoned not in vain.
As to their alarm when they saw our troops running back to
Richmond, it is quite certain that they did not see that, if indeed they could have anything at all. Rather they saw the
Yankees driven before them like sheep for a mile and diving into the swamp like muskrats.
They saw our men, if they saw anything in possession of the
Yankee camp with their tents, equipage of the field stores, baggage and cannon.
This, surely, could not have been to them a very alarming sight.
A
Yankee Colonel, who was brought in Tuesday morning expressed his surprise at seeing such an enormous number of our troops dressed in Yankee overcoats. "Everyone came off a dead Yankee," said some person to whom he expressed his surprise.
We ourselves saw half a dozen splendid br- fieldpieces going up Main street last Monday, all marked
U. S. A., (Uncle Sam's Artillery we suppose,) and all captured in that battle.
To talk about their beating us when we have their cannon, when we have thousands of their rifles and muskets, when we have their stores, and their tents, and their letters, and their portfolios, and have dressed a whole brigade in their overcoats, requires an amount of brave nobody but a Yankee ever had.
Once for all, the calm equanimity of our citizens that day was above all praise.
We who saw it, knew it. A distinguished lawyer, whose age prevented him from being on the field, exclaimed to a friend while the battle was raging, in the fullness of a heart over-flowing with admiration. "I am proud of
Richmond.
I am proud of my fellow citizens.
I could never have believed it possible for human beings to behave so admirably as they have done this day. From my soul, I am proud of them." And good reason he had to be proud of them, for certainly their behavior was most admirable.
There is nothing of which we read in the Annuals of
Rome — whether real or fictitious — that surpassed it.--How different from the account which
Washington Irving gives of the manner in which the people of New York conducted themselves when the battle was going on
Long Island True, however, the circumstances were different.
The people of New York knew the
British would be victorious, while our people fair satisfied we should beat the
Yankees.
