Englishmen, took their lives in their hands and they fairly earned all the returns that came to them.  I happened to have early experience of the result of the fall of Fort Fisher and of the final closing of the last inlet for British goods.  I was at the time in prison in Danville, Virginia.  I was one of the few men in the prison (the group comprised about a dozen) who had been fortunate enough to retain a tooth-brush.  We wore our tooth-brushes fastened into the front button-holes of our blouses, partly possibly from ostentation, but chiefly for the purpose of keeping them from being stolen.  I was struck by receiving an offer one morning from the lieutenant of the prison guard of $300 for my tooth-brush.  The “dollars” meant of course Confederate dollars and I doubtless hardly realised from the scanty information that leaked into the prison how low down in February, 1865, Confederate currency had depreciated.  But still it was a large sum and the tooth-brush had been in use for a number of months.  It then leaked out from a word dropped by the lieutenant that no more English tooth-brushes could get into the Confederacy and those of us who had been studying possibilities on the coast realised that Fort Fisher must have fallen.

In this same month of February, into which were crowded some of the most noteworthy of the closing events of the War, Charleston was evacuated as Sherman’s army on its sweep northward passed back of the city.  I am not sure whether the fiercer of the old Charlestonians were not more annoyed at the lack of attention paid by Sherman to the fire-eating little city in which four years back had been fired the gun that opened the War, than they would have been by an immediate and strenuous occupation.  Sherman had more important matters on hand than the business of looking after the original fire-eaters.  He was hurrying northward, close on the heels of Johnston, to prevent if possible the combination of Johnston’s troops with Lee’s army which was supposed to be retreating from Virginia.

On the 4th of March comes the second inaugural, in which Lincoln speaks almost in the language of a Hebrew prophet.  The feeling is strong upon him that the clouds of war are about to roll away but he cannot free himself from the oppression that the burdens of the War have produced.  The emphasis is placed on the all-important task of bringing the enmities to a close with the end of the actual fighting.  He points out that responsibilities rest upon the North as well as upon the South and he invokes from those who under his leadership are bringing the contest to a triumphant close, their sympathy and their help for their fellow-men who have been overcome.  The address is possibly the most impressive utterance ever made by a national leader and it is most characteristic of the fineness and largeness of nature of the man.  I cite the closing paragraph: