The skill and character of Lee and his associates would however of course have been in vain and the lines would have been broken not in 1865, but in 1863 or in 1862, if it had not been for the magnificent patience and heroism of the rank and file that fought in the grey uniform under the Stars and Bars and whose fighting during the last of those months was done in tattered uniforms and with a ration less by from one quarter to one half than that which had been accepted as normal.

On the second of April, the Stars and Stripes are borne into Richmond by the advance brigade of the right wing of Grant’s army under the command of General Weitzel.  There was a certain poetic justice in the decision that the responsibility for making first occupation of the city should be entrusted to the coloured troops.  The city had been left by the rear-guard of the Confederate army in a state of serious confusion.  The Confederate general in charge (Lee had gone out in the advance hoping to be able to break his way through to North Carolina) had felt justified, for the purpose of destroying such army stores (chiefly ammunition) as remained, in setting fire to the storehouses, and in so doing he had left whole quarters of the city exposed to flame.  White stragglers and negroes who had been slaves had, as would always be the case where all authority is removed, yielded to the temptation to plunder, and the city was full of drunken and irresponsible men.  The coloured troops restored order and appear to have behaved with perfect discipline and consideration.  The marauders were arrested, imprisoned, and, when necessary, shot.  The fires were put out as promptly as practicable, but not until a large amount of very unnecessary damage and loss had been brought upon the stricken city.  The women who had locked themselves into their houses, more in dread of the Yankee invader than of their own street marauders, were agreeably surprised to find that their immediate safety and the peace of the town depended upon the invaders and that the first battalions of these were the despised and much hated blacks.

Upon the 4th of April, against the counsel and in spite of the apprehensions of nearly all his advisers, Lincoln insisted upon coming down the river from Washington and making his way into the Rebel capital.  There was no thought of vaingloriousness or of posing as the victor.  He came under the impression that some civil authorities would probably have remained in Richmond with whom immediate measures might be taken to stop unnecessary fighting and to secure for the city and for the State a return of peaceful government.  Thomas Nast, who while not a great artist was inspired to produce during the War some of the most graphic and storytelling records in the shape of pictures of events, made a drawing which was purchased later by the New York Union League Club, showing Lincoln on his way through Main Street, with the coloured folks of the town and of the surrounding country crowding