On Sunday night, April 2,
Jefferson Davis, with his cabinet and their more important papers,
hurriedly left the doomed city on one of the crowded and overloaded
railroad trains. The legislature of Virginia and the governor of the
State departed in a canal-boat toward Lynchburg; and every available
vehicle was pressed into service by the frantic inhabitants, all anxious
to get away before their capital was desecrated by the presence of
"Yankee invaders." By the time the military left, early next morning, a
conflagration was already under way. The rebel Congress had passed a
law ordering government tobacco and other public property to be burned.
General Ewell, the military commander, asserts that he took the
responsibility of disobeying the law, and that they were not fired by
his orders. However that may be, flames broke out in various parts of
the city, while a miscellaneous mob, inflamed by excitement and by the
alcohol which had run freely in the gutters the night before, rushed
from store to store, smashing in the doors and indulging all the
wantonness of pillage and greed. Public spirit was paralyzed, and the
whole fabric of society seemed crumbling to pieces, when the convicts
from the penitentiary, a shouting, leaping crowd of party-colored
demons, overcoming their guard, and drunk with liberty, appeared upon
the streets, adding their final dramatic horror to the pandemonium.
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