It is quite probable that the very magnitude and rapidity of the
disaster served in a measure to mitigate its evil results. The burning
of seven hundred buildings, comprising the entire business portion of
Richmond warehouses, manufactories, mills, depots, and stores, all
within the brief space of a day, was a visitation so sudden, so
unexpected, so stupefying, as to overawe and terrorize even wrong-doers,
and made the harvest of plunder so abundant as to serve to scatter the
mob and satisfy its rapacity to quick repletion.
Before a new hunger could arise, assistance was at hand. General
Weitzel, to whom the city was surrendered, taking up his headquarters in
the house lately occupied by Jefferson Davis, promptly set about the
work of relief; organizing efficient resistance to the fire, which, up
to this time, seems scarcely to have been attempted; issuing rations to
the poor, who had been relentlessly exposed to starvation by the action
of the rebel Congress; and restoring order and personal authority. That
a regiment of black soldiers assisted in this noble work must have
seemed to the white inhabitants of Richmond the final drop in their cup
of misery.
Into the capital, thus stricken and laid waste, came President Lincoln
on the morning of April 4. Never in the history of the world did the
head of a mighty nation and the conqueror of a great rebellion enter the
captured chief city of the insurgents in such humbleness and simplicity.
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