the balance of our forces were
already on the march, up the Appomattox. We rested a short while by the
roadside in the vicinity of the bridge, and at the signal gun from a
piece of artillery near by, which startled us by its suddenness and
proximity, we were called to attention and followed our comrades who had
preceded us up the river. That signal gun was a notice to others besides
ourselves. By the time we had got under weigh, the heavily charged
magazine of Cummins' battery of siege guns, blew up, first lighting up the
deep darkness of the night with its fierce and vivid glare, and then
shaking the earth under our feet like the shock of an earthquake.--Fort
Clifton's magazine in a moment followed, and then it was taken up all
along the line to Richmond. The scene was the fiercest and most imposing I
ever witnessed. We left the light and pierced the midnight darkness of the
rear. At each step we took some new explosion would occur, seemingly
severer than the one that preceded it; the whole heavens in our rear were
lit up in lurid glare, that added intensity to the blackness before us.
It was as if the gases, chained in the earth, had at last found vent, and
the general conflagration of the world was at hand, while we were
retreating into the blackness of uncertain gloom and chaos. We then knew
that Richmond had been left to the fate of Petersburg, and we were on a
retreat to a new base.

On leaving Petersburg, Gordon's corps took the river road; Mahone, with
his division, and all other troops on this side of the James, the middle
road, and Ewell and Elzey, with the Richmond garrison, and other troops,
the road nearest the James river. During the day following the evacuation
of Petersburg the Confederates made good progress, their route unimpeded
by wagons and artillery. But after the junction of Gordon's corps with
Mahone and Early, with thirty miles of wagons, containing the special
plunder of the Post Doctors, Quartermasters and Post Commissaries of
Richmond, they went at a snail's pace, and it would have been no trouble
for an enterprising enemy to have overtaken them. Until they arrived at
Amelia Courthouse, on the 4th of April, although a body of the enemy had
followed them up, no attack had been made, and it was only after leaving
the Courthouse that the first dash by Sheridan's cavalry was made on their
wagon trains.

At Amelia Courthouse they were joined by the remnants of A. P. Hill's,
Pickett's and Longstr