luck and chewed
tobacco defiantly. He announced that the last hope was gone and that he
would maintain order with two regiments of militia.

He gave orders to destroy every drop of liquor in the stores, saloons
and warehouses and establish a patrol.

The militia slipped through the fingers of their officers and in a few
hours the city was without a government. Disorder, pillage, shouts,
revelry and confusion were the order of the night. Black masses of men
swayed and surged through the dimly-lighted streets, smashing into
stores and warehouses at will. Some of them were carrying out the
Mayor's orders to destroy the liquor. Others decided that the best way
to destroy it was to drink it. The gutters ran with liquor and the fumes
filled the air.

To the rear guard of Lee's army under Ewell was left the task of blowing
up the vessels in the James, and destroying the bridges across the
river. The thunder of exploding mines and torpedoes now shook the earth.
The ships were blown to atoms and the wharves fired.

In vain the Mayor protested against the firing of the great warehouses.
Orders were orders, and the soldiers obeyed. The warehouses were fired,
the sparks leaped to the surrounding buildings and the city was in
flames.

As day dawned a black pall of smoke obscured the heavens. The sun's rays
lighted the banks of rolling smoke with lurid glare. The roar of the
conflagration now drowned all other sounds.

The upper part of Main Street was choked with pillagers--men with drays,
some with bags, some rolling their stolen barrels painfully up the
hills.

A small squadron of Federal cavalry rode calmly into the wild scene.
General Weitzel, in command of the two divisions of Grant's army on the
north side, had sent in forty Massachusetts troopers to investigate
conditions.

At the corner of Eleventh Street they broke into a trot for the Square
and planted their guidons on the Capitol of the Confederacy.

Long before this advance guard could be seen in the distance the old
flag of the Union had been flung from the top of the house on Church
Hill. Foreseeing the fall of the city Miss Van Lew had sent to the
Federal Commander for a flag. Through his scouts he had sent it. As
Weitzel's two grand divisions swung into Main Street this piece of
bunting eighteen feet long and nine feet wide waved from the Van Lew
mansion on the hill above them.

Stretching from the Exchange Hotel to the slopes of Church Hill, down
the h