ps
and mingling so little with their captors, Richmond people got only
most startling and unreliable rumors from the army. Clinging, with the
tenacity of the drowning, to the least straw of hope, they would not
yet give up utterly that army they had looked on so long as
invincible--that cause, which was more than life to them! Though they
knew the country around was filled with deserters and stragglers;
though the Federals had brigades lying round Richmond in perfect
idleness--still for a time the rumor gained credit that General Lee had
turned on his pursuer, at Amelia Court House, and gained a decisive
victory over him. Then came the more positive news that Ewell was cut
off with 13,000 men; and, finally, on the 9th of April, Richmond heard
that Lee had surrendered. Surely as this result should have been looked
forward to--gradually as the popular mind had been led to it--still it
came as a blow of terrific suddenness. The people refused to believe
it--they said it was a Yankee trick; and when the salute of one hundred
guns rang out from forts and shipping, they still said, bitterly, it
was a ruse to make them commit themselves.

Gradually they came to accept the inevitable; and, as the last ray of
hope died out, its place was filled with the intense yearning to know
the fate of those lost and loved ones--to know if they had died at the
bitter ending, or lived to be borne away into captivity. Forgetting
pride, hostility--all but their anxiety for those so precious to them
now--the women caught at every shred of information; questioned
ignorant soldiers eagerly; and listened patiently to the intelligible
news the officers were only too willing to give. And at last these
rumors assumed tangible form--there was no longer any room to doubt.
General Lee, weakened by desertion and breaking down of his men--by
General Ewell's capture and by the sense of hopelessness of further
resistance, had on the morning of the 9th of April, surrendered 24,000
men--including the volunteer citizens, and the naval brigade of all the
Richmond ship's-crews--and with them 8,000 muskets! Such, too, was the
condition of the horses that the Federals refused even to drive them
away from their stands. Little need, indeed, had there been for those
extra brigades around the city.

Then Richmond, sitting like Rachel in her desolation, waited for the
return of her vanquished--heroes still to her. News came of the general
parole; and every sound acros