xtremity at Richmond, and appointed in
February, 1865, general-in-chief of armies which no longer had a real
existence, decided to abandon the Confederate capital and effect a
junction with Johnston. Sheridan prevented this by defeating the
Confederates at Five Forks, April 1, and turning Lee's right and
threatening his rear. Five Forks was the beginning of the end.
Thirty-five thousand muskets were guarding thirty-seven miles of
intrenchments, and on these attenuated lines General Grant ordered an
immediate assault. The defences were found to be almost denuded of men.
Petersburg and Richmond fell, and Lee, driven westward, surrendered at
Appomattox, on April 9, the remains of the once proud Army of Northern
Virginia, now numbering 26,000 ragged and starving soldiers. On learning
that Lee's troops had been living for days on parched corn, General Grant
at once offered to send them rations, and the Union soldiers readily
shared their own provisions with the men with whom, a few hours before,
they had been engaged in mortal strife. Lee bade a touching farewell to
his troops, and rode through a weeping army to his home in Richmond. A
fortnight afterward Johnston surrendered to Sherman, and with the
surrender of the Confederate Trans-Mississippi Army, May 26, the war was
at an end. The Confederate Government had fled from Richmond when Lee
withdrew his army, and on May 10, Jefferson Davis was captured near
Irwinsville, Ga., and sent as a prisoner to Fortress Monroe.

* * *

We have read of the sieges of Numantia and of Haarlem, of Scotland's
struggle for liberty under Wallace and Bruce, and of the virtual
extinction of the men of Paraguay in the war against Brazil and
Argentina; but history records no resistance on the part of a
considerable population inhabiting an extensive region, under an
organized government, worthy to compare in resolution, endurance and
self-sacrifice, with that of the Southern Confederacy to the forces of
the Union. When the war closed the South was prostrate. When the Governor
of Alabama was asked to join in raising a force to attack the rear of
Sherman he answered, no doubt truthfully, that only cripples, old men and
children remained of the male population of the State. In their
desperation the Southern leaders even thought of enlisting negroes, thus
adding a grotesque epilogue to the mighty national tragedy. Of course
even the most ignorant negro could