ning. Lieut. Cantey, Sergt. Lee and twenty men
from the Seventh were left, under the supervision of Colonel Haskell,
to burn the bridge, while the rest went slowly up the hill on which
Manchester is built, and waited for them. Just as the canal bridge on
which we had crossed took fire, about forty of Kautz' cavalry
galloped easily up Main street, fired a long shot with their carbines
on the party at the bridge, but went on up the street instead of
coming down to the river. They were too late to secure the bridge, if
that had been their object, which they seemed to be aware of, as they
made no attempt to do so. Their coming was of service to the city.
General Ord, as we afterwards understood, acted with promptness and
kindness, put down the mob, and put out the fire, and protected the
people of Richmond from the mob and his own soldiers, in their persons
and property.

As we sat upon our horses on the high hill on which Manchester is
built, we looked down upon the City of Richmond. By this time the fire
appeared to be general. Some magazine or depot for the manufacture of
ordnance stores was on fire about the centre of the city; it was
marked by the peculiar blackness of smoke; from the middle of it would
come the roar of bursting shells and boxes of fixed ammunition, with
flashes that gave it the appearance of a thunder cloud of huge
proportions with lightning playing through it. On our right was the
navy yard, at which were several steamers and gunboats on fire, and
burning in the river, from which the cannon were thundering as the
fire reached them. The old war-scarred city seemed to prefer
annihilation to conquest--a useless sacrifice, as it afterwards
proved, however much it may have added to the grandeur of the closing
scene; but such is war.

Moving slowly out of Manchester, we soon got among the host of
stragglers, who, from a natural fear of the occupation of the towns
both of Petersburg and Richmond, were going with the rear of our army.
Civilians, in some cases ladies of gentle nurture, without means of
conveyance, were sitting on their trunks by the roadside--refugees
from Petersburg to Richmond a few days before, now refugees from
Richmond into the highway; indeed the most were from Petersburg,
driven out literally by the artillery fire. The residents of Richmond,
as a general thing, remained.

Two ladies here got into our regimental ambulance, rode for a few
miles, and then took refuge in some farm hous