and hogs drunk for days.

All through the night, crowds of men, women, and children traversed the
streets, loading themselves with supplies and plunder. At midnight,
soldiers drunk with vile liquor, followed by a reckless crowd as drunk as
themselves, dashed in the plate-glass windows of the stores, and made a
wreck of everything.

About nine o'clock on Monday morning, terrific shell explosions, rapid and
continuous, added to the terror of the scene, and gave the impression that
the city was being shelled by the retreating Confederate army from the
south side. But the explosions were soon found to proceed from the
Government arsenal and laboratory, then in flames. Later in the morning, a
merciful Providence caused a lull in the breeze. The terrific explosion of
the laboratory and of the arsenal caused every window in our home to
break. The old plate-glass mirrors, built in the walls, were cracked and
shattered.

Fort Darling was blown up, and later on the rams. It was eight o'clock
when the Federal troops entered the city. It required the greatest effort
to tame down the riotous, crazed mob, and induce them to take part in the
struggle to save their own. The firemen, afraid of the soldiers who had
obeyed the orders to light the torch, would not listen to any appeals or
entreaties, and so the flames were under full headway, fanned by a
southern breeze, when the Union soldiers came to the rescue.

The flouring mills caught fire from the tobacco houses, communicating it
to Cary and Main streets. Every bank was destroyed. The War Department
was a mass of ruins; the _Enquirer_ and _Dispatch_ offices were in ashes;
and the county court-house, the American Hotel, and most of the finest
stores of the city were ruined.

Libby Prison and the Presbyterian church escaped. Such a reign of terror
and pillage, fire and flame, fear and despair! The yelling and howling and
swearing and weeping and wailing beggar description. Families houseless
and homeless under the open sky!

I shall never forget General Weitzel's command, composed exclusively of
colored troops, as I saw them through the dense black columns of smoke.
General Weitzel had for some time been stationed on the north side of the
James River, but a few miles from Richmond, and he had only to march in
and take possession. He despatched Major A. H. Stevens of the Fourth
Massachusetts cavalry, and Major E. E. Graves of his staff, with about a
hundred mounted men, to reconn