ss.--Development of Grant's combination.--Assault at
Hare's Hill.--Departure of Mrs. President Davis. 436

CHAPTER XLIX.

Rumors of battles.--Excitement in the churches.--The South
Side Road captured by the enemy.--Evacuation of
Richmond.--Surrender of Gen. Lee.--Occupation of Richmond by
Federal forces.--Address to the people of Virginia by J. A.
Campbell and others.--Assassination of President Lincoln. 464

A REBEL WAR CLERK'S DIARY.

CHAPTER I.

My flight from the North and escape into Virginia.--Revolutionary scene at
Richmond.--The Union Convention passes the Ordinance of Secession.--
Great excitement prevails in the South.

APRIL 8TH, 1861. BURLINGTON, NEW JERSEY.--The expedition sails to-day
from New York. Its purpose is to reduce Fort Moultrie, Charleston
harbor, and relieve Fort Sumter, invested by the Confederate forces.
Southern born, and editor of the _Southern Monitor_, there seems to be
no alternative but to depart immediately. For years the _Southern
Monitor_, Philadelphia, whose motto was "The Union as it was, the
Constitution as it is," has foreseen and foretold the resistance of the
Southern States, in the event of the success of a sectional party
inimical to the institution of African slavery, upon which the welfare
and existence of the Southern people seem to depend. And I must depart
immediately; for I well know that the first gun fired at Fort Sumter
will be the signal for an outburst of ungovernable fury, and I should be
seized and thrown into prison.

I must leave my family--my property--everything. My family cannot go
with me--but they may follow. The storm will not break in its fury for a
month or so. Only the most obnoxious persons, deemed dangerous, will be
molested immediately.

8 O'CLOCK P.M.--My wife and children have been busy packing my trunk,
and making other preparations for my departure. They are cheerful. They
deem the rupture of the States a _fait accompli_, but reck not of the
horrors of war. They have contrived to pack up, with other things, my
fine old portrait of Calhoun, by Jarvis. But I must leave my papers, the
accumulation of twenty-five years, comprising thousands of letters from
predestined rebels. My wife opposes my suggestion that they be burned.
Among them are some of the veto messages of President Tyler, and many
letters from him, Governor Wise, etc. With the latter I had a
correspondence in 1