o'clock in the morning. It was an awful night for the few inhabitants remaining in Petersburg, and for the soldiers in the trenches. At dawn the works were assailed by infantry. Parke, with the Ninth corps, carried the outer works on his  front, but was checked at an inner line; and the Nationals were successful on their extreme left, in crushing Lee's right wing. Longstreet had hastened down from Richmond to assist him, but he was too late. The Confederate right was shattered beyond recovery; and the Southside Railway, on which Lee placed great dependence, was struck by Sheridan at three different points.
Lee now perceived that he could no longer hold Petersburg, or the capital, with safety to his army, then reduced, by enormous losses in the space of a few days, to about thirty-five thousand men, and he resolved to maintain his position, if possible, until night, and then retreat with the hope of making his way to Johnston, in North Carolina, by way of the Danville railroad. He telegraphed to Davis at Richmond, in substance: "My lines are broken in three places; Richmond must be evacuated this evening." It was Sabbath morning, the 2nd of April, and the message was delivered to Davis in St. Paul's Church. He quietly left the fane with deeply anxious features, and for a moment a painful silence prevailed. The religious services were closed; and before Dr. Minnegerode, the rector, dismissed the congregation, he gave notice that General Ewell, the commander in Richmond, desired the local forces to assemble at three o'clock in the afternoon.
For hours the people of the city were kept in the most anxious suspense, for the "government" was as silent as the sphinx. Panic gradually took the place of judgment; and when, toward evening, wagons were seen a-loading with trunks and boxes at the departments, and were driven to the Danville Railway station, and it became evident that Davis and his cabinet were preparing to flee, the wildest confusion and alarm prevailed. Prominent Confederates also prepared to fly, they knew not whither; and at eight o'clock in the evening, Davis abandoned his capital and sought personal safety in flight. This act was a marked commentary on his assertion made in a speech a few weeks before: "If it were possible, I would be willing to sacrifice my life a thousand times before I would succumb." His wife had fled to Danville a few days before, and there awaited his coming. At nine o'clock in the evening, the Virginia legislature fled. The Confederate congress had already gone, having left an order for the cotton, tobacco, and other property in the city, to be burned. At midnight, all signs of a "government " had disappeared; and at three o'clock in the morning, incendiary fires were lighted. There was a fresh breeze from the south, and very soon a large portion of the chief business section of Richmond was enveloped in flames. Drunken incendiaries fired buildings not in the pathway of the great conflagration; and until dawn the city was a pandemonium. Most of the Confederate troops had fled; and at an early hour in the morning, General Weitzel, in command of the forces on the north side of the James, entered Richmond with his colored regiments and put out the fires. Lieutenant Johnston Livingston De Peyster, of Weitzel's staff, ascended to the roof of the Virginia State-House and there unfurled the National Flag, where it had not been seen floating for four years.
Meanwhile, Davis and his associates fled to Danville, whither Lee hoped to follow. They had left the inhabitants of the capital defenceless and that city on fire; and they also abandoned five thousand of their sick and wounded in the hospitals, and a thousand soldiers, to become prisoners of war. They also left, as trophies for the victors, five hundred pieces of artillery, five thousand small arms, many locomotives and cars, and a large amount of other public property. They carried with them what gold they could seize in their haste; also the archives of the Confederate government, together with their
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