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SPANISH FORT AND BLAKELY.

511

As the city was too strong to be attacked successfully on the west side, General Canby determined to move first against Spanish Fort. Some of the troops under General Gordon Granger marched from Fort Morgan, and others under General A. J. Smith were landed on the east side of the bay. These two forces joined and moved northward against Spanish Fort, while General Steele, with a division of negro troops, marched from Pensacola westward against Fort Blakely, ten miles north of Mobile. The siege of Spanish Fort began on the 28th of March and lasted two weeks, during which a heavy bombardment was kept up by both sides day and night. The Union gunboats aided the besiegers by day, but withdrew out of range by night. Two of them, the Metacomet and the Osage, were blown up by torpedoes. The Confederates fought with the greatest bravery, and made several sallies from their works, taking some prisoners, but were always driven back. At last (April 8), after a heavy cannonade, part of the works were taken by assault, and that night the Confederates evacuated it. Its guns were turned upon some of the other forts, which had also to be left, and the fleet, after fishing up many torpedoes, moved up near enough to throw shells into the city.

The army then moved against Fort Blakely, which had been besieged for several days by General Steele. It was a very strong work, with a line of forts nearly three miles long, with a deep ditch in front, and was held by about three thousand men, under General St. John Lidell. In the evening of Sunday, April 9th, a grand assault was made on the fort. A storm was gathering in the west, and the heavens resounded with the rolling of distant thunder; but its sounds were soon drowned in the roar of artillery. Under cover of the fire the men advanced toward the works, cutting and clearing away the abatis and other obstructions, while their ranks were thinned. by grape and canister shot from the guns of the besieged. The ground in front of the works was planted thickly with torpedoes, many of which exploded with dreadful effect. But the brave men pushed gallantly on, across ditches and over embankments, and by seven o'clock Blakely was won. Three generals and three thousand men fell into the hands of the victors, besides forty cannons, many small-arms, and a large amount of ammunition. Two days afterward General Maury

evacuated Mobile, and sinking the rams Huntsville and Tuscaloosa, went with the rest of his force, about nine thousand men, up the Alabama River. On the 12th of April the city was surrendered, and on the next day the Union troops entered and the flag of the Union was hoisted on all the public buildings of the last Confederate seaport.

CHAPTER XLI.

PETERSBURG.

THE CONFEDERACY IN 1865.-CONSCRIPTION AND DESERTION.-NEGRO SOLDIERS.-CONFEDERATE MONEY.-LEE'S ARMY.-DISSATISFACTION WITH DAVIS.-LEE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF. -MRS. DAVIS.-FOREIGN AID EXPECTED.-PEACE EFFORTS.-WAR MEETINGS IN RICHMOND. DESOLATION IN VIRGINIA.-CHRISTMAS IN 1864.-WAR PRICES. DINNER-PARTY.SOUTHSIDE RAILROAD.-DINWIDDIE COURT-HOUSE.-ARMY TELEGRAPH.-SHERIDAN'S RAID. -EARLY DEFEATED.-CHARLOTTESVILLE.-LEE'S LAST ATTACK.-FORT STEEDMAN.-SHERIDAN AGAIN IN THE SADDLE.-FIVE FORKS.-GRAND ASSAULT ON PETERSBURG.--FORT ALEXANDER.-FORT GREGG.-DEATH OF A. P. HILL.-LEE'S TELEGRAM.-PETERSBURG at

LAST!

THE

HE beginning of 1865 found the Confederacy almost at its last gasp. Most of its strongholds and seaports had fallen, much of its territory had been devastated, and a vast amount of its property destroyed; and although its armies still kept the field, it was with the utmost difficulty that recruits could be obtained to fill the ranks. Every able-bodied man between the ages of seventeen and fifty-five was liable under the law to do military duty, but it was found impossible to force all men into the army. The poor could not escape, but the rich slave-owners and office-holders stayed at home and made money. Desertions grew more and more frequent, not on account of cowardice, but because the soldiers felt it to be their duty to provide for their families, who were starving at home. Hundreds of letters came every day in which mothers, wives, and sisters told how they were unable to satisfy the wants of hungry children or to get proper remedies for the sick, and called on them by all they held dear to come home and save them. The men could not withstand such appeals, and so it happened that at least two thirds of those enrolled in the army were absent from it. At last, so great was the need of more men that it was seriously proposed to make soldiers of negroes. General Lee favored this, but public opinion was against it, and it was given up.

The supplies of food and clothing were rapidly giving out, and Confederate money had become so nearly worthless that farmers and storekeepers refused to sell anything excepting at the highest prices. The government then seized what it

wanted and appointed officers to set a value on the goods. Confederate paper money had kept at par-that is, the paper dollar was equal in value to the gold dollar-until November, 1861; after that it rapidly fell in value until, at the beginning of 1865, it took five hundred paper dollars to buy one gold dollar. In the following March it took six hundred to buy one, and a month later Confederate paper money had no value at all.

Though most of the people of Richmond had lost hope and were ready for any change, very few knew the real seriousness of the situation. They were kept in ignorance by the government of all military details, and the newspapers were forbidden to publish any war news except the meagre telegrams furnished by the war department. Even the number and condition of the army were kept secret, for the authorities feared to tell the people that General Lee was holding his lines of thirty miles in length with only forty-five thousand poorly fed and poorly clad men against more than three times that number of Union troops. The newspapers did not dare to criticise openly any of the acts of the government, but sometimes, under cover of a humorous style, they exposed the real condition of things, and showed what they thought of the men employed in public positions. Much dissatisfaction, too, was felt with the course of President Davis, and a strong party against him grew up in the Confederate Congress. It was charged against him that while he refused to listen to the words of those capable of giving advice, he surrounded himself with flatterers and unworthy favorites, to whom he gave rank and position, to the great harm of the Confederacy; indeed, while he had a public reputation for firmness of character, those who knew him best said that he was one of the weakest and most conceited of men, and his enemies did not hesitate to ascribe the miserable condition of the Confederacy to his unwise acts. The party in Congress opposed to him insisted that the control of military affairs should be taken from him, and it was voted that the command of all the armies of the Confederacy should be put into the hands of General Lee. As the President of the Confederate States was, like the President of the United States under the Constitution, commander-in-chief of the army and navy, this act was felt by Mr. Davis's friends to be in the

1865.]

CONFEDERATE HOPES.

515

nature of an insult to him. It is said that Mrs. Davis exclaimed, when she heard of it, "I would die or be hung before I would submit to the humiliation."

One of General Lee's earliest acts in this position was the re-appointment to the command of the forces opposing General Sherman of General Joseph E. Johnston, who had been removed by Mr. Davis, contrary to General Lee's advice, to make room for Hood, a favorite of the President's. But it was too late; the army which Hood's recklessness had shattered had little other duty to perform than to surrender.

Notwithstanding the disasters which seemed to be driving the Confederacy to its doom, President Davis and his friends still clung to the idea of getting foreign aid. This was looked for especially from the Emperor Napoleon, and only a few weeks before Richmond fell it was currently reported and believed that a messenger from him had landed on the coast of North Carolina, and was making his way overland to Richmond with the news of the recognition of the Confederacy by France. It is even said that the arrival of a hundred thousand French soldiers from Mexico was confidently expected, and that many thousand Poles, then living in different foreign countries, were coming to swell the ranks of the Confederate army. But the people were tired of the war and anxious for peace on almost any terms, and Mr. Davis was forced by public opinion to make another effort to bring about a settlement of the questions in dispute. After some other steps had been taken, he appointed three commissioners: Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia, the Confederate Vice-President; John A. Campbell, of Alabama, formerly a justice of the United States Supreme Court; and R. M. T. Hunter, of Virginia, a distinguished member of the Confederate Senate. These gentlemen went on a steamer to Fortress Monroe, and had there a talk of several hours with President Lincoln and Secretary Seward. The Commissioners wished to have an armistice—that is, a stopping of all hostilities between the two parties and to leave the main question of the separation of the Confederate States from the Union to be settled afterward. But President Lincoln would not consent to any cessation of hostilities unless the Confederates would disband all their forces and everywhere recognize the supreme authority of the Union. He said also that slavery must be given up. To these conditions