Chapter 7

ENTERING RICHMOND--DISAPPOINTMENT AT ITS APPEARANCE--EVERYBODY IN
UNIFORM--CURLED DARLINGS OF THE CAPITAL--THE REBEL FLAG--LIBBY PRISON
--DICK TURNER--SEARCHING THE NEW COMERS.

Early on the tenth morning after our capture we were told that we were
about to enter Richmond. Instantly all were keenly observant of every
detail in the surroundings of a City that was then the object of the
hopes and fears of thirty-five millions of people--a City assailing which
seventy-five thousand brave men had already laid down their lives,
defending which an equal number had died, and which, before it fell, was
to cost the life blood of another one hundred and fifty thousand valiant
assailants and defenders.

So much had been said and written about Richmond that our boyish minds
had wrought up the most extravagant expectations of it and its defenses.
We anticipated seeing a City differing widely from anything ever seen
before; some anomaly of nature displayed in its site, itself guarded by
imposing and impregnable fortifications, with powerful forts and heavy
guns, perhaps even walls, castles, postern gates, moats and ditches,
and all the other panoply of defensive warfare, with which romantic
history had made us familiar.

We were disappointed--badly disappointed--in seeing nothing of this as we
slowly rolled along. The spires and the tall chimneys of the factories
rose in the distance very much as they had in other Cities we had
visited. We passed a single line of breastworks of bare yellow sand,
but the scrubby pines in front were not cut away, and there were no signs
that there had ever been any immediate expectation of use for the works.
A redoubt or two--without guns--could be made out, and this was all.
Grim-visaged war had few wrinkles on his front in that neighborhood.
They were then seaming his brow on the Rappahannock, seventy miles away,
where the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac lay
confronting each other.

At one of the stopping places I had been separated from my companions by
entering a car in which were a number of East Tennesseeans, captured in
the operations around Knoxville, and whom the Rebels, in accordance with
their usual custom, were treating with studied contumely. I had always
had a very warm side for these simple rustics of the mountains and
valleys. I knew much of their unwavering fidelity to the Union, of the
firm steadfastness with which they endured persecution for their
country's sake, and made sacrifices even unto death; and, as in those
days I estimated all men simply by their devotion to the great cause of
National integrity, (a habit that still clings to me) I rated these men
very highly. I had gone into their car to do my little to encourage
them,