President Lincoln in Richmond.
I was standing upon the bank of the river, viewing the scene of desolation, when a boat, pulled by twelve sailors, came up stream. It contained President Lincoln and his son, Admiral Porter, Capt. Penrose of the army, Capt. A. H. Adams of the navy, Lieut. W. W. Clemens of the signal corps. Somehow the negroes on the bank of the river ascertained that the tall man wearing a black hat was President Lincoln. There was a sudden shout. An officer who had just picked up fifty negroes to do work on the dock found himself alone. They left work, and crowded around the President. As he approached, I said to a colored woman,— “There is the man who made you free.” “That is President Lincoln.” She gazed at him a moment, clapped her hands, and jumped straight up and down, shouting, “Glory, glory, glory!” till her voice was lost in the universal cheer. There was no carriage near; so the President, leading his son, walked three-quarters of a mile up to Gen. Weitzel's headquarters,—Jeff Davis's mansion. What a spectacle it was! Such a hurdy-burly, such wild, indescribable, ecstatic joy, I never witnessed. A colored man acted as guide. Six sailors, wearing their round blue caps, and short jackets and bagging pants, with navy carbines, were the advance guard. Then came the President and Admiral Porter, flanked by the officers that accompany him, and the correspondent of the “Journal;” then six more sailors with carbines,—twenty of us all told,—amid a surging mass of men, women, and children, black, white, and yellow, running, shouting, dancing, swinging their caps, bonnets, and handkerchiefs. The soldiers saw him,163and swelled the crowd, cheering in wild enthusiasm. All could see him, he was so tall, so conspicuous. One colored woman, standing in a doorway, as the President passed along the sidewalk, shouted, “Thank you, dear Jesus for this, thank you, Jesus!” Another standing by her side was clapping her hands, and shouting, “Bless de Lord!” A colored woman snatched her bonnet from her head, whirled it in the air, screaming with all her might, “God bless you, Massa Linkum!” A few white women looking out from the houses waved their handkerchiefs. President Lincoln walked in silence, acknowledging the salutes of officers and soldiers, and of the citizens, black and white. It was the man of the people among the people. It was the great deliverer meeting the delivered. Yesterday morning the majority of the thousands who crowded the streets, and hindered our advance, were slaves. Now they were free, and beheld him who had given them their liberty.—Boston Journal.