116 APPENDIX. About eight o’clock on the evening of the m xt day, the 26th, when after four hours of the nearest and most vivid firing, bmh with great gnus and musketry that had yet been heard, the white wreaths of the curling cannon-smoke began to be drifted by the wind up the Shockoe valley into the heart of the city, and the smell of the gmi-powdcr coidd be plainly perceived in Capitol Square. affairs took a more serious turn. 1 witnessed the fight of this evening myself from a favorable position on the outskirts of the city. 1 saw the confederate lines recoil, and our own artillery advance until between eight and nine o'clock. I began to think that we had really reached the crisis of the siege, and that Richmond was on the point of falling into the hands of the army of the Union. A young officer of artillery, a West Pointer from the old army, and belonging then to a detached corps of the C. S. A., who joined me in my post of observation about that time, and recognized with me the fact that the confederates were fighting on a line considerably in the rear of the positions which they had held about four p. m., borrowed my glass, looked long and earnestly through the deepening twilight on the scene before us, and then, turning to me, said in a hnrried way,—■ ■■ they will certainly be here to-night,” and then, half laughing with an air of somewhat affected indifference added, as he tapped his light grey uniform coat, •• had n’t I better take this off and ‘skedaddle’ to Danville'’’ Ity nine o’clock, however, and, so far as we coidd see, with no change in the relative strength of the firing on either side, the federal artillery still maintaining its plain and tremendous preponderance—the line of the federal (ire began to recede. By half-past nine the affair was over, and after an hour or two of spasmodic and still receding discharges, mainly of shell, vhicli burned in magnificent curves against the darkening sky, every tiling was once more quiet. Thu next day was an anxious rue to the people of Rich
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