Richmond fell to the U.S. Army 161 years ago today...

The air in Richmond on Sunday morning, April 2, 1865, was unnervingly still. Inside St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, President Jefferson Davis sat in his pew until a messenger leaned over and handed him a telegram from General Robert E. Lee. The message was blunt: the lines at Petersburg had broken. Richmond must be evacuated by nightfall.

Davis rose quietly and left, but the secret didn't stay kept for long. By afternoon, the "Panic of Richmond" had begun.

As the sun set, the city descended into a fever dream. Chaos choked the streets as government officials scrambled onto the last departing trains, their wagons overturning in the mud. To prevent the Union army from seizing anything of value, Confederate commanders ordered the tobacco and cotton warehouses near the river to be torched.

It was a disastrous miscalculation. A stiff wind picked up, carrying the sparks from the riverfront into the heart of the city. By midnight, the business district was a wall of flame. The roar of the fire was punctuated by the booming of "ironclads" being blown up in the James River and the rhythmic thud of the bridges being demolished by retreating soldiers.
By dawn on April 3, the Confederate rear guard was gone, and the city was a hellscape of smoke and looters. Then came a new sound: the steady, rhythmic trill of Union bugles.

The first troops to crest the hill and march into the burning capital weren't just any soldiers: they were the United States Colored Troops of the 25th Corps. Wearing Union blue, these formerly enslaved men became the city's liberators and its firemen. They dropped their muskets for buckets, forming human chains to battle the fires the Confederates had started.

Forty-eight hours later, a tall, gaunt man in a black suit stepped off a boat at Rockett’s Landing. With no heavy guard and only a few sailors for company, Abraham Lincoln walked two miles through the smoldering ruins. He was quickly surrounded by a crowd of thousands of freedmen who wept and cheered, some kneeling at his feet. Lincoln, visibly moved, told them simply, "Don't kneel to me. That is not right. You must kneel to God only, and thank Him for the liberty you will hereafter enjoy."

As Lincoln sat briefly in Jefferson Davis’s abandoned chair at the Confederate White House, the smoke of the "Old South" was still rising from the streets outside. The war wasn't technically over, but the heart of the rebellion had stopped beating.