Diary of Orrin Brown, Goldsboro, North Carolina
Monday–Apr 3rd
It is just six months today since I was mustered into the service. We have had a very nice day. James Gifford went over to the 15th A. C. today to find an old friend. I was on drill today for the first time since we have been in camp here. I wrote a letter home today. I was out on dress parade and Batalion drill this PM and it pretty near tired me out. I read 3 Chapt.
Richmond Falls
Six months after Pvt. Brown mustered into service, the Union Army marched into the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia. Gen. Robert E. Lee and the Confederate government had abandoned the city, along with Petersburg, the night before (“Evacuation Sunday”), setting fire to the bridges, armory and whatever supplies they could not take with them.
On the morning of 3 April 1865, Union Maj. Gen. Godfrey Weitzel and the XXV Corps occupied Richmond and began to put the fires out, while Confederate President Jefferson Davis reached Danville, Virginia, with his Cabinet. Lt. Gen. Grant and President Abraham Lincoln toured the city the next day, visiting Davis’ Confederate White House and the Virginia State Capitol building.
Read More:
- Guide to the Richmond-Petersburg Campaign (U.S. Army War College Guides to Civil War Battles) edited by Charles R. Bowery, Jr, and Ethan S. Rafuse (University Press of Kansas, 2014)
- The Richmond-Petersburg Campaign, 1864–65 (Battles and Leaders of the American Civil War) by Charles R. Bowery Jr (Praeger, 2014)
- Richmond Must Fall: The Richmond-Petersburg Campaign, October 1864 (Civil War Soldiers and Strategies) by Hampton Newsome (Kent State University Press, 2013)
- Crucible of Command: Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee–The War They Fought, the Peace They Forged by William C. Davis (Da Capo Press, 2015)
- Grant and Lee: Victorious American and Vanquished Virginian by Edward H. Bonekemper III (Prager, 2007)
- Grant and Lee. The Virginia campaigns 1864-1865 by William A. Frassanito (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1983)
- Sherman’s March Through the Carolinas by John Gilchrist Barrett (Univ North Carolina Press, 1956)
- Fierce Patriot: The Tangled Lives of William Tecumseh Sherman by Robert L. O’Connell (Random House, 2014)
- The March to the Sea and Beyond: Sherman’s Troops in the Savannah and Carolinas Campaigns by Joseph T. Glatthaar (New York University Press, 1985)
- The Memoirs Of General William T. Sherman by W.T. Sherman (Library of America, 1990)
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