GDG- I will take care of myself

[Dennis Lawrence]

To Edwin M. Stanton [2]
Head Quarters Armies of the United States,
Hon. Sec. of War City-Point,
Washington, D.C. April 3. 5. P.M. 1865

Yours received. Thanks for your caution; but I have already been to 
Petersburg, staid with Gen. Grant an hour & a half and returned here. It is 
certain now that Richmond is in our hands, and I think I will go there 
to-morrow. I will take care of myself.

A LINCOLN
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April 3, 1865 : Richmond captured

The Rebel capital of Richmond falls to the Union, the most significant sign 
that the Confederacy is nearing its final days.

For ten months, General Ulysses S. Grant had tried unsuccessfully to 
infiltrate the city. After Lee made a desperate attack against Fort Stedman 
along the Union line on March 25, Grant prepared for a major offensive. He 
struck at Five Forks on April 1, crushing the end of Lee's line southwest 
of Petersburg. On April 2, the Yankees struck all along the Petersburg 
line, and the Confederates collapsed.

On the evening of April 2, the Confederate government fled the city with 
the army right behind. Now, on the morning of April 3, blue-coated troops 
entered the capital. Richmond was the holy grail of the Union war effort, 
the object of four years of campaigning. Tens of thousands of Yankee lives 
were lost trying to get it, and nearly as many Confederate lives lost 
trying to defend it.

Now, the Yankees came to take possession of their prize. One resident, Mary 
Fontaine, wrote, "I saw them unfurl a tiny flag, and I sank on my knees, 
and the bitter, bitter tears came in a torrent." As the Federals rode in, 
another wrote that the city's black residents were "completely crazed, they 
danced and shouted, men hugged each other, and women kissed." Among the 
first forces into the capital were black troopers from the 5th 
Massachusetts Cavalry, and the next day President Abraham Lincoln visited 
the city. For the residents of Richmond, these were symbols of a world 
turned upside down. It was, one reporter noted, "...too awful to remember, 
if it were possible to be erased, but that cannot be."