Upon the 4th of April, against the counsel and in spite of the apprehensions of nearly all his advisers, Lincoln insisted upon coming down the river from Washington and making his way into the Rebel capital. There was no thought of vaingloriousness or of posing as the victor. He came under the impression that some civil authorities would probably have remained in Richmond with whom immediate measures might be taken to stop unnecessary fighting and to secure for the city and for the State a return of peaceful government. Thomas Nast, who while not a great artist was inspired to produce during the War some of the most graphic and storytelling records in the shape of pictures of events, made a drawing which was purchased later by the New York Union League Club, showing Lincoln on his way through Main Street, with the coloured folks of the town and of the surrounding country crowding about the man whom they hailed as their deliverer, and in their enthusiastic adoration trying to touch so much as the hem of his garment. The picture is history in showing what actually happened and it is pathetic history in recalling how great were the hopes that came to the coloured people from the success of the North and from the certainty of the end of slavery. It is sad to recall the many disappointments that during the forty years since the occupation of Richmond have hampered the uplifting of the race. Lincoln's hope that some representative of the Confederacy might have remained in Richmond, if only for the purpose of helping to bring to a close as rapidly as possible the waste and burdens of continued war, was not realised. The members of the Confederate government seem to have been interested only in getting away from Richmond and to have given no thought to the duty they owed to their own people to cooperate with the victors in securing a prompt return of law and order. On the 9th of April, came the surrender of Lee at Appomattox, four years, less three days, from the date of the firing of the first gun of the War at Charleston. The muskets turned in by the ragged and starving files of the remnants of Lee's army represented only a small portion of those which a few days earlier had been holding the entrenchments at Petersburg. As soon as it became evident that the army was not going to be able to break through the Federal lines and begin a fresh campaign in North Carolina, the men scattered from the retreating columns right and left, in many cases carrying their muskets to their own homes as a memorial fairly earned by plucky and persistent service. There never was an army that did better fighting or that was better deserving of the recognition, not only of the States in behalf of whose so-called "independence" the War had been waged, but on the part of opponents who were able to realise the character and the effectiveness of the fighting.