To prevent the United States from obtaining possession of a few thousand hogsheads of tobacco, a thousand houses were destroyed by fire, the heart of the city was eaten out,--all of the business portions, all the banks and insurance-offices, half of the newspapers, mills, depots, bridges, foundries, workshops, dwellings, churches, thirty squares in all, swept clean by the devouring flames. It was the work of the Confederate Government. And not only this, but human life was remorselessly sacrificed. In the outskirts of the city, on the Mechanicsville road, was the almshouse, filled with the lame, the blind, the halt, the bedridden, the sick, and the poor. Ten rods distant was a magazine containing fifteen or twenty kegs of powder, of little value to a victorious army with full supplies of ammunition. They could have been rolled into the creek near at hand; but the order of Jeff Davis was to blow up the magazines, and the order must be executed. "We give you fifteen minutes to get out of the way," was the sole notice to that crowd of helpless creatures lying in their cots, at three o'clock in the morning. Men and women begged for mercy. In vain their cries. The officer in charge of the matter was inexorable. Clotheless and shoeless, the inmates of the almshouse ran in terror from the spot to seek shelter in the ravines. But there were those who could not run, who, while the train was laying, rent the air with shrieks of terror. The train was fired at the expiration of the allotted time. The whole side of the house went in with a crash, as if it were no more than pasteboard. Windows flew into minutest particles. Bricks, stones, timbers, beams, and boards went whirling through the air. Trees were wrenched off as though a giant had twisted them into withes. The city rocked as if upheaved by an earthquake. The dozen poor wretches remaining in the almshouse were torn to pieces. Their bodies were but blackened masses of flesh, when the fugitives who had sought shelter in the fields returned to the shattered ruins.