The Union forces entered the city the next day and proceeded to restore order. A few days later the writer accompanied a party of officers to the city, going by way of City Point and up the James river by boat, past formidable forts and earthworks that had swarmed with Confederate soldiers ten days before, now deserted. The cannon that had hardly cooled off for over nine months were now silent. White tents that had sheltered the enemy stood as lonely sentinels for the “Lost Cause.” There were many points of interest, such as the famous Howlett house battery, Butler’s Dutch Gap canal, the “Crow’s Nest,” a lookout station, Haxall’s landing where the exchange of prisoners used to take place. The river was full of mines and torpedoes, and the thought that every minute might be our last was anything but pleasant. The defenses of the City of Richmond appeared to have been impregnable, if the confederates could have kept a sufficient force there to man them. Every elevation about the city had a fort, and there were two lines of abatis and three separate lines of rifle pits and earthworks encircling the city. No attacking army can ever carry by direct assault a city so fortified, if the army within is anywhere equal in numbers to that on the outside and has supplies to subsist upon. It used to be reckoned that the troops that assaulted a fortified position must lose five or more men to one of those defending the works. LIBBY PRISON. The name of which was quite enough to give a Union soldier the cold chills, was filled with Confederates the day we were there. The blue and the gray had exchanged places. We being human, were much pleased to see the rebels peering out through the grated windows with the Union sentries pacing up and down around the building. The bridges leading out of the city had mostly been destroyed, also the great warehouses, the postoffice, the treasury, the leading banks, and, in fact, the heart of the city had been burned out and the ruins were smoldering when we were there. The street where the treasury and war department had been was knee deep with official papers and records that had been thrown out. We wandered through the deserted State house, the capitol of the confederacy, and the writer has a piece of the upholstering taken from the chair that was presented to the speaker of the Confederate congress by English sympathizers. The home of Jefferson Davis was used as the headquarters of Gen. Weitzel, who commanded the forces that entered the city after its evacuation.