A Stillness at Appomattox: The Army of the Potomac Trilogy

by Bruce Catton

  “The colonel commanding hopes that all the scoundrels who desire to desert to the enemy after swindling the government out of heavy bounties have already left us”; but in case a few still remained he would read the Confederate announcement, which he did, adding that a prospective deserter ought to realize that “neither army considers him fit to be trusted anywhere, or able to earn his living.” Since prisoners of war were subject to exchange, the colonel reminded his men that deserters might some day find themselves back with their regiment. If that happened, he said, they would be shot.23

  What all of this meant was that the Army of the Potomac had to take on Regular Army discipline. The Regulars were used to hard cases and knew how to handle them. In ordinary times a Regular regiment would expect to lose perhaps a fourth of its men through desertion, but it could turn the rest into fighters. Now the volunteer regiments were following suit, caste lines were hardening, and discipline was enforced by brutality.

  The artillerists led the way. The volunteer batteries had always had more of a Regular Army flavor than the infantry regiments, possibly because in the early days General McClellan had taken pains to brigade one regular battery with every three batteries of volunteers, and the force of example had been strong. In any case, the gunners this winter were pounding their recruits into shape, hurting them with cold ferocity when they needed correction. Their favorite punishment centered around the fact that every artillery caisson carried a spare wheel, mounted at the rear of the caisson a couple of feet off the ground at a slight angle from the vertical. An insubordinate artillerist was made to step on the lower rim of this wheel, and then he was spread-eagled, wrists and ankles firmly lashed to the rim. This done, the wheel was given a quarter turn so that the man was in effect suspended by one wrist and one ankle. He would be left in this position for several hours, and if he cried out in pain—as he usually did, before long—a rough stick was tied in his mouth for a gag.

  Even worse was being tied on the rack. At the rear end of every battery wagon was a heavy rack for forage—a stout wooden box, running across the end of the wagon and protruding a couple of feet back of the rear wheels. The man who was up for punishment was made to stand with his chest against this rack while his wrists were tied to the upper rims of the wheels. Then his feet were lifted and tied to the lower rims, so that he was left hanging with all of his weight pressing against the sharp wooden edge of the rack. He was always gagged first, because not even the toughest customer could stand this punishment without screaming. The man generally fainted after a few minutes of it, and some men were permanently disabled. One gunner recalled that men sentenced to the rack sometimes begged to be shot instead.24

  The infantry had no spare wheels or forage racks, but it had its little ways. Commonest punishment was the “buck and gag.” The erring soldier was made to sit on the ground, his knees drawn up to his chin and his hands clasped over his shins. After his wrists were bound together a heavy stick was thrust under his knees and over his arms, and a gag was tied in his mouth. He was then left to sit there for some hours, suffering no extreme of pain but utterly helpless and voiceless, enduring cramps, thirst, and the jibes of unfeeling soldiers. It was also found effective to tie a man by his thumbs to the branch of a tree, pulling him just high enough so that he could keep his thumbs from being torn out of joint only by standing on tiptoe.

  In a way there was nothing new about all of this. Brutal punishments had always been on tap, but hitherto they had hardly amounted to more than the army’s backhanded way of cuffing the ne’er-do-wells and misfits who had found their way into the ranks. Now the harshness was becoming central. An important number of soldiers responded to that sort of language, and therefore it was being addressed to all of the soldiers. There was a new tone to the army. The old spirit had been diluted and the old ways had changed. The veterans drew closer together, seeming almost to be aliens in the army which they themselves had created.

  And the great danger now was that the veterans might presently get out of the army altogether and leave everything to the newcomers. Under the law they might do this, and nobody could stop them, and if that happened the war was lost forever, because conscripts and bounty men could not make Robert E. Lee’s incomparable soldiers even pause to take a deep breath.

  Federal regiments in the Civil War enlisted, usually, for three years. There had been a number of nine-month regiments, earlier, and some had come in to do a two-year hitch, but the three-year enlistment was the rule. Now the time was running out. The old 1861 regiments had just about finished their terms. In May and June and July and August they would come to the end of their enlistments, and under the law there was no way to compel their members to remain in service if they did not choose to remain.

  Fighting was expected to begin in April or May. The prospect, therefore, was that just as the campaign got well under way the army would begin to fall apart. The army authorities could see this coming but there was nothing on earth they could do to keep it from happening except go to the veterans—hat in hand, so to speak—and beg them to re-enlist.

  The big thing was to get them to re-enlist as regiments, and inducements were offered. If three fourths of the men in any regiment would re-enlist, the regiment could go home as a unit for a thirty-day furlough, and when it got back to camp it would keep its organization, its regimental number, its flag, and so on. In addition, the veterans would be cut in on some of this bounty money. Adding state and Federal bounties together, the average soldier who signed on for a second enlistment would get about $700, on which he might have quite a time for himself during that month’s furlough. So the authorities put on a big campaign, and the old regiments were called together and cajoled and orated to, and the men observed that on such occasions a good deal of whisky seemed to be available for the thirsty.

  Now the high command was talking to men who had had it.

  The record of these three-year regiments contained the whole story of the war in the East, down to date—Bull Run and the Seven Days, Antietam and Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, plus the mean little skirmishes and minor battles in between, the hard marches in dust or mud, the dreary months in unsavory camps. Whatever there could possibly be in war to make a man say, “Never again!” these soldiers knew about it. There were in the North thousands upon thousands of young men who had had no part in the war, and the veterans knew all about them and knew that if they themselves re-enlisted these men would remain civilians, with every night in bed and nobody shooting at them. They knew, too, that the thousands of recruits who were coming in now were corrupting the army and giving it little of value. When the fighting began again the load would have to be carried by the old-timers, the men who had survived many terrible battles and whose numbers, by the mere law of averages, must be about due to come up. The veteran who was asked to re-enlist had a good many things to think about. A man in the 3rd Michigan wrote:

  “After serving three years for our country cannot we go home, satisfied that we have done our share toward putting down the rebellion, and let those who stayed at home come and give their time as long; the country is as dear to them as us.”

  A man in the 25th Massachusetts noted that few of his comrades were signing up, and he spelled out his own feeling:

  “I shall not re-enlist, and my reasons are, first, I have no desire to monopolize all the patriotism there is, but am willing to give others a chance. My second reason is that after I have served three years my duty to my country has been performed and my next duty is at home with my family.”

  A member of the 13 th Massachusetts noted that his regiment “listened with respectful attention” while officers urged re-enlistment and extolled the valor of old soldiers, but he added: “It was very sweet to hear all this, but the 13th was not easily moved by this kind of talk. The boys knew too well what sacrifices they had made, and longed to get home again and, if possible, resume the places they had left.” In the end the 13th refused to re-enlist, except for a ha
ndful who signed up for places in another regiment.25

  Altogether, there are few facts in American history more remarkable than the fact that so many of these veterans did finally re-enlist—probably slightly more than half of the total number whose terms were expiring. The proffered bounty seems to have had little influence on them. The furlough was much better bait. To men who had not seen their homes for more than two and one half years, a solid month of freedom seemed like an age. A member of the 5th Maine said that it actually seemed as if the war might somehow end before the furloughs would expire, and he wrote of the men who re-enlisted: “What tempted these men? Bounty? No. The opportunity to go home.” 26

  It was not hardship that held men back. The 100th Pennsylvania had been marooned in eastern Tennessee for months, cut off from supplies and subsisting on two ears of corn per day per man, but when the question of re-enlistment came up only 27 out of the 393 present for duty refused to sign. In the 6th Wisconsin, which had done as much costly fighting as any regiment in the army, it was noted that the combat men were re-enlisting almost to a man; it was the cooks, hostlers, clerks, teamsters, and others on non-combat duty who were holding back. And the dominant motive, finally, seems to have been a simple desire to see the job through. The government in its wisdom might be doing everything possible to show the men that patriotism was for fools; in the end, the veterans simply refused to believe it. A solid nucleus did sign the papers, pledging that the army would go on, and by the end of March Meade was able to tell the War Department that 26,767 veterans had re-enlisted.27

  The men signed up without illusions. A company in the 19th Massachusetts was called together to talk things over. The regiment had left most of its men on various battlefields, in hospitals, and in Southern prison camps, and this company now mustered just thirteen men and one wounded officer. These considered the matter, and one man finally said: “They use a man here just the same as they do a turkey at a shooting match, fire at it all day and if they don’t kill it raffle it off in the evening; so with us, if they can’t kill you in three years they want you for three more—but I will stay.” And a comrade spoke up: “Well, if new men won’t finish the job, old men must, and as long as Uncle Sam wants a man, here is Ben Falls.”

  The regiment’s historian, recording this remark, pointed out that Ben Falls was killed two months later in battle at Spotsylvania Court House.28

  3. From a Mountain Top

  On the tenth day of March, 1864, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant came down to meet General Meade and to have a look at the Army of the Potomac.

  They made an occasion of it, and when Grant reached headquarters they turned out the guard. The guard included a Zouave outfit, 114th Pennsylvania, which had seen much hard fighting before the luck of the draw pulled it out of combat ranks and assigned it to headquarters, and it was natty with baggy red pants, white leggings, short blue jackets, and oriental-looking turbans. With the guard came the headquarters band, also of the 114th Pennsylvania; a melodious group, distinguished from most of the other army bands by the fact that all of the players were always sober when time came to make music. It had learned to play the kind of music Meade liked—something soft and sweet, usually—and it tootled away vigorously today, quite unaware that the lieutenant general was completely tone-deaf, disliked all music rather intensely, and could not for the life of him tell one tune from another.1

  The meeting between Grant and Meade was brief. Meade suggested that it might suit the new general in chief if the commander of the Army of the Potomac quietly retired, and Grant quickly rejected the offer—and wrote that he was favorably impressed by the way it was made. Mostly, the two men seem to have spent their time sizing each other up, and each man liked what he saw. They would appear to have made an odd picture, standing together. Grant was five feet eight, stooped, unmilitary in his gait, with creased horizontal wrinkles across his brow giving him a faintly harassed look, and for once he was togged out in dress uniform, black sugar-loaf hat set squarely on his head, sash about his waist, straight sword of a general officer belted at his side. Meade was taller, skinny, and bearing something of a patrician air, harsh lines cutting down from the corners of his nose. He spoke of the army as “My people,” and he wore a felt hat with peaked crown and turned-down brim which gave him a Tyrolean appearance.2 They had their talk, and then the Zouaves presented arms and the band played ruffles and flourishes, and Grant went away. He came back, a little more than a fortnight later, and from that moment on, in spite of fact and logic, the army was known as “Grant’s army.”

  Grant made his headquarters in a plain brick house near Culpeper Court House, with tents for his staff pitched in the yard, and he got down to work. He was commander of all of the armies of the United States—counting everything, he had twenty-one army corps and eighteen military departments under him, for a total of 533,000 soldiers—and he had a diversity of jobs to do, from winning the war down to keeping the politicians from running the Army of the Potomac, and he had very little time for small talk.3

  Ulysses S. Grant was a natural—an unmistakable rural Middle Westerner, bearing somehow the air of the little farm and the empty dusty road and the small-town harness shop, plunked down here in an army predominantly officered by polished Easterners. He was slouchy, round-shouldered, a red bristly beard cropped short on his weathered face, with a look about the eyes as of a man who had come way up from very far down; his one visible talent seemingly the ability to ride any horse anywhere under any conditions. These days, mostly, he rode a big bay horse named Cincinnati, and when he went out to look at the troops he set a pace no staff officer could match, slanting easily forward as if he and the horse had been made in one piece, and his following was generally trailed out behind him for a hundred yards, scabbards banging against the sides of lathered horses, the less military officers frantically grabbing hats and saddle leather as they tried to keep up.

  Somewhere within the general in chief there hid the proud, shy little West Point graduate who put on the best uniform a brevet second lieutenant of infantry could wear when he went home to Ohio on furlough after graduation, and who got laughed at for a dude by livery-stable toughs, and who forever after preferred to wear the plain uniform of a private soldier, with officer’s insignia stitched to the shoulders. He had three stars to put there now—more than any American soldier had worn except George Washington and Winfield Scott—and he had little eccentricities. He breakfasted frequently on a cup of coffee and a cucumber sliced in vinegar, and if he ate meat it had to be cooked black, almost to a crisp: this author of much bloodshed detested the sight of blood, and was made queasy by the sight of red meat. When he prepared for his day’s rounds he accepted from his servant two dozen cigars, which were stowed away in various pockets, and he carried a flint and steel lighter with a long wick, modern style, so that he could get a light in a high wind.

  He received many letters asking for his autograph, but, he admitted, “I don’t get as many as I did when I answered them.” He was not without a quiet sense of humor; writing his memoirs, he told about the backwoods schools he went to as a boy, saying that he was taught so many times that “a noun is the name of a thing” that he finally came to believe it. As a man he was talkative but as a general he was closemouthed. When the crack VI Corps was paraded for him and officers asked him if he ever saw anything to equal it (hoping that he might confess that the Army of the Potomac was better drilled than Western troops, which was indeed the case) he remarked only that General So-and-so rode a very fine horse; the general in question, a brigade commander, having recently invested $500 in a fancy new saddle of which he was very proud.4

  Nobody knew quite what to make of him, and judgments were tentative. One of Meade’s staff officers commented that Grant’s habitual expression was that of a man who had made up his mind to drive his head through a stone wall, and Uncle John Sedgwick, canniest and most deeply loved of all the army’s higher officers, wrote to his sister that he had been “most agr
eeably disappointed” both with the general’s looks and with his obvious common sense. (As it happened, “common sense” was the expression most often used when men tried to say why they liked Sedgwick so much.) Sedgwick was a little bit skeptical. He said that even though Grant impressed him well, it was doubtful whether he could really do much more with the army than his predecessors had done, since “the truth is we are on the wrong road to take Richmond.”5 Having unburdened himself, Sedgwick retired to his tent to resume one of his everlasting games of solitaire, leaving further comment to other ranks.

  Other ranks had their own ideas, which did not always approach reverence. A squadron of cavalry went trotting by one day while Grant sat his horse, smoking, and one trooper sniffed the breeze and said that he knew the general was a good man because he smoked such elegant cigars. Two privates in the 5th Wisconsin saw Grant ride past them, and studied him in silence. Presently one asked the inevitable question: “Well, what do you think?” The other took in the watchful eyes and the hard straight mouth under the stubbly beard, and replied: “He looks as if he meant it.” Then, reflecting on the problems which politics could create for a general, he added: “But I’m afraid he’s too near Washington.” The first soldier said that they would see for themselves before long, and remarked contemplatively: “He’s a little ’un.”

  One man said that while the soldiers often saw Grant he was always riding so fast that they could not get a good look at him, and another commented: “After the debonair McClellan, the cocky Burnside, rosy Joe Hooker and the dyspeptic Meade, the calm and unpretentious Grant was not exciting anyway.” He felt that the most anyone really saw was “a quiet solidity.” 6

  If the general had solidity he would need it, because he was under great pressure. Hopes and fears centered on him, not to mention jealousies. The country at large believed that he was the man who at last was going to win the war, possibly very quickly. The day when men easily expected miracles and hoped to find another Napoleon under the newest general’s black campaign hat had died out long ago, but if miracles were out of order ruthless determination perhaps would do, and that much seemed to be visible.