A Stillness at Appomattox: The Army of the Potomac Trilogy

by Bruce Catton

  Sheridan was on his favorite horse, a tireless black named Rienzi, and it became a fable and a folk legend how Rienzi went a full twenty miles at a gallop without stopping. The legend outdid reality. There were a number of little halts, when Sheridan would pull up to ask for news, and at one halt he had Major Forsyth cut a little switch for him, with which he birched Rienzi into greater speed. Once he met a panicky man riding to the rear on a mule, and he asked the man how things were at the front. “Oh, everything is lost and gone,” shouted the man, “but it will be all right when you get there”—after which the man got the mule to a gallop and kept on in the direction of Winchester. Once Sheridan stopped to look in on a field hospital, and talked to some of the wounded. Counting everything, Rienzi had a number of chances to catch his breath.

  Yet the legendary picture is close enough to fact: black-headed man on a great black horse, riding at furious speed, his escort dim in the dust behind him, waving his arm and swinging his absurd flat little hat and shouting continually the order to turn around and get back into the fighting; a man followed for many miles by the cheers of men who spun on their heels and returned to the firing line because they believed that if he was going to be there everything would be all right again—and because the look of him, and his great ringing voice, and the way he moved and rode and gestured somehow made going back into battle with him seem light and gay and exciting, even to men who had been in many battles.

  Major Forsyth wrote that every time a group of stragglers saw Sheridan the result was the same—“a wild cheer of recognition, an answering wave of the cap.” In no case, he said, did the men fail to shoulder their arms and follow the general, and for miles behind him the turnpike was crowded with men pressing forward to the front which they had run away from a few hours earlier. And all along the highway, for mile on mile, and in the fields beside the road, there went up the great jubilant chant: “Sheridan! Sheridan!”

  As they got closer to the front Sheridan became grimmer. Major Forsyth wrote: “As he galloped on his features gradually grew set, as though carved in stone, and the same dull red glint I had seen in his piercing black eyes when, on other occasions, the battle was going against us, was there now.” 21

  They came at last to a ridge where there were batteries in action, dueling at long range; and up ahead, on the right of the road, they could see the ranks of the VI Corps, men standing in line waiting to be used. Sheridan came plowing up through the fainthearts and the skulkers, and his face was black as midnight, and now he was shouting: “Turn about, you damned cowardly curs, or I’ll cut you down! I don’t expect you to fight, but come and see men who like to!” And he swung his arm in a great inclusive gesture toward the VI Corps up ahead.22

  These men had been waiting in line for an hour or more. As veterans, they knew that the army had been beaten in detail and not by head-on assault, and they were grumbling about it, making profane remarks about men who ran away—and then, far behind them, they heard cheering.

  “We were astounded,” wrote a man in the Vermont Brigade. “There we stood, driven four miles already, quietly waiting for what might be further and immediate disaster, and far in the rear we heard the stragglers and hospital bummers and the gunless artillerymen actually cheering as though a victory had been won. We could hardly believe our ears.”

  And then, while the men were still looking their questions at one another, out in front of the line came Sheridan himself, still riding at a swinging gallop—and the whole army corps blew up in the wildest cheer it had ever given in all of its career, and the roar went rocketing along the line as Sheridan rode on past brigade after brigade of the toughest veterans in the Army of the Potomac. The Vermont Brigade’s historian wrote fondly:

  “Such a scene as his presence produced and such emotions as it awoke cannot be realized once in a century. All outward manifestations were as enthusiastic as men are capable of exhibiting; cheers seemed to come from throats of brass, and caps were thrown to the tops of the scattering oaks; but beneath and yet superior to these noisy demonstrations there was in every heart a revulsion of feeling, and a pressure of emotion, beyond description. No more doubt or chance for doubt existed; we were safe, perfectly and unconditionally safe, and every man knew it.”

  All along the line went Sheridan, waving his hat, telling the troops: “Boys, we’ll get the tightest twist on them they ever saw. We’ll get all those camps back.” To a colonel who rode up and said they were glad to see him, Sheridan replied: “Well, by God, I’m glad to be here!” And to another officer, still pessimistic from the morning’s licking, who said that Early intended to drive them clear out of the Shenandoah Valley, Sheridan barked in fury: “What? Three corps of infantry and all of my cavalry; Jubal Early drive me out of the valley? I’ll lick him like blazes before night! I’ll give him the worst licking he ever had!” 23

  And that was the way of it, in the end. After Sheridan passed by the men in line retied their shoes, tucked pants legs inside their socks, tightened their belts, unfastened cartridge-box lids, slid ramrods down rifle barrels to make sure the weapons were loaded, and jerked their forage caps down lower on their foreheads. From the rear the returning stragglers came up in droves, wandering along the lines, finding their proper regiments and taking their places—to the tune of jibes from their comrades. Sheridan went to General Wright, who was lying on the ground, his throat and chin all swollen, blood on his coat. It was hard for him to talk, but he got up when Sheridan came, made his report, and prepared to go into action. Sheridan took plenty of time, waiting for his stragglers to come up, and it was nearly four in the afternoon when his battle line finally went forward.24

  When it hit, it hit hard. Confederate ranks were thinned by the absence of men who persisted in foraging among what the Yankees had left, and if all of the absentees had been in line Sheridan still would have had more men than Early had. Anyway, this Federal army knew it was going to win, at last, and it rolled up to the Rebel lines with irresistible might.

  One of Emory’s men reported that the Confederates were retreating presently “in precisely the same kind of disorder we had exhibited that morning,” and he wrote that they pursued eagerly because “the sight of so many rebel heels made it an easy thing to be brave.” On a ridge, by and by, the Confederates made a stand, and with their heels no longer visible the joys of pursuit were not quite so overpowering; but Sheridan had a great mass of cavalry swinging in on the flank like a scythe, and it sheared in behind the Rebel infantry and the whole line gave way, and a disordered rout went southward as dusk came down.

  Cheering madly, the Federal infantry pressed on, determined not to stop until they had at least got past their old camping grounds. At times it seemed as if the front were all flags, since the color sergeants were not loaded down with weapons and accouterments and so could run faster than the others. The infantry pressed on so hard that George Custer once turned to his mounted men, pointing, and cried: “Are you going to let infantry get ahead of you?”25

  It was the cavalry that made the victory complete. It cannoned into the Confederate wagon and artillery train, smashed a bridge near the town of Strasburg, and went bucketing up and down and back and forth through the whole confused retreat. All of the Federal guns and wagons that had been lost that morning were retaken, together with twenty-five Confederate guns and any number of wagons, and Early’s army was ruined.

  At times the cavalry was going too fast to take prisoners. Rebels who surrendered would be told, “You stay here!” while the captors rode off to get more—after which most of the prisoners would disappear in the dark and try to rejoin their comrades. A South Carolina officer who got away recalled that he had surrendered five times during the retreat. The 5th New York boasted that one of its troopers, a tough Montenegrin named Heiduc, had personally sabered the two teamsters of a Confederate baggage wagon and had himself brought the vehicle back to camp.

  Sheridan’s word was good. The troops occupied their old camps that night, a
nd at least some of them found that hardly any of their things had been taken; possibly fewer Rebels left the ranks for plunder than Early afterward alleged. A field in front of Sheridan’s headquarters was filled with captured matériel—guns and ambulances and baggage wagons and stacks of muskets—and Sheridan’s hell-for-leather scouts equipped themselves with a score of captured Confederate flags and paraded wildly across the firelight with them. General Emory watched Sheridan ride proudly by and he mused: “That young man has made a great name for himself today.” 26

  A few days after the battle a Connecticut soldier looked over the long files of prisoners and wrote to his family that the Rebs were “smart healthy-looking men,” clad in neat gray uniforms and slouch hats. “They are very quick, walk like horses,” he added, and he found most of them quite cheerful, laughing and joking all of the time. And all of them, he said, “from officers down to privates, said they were tired of the war and that peace was worth more than the C.S.A.” 27

  CHAPTER SIX

  Endless Road Ahead

  1. Except by the Sword

  A LUMINOUS mist of Indian summer lay on the desolate plains around Petersburg, and on the horizon the surviving woodlands were as remote and unreal as the memory of peace, magical with rich color, cool green of pines blending into the deep russet brown of oaks and the flaming red of maples and dogwood. Near the trees were thousands of tents and canvas-roofed huts, and across the fields and hills where there were neither tents nor trees were mile upon mile of trenches, scarring the earth with grotesque irregular patterns, the ground between them bristling with tangles of abatis and sinister sharpened stakes of chevaux-de-frise. Autumn sunlight sparkled on rifle barrels and bayonets, in the trenches and the skirmishers’ rifle pits and the big square forts, and gleamed from the bright metal of the guns; and at night all the front glowed with flashing fires as the armies sniped and bombarded each other, and the great mortar shells climbed the sky in high slow parabolas, fuses burning red in the black sky.

  The rival lines of forts and trenches ran for more than thirty-five miles. They began north of the James, at gloomy White Oak Swamp, and from the swamp they curved and twisted for eight miles to the north bank of the James. Along the river itself there was a four-mile stretch where Confederate artillery, mounted on the bluffs along the southern shore, barred the way against the Yankee monitors and gunboats. Then the trenches began again, running for five miles across the Bermuda Hundred neck to the Appomattox River, and here again, for four miles along the river bank, there was artillery. Then, below the river, due east from Petersburg and so close to the city that Yankee gunners could throw shells into warehouses and churches and dwellings if they chose, there were trenches once more.

  These followed the battle lines that had been fixed in June, and they led south for four or five miles to the Jerusalem Plank Road—never very far apart, the men who occupied them always under fire, the hideous red wound of the mine crater lying just back of the Rebel parapets. Below the Plank Road the lines swung southwest, and here, early in the summer, they had ended, the Confederate system anchored by a work named Fort Mahone, the Yankee line tied to an opposing work named Fort Sedgwick. By day and by night, month after month, these forts dueled with each other, and the soldiers of the two armies had named the Federal work “Fort Hell” and the Confederate work “Fort Damnation.” 1

  Always the lines had been creeping off toward the southwest. Since the day the mine was exploded the Federals had made no more frontal assaults. Grant resumed the old habit of edging constantly around by his left, looking always for a chance to strike in past the Rebel flank. There had been a series of moves of this kind during late summer and autumn, with Federal troops trying to get west from Fort Hell. None of these moves came to very much, and some had ended in humiliating defeat. The II Corps, for instance, was roundly whipped at a place called Reams’s Station, men running in panic from a Rebel counterattack which the old II Corps would have beaten off with ease, Hancock riding among the routed troops waving his hat and crying: “Come on! We can beat them yet! Don’t leave me, for God’s sake!” 2

  Yet after each of these moves, somehow, the Union position was a little better and the Confederate position was a little worse. Lee was forever being compelled to stretch his line farther and farther, which meant that it was steadily growing thinner. While Confederate manpower was declining, he was being given more and more ground to hold. Month after month the Union army reached out, slowly but inexorably drawing closer to the railroad lines behind the Confederate right and rear which Lee must keep unbroken if his army and Richmond were to live.

  Behind Grant’s army was visible the enormous power of the North. City Point, which had been the sleepiest of riverside hamlets, had become one of the world’s great seaports. Wharves lined the waterfront for more than a mile, with more docks extending up the Appomattox. An average day would see 40 steamboats, 75 sailing vessels, and 100 barges tied up or anchored along the waterfront. An army hospital that covered 200 acres and could accommodate 10,000 patients crowned a bluff above the river. There were vast warehouses for quartermaster, commissary, and ordnance departments; bakeries, blacksmith shops, wagon-repair shops, barracks for soldiers, quarters for civilian workers. Two steam engines had been set up to pump a water supply for this strange military city, and half a dozen sprinkling carts had been imported to lay the dust in its streets. The quartermaster general boasted that the facilities here were so extensive that he could easily supply an army of 500,000 men if he had to, and he had four passenger steamers providing daily service between City Point and Washington. (Very bad service, too, according to a newspaper correspondent, who found the boats dirty, crowded, and odorous and the food hardly fit to eat.)3

  To connect this seaport with the army, the government had built a twenty-one-mile railroad, complete with freight yards, coal docks, roundhouse, repair shops, and all the rest. Nucleus of this was a prewar line which connected Petersburg with City Point, but of that seven-mile stub nothing much remained except the right of way; it had been a five-foot-gauge affair, and the military road was built to the standard four feet eight and one half inches. Branches had been built to run up and down behind the front, so that all of the military area below the Appomattox could be serviced by rail.

  This railroad was enormously useful, since it meant that the fighting line could be kept supplied even in the worst weather, and it made the speedy reinforcement of any part of the line comparatively simple. The railroad amused the soldiers immensely. Even while it was contemporary, it managed to look quaint. It had been built in a great hurry and there had been almost no grading of the right of way, the tracks simply being laid on unprepared ground. As a result the railroad snaked up and down over hills and hollows, and it was said that watching a train go by was like watching a fly walk down a corrugated washboard. When a well-loaded train was at the top of a grade the engineer would open the throttle and go thundering down into the valley, hoping that the added momentum would get him up the opposite slope. If it did not he would back up and make a fresh start. If he carried troops, the men often would be ordered to get out and push.

  The line had been built by railroad men. Army engineers had said that the road could never be operated—the grades would be too steep and cargo-carrying capacity would be too small. The railroad men knew better and went ahead with their program, and by fall the line was operating eighteen trains a day, with from fifteen to two dozen cars in each train, and was doing a fair passenger business besides.4

  An Episcopal bishop from Atlanta, who had come north on a pass from General Sherman and who stopped off to visit Grant on his trip back south, was greatly impressed by the abundance of military supplies at City Point—“not merely profusion, but extravagance; wagons, tents, artillery, ad libitum. Soldiers provided with everything.” He thought of the Confederate armies’ lean rations and then looked in amazement at the comforts available to the Yankees. Bakeries were turning out thousands of loaves of fresh bread
, sutlers’ shops were everywhere, soldiers were forever buying extras to supplement their regular diet, and to him this reflected the wealth of the North.

  The bishop believed that the consciousness of wealth and power had a direct effect on the mental attitude of the Northern soldiers and the Northern people. Everyone he talked to seemed obsessed with the greatness and destiny of the Federal Union. He found “a universal horror of rebellion,” which made people feel that Rebels were almost “outside the pale of humanity,” so that it was no sin to commit almost any sort of outrage on Southern people or property. It seemed to the good bishop that this was not merely a purse-proud complacency; it was something that looked far past the present, beyond the war to a future greatness for the whole country that would go beyond all present comprehension. He wrote: “Their idol is less the Union of the past than the sublime Union of the future, destined soon to overshadow all the nations.”5

  There was power in this sentiment, and as the fall progressed it seemed to overshadow everything else. It even dominated the one great emotional drive which had been bred into the very bones of the Army of the Potomac—the love which the army still felt for General McClellan. As election day approached there was much talk of McClellan among the veterans. A Quaker nurse at the City Point hospital wrote in September that “if it is left to the soldiers, his election is sure,” and it was clear that the old affection for the handsome little general still ran strong.6

  “Soldiers’ eyes would brighten when they talked of him,” one veteran recalled. “Their hard, lean, browned faces would soften and light up with affection when they spoke of him”—and yet, he continued, it was affection only. There was not, in the showdown, anything in it that would carry the election. Talking things over, the veterans agreed that they had been a better, stronger army in 1862, when McClellan commanded, than they were now in 1864, under Grant. Yet they also agreed that if Grant had commanded in 1862 the war would have been won in that year, while if McClellan had commanded in 1864 “he would have ended the war in the Wilderness—by establishing the Confederacy.”