Lee's Lieutenants

by Douglas Southall Freeman

  “So far I have been able to protect [the wagons],” he wrote in a note to Lee, “but without assistance can scarcely hope to do so much longer.” The cavalry of Rooney Lee, which had covered Gordon’s retreat, had been withdrawn. Gordon fought with no troops except his own. One assault he repulsed. After Ewell’s troops were captured, Gordon’s right was attacked from the south while his front was under heavy pressure and his left was threatened. His line broke in much confusion, but, west of the creek, Gordon rallied the survivors. Although his loss on that Flodden Field of the Confederacy was about 1,700, his had been a gallant fight.23

  While Ewell and Anderson had been fighting their hopeless battle at the upper crossing of Sayler’s Creek and Gordon at the lower, Longstreet had remained at Rice to cover the roads that led to the Appomattox bridges. After the disaster to Anderson and Ewell, Mahone’s division had been moved by the commanding general to a hill west of and in full view of the scene of their surrender. There, in the late afternoon, occurred an incident that Mahone himself described: “At this spectacle General Lee straightened himself in his saddle, and, looking more the soldier than ever, exclaimed, as if talking to himself: ‘My God! Has the army dissolved?’ As quickly as I could control my voice I replied, ‘No, General, here are troops ready to do their duty’; when, in a mellowed voice, he replied, ‘Yes, General, there are some true men left. Will you please keep these people back?’” Fleeing men had crowded around Lee where he sat his horse holding aloft a Confederate battleflag. At Mahone’s request Lee handed him the flag, with which, and with his own trusted men, Mahone drew a line behind which the fugitives rallied.24

  Night scarcely brought relief. In other battles more men had been killed and wounded, but in no engagement had so large a part of the Army of Northern Virginia been destroyed. The day’s casualties, which were between 7,000 and 8,000, represented probably one third of the men that had left Amelia Court House and Jetersville the previous day. Worst of all, time had been lost, the time bought by the agonizing night march of April 5-6. Union infantry now were on the heels of the Confederates. Sheridan had been on the flank all day. If he got ahead of the army …

  3

  THE ARMY SEES A RED WESTERN SKY

  Whatever the dreadful possibilities of the morrow, headquarters on the night of April 6 had to collect the scattered fragments of broken commands and formulate plans. Anderson, Pickett, and Bushrod Johnson were somewhere in the woods. The few survivors of their commands, plus Wise’s brigade, could be placed under Gordon. He and Longstreet now headed the two corps that remained. They could count six divisions, but four of these were wrecked. Field’s and Mahone’s alone were strong enough to make an all-day fight. As for route, manifestly the army could not strike immediately south. It must put the Appomattox between it and the enemy, and after that must describe a wider arc toward Danville or, if need be, westward toward the mountains.

  To get the army across the river, Longstreet would continue on the road to Farmville. Mahone’s division, Gordon, and the men who had escaped the day’s defeats would cross the Appomattox at High Bridge and rejoin at Farmville. When the troops were on the north bank of the river, the bridges could be burned. In this way the lost day might be recovered. The Army of Northern Virginia might get one march ahead of the pursuers.

  After darkness the march began. Hundreds of men separated from their commands wandered hopelessly along and crowded the road. Many lost heart that night and lay down by the roadside to die or to await helplessly the arrival of an enemy who, if he imprisoned, at least did not starve soldiers. The hardiest and most resolute kept on. They had firm assurance that rations were awaiting them at Farmville. Commissary I. M. St. John had seen General Lee and had hurried on to the railroad to be sure the cars from Lynchburg with bacon and meal were ready when the troops arrived.25

  Longstreet’s men had the worst of the marching conditions, on a crowded road deep in mud. Gordon to the north soon had the survivors of the Second Corps marching in their regular order by brigades. Though some of these brigades were smaller than a feeble regiment should have been, they did not throw off their discipline. At last—the night seemed a month—they crossed the Appomattox on a wagon bridge under the High Bridge of the Southside railway and pushed on toward Farmville where rations were awaiting them. The engineers assigned to burn the bridges awaited Mahone’s order to do so, and when it did not come they sent to find him. On his belated order they set the lofty structure aflame, but could not get the wagon crossing vigorously afire before the enemy was upon them. Whether Mahone forgot to give the order earlier or assumed the engineers would act when he marched off, it is impossible to say.26

  Plain speech and a picturesque political career had made Henry A. Wise a privileged character in the army. He had never hesitated to speak his mind to his superiors. Now, when he saw Lee on a little eminence where the weary commander was trying to rally stragglers, he made straight for the place. Lee gave him a good morning and asked the condition of his command. “Ready for dress parade,” the quick-witted Wise answered, and with no further introduction he swore, “General Lee, these men shall not move another inch unless they have something more to eat than parched corn taken from starving mules!” Prompt was Lee’s answer: “They deserve something to eat, sir,” and he directed Wise to a nearby hill where rations from the cars at Farmville would be issued.27

  The men of Wise’s command and of Gordon’s corps received two days’ rations. Longstreet’s men arriving in Farmville could draw their rations, move to the north bank of the river, and prepare them. A few hours might then be allowed for rest, for with the bridges destroyed the Appomattox would be impassable temporarily for the Federal infantry. The cavalry would be able to ford the stream, but they could be engaged and held. With good fortune, what was left of Lee’s army might march toward Lynchburg and try, once again, to move toward a junction with the waiting troops of Joe Johnston.

  This hope was reviving dimly as fires crackled and bacon fried, but soon there was an alarm: The enemy was advancing! Federals who had reached the wagon crossing at High Bridge had extinguished the fire and continued their pursuit with little delay. Mahone had not succeeded in pushing them back. Instead of enjoying a rest, the Confederates must make the north side of the river a battleground. Those who had finished their cooking could eat and fight. Others must leave their fires and take with them what they could snatch. Some thousands in the rear brigades, shuffling into Farmville, found the issue of rations halted and the trains gone. The best they could hope was that the cars might be run up toward Lynchburg and stopped again at a point on the Southside track that paralleled the road along which the army must renew its retreat.

  Three and a half miles beyond Farmville the line of the Confederate retreat crossed that of the Federal advance from High Bridge. Mahone’s division accordingly was posted at the road junction. When the Federals came they threatened a heavy attack, and Mahone had to fight to keep them at a distance. Gordon marched through the woods by the flank to cover the wagons against attack by the Federal cavalry. Fitz Lee’s exhausted troopers met and repulsed one cavalry attack on the trains, but the danger remained essentially the same as on the sixth: The enemy would press hard from the rear while his cavalry tried to strike the left flank of the column from the south. Presumably, too, Federal infantry were marching south of Lee’s army and parallel to it. If those strong blue columns, or even the blue cavalry, outmarched the Southerners, the only line of escape would be to the north—the direction opposite that of the desired movement to unite with Johnston.28

  The retreat resumed, and in hundreds of instances strength failed many whose faith remained. An artillerist wrote, “Horses and mules dead or dying in the mud…. The constant marching and fighting without sleep or food are rapidly thinning the ranks of this grand old army. Men who have stood by their flags since the beginning of the war fall out of their ranks and are captured, simply because it is beyond their power of physical endurance to go any farthe
r.” This happened among some of the proudest units of the army. Until its stragglers rejoined, the Texas Brigade could engage but 130 rifles. One famished, ragged North Carolinian fell back and was overtaken by a squad of well-fed Union troops. “Surrender, surrender, we’ve got you!” they yelled. “Yes,” said Johnny Reb as he dropped his gun, “you’ve got me, and the hell of a git you got!”

  Gordon was to be moved forward to be the advance of the next day; Longstreet’s corps would become rear guard. With nothing more encouraging than this in prospect, most of the men were too benumbed to do more than continue their torturing march. Their seniors were excited by two developments. During the late afternoon of the seventh efforts were made by the Federals to pass a flag of truce, but the fire had been too hot. About 9:00 P.M. another flag was presented opposite Mahone’s lines and was received. A letter addressed to General Lee was handed over and hurried to field headquarters. The fact of the receipt of this letter and of the prompt dispatch of an answer became known to many officers during the night. Some of them correctly guessed what the letters concerned. Longstreet, but probably no one else, was shown the communication received from the Federal lines. He received it from Lee’s hands, read it, and returned it with two words of comment—“Not yet.”29

  The other development that woeful seventh of April was without any precedent and technically was contrary to stern terms of Army Regulations. During the day several of the general officers talked of the plight of the army and of the black alternatives it faced. It could disperse and attempt to reassemble, or it could abandon all trains and cut its way out. To scatter through the countryside would subject the region to foraging and plunder by uncontrolled detachments that might never be brought together again. If the second alternative were adopted, the army’s ammunition soon would be exhausted. There remained, then, no humane, practical alternative to the one thing no soldier had wished to consider or mention—immediate surrender. In that conviction, the officers felt that General Lee should be told that his generals believed the struggle hopeless and thought themselves unjustified in permitting more blood to be shed. Lee must be informed, also, that a desire to spare him the entire burden of decision prompted them to make their statement. General Pendleton was suggested as the person to lay the opinion of the officers before Lee. John B. Gordon, who had not shared in the conversation, suggested to Pendleton that Longstreet be informed before the matter was presented to Lee.

  For some hours it seemed that the humiliating suggestion of surrender might be avoided. The morale of the army improved. The men were jaded but less despairing. The enemy was not troubling them; their march was unimpeded. Many began to predict they would reach Lynchburg. “Once there,” they thought, their “safety seemed to be almost perfectly secured.” Headquarters anticipated a harder struggle. Supplies had been ordered to Appomattox Station, twenty-five miles west of Farmville on the Southside Railroad. These must be secured before the enemy got them. Half dead though the troops might be, they must be kept on the road.30

  Dick Anderson, George Pickett, and Bushrod Johnson still were with the army, but did not have commands that fitted their rank. To assign them to head other troops would entail the displacement of officers who had done their full duty and had not suffered defeat. To call on the three generals to remain with the army and have no part in its battles was humiliation. They accordingly were relieved and authorized to return home. If there was any implication in these orders that the three had been culpable in the loss of their troops—Pickett at Five Forks and the others at Sayler’s Creek—their comrades-in-arms never knew it. Pickett nursed resentments for this treatment, or for what had happened at Gettysburg. Dick Anderson remained to the end the loyal lieutenant and in his final report voiced no protest. Johnson publicly said nothing. Wise’s brigade and the other men from Johnson’s division were assigned to Grimes’s division of Gordon’s corps. No fragment of infantry now remained outside the two corps in the determined hands of Longstreet and Gordon. Both were withstanding the strains of the agonizing week; both remained clear-headed.

  During the forenoon Longstreet showed his old fighting spirit. Pendleton told him of the conference of the previous day, and asked if Longstreet would lay before Lee the conclusion of his officers. Instantly Old Pete reminded Pendleton of the article of war which provided the death penalty for proposing surrender. “If General Lee doesn’t know when to surrender until I tell him,” stormed Longstreet, “he will never know!” Pendleton found Lee resting on the ground beneath a large pine tree. Without a word, he permitted Pendleton to state his case. Then, firmly and probably with some sharpness, Lee answered that he still had too many brave men to think of surrendering. Lee’s manner did not encourage argument or reiteration. “From his report of the conversation,” Porter Alexander said of Pendleton, “he had met a decided snub….”31

  “The enemy left us to a quiet day’s march on the 8th,” Longstreet subsequently wrote, “nothing disturbing the rear-guard, and our left flank being but little annoyed….” The excitement was in the ranks of the cavalry. If the commander of the mounted forces had been negligent at Five Forks, he was atoning now. Two miles behind Longstreet’s troops, Fitz Lee was watching and calculating. He had no fight to wage at the moment because he was pursued by infantry alone. That fact was itself suspicious. It led him to conclude that Sheridan’s divisions had left the rear and were moving parallel to the Southern infantry, in order to cut off supplies at Appomattox Station or to get across the Confederate line of advance. Fitz decided that he, too, should leave the rear and go to the front of the column. He determined to advance his whole force, other than a rear guard for the First Corps. Sheridan must be met quickly, and he must be met with every gun and saber the Confederates could command.32

  To the west, in the late afternoon, when Gordon’s van approached Appomattox Court House, a halt was called. General Pendleton was concerned for the surplus batteries that Lindsay Walker had been directed to move from Amelia ahead of the army. They were parked two miles ahead on the road to Appomattox Station. The gunners had repelled one cavalry attack, but Pendleton was fearful that without infantry support they would be overwhelmed. About 9:00 P.M. there was sound of artillery fire from the direction of Walker’s camp, and then, suddenly, complete silence. Walker and his twenty-four guns must already have been captured.33

  The abrupt cessation of the cannonade was not the sole omen of disaster. Another was in the heavens. After the last glint of the sun had faded, to the east there was redness near the earth. From the south came the same reflections, dim but unmistakable. Westward, too—hearts stood still at the sight!—the light of kindled campfires slowly spread. Only to the north was the darkness unrelieved by fiery notice that the enemy was waiting and almost had surrounded the army.

  While the skies proclaimed this red warning, Longstreet, Gordon, and Fitz Lee were conferring with the commanding general. Gordon and Fitz were told of the exchange of letters with General Grant. The letter which Longstreet had read and handed back to Lee with the comment “Not yet” had been a call by Grant for the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia. Lee had replied that he did not take Grant’s view of the hopelessness of further resistance, but reciprocated the desire to stop the flow of blood and therefore asked what terms Grant would offer. Grant replied: “Peace being my great desire, there is but one condition I would insist upon, namely, that the officers and men surrendered shall be disqualified for taking up arms against the government of the United States until properly exchanged.” Lee had made this letter the occasion of a proposal to meet Grant, not to negotiate surrender of the army, but to consider how Grant’s proposal “may affect the C.S. forces under my command and to tend to the restoration of peace.”34

  To this second letter from Lee, no answer had been received. In the light of this and in the face of the known military situation, Gordon and Fitz Lee and Longstreet were asked what they thought the army should do on the ninth. Discussion ranged from tactics of another ba
ttle to the future of the Southern people, but the decision was unequivocal—one more effort must be made to break through toward Lynchburg and then to turn southward.

  The artillery must be reduced to two battalions. Only the ammunition wagons were to accompany the army. Fitz Lee would open the attack, supported by the Second Corps, and then he and Gordon would wheel to the left to cover the passage of the remaining guns and trains. Longstreet would close behind the trains and hold the position. If this succeeded, the army would fight on. In the event of failure, the end would have come. Fitz Lee made one request: He would like to be notified, before a surrender, in order that he and his men might leave the field and go to North Carolina to unite with Johnston, provided this could be done honorably and without compromising the general-in-chief. The request was granted; the conference ended. At 1:00 A.M. on the morrow, the ninth of April, the movement would begin. The old army would shake off its pursuers or perish on the field.35

  4

  APPOMATTOX: EXEUNT OMNES

  At daybreak, Palm Sunday, half a mile west of Appomattox Court House, on the road to Lynchburg, Gordon boldly spread his men in line of battle. They numbered no more than 1,600 muskets of the 7,500 that had been in the soldiers’ hands as recently as the first of March. On the right of Gordon’s troops were the cavalry—Rooney Lee next the infantry, then Tom Rosser and then Tom Munford. Fitz Lee was determined but he was not hopeful. He believed that his men could whip any mounted troops the Federals could bring against him. As an experienced soldier he knew that with his 2,400 men he could not break through strong Federal infantry. Privately he arranged with Gordon that if the Second Corps encountered infantry in its front, Gordon was to signal. Then Fitz would lead his cavalry off the field before a truce was declared.