Lee's Lieutenants

by Douglas Southall Freeman

  As soon as it was light enough to see westward across the fields to the crossroads ahead, Federal earthworks were discernible. They were new and not heavy, the sort any soldiers might have thrown up during the night. Neither Fitz Lee nor Gordon could tell, at the distance and in the dim light, whether the men occasionally visible behind the field fortifications were dismounted troopers or the familiar blue infantry. After careful scrutiny, Gordon was satisfied that the Federals were cavalry and were Fitz Lee’s prey. Young Lee was convinced that the Unionists were infantry and therefore meat for Gordon. They argued so long that Bryan Grimes, with all the zeal of a new major general, broke in. Somebody, he said, must attack and at once. “I will undertake it,” Grimes volunteered.

  “Well, drive them off!” answered Gordon. “You can take the other two divisions of the corps.” Fitz Lee was ready to do his part, but he and his men believed the bluecoats at the crossroads were infantry and would mow down the attackers. A cavalryman of Beale’s brigade observed, before the bugle sounded, “Old Company E will call the roll in Hell this morning.”

  At 5 o’clock the advance began in echelon on the right. It was a smart, well-ordered advance that would have evoked Stonewall Jackson’s terse “Good, good!” The quaver of the rebel yell saluted the dawn. At the crossroads the breastworks were reached and swept. The uniform of the first fallen Federal showed to the relief of all that Gordon was correct. The defenders were dismounted cavalry who were sent hurrying to their horses. Two field guns were captured.36

  Then Gordon wheeled by the left flank and formed a new line of battle facing south. The Lynchburg road was cleared and covered, as Lee had directed. Scarcely was Gordon in this new position than word came of Federals in a wood to his right and rear—and infantry at that, beyond all doubt infantry. Action swiftly followed report. These troops attacked Fitz Lee and drove him back on Gordon’s flank. More distant Union regiments emerged from the wood and slipped to the east as if they intended to get between Gordon and Longstreet. Federal cavalry began to demonstrate against the left of Gordon’s line. All this the enemy did smoothly and confidently and to the dismay of Gordon. He had Federal infantry to the west of him, the threat of infantry deployment to the east, and cavalry to the southeast. Against such odds, he realized that the fight was hopeless. If John Gordon admitted that, his plight was almost past redemption, because in a black hour at Sharpsburg and in the madness of the Bloody Angle, his had been the voice of unshakable confidence.

  Sketch of the vicinity of Appomattox Court House.

  Now, about 8 o’clock, Colonel Charles Venable rode up to ask how the contest was progressing. Never in his military career had Gordon been compelled to give such an answer as his honor demanded: “Tell General Lee I have fought my corps to a frazzle, and I fear I can do nothing unless I am heavily supported by Longstreet’s corps.” As Gordon stubbornly renewed his fight, Longstreet was closing the rear. Old Pete prepared to fight in front or in rear.37

  Soon a courier brought Longstreet a message: The commanding general wished to see him at the front. Leaving Charles Field to guard the rear, Longstreet hurried toward the Court House. By the roadside, near a dying fire offence rails, he saw Lee, Mahone, and a number of other officers. He observed that Lee had dressed most carefully, as if for a grand review, and wore sword, sash, and gold spurs. He looked vigorous, Longstreet thought. At closer range it was manifest that the commanding general was profoundly depressed.

  As always, Lee’s greeting was courteous but his preliminaries were brief: Venable had returned and brought the news that Gordon was under heavy attack by infantry and cavalry. The Second Corps could not break through. The army’s subsistence stores doubtless had been lost on the railroad, which must be in the hands of the enemy. Gordon had asked help from the First Corps, but, said Lee, Longstreet doubtless would have his hands full in dealing with Meade, who was pressing the rear guard. It did not seem possible for the army to get along. What did Longstreet think? At such a time, Longstreet never wasted words. He asked whether the sacrifice of the army could in anyway help the Southern cause elsewhere. “I think not,” Lee answered.

  “Then your situation speaks for itself.”

  At that answer, Lee looked unhappily aside and called to Little Billy Mahone. He gave Mahone the same résumé of the situation he had given Longstreet. After questioning Lee about the condition of the army, Mahone said he thought the army should surrender, and then he turned to Old Pete. Did not Longstreet agree? The corps commander had to say he did. Lee spoke to several others and to Porter Alexander, in particular, at some length. Then Longstreet saw his commander mount and ride to the rear to meet General Grant in accordance with Lee’s request of the previous evening for an interview on general terms of peace.38

  Longstreet was disturbed that nothing had been said about authorizing a truce. All the indications were that the Federals in the rear were preparing to attack. Field’s veterans continued to fell trees and dig dirt in ignorance of the fact that their surrender might be under negotiation. Longstreet told no one. Presently a cavalry staff officer from the front hurried up to him: Fitz Lee, said the young man, had found a route by which the army could escape. Old Pete called lustily for a swift courier. Colonel John Haskell was at hand with a thoroughbred mare, famous in the army for her speed. Longstreet gave the message to Haskell and told him to overtake General Lee even if it cost the horse. Off hurried Haskell along the road Lee had followed. Longstreet waited. Outwardly he was composed. Inwardly, his fighting blood boiled. If there was a way out, as Fitz Lee said, he would take it in the event Lee could not get honorable terms. “I know my corps will follow me,” he said. Before many minutes, another messenger rode up: General Fitz Lee regretted to report that he was mistaken; the route he had found was not one by which the army could escape. That intelligence was carried immediately to General Lee by Colonel John Fairfax.

  Again there was a wait, a long wait, at Longstreet’s headquarters. As Old Pete saw it, everything depended now on whether the commanding general had received at the hands of General Grant terms that could be accepted. If they were terms of degradation, then the army could do what Jeb Stuart said he had planned to do that June day in 1862 when he thought he might be trapped on the bank of the swollen Chickahominy: The army could “die game.”

  At length Haskell returned. He had met Fairfax on the road and knew of Fitz Lee’s second message. In fact, Haskell reported, the commanding general had not credited the first one. “Fitz,” the general had said, “has fooled himself.” Lee, Haskell went on, said he had forgotten to notify Gordon that a truce would be asked. Would Longstreet inform Gordon of the situation so that the army would not be fighting in front while observing a truce in the rear? In all other respects, while Lee was between the lines, Longstreet was to use his own judgment. Longstreet listened, said little, and called for a staff officer to ride to Gordon with Lee’s message.39

  Gordon’s few men were “fighting furiously in nearly every direction,” to use their commander’s words, when Longstreet’s messenger arrived at the front. Gordon directed Colonel Green Peyton to ride out between the lines with a flag of truce and tell the Federal commander that “General Gordon has received notice from General Lee of a flag of truce, stopping the battle.” Peyton returned quickly to report—it was a proud fact of history—that the Second Corps had no flag of truce. Gordon told him to take his handkerchief and tie that on a stick. Peyton confessed that he had no handkerchief. Tear up a shirt for the purpose, said Gordon. Peyton explained that neither he nor anyone else in the army had a white shirt. “Get something, sir; get something and go!” Gordon demanded.

  Peyton secured a rag of some sort, and presently returned with a Union officer whose long, tawny hair fell almost to his shoulders. Gordon noted the length of the hair and the grace of the rider, who was handling a poor horse superbly. He introduced himself as General Custer, and said he bore a message from General Sheridan: “The General desires me to present to you his compli
ments, and to demand the immediate and unconditional surrender of all the troops under your command.” Gordon’s reply was polite but instant: “You will please, General, return my compliments to General Sheridan and say to him that I shall not surrender my command.”

  “He directs me to say to you, General, if there is any hesitation about your surrender, that he has you surrounded and can annihilate your command in an hour.” Gordon was not to be shaken by threats. Nothing, he said, did he have to add to the simple message that General Lee had asked a truce. If Sheridan continued the fighting in the face of a flag of truce, the responsibility for the resultant bloodshed would be his. Custer was puzzled, and asked to be conducted to General Longstreet. Gordon assented, and sent him off under escort.

  Almost immediately another flag of truce was advanced toward Gordon’s line. Under it was Sheridan himself. Gordon rode out to meet his adversary. Sheridan was as anxious as Custer had been to receive the surrender of the army, but he was met with the same assurances. Sheridan then suggested that firing cease on both sides and that the two forces withdraw to agreed positions while they waited for a report of the outcome of the conference. Orders were dispatched immediately.40

  By the time Gordon and Sheridan suspended hostilities, Custer and his escort had reached the place on the roadside where Longstreet was awaiting Lee’s return. The Federal—he was only twenty-five—walked up to Longstreet and called out in a voice audible to all: “I have come to demand your instant surrender. We are in position to crush you, and unless you surrender at once, we will destroy you.” Longstreet blazed: “By what authority do you come into our lines? General Lee is in communication with General Grant. We certainly will not recognize any subordinate.”

  “Oh,” answered Custer, “Sheridan and I are independent of Grant and we will destroy you if you don’t surrender at once.”

  This was the spark to explode the wrath of Longstreet: “I suppose you know no better and have violated the decencies of military procedure because you know no better. But your ignorance will not save you if you do so again. Now, go and act as you and Sheridan choose, and I will teach you a lesson you won’t forget! Now go!”—and he raised both hand and voice.

  Custer said no more, and with his guard returned to his own lines, where the truce arranged by Gordon and Sheridan continued. Before the truce had been arranged, Gordon had given the agreed signal to Fitz Lee. That officer, Rosser, and Munford and the greater part of their cavalry had ridden off to escape surrender and to renew the campaign, as they hoped, with Johnston.41

  Longstreet found the commanding general on the edge of a little orchard, waiting in the shade of an apple tree. Lee explained that he had gone to the rear to meet Grant and, instead, had received from a staff officer a letter in which the head of the Federal armies said he had no authority to treat for peace; the proposed meeting could do no good. Grant ended his letter with an expression of hope that no more blood would be shed. Lee then had been compelled to ask for a meeting in accordance with Grant’s previous offer of terms of surrender. A truce had been requested by Lee and, after some delay, granted by General Meade, who had reached that part of the line. At Meade’s suggestion, Lee had written another letter to Grant and dispatched it from the line near Appomattox Court House. He now was awaiting an answer.

  Lee ended his account with an admission that he was afraid Grant’s refusal to meet him was due to a knowledge that the plight of the Confederate army had worsened and that more severe terms could be imposed. Lee did not say so, but his dread was that his men would be marched off to Federal prisons. Longstreet answered that he knew the Federal general-in-chief well enough to feel that Grant would give such terms as, in reversed circumstances, the Confederate commander would demand. In his effort to reassure his chief, Longstreet saw that he was not succeeding and did not press the point. Lee was disposed to silence. Then, at 12:15, there arrived at the orchard under flag of truce a Union officer. Longstreet guessed his mission and turned again to Lee: “General, unless he offers us honorable terms, come back and let us fight it out!” As Lee prepared to leave for the interview with Grant, it seemed to Old Pete that the prospect of a fight had braced his chief.42

  Three long hours passed, and more. The duration of the truce and the passage of so many white flags had spread wild rumor through the ranks. “We had been thinking it might come to that, sooner or later,” wrote artillerist William Owen of the prospect of surrender, “but when the shock came it was terrible.” Then there came a mutter along the road that led to the Confederate lines from Appomattox Court House. Men at the roadside saw a sight that startled some and made others blanch, and halted still others as if by a sudden, shouted command. General Lee was riding along the road. Behind him were a lieutenant colonel and a sergeant. Lee was flawlessly dressed. Traveller was perfectly caparisoned. On any other day the sight of Lee on the battlefield in that martial garb would have sent the rebel yell running through the ranks as it had at the Chancellor house that May noon in 1863. Now … it was different. Lee, supreme master of his emotions, was battling with tears. Late-comers caught the end of a disjointed answer to pleading inquiries from the men—“will all be paroled and go to your homes till exchanged.”

  Still the same question. “General, are we surrendered, are we surrendered?” His face gave the answer, but they followed him and thronged him and tried to touch him. They pressed about him till he reached the apple tree; they ringed the little orchard as closely as the guarding engineer detachment permitted. Later, when he and the staff rode to army headquarters a mile in the rear, many men still clung to the little cavalcade. There were soldierly avowals. “Blow, Gabriel, blow,” shouted one agonized North Carolinian as he threw his musket from him. “My God, let him blow, I am ready to die!” Most of the surrendered troops were bewildered. “Very little was said by men or officers. They sat, or lay on the ground in reflective mood, overcome by a flood of sad recollections.”

  During the late afternoon, commissary wagons entered the Confederate camps from the Union lines. Nothing except bread was issued to some commands that evening and to some, meat only, but whatever the food, it was devoured ravenously and gratefully. While this brought relief from the worst pangs of hunger, the pain of defeat and the humiliation of surrender scarcely were lessened. Bitter feelings deepened in the shadows of the spring afternoon. At length, as one officer phrased it, “the sun went down, and with it all the hopes of a people who, with prayers, and tears and blood, had striven to uphold that falling flag.”43

  The next day brought rain, more food, and the refreshment that came from the first untroubled sleep that some men had been allowed since April 3. There was nothing to do except to hope for more rations, to plan the journey home, and to wait for the issuance of paroles. Officers had much work in preparing and checking rolls. All officers of corps and divisional rank and all chiefs of staff bureaus were directed to prepare reports of the operations from Petersburg to the surrender. For arranging the details of the surrender with a like number of Federal officers, Lee designated Longstreet, Gordon, and Pendleton. In cordial spirit, the commissioners arranged readily for the formal surrender of arms, for the transfer of public property, for the departure of the Confederates under their own commanders, and for a variety of other matters.

  Announcement of these terms was the first step in the effective reconstruction of the Union. Said cannoneer Ned Moore, “When we learned that we should be paroled, and go to our homes unmolested, the relief was unbounded…. The favorable and entirely unexpected terms of surrender wonderfully restored our souls….” A South Carolinian elaborated: “I am forced to admit that the Federal officers and troops conducted themselves with singular propriety throughout this time,” and Northern officers “came without parade, and departed without uncourteous reference to our misfortune.”44

  How few there were to respect this civility, the new muster-rolls tragically displayed. The four corps had been directed, first and last, by six lieutenant generals.
Longstreet alone remained with the troops. Forty-seven men had fought under Lee as major generals. Thirteen had started the retreat from Petersburg. Seven were left now in command of troops. Lee’s brigadiers had reached a total of 146. When “cease firing” was ordered, 22 of these men stood with the infantry. Not more than 85 colonels of infantry could be counted now; full organization called for upwards of 200. Organized, armed foot soldiers were reduced to 7,892. Cavalrymen had numbered perhaps 2,100 prior to the escape. Of all ranks and all branches of the armed service, equipped and weaponless, sick and able to fight, present or captured after April 8, the lists were to show 28,231.45

  Formal surrender of the artillery was put first. The painful transfer of guns and animals, and the parole of the cannoneers, took place on April 11. Remaining cavalrymen of Rooney Lee’s division laid down their swords the same day and then rode sadly off. The next morning the infantry were to go through the same last humiliation, that of surrendering arms, cartridge boxes, and flags. The Confederate commissioners had pleaded hard for permission to place the arms, accouterments, and standards on the ground in the camps; but to this General Grant would not consent, generous though he had been in every other particular. The surrender would be simple; it had to be actual, not symbolic.

  The morning of April 12, the last day of the army’s life, was chill and gray but without the rain that had fallen almost continuously since the surrender. After sunrise the column soon was formed. General officers mounted; regimental commanders took their stations; each man had his musket. The Stars and Bars were at their proper place midway of some regiments, but a few flagstaffs were without standards. Men had torn the bunting to bits or else hidden the banners. There were no bands. Without a beat of drum and in the silence of their black depression, the men started down the hill. At the front of the Second Corps, which headed the column, rode John B. Gordon. His was the same soldierly figure, but now his chin was on his breast, his eyes were downcast. Scarcely a career in the whole army had been more remarkable than his—from inexperienced captain to major general and corps commander.