Now, in the darkness after midnight, a courier approaches the marching soldiers and hands Lee a captured Union message from Grant to his generals, giving orders to attack at first light.
But at last Lee gets good news, in the form of a report from his commissary general, I. M. St. John: 80,000 rations have been rushed to the town of Farmville, just nineteen miles away. Lee can be there in a day.
He swings his army toward Farmville. It is Lee’s final chance to keep the Confederate struggle alive.
CHAPTER NINE
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5, 1865
JETERSVILLE, VIRGINIA
NIGHT
General Sam Grant is also on a midnight ride. The great hooves of his horse beat a tattoo on the bad roads and forest trails of of his horse beat a tattoo on the bad roads and forest trails of central Virginia. Speed is of the essence. Scouts report that Lee is escaping, marching his men through the night in a bold attempt to reach rations at Farmville. From there it’s just a short march to High Bridge, a stone-and-wood structure wide enough to handle an army. Once Lee crosses and burns the bridge behind him, his escape will be complete, and the dreadful war will continue.
Tonight decides everything. Grant is so close to stopping Lee. So very close. Grant digs his spurs into his horse, named Jeff Davis after the Confederate president, in a gesture uncharacteristically vindictive of Grant, who is usually polite and respectful even to his enemies. Grant knows that he must ride hard. Lee must be captured now. And Grant must capture him personally.
As always, his battle plan is simple: Get in front of Lee. Block his path. How many times has he explained this to Generals Sheridan and Meade? Block Lee’s path, stop him in his tracks, then attack and crush the Army of Northern Virginia. So how is it that Lee came within spitting distance of the Jetersville roadblock and escaped?
It confounds Grant that his top generals are so terrified of Lee, holding back when they should rush in. The Union soldiers are better armed, better fed, and far more rested than Lee’s men. The generals must be relentless, pressing forward without ceasing until the war is won. But they are not.
So it is up to Grant to lead the way.
The culprit, Grant decides, is not General Phil Sheridan. He and the cavalry are more than doing their part, charging far and wide over the Virginia countryside, harassing Lee’s wagons and skirmishing with Confederate cavalry. Sheridan is Grant’s eyes and ears, sending scouts to track Lee’s movements and ensuring that Marse Robert doesn’t disappear into the Blue Ridge Mountains. Grant would be lost without Sheridan.
The same cannot be said of General George Meade. His force reached Jetersville at dusk on April 5, after a dreary day of pursuit. But rather than launch an immediate assault on Lee’s rear, as Grant ordered, Meade halted for the night, claiming that his men were too tired to fight.
Grant knows there’s more to it than that. The problem, in a nutshell, is the unspoken rivalry between infantry and cavalry—between the unglamorous and the swashbuckling. Meade’s refusal to fight is his way of pouting about the cavalry divisions sharing the roads with his men, slowing their march. “Behold, the whole of Merritt’s division of cavalry filing in from a side road and completely closing the way,” one of Meade’s aides wrote home. “That’s the way it is with those cavalry bucks: they bother and howl about infantry not being up to support them, and they are precisely the people who are always blocking the way … they are arrant boasters.
“To hear Sheridan’s staff talk, you would suppose ten-thousand mounted carbineers had crushed the entire Rebellion … . The plain truth is, they are useful and energetic fellows, but commit the error of thinking they can do everything and that no one else does anything.”
So Meade made his point by refusing to attack.
Sheridan was furious. “I wish you were here,” he wired Grant. “We can capture the Army of Northern Virginia if enough force be thrown to this point.”
Grant reads between the lines. Rather than wait until morning, and the chance that Meade will find another excuse for not fighting, he orders his staff to mount up for the sixteen-mile midnight ride to Jetersville. Never mind that it is a cold, pitch-black night. There is purpose in the journey. They travel carefully, lest they surprise Union troops and be mistakenly shot as southern scouts.
Grant is always one to keep his emotions in check. But as he guides his horse from the village of Nottoway Court House to Jetersville, from the sandy soils west of Petersburg to the quartz and red soil of the Blue Ridge foothills, Grant fears that Lee is on the verge of outfoxing him again.
Grant knows that the Confederates are beatable. His spies captured a note from one of Lee’s aides, detailing the poor morale and horrible conditions the Confederates are experiencing. Grant is also aware of the massive desertions. He has heard about the roads littered with rifles and bedrolls, abandoned wagons and broken horses. He knows that an astronomic number of Confederate men have been taken prisoner. But all this means nothing if he cannot get ahead of Lee and block the Confederate escape to the Carolinas. And not just that: he must win what he calls the “life and death struggle for Lee to get south to his provisions.”
Once a second-rate fighting force, the Union soldiers have gained remarkable strength since the assault on Petersburg. “Nothing seemed to fatigue them,” Grant marvels. “They were ready to move without rations and travel without rest until the end.” Unlike Lee’s bedraggled force, Grant’s men march with a bounce in their step. Bands play. Nobody straggles or falls out of ranks. They walk the unheard-of distance of thirty miles in one day.
Now Grant and the cavalry detail that guards his life walk their horses through a forest to Sheridan’s camp. Sentries cry out, ordering them to stop. Grant steps forward to show himself. Within seconds the sentries allow them to pass and usher Grant to Sheridan’s headquarters.
Grant speaks briefly with “Little Phil,” the short and fiery dynamo who makes no secret that he wants his cavalry “to be there at the death” of the Confederate insurrection. Then the two men saddle up and ride through the darkness to Meade’s headquarters in Jetersville. The lanky Pennsylvanian is in bed with what he claims to be a fever. Grant chalks it up to fear and orders Meade to get his army ready to attack.
Meade was a hero of Gettysburg, outwitting Lee on the battlefield despite having a reputation for being timid and temperamental. At forty-nine, the “Old Snapping Turtle” is the oldest and most experienced man in the room. Grant bears him a grudging respect, but respect isn’t enough right now. Grant needs a man who will press the attack, day and night, fresh or exhausted, ill or in good health.
Meade is not that man. He never has been. Furthermore, it is not merely a question of heart anymore but of logistics: it is simply impossible for Meade’s infantry to outrace Lee to Farmville. Marse Robert had a good head start, and Meade’s halt for the night only increased the distance. Grant now thinks of Lee, somewhere out there in the darkness, sitting tall astride Traveller, not letting his men stop their all-night march for any reason. Lee has cavalry, artillery, and infantry at his disposal, should it come to a fight.
It will take a fast and mobile fighting force to beat the rebels. In other words: Sheridan’s cavalry.
Grant delivers his orders.
There will be no more waiting, he decrees, proposing a pincer movement, Sheridan in front and Meade from the rear. At first light Meade’s infantry will chase and find Lee’s army, then harass them and slow their forward movement. Sheridan, meanwhile, will “put himself south of the enemy and follow him to his death.” In this way, the Confederate race to North Carolina will stop dead in its tracks. As Sheridan revels in the glory to come, Meade bites his tongue and accepts Grant’s decision. He has to.
There is nothing more Sam Grant can do. His midnight ride has produced exactly the results he was hoping for. Promptly at six A.M., the earth shakes with the clip-clop of thousands of hooves as Sheridan’s cavalry trot west in their quest to get in front of Lee. Meade’s army, meanwhile,
marches north to get behind Lee, the two armies forming Grant’s lethal pincers.
Meade’s men march past Grant as he sits down at sunrise, lighting a cigar. Grant is confident. Finally, the Black Thursday of the Confederacy has arrived.
CHAPTER TEN
THURSDAY, APRIL 6, 1865
RICE’S STATION, VIRGINIA
DAWN
General Robert E. Lee has been up all night yet still looks crisp and composed as he rides, backlit by the rising sun, into Rice’s Station. The Army of Northern Virginia, looking for all the world like the most beaten-down fighting force in history, cheers as the beloved general glides past on Traveller. Marse Robert is stately and rugged, six feet tall and afraid of no man. He is almost asleep in the saddle, thanks to the all-night march. But his broad gray hat remains firmly in place as he acknowledges the adulation of his suffering men. Many don’t have shoes; those that do can put two fingers through the rotting leather soles. Half of Lee’s force has quit the war between Petersburg and this tiny depot, slinking into the woods to search for the slightest morsel of a meal and then not coming back. Those who remain are so crazed from lack of sleep and belly-hollowing hunger that their cheers resemble frantic drunken slurs.
Many are too weak even to shoulder a musket, but Lee knows that somehow they will fight when called to do so. The roads of central Virginia are now littered with the detritus of Lee’s retreating army: guns, blankets, broken wagons, artillery limbers, dead horses, and dead men.
It has now been four days since the Confederate army began retreating from Petersburg. The soldiers have endured the betrayal at Amelia Court House, where boxcars full of food had been stolen by Confederate scavengers. Still, Lee’s men marched on, nerves frazzled by the threat of Union attack, but never stopping for more than five or ten minutes to sleep in the mud and rain before resuming their march. The general understands their suffering. Still, he orders them to push on.
Now they see that he was right all along. For the Army of Northern Virginia has eluded the army of General Ulysses S. Grant. Better yet, there are rations waiting just a few miles away, in Farmville.
Which is why Lee’s crazed soldiers cheer him on this dawn as they march into Rice’s Station. Lee is all they believe in right now—not Confederate president Jefferson Davis, not the Army of Northern Virginia, not even terms like “states’ rights” or “pro-slavery,” which spurred many men to enlist in the Confederate cause. Now those things mean nothing. Only Marse Robert matters.
They would follow him into hell.
Ahead of General Lee is his trusted point man General Pete Longstreet. Behind Lee is the rear guard under the command of General John B. Gordon, the fearless Georgian. In between is a ten-mile-long supply column, supervised by General Richard “Fighting Dick” Anderson and General Richard Ewell, a veteran soldier with just one leg who oversees a scrappy band of bureaucrats, frontline veterans, and landlocked sailors who escaped from Richmond just days earlier.
The tiny hamlet of Rice’s Station is a crossroads. One way leads to the Carolinas and safety; the other direction leads back to Petersburg. Longstreet orders cannons pointed down the Petersburg road, to scare off any Union force that might be stalking them. The tired men dig trenches and earthworks to protect themselves from bullets. The woods serve as latrines, the newly dug trenches as beds. Longstreet’s mandate is to remain in Rice’s Station until Lee’s entire army has passed through. Only then will he and his men evacuate.
Incredibly, a bleary-eyed Robert E. Lee is reveling in the moment. The air is fresh, scrubbed clean by the night’s rain. Birds are singing to greet this fine spring morning. He knows that Farmville is less than an hour away, with its boxcars filled with smoked meat, cornmeal, and all the makings of a great military feast. Advance scouts have confirmed that the food is actually there this time. Looters have not touched it.
The plan is for Lee’s men to fill their empty bellies in Farmville this morning, then march over the great span known as High Bridge, which towers over the Appomattox River, separating central and western Virginia. Lee will order the bridge burned immediately after they cross, preventing the Union from following. The Carolinas will be reached in days.
Lee’s escape is so close.
But then grim news arrives. A flying column of Union cavalry galloped through Rice an hour ago. They are now ahead of the Confederates. Longstreet’s scouts report that 800 bluecoats on foot and on horseback are headed for High Bridge. Their goal, obviously, is to burn the bridge and close Lee’s escape route.
General Lee quietly ponders Longstreet’s information. He knows he has no way of stopping this Union advance.
For one of the few times in his adult life, Robert E. Lee is stymied.
Lee hears the thunder of approaching hooves. General Thomas Lafayette Rosser, a gregarious twenty-eight-year-old Texan, gallops his cavalry into Rice’s Station. Rosser’s roommate at West Point was the equally audacious George Armstrong Custer, now a Union general involved on the other side of this very fight.
Longstreet approaches Rosser and, warning him about the Union plan, screams, “Go after the bridge burners. Capture or destroy the detachment, even if it takes the last man of your command to do it.”
Rosser salutes, his face stolid. Only afterward does he grin, then bark the order. His cavalry, enlisted men and officers alike, gallop toward High Bridge. The quiet morning air explodes with noise as hundreds of hooves pound into the narrow dirt road.
When the war first broke out, Thomas Lafayette Rosser was so eager to take up arms for the Confederacy that he dropped out of West Point two weeks before graduation. Starting as a lieutenant, he distinguished himself at more than a dozen key battles, among them Manassas, Bull Run, and Gettysburg. Though wounded several times, Rosser never altered his daring approach to combat. In January 1865, as the Army of Northern Virginia huddled in its Petersburg defenses, Rosser selected 300 of his toughest riders for an impossible mission. They crossed the Allegheny Mountains in the dead of winter, seeking to destroy the Union infantry headquartered in the town of Beverly, West Virginia. Thunderstorms drenched them their second day on the march; then the temperature plummeted below zero, freezing their overcoats stiff. But those hardships actually helped Rosser, making the attack a complete surprise. The daring nighttime raid yielded 800 Union prisoners.
So Longstreet knows that Rosser is the sort of man who will not be afraid of the “kill or be killed” order. Rosser will not let him down.
After Rosser departs, there is nothing to do but wait. As Longstreet directs his men to strengthen their impromptu defenses in Rice’s Station, Lee can only wonder how long it will take the rest of his army and its wagon train to catch up. With every passing second, the danger of Grant’s scouts finding his army grows. Lee cannot let this happen. He must get over High Bridge by the end of the day.
Overcome with exhaustion, at last the fifty-eight-year-old general instructs his orderly to find someplace for him to nap. It is midmorning. Lee will close his eyes just long enough to feel rejuvenated. Then he will begin perhaps his last campaign. If he doesn’t get over High Bridge, Lee knows, he will be defeated.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THURSDAY, APRIL 6, 1865
FARMVILLE, VIRGINIA
MIDMORNING
The Union force racing to burn High Bridge consists of the Fourth Massachusetts Cavalry, the Fifty-fourth Pennsylvania Infantry, and the 123rd Ohio Infantry. The cavalry comprise 79 soldiers on horseback, who can fight either in the saddle or as dismounted foot soldiers. The two infantry regiments comprise almost 800 fighters who can wage war only on foot.
If the entire Union force were cavalry, the fearless General Rosser and his men would never catch them. A fast-walking soldier, even one on a mission of the utmost military importance, is obviously no match for a cavalry horse.
Colonel Francis Washburn of the Fourth Massachusetts knows this, which is why he orders his cavalry to gallop ahead of the foot soldiers. His men will burn the brid
ge while the infantry covers the rear.
High Bridge is an engineering marvel, considered by some to be the finest bridge in the world. The architects of the Brooklyn Bridge will steal liberally from its design. And yet High Bridge is situated not in one of the world’s great cities but in a quiet, wooded corner of Virginia. Made of stone and felled trees, it stretches a half mile, from the bluff outside Farmville marking the southern shore of the Appomattox River floodplain to the Prince Edward Court House bluff at the opposite end. Twenty 125-foot-tall brick columns support the wooden superstructure. That two great armies, at the most pivotal point in their histories, have descended upon High Bridge at the same time is one of those random acts of fate that so often decide a war.
As Colonel Washburn and his men ride within three miles of High Bridge, they are joined by Union general Theodore Read, who has undertaken a daring mission to warn Washburn that the Confederates are hot on his trail, and that a small force of rebels who have been at High Bridge for months are dug in around the span. Read has full authority to cancel Washburn’s mission if he thinks it too risky.
Washburn and Read hold a council of war at a hilltop plantation known as Chatham, roughly halfway between Rice’s Station and High Bridge. They can see the bridge in the distance, and the two earthen forts defending it. There are just a few dozen Confederates dug in at the bridge, but they have a clear field of fire. A direct frontal assault would leave Washburn’s men badly battered.
Another concern is that the ground between the Chatham plateau and High Bridge is a swampy morass of small creeks, sand, and hills, taking away any advantage of speed—and adding the very real potential of getting caught in a kill zone. Nevertheless, General Read orders Washburn to proceed to the bridge. Read will stay behind, with the infantry, to cover the cavalry’s rear. This is a gamble, and both of these brave officers know it—a gamble with their own lives and those of their men.
Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination that Changed America Forever Page 5