A Stillness at Appomattox (122 page)

"I
expected
to
write
to
you
of
one
of
the
most
glorious victories
that
was
ever
won
by
this
army,
but
instead
of
a
victory
I
have
to
write
about
the
greatest
shame
and
disgrace that
ever
happened
to
us.
The
people
at
home
may
look
at it
as
nothing
but
a
mere
defeat,
but
I
look
at
it
as
a
disgrace to
our
corps."
³⁰

In
the
115th
New
York,
a
sergeant
blew
his
top
from
heat and
fatigue,
sprang
up
and
cried,
"Well
fight
'em
till
we
die, won't
we,
boys?"
and
then
dropped
unconscious.
And
in
Fer-rero's
division
it
was
observed
that
the
colored
troops
never again
sang
their
song:

We
looks
like
men
a'marching
on;

We
looks
like
men
o'
war.

As
such
things
went,
the
great
battle
of
the
crater
was
not, perhaps,
unduly
expensive.
When
the
butcher's
bill
was added
up
it
recorded
a
loss
of
3,798
men,
more
than
a
third of
them
in
the
colored
division.
Measured
by
the
standards of
the
Wilderness
and
Spotsylvania,
this
was
comparatively mild.
Most
of
the
casualties
occurred
after
Grant
and
Meade had
ordered
the
attack
given
up,
when
the
men
were
trying to
do
nothing
more
than
get
back
to
their
own
trenches.

Yet
the
casualty
lists
did
not
tell
the
whole
story,
which indeed
was
a
good
deal
more
complex
than
most
of
the
participants
were
able
to
understand.

Since
May
4
everything
that
had
happened
had
been
part of
one
continuous
battle,
a
battle
three
months
long,
with advance
and
retreat
and
triumph
and
disaster
all
taking place
together,
so
that
words
like
victory
and
defeat
had
lost their
meaning.
All
that
had
gone
before
was
no
more
than prelude.
The
nation
itself
had
been
heated
to
an
unimaginable
pitch
by
three
years
of
war
and
now
it
had
been
put on
the
anvil
and
the
hammer
was
remorselessly
coming
down, stroke
after
clanging
stroke,
beating
a
glowing
metal
into
a different
shape.

There
would
be
change
and
the
war
was
bringing
it,
even though
it
might
be
that
the
war
could
not
bring
victory.
The war
had
taken
on
a
new
magnitude,
and
perhaps
it
was
no longer
the
kind
of
struggle
anybody
could
win.
But
it
was moving
inexorably
toward
its
end,
and
when
it
ended
many things
would
end
with
it,
in
the
South
and
in
the
North
as well.
Some
of
these
were
things
that
ought
to
end
because they
shackled
men
to
the
past,
and
some
of
them
were
fit
to be
laid
away
in
the
shadowland
of
dreams
that
are
remembered
forever,
but
in
any
case
they
were
being
brought
to
an end.
After
that
there
could
be
a
new
beginning.

CHAPTER
V

Away? You Rolling River

1. Special Train for Monocacy Junction

Private
Spink
belonged
to
the
147th
Regiment
of
Ohio
Na
tional
Guard
Infantry,
and
in
a
modest
and
wholly
innocent way
he
symbolized
what
was
wrong
with
the
defenses
of Washington.

The
147th
was
doing
a
100-day
tour
of
duty,
and
it
had been
sent
to
Washington
to
help
occupy
the
defensive
lines so
that
the
troops
regularly
in
garrison
could
go
down
to fight
the
Rebels
around
Petersburg.
Presumably
Private Spink
was
a
good
soldier.
He
had
recently
been
made
acting ordnance
sergeant,
and
with
six
other
privates
of
the
147th he
had
been
detailed
to
take
charge
of
a
battery
of
fieldpieces at
the
eastern
end
of
the
Chain
Bridge,
the
farthest
upstream of
three
Potomac
River
bridges
which
connected
the
District
of
Columbia
with
Virginia.
This
bridge
had
been guarded
against
Rebel
intrusion
ever
since
the
early
days
of the
war,
and
it
was
a
key
spot
in
the
capital's
defenses,
and Private
Spink
and
his
detail
cleaned
the
guns
daily
and swept
the
wooden
gun
platforms,
and
periodically
took
the ammunition
out
of
the
magazine
and
exposed
it
briefly
to
the air
so
that
it
would
not
deteriorate.
No
one
made
any
complaint
about
the
way
this
duty
was
performed,
but
in
July of
1864,
when
a
Confederate
army
came
north
to
menace

the
capital,
it
suddenly
developed
that
cleaning
the
guns
and airing
the
ammunition
taxed
the
abilities
of
these
seven guardsmen
to
their
absolute
limit.