A Stillness at Appomattox (124 page)

If
Grant
had
risked
sometliing
by
taking
the
soldiers
away, the
risk
had
been
carefully
calculated.
What
had
thrown
the calculations
out
of
gear
was
the
eccentric
notion
of
strategy held
by
General
Hunter.

While
the
Army
of
the
Potomac
remained
on
the
offensive, Lee
could
not
bring
his
own
army
up
across
the
border
as
he had
done
in
1862
and
1863.
The
only
danger
would
come from
lesser
detachments
advancing
down
the
Shenandoah Valley,
and
as
long
as
Hunter
and
his
troops
were
in
the
valley
that
way
was
barred.
As
far
as
the
security
of
Washington
was
concerned
it
did
not
matter
much
whether
Hunter was
advancing,
retreating,
or
sitting
down.
If
he
and
his
men were
in
the
Valley,
that
was
enough.

But
when
Hunter
found
Early
ready
to
fight
him
in
front
of Lynchburg,
and
decided
to
run
for
shelter,
he
concluded
for some
incomprehensible
reason
that
he
had
better
run
off through
the
West
Virginia
mountains
instead
of
back
down the
valley
toward
Winchester
and
Harper's
Ferry.
That
took his
entire
army
out
of
the
way
for
more
than
a
fortnight, and
it
left
the
valley
wide
open
for
any
use
the
Confederates wanted
to
make
of
it.
Of
this
opening
General
Early promptly
took
full
advantage.

Hunter
could
never
see
what
was
wrong
with
his
move. He
wrote
to
Stanton
and
he
wrote
to
Lincoln,
protesting
that he
had
done
everything
for
the
best
and
complaining
that
he was
unfairly
blamed.
Six
months
later
he
was
still
at
it,
writing
to
Grant,
reciting
all
of
his
troubles
with
the
undisciplined
troops
and
unskilled
generals
he
had
inherited
from the
blessed
Sigel
and
complaining
that
no
one
ever
told
him he
had
anything
to
do
with
the
defense
of
Washington.
After the
war
he
was
obtuse
enough
to
write
to
Robert
E.
Lee,
asking
if
Lee
did
not
agree
that
the
retreat
into
the
mountains had
been
strategically
sound.
Lee,
who
detested
him,
replied with
dead-pan
courtesy
that
he
hardly
felt
competent
to
pass on
Hunter's
reasons
for
making
that
move,
since
he
did
not know
what
they
were;
but
he
said
that
the
move
itself
had been
a
tremendous
help
to
Lee
personally
and
to
the
Southern
Confederacy
in
general.
²

An
aging
Regular
with
sagging
cheeks,
a
stringy
mustache, and
a
habit
of
writing
ill-tempered
letters,
Hunter
had
had rather
an
odd
career.
In
February
of
1861
he
had
been
one of
four
army
officers
assigned
to
guard
Mr.
Lincoln
on
the President-elect's
trip
from
Springfield
to
Washington.
Out
of this
experience
Hunter
got
a
dislocated
shoulder,
received when
a
crowd
surged
out
of
hand
at
Buffalo;
but
a
little
later, after
Fort
Sumter,
he
got
a
major
general's
commission,
and when
Fremont
was
removed
from
command
in
Missouri
that fall
it
was
Hunter
who
was
put
in
his
place.
He
did
not
last very
long
in
that
important
job,
and
presently
he
was
on
the shelf
in
Kansas,
with
few
troops
and
fewer
responsibilities, and
he
complained
about
it
so
gracelessly
that
even
Lincoln, who
could
put
up
with
almost
anything,
told
him
it
was
hard to
answer
"so
ugly
a
letter"
in
good
temper.

Still
later
Hunter
had
been
given
command
along
the Carolina
coast,
where
he
had
endeared
himself
to
the
radicals
by
proclaiming
the
emancipation
of
slaves
some
months before
Mr.
Lincoln
was
ready
for
such
a
policy.
Naturally, he
had
been
removed,
and
when
the
War
Department
this spring
picked
him
to
command
in
the
Valley,
Grant
had
approved
on
the
simple
theory
that
anybody
would
be
better than
Sigel.

His
stay
in
the
Valley
had
been
brief
enough
and
his
exit had
been
disastrous,
but
in
one
way
he
had
made
his
presence
felt—by
burning
Virginia
Military
Institute
and
the home
of
Virginia's
Governor
Letcher.
His
troops
took
then-cue
from
him
and
did
a
good
deal
of
looting
and
house
burning
on
their
own
hook,
and
when
Early
led
his
Confederates north
of
the
Potomac
the
Southerners
were
not
in
a
mood
to be
gentle
with
Northern
civilians.
One
of
Early's
officers
who surveyed
the
damage
Hunter's
troops
had
left
behind
them wrote
that
it
was
very
hard
to
admit
that
vengeance
belonged solely
to
the
Lord.
³
So
the
Confederates
levied
heavy
cash contributions
on
such
towns
as
Frederick,
Maryland,
and when
they
seized
horses
and
cattle
and
forage
they
were
less urbane
and
polite
about
it
than
had
been
the
case
during
the Gettysburg
campaign.
By
the
end
of
the
first
week
in
July they
were
destroying
railroad
bridges
and
other
property
in Maryland
east
of
the
South
Mountain
ridge,
and
the
long-suffering
Baltimore
and
Ohio
Railroad
was
asking
the
Navy if
it
could
send
gunboats
to
protect
railroad
property
in
the upper
reaches
of
Chesapeake
Bay.