A Stillness at Appomattox (130 page)

"The
clear,
sparkling
river
ran
along
the
lower
edge
of
it, and
the
surrounding
woods
abounded
in
saplings,
poles
and brush,
for
which
soldiers
can
always
find
so
many
uses.
Regular
camp
calls
were
instituted,
company
and
battalion
drills ordered,
and
things
began
to
assume
the
appearance
of
a stay."
An
officer
died
while
the
corps
was
camped
here
and he
was
given
a
full-dress
military
funeral,
whereat
all
the men
wagged
their
heads.
They
had
seen
so
many
men
of
all ranks
put
under
the
sod
without
any
ceremony
at
all
that this
seemed
to
be
an
infallible
sign
that
they
would
stay
here for
a
long
time,
resting,
drilling
a
little,
and
regaining
their strength.
¹⁸

Emory's
men
in
the
XIX
Corps
felt
the
same
way.
They had
spent
all
of
the
war
in
the
humid
heat
of
Louisiana,
and when
they
made
camp
by
the
Shenandoah
a
few
miles
from Harper's
Ferry
they
felt
that
they
were
in
a
new
world.
One soldier
wrote
glowingly
of
"the
bracing
air,
the
crystal
wa
ters,
the
rolling
wheat
fields
and
the
beautiful
blue
mountains,"
sick
men
in
the
field
hospitals
returned
to
duty,
straggling
diminished,
and
the
men
looked
about
them
at
the
open country
and
the
excellent
roads
and
felt
that
marching
in this
region
might
almost
be
a
pleasure.
¹⁹

While
the
soldiers
caught
their
breath
and
hoped
for
the best,
Grant
had
been
living
through
what
were
probably
his most
trying
moments
of
the
war.
He
was
at
City
Point,
and some
sort
of
curtain
seemed
to
have
come
down
between
his headquarters
there
and
the
War
Department
in
Washington. He
had
a
good
many
things
on
his
mind—the
tragedy
of
the mine
and
the
attempted
break-through
came
right
when
all of
this
frenzied,
useless
countermarching
was
going
on—and when
he
sent
orders
north
to
govern
the
use
of
the
troops that
were
supposed
to
be
rounding
up
Early's
army
the
orders
had
to
go
through
Washington,
and
on
their
way through
things
happened
to
them.

The
pursuit
of
Early
had
been
ineffective
because
too many
men
were
in
position
to
give
orders
to
soldiers
like

Wright
and
Emory.
All
lines
of
authority
were
crossed,
and the
War
Department
was
buzzing
and
fretting
and
issuing innumerable
orders,
taking
time
along
the
way
to
modify,
alter,
or
countermand
the
orders
other
people
were
issuing. Looking
back
long
after
the
war,
Grant
wrote
his
verdict: "It
seemed
to
be
the
policy
of
General
Halleck
and
Secretary Stanton
to
keep
any
force
sent
there
in
pursuit
of
the
invading
army
moving
right
and
left
so
as
to
keep
between
the enemy
and
our
capital;
and
generally
speaking
they
pursued this
policy
until
all
knowledge
of
the
whereabouts
of
the enemy
was
lost."
²⁰

The
first
step,
obviously,
was
to
put
one
competent
soldier
in
charge
of
the
whole
operation
with
definite,
overriding
authority,
and
this
step
Grant
took.
He
sent
orders
to pull
Major
General
William
B.
Franklin
out
of
retirement and
give
him
command
over
everybody,
and
for
a
day
or two
he
assumed
that
he
had
settled
things.
Then
he
got
a fussy
telegram
from
Halleck
explaining
that
this
just
would not
do.
Franklin
had
been
a
McClellan
man
in
the
old
days, and
the
grim
Committee
on
the
Conduct
of
the
War
considered
that
he
was
really
responsible
for
Burnside's
failure
at Fredericksburg,
and
he
was
in
very
bad
odor
at
the
War
Department—and
Grant's
order
was
nullified
and
Franklin
was not
appointed.
It
appeared
that
Halleck
and
Stanton
were exercising
a
veto
power
over
Grant's
authority
and
substituting
their
own
ideas
of
strategy
for
his.
²¹

Now
this
was
the
old
McClellan
situation
all
over
again, and
in
a
sense
it
was
the
crisis
of
the
war.
This
was
a
presidential
election
year
and
by
every
sign
men
could
read
the Northern
people
were
tired
and
discouraged.
Sherman
had not
taken
Atlanta
and
Grant
had
not
taken
Richmond,
casualty
lists
had
been
heavy
beyond
all
previous
experience, and
now
the
Confederates
had
an
army
in
the
lower
Shenandoah
Valley,
ravaging
Northern
towns
and
apparently quite
as
irrepressible
as
in
the
Stonewall
Jackson
days.
Unless
the
general
in
chief
could
somehow
regain
control
and put
an
end
to
the
fumbling
and
meddling,
the
bottom
might fall
out
of
the
whole
war
effort,
with
failure
in
the
field
leading
to
defeat
at
the
polls,
and
with
independence
for
the Confederacy
coming
along
in
due
course.