A Stillness at Appomattox (131 page)

In
a
very
similar
situation,
McClellan
wrote
bitter
letters to
his
wife,
told
his
officers
that
Washington
was
villainously conspiring
against
him,
and
drifted
on
down
to
defeat.
It remained
to
be
seen
what
Grant
would
do.

On
August
1—while
he
was
still
digesting
the
dismal
story of
the
fiasco
at
the
crater—Grant
made
his
move.
He
ordered Phil
Sheridan
to
go
up
to
the
Monocacy
and
take
control
of all
the
troops
in
that
area,
and
he
wired
Halleck
that
he
was instructing
Sheridan
to
"put
himself
south
of
the
enemy
and follow
him
to
the
death."
²²

The
emphasis
here,
of
course,
was
on
the
instruction
to
get
south
of
the
enemy.
Whenever
the
Confederates
invaded
the North
they
were
actually
offering
the
Federals
a
priceless opportunity,
and
the
real
job
of
the
Federal
commander
at such
times
was
not
to
repel
the
invasion
but
to
destroy
the
invading
army.
Lincoln
had
always
seen
it
so,
but
he
could never
make
his
generals
see
it,
and
both
Antietam
and
Gettysburg
had
been
barren
victories.
Now
there
was
a
general with
iron
in
him,
who
saw
things
as
Lincoln
did;
and
yet
the old
viewpoint
still
prevailed
in
the
War
Department,
and the
War
Department
had
muscled
in
between
general
and President,
on
the
one
hand,
and
opportunity,
on
the
other.

Grant's
order
was
not
at
all
the
sort
of
thing
Secretary Stanton
was
apt
to
approve.
Under
all
his
bluster,
Stanton was
timid,
and
the
idea
of
following
a
pugnacious
enemy
to the
death
was
just
too
much
for
him.
Also,
he
felt
that
Sheridan
was
too
young
for
an
important
independent
command, and
it
appears
that
he
did
not
like
him
very
much
personally,
and
what
would
happen
to
Grant's
order
regarding Sheridan
was
likely
to
be
very
similar
to
what
had
happened to
his
order
regarding
Franklin.

But
just
at
this
moment
President
Lincoln
took
a
hand.
He had
been
reading
all
of
the
correspondence,
and
now
he
sat down
to
send
a
telegram
of
his
own
to
General
Grant,

Grant's
instructions
to
Sheridan,
said
the
President,
were just
exactly
right,
and
what
Grant
wanted
done
was
precisely what
the
President
wanted
done.
But
Grant
was
invited
to look
over
all
of
the
dispatches
he
had
received
from
Washington,
and
to
consider
everything
he
knew
about
the
way the
War
Department
did
things,
"and
discover,
if
you
can, that
there
is
any
idea
in
the
head
of
anyone
here
of
putting our
army
south
of
the
enemy'
or
of
'following
him
to
the death'
in
any
direction."

Mr.
Lincoln
closed
with
the
blunt
warning:

"I
repeat
to
you
it
will
neither
be
done
nor
attempted, unless
you
watch
it
every
day
and
hour
and
force
it."
²³

The
whole
history
of
the
Army
of
the
Potomac
passes
in review
in
Mr.
Lincoln's
brief
dispatch:
the
history
of
the army,
and
the
most
exasperating
problem
of
the
war
itself. Over
and
over
the
war
had
been
prolonged
because
of
the timid,
restrictive
caution
that
could
paralyze
action—the habit
of
mind
that
was
always
too
busy
weighing
risks
to grasp
opportunities.
It
developed
now
that
that
habit
of
mind had
never
been
eradicated
because
when
all
was
said
and done
it
had
its
final
roots
in
the
War
Department
itself.
The War
Department
could
not
act
and
the
President
could
not make
it
act.
The
most
he
could
do
was
support
a
general
who was
bold
enough
to
ram
action
down
the
department's
throat.

Now
Lincoln
was
giving
Grant
the
final
tip-off,
just
as
he had
so
often
and
so
vainly
tried,
two
years
earlier,
to
give McClellan
a
similar
tip-off.
Tables
of
organization
and
lines of
authority
meant
nothing
in
themselves.
In
the
end
everything
depended
on
the
general,
and
it
was
up
to
the
general to
act.
McClellan
had
never
been
able
to
rise
to
this
challenge. Grant
was
the
last
chance.

Two
hours
after
he
had
received
this
wire
from
President Lincoln,
Grant
was
on
a
fast
steamer,
coming
up
the
Potomac. When
the
boat
docked
at
Washington
he
stopped
off
neither at
the
White
House
nor
at
the
War
Department.
Instead
he went
directly
to
the
railroad
station
and
took
a
special
train to
Monocacy
Junction,
and
as
soon
as
he
got
there
he
went to
see
General
Hunter.