A Stillness at Appomattox (134 page)

Sheridan
got
the
point.
A
soldier
in
Torbert's
division
of cavalry
remembered
the
orders
that
came
down
from
Sheridan's
headquarters:
".
.
.
you
will
seize
all
mules,
horses
and cattle
that
may
be
useful
to
our
army.
Loyal
citizens
can
bring in
their
claims
against
the
government
for
this
necessary destruction.
No
houses
will
be
burned;
and
officers
in
charge of
this
delicate
but
necessary
duty
must
inform
the
people that
the
object
is
to
make
this
Valley
untenable
for
the
raiding
parties
of
the
rebel
army."
³

It
could
be
written
out
concisely,
and
the
telegraph
instruments
would
click
it
off,
and
adjutants
could
read
it before
the
troops
at
evening
parade,
with
deep
shadows dropping
down
through
the
rich
dusk;
and
a
grim
eternity
of war
and
the
hardening
of
many
hearts
had
gone
into
it, romance
of
war
and
knightly
chivalry
dissolved
forever
in the
terrible
acid
of
enmity
and
hatred,
settlement
by
the sword
coming
at
last
to
mean
all-out
war,
modern
style,
with a
blow
at
the
economic
potential
cutting
across
the
farmer's yard
and
dooming
innocent
people
to
the
loss
of
a
lifetime's hard-bought
gains.

There
was
a
young
fellow
in
the
2nd
Ohio
Cavalry
who presided
over
some
of
this
devastation:
a
lad
who
had
seen values
beyond
life
glimmering
on
the
edge
of
the
war
when he
enlisted,
and
who
wrote
in
his
diary
about
a
talk
he
had with
a
farmer
on
the
western
fringe
of
the
Valley
whose
farm lay
in
the
road
of
military
necessity:

"He
owned
a
farm,
sterile
and
poor,
of
200
acres
in
among the
hills.
Moved
there
34
years
since
when
all
was
a
wilderness.
Had
never
owned
a
slave.
Had
cleaned
up
the
farm, built
a
log
house
and
made
all
the
improvements
with
his own
hands.
It
made
him
almost
crazy
to
see
all
going
to destruction
in
one
night—all
his
fences,
outbuildings,
cattle, sheep
and
fowls.
An
only
son
at
home,
an
invalid.
Had
always
been
true
to
the
government.
Only
wished
that
God would
now
call
him,
that
he
might
be
with
his
many
friends in
the
church
yard—pointing
to
it
near
by—and
the
aspect of
suffering
and
starvation
be
taken
from
it."
⁴

The
war
had
grown
old,
and
it
was
following
its
own logic,
the
insane
logic
of
war,
which
had
been
building
up ever
since
Beauregard's
cannon
bit
into
the
masonry
of
Fort Sumter.
The
only
aim
now
was
to
hurt
the
enemy,
in
any
way possible
and
with
any
weapon;
to
destroy
not
his
will
to resist
but
his
ability
to
make
that
will
effective.
The
will might
remain
and
be
damned
to
it:
if
the
will
and
the
bitterness
could
be
made
impotent,
nothing
else
mattered.

There
was
much
bitterness
abroad
by
now—everywhere, perhaps,
except
in
the
army
itself—and
kindly,
God-fearing people
were
demanding
that
their
enemies
be
made
to
suffer. An
example
of
this
feeling
can
be
seen
in
a
letter
which
President
Lincoln
received
just
about
this
time
from
the
good businessmen
who
made
up
the
Chicago
Board
of
Trade.

The
president
and
the
secretary
of
this
organization
wrote to
Mr.
Lincoln
to
recite
the
terrible
evils
which
were
befalling Union
prisoners
in
the
great
Confederate
prison
camp
at Andersonville,
Georgia.
In
that
overcrowded
pen
men
lived
in an
open
field
without
tents
or
huts,
exposed
to
the
hot
sun and
the
driving
rain,
unclothed
and
badly
fed,
dying
miserably
of
disease
and
malnutrition,
all
but
totally
uncared
for, none
of
their
sufferings
minimized
by
wartime
propaganda. So
the
Chicago
civilians
were
soberly
urging
that
the
Federal government
set
aside
an
equal
number
of
Confederate
prisoners
and
subject
them
to
the
same
treatment:
that
is,
throw them
together
in
such
a
way
that
most
of
them
would
die and
the
rest
would
lose
their
health
and
their
minds,
do
it deliberately
and
with
calculation,
in
order
that
there
might be
a
fair
extension
of
pain
and
death.

"We
are
aware,"
wrote
the
Chicagoans,
"that
this,
our petition,
savors
of
cruelty"—but
it
was
no
time
to
be
squeamish.
There
was
a
war
on
and
they
felt
obliged
to
"urge retaliatory
measures
as
a
matter
of
necessity";
and,
in
sum, here
was
a
black
flag
fluttering
on
the
hot
wind,
a
rallying point
for
any
ill
will
which
had
not
yet
been
properly
organized.
⁵