A Stillness at Appomattox (157 page)

Sheridan's
word
was
good.
The
troops
occupied
their
old camps
that
night,
and
at
least
some
of
them
found
that
hardly any
of
their
things
had
been
taken;
possibly
fewer
Rebels left
the
ranks
for
plunder
than
Early
afterward
alleged.
A field
in
front
of
Sheridan's
headquarters
was
filled
with
captured
materiel—guns
and
ambulances
and
baggage
wagons and
stacks
of
muskets—and
Sheridan's
hell-for-leather
scouts equipped
themselves
with
a
score
of
captured
Confederate flags
and
paraded
wildly
across
the
firelight
with
them.
General
Emory
watched
Sheridan
ride
proudly
by
and
he
mused. "That
young
man
has
made
a
great
name
for
himself
today."

A
few
days
after
the
battle
a
Connecticut
soldier
looked over
the
long
files
of
prisoners
and
wrote
to
bis
family
that the
Rebs
were
"smart
healthy-looking
men,"
clad
in
neat gray
uniforms
and
slouch
hats.
"They
are
very
quick,
walk like
horses,"
he
added,
and
he
found
most
of
them
quite cheerful,
laughing
and
joking
all
of
the
time.
And
all
of them,
he
said,
"from
officers
down
to
privates,
said
they
were tired
of
the
war
and
that
peace
was
worth
more
than
the CS
A
"
²⁷

Endless Road Ahead

1
Except by the Sword

A
luminous
mist
of
Indian
summer
lay
on
the
desolate
plains around
Petersburg,
and
on
the
horizon
the
surviving
woodlands
were
as
remote
and
unreal
as
the
memory
of
peace, magical
with
rich
color,
cool
green
of
pines
blending
into the
deep
russet
brown
of
oaks
and
the
flaming
red
of
maples and
dogwood.
Near
the
trees
were
thousands
of
tents
and canvas-roofed
huts,
and
across
the
fields
and
hills
where
there were
neither
tents
nor
trees
were
mile
upon
mile
of
trenches, scarring
the
earth
with
grotesque
irregular
patterns,
the ground
between
them
bristling
with
tangles
of
abatis
and
sinister
sharpened
stakes
of
chevaux-de-f
rise.
Autumn
sunlight sparkled
on
rifle
barrels
and
bayonets,
in
the
trenches
and the
skirmishers'
rifle
pits
and
the
big
square
forts,
and gleamed
from
the
bright
metal
of
the
guns;
and
at
night
all the
front
glowed
with
flashing
fires
as
the
armies
sniped
and bombarded
each
other,
and
the
great
mortar
shells
climbed the
sky
in
high
slow
parabolas,
fuses
burning
red
in
the
black sky.

The
rival
lines
of
forts
and
trenches
ran
for
more
than thirty-five
miles.
They
began
north
of
the
James,
at
gloomy White
Oak
Swamp,
and
from
the
swamp
they
curved
and twisted
for
eight
miles
to
the
north
bank
of
the
James.
Along the
river
itself
there
was
a
four-mile
stretch
where
Confederate
artillery,
mounted
on
the
bluffs
along
the
southern shore,
barred
the
way
against
the
Yankee
monitors
and
gunboats.
Then
the
trenches
began
again,
running
for
five
miles across
the
Bermuda
Hundred
neck
to
the
Appomattox
River, and
here
again,
for
four
miles
along
the
river
bank,
there was
artillery.
Then,
below
the
river,
due
east
from
Petersburg
and
so
close
to
the
city
that
Yankee
gunners
could
throw shells
into
warehouses
and
churches
and
dwellings
if
they chose,
there
were
trenches
once
more.

These
followed
the
battle
lines
that
had
been
fixed
in
June, and
they
led
south
for
four
or
five
miles
to
the
Jerusalem Plank
Road—never
very
far
apart,
the
men
who
occupied them
always
under
fire,
the
hideous
red
wound
of
the
mine crater
lying
just
back
of
the
Rebel
parapets.
Below
the
Plank Road
the
lines
swung
southwest,
and
here,
early
in
the
summer,
they
had
ended,
the
Confederate
system
anchored
by
a work
named
Fort
Mahone,
the
Yankee
line
tied
to
an
opposing
work
named
Fort
Sedgwick.
By
day
and
by
night,
month after
month,
these
forts
dueled
with
each
other,
and
the
soldiers
of
the
two
armies
had
named
the
Federal
work
"Fort Hell"
and
the
Confederate
work
"Fort
Damnation."
¹

Always
the
lines
had
been
creeping
off
toward
the
southwest.
Since
the
day
the
mine
was
exploded
the
Federals
had made
no
more
frontal
assaults.
Grant
resumed
the
old
habit of
edging
constantly
around
by
his
left,
looking
always
for
a chance
to
strike
in
past
the
Rebel
flank.
There
had
been
a series
of
moves
of
this
kind
during
late
summer
and
autumn, with
Federal
troops
trying
to
get
west
from
Fort
Hell.
None of
these
moves
came
to
very
much,
and
some
had
ended in
humiliating
defeat.
The
II
Corps,
for
instance,
was
roundly whipped
at
a
place
called
Reams's
Station,
men
running
in panic
from
a
Rebel
counterattack
which
the
old
II
Corps would
have
beaten
off
with
ease,
Hancock
riding
among
the routed
troops
waving
his
hat
and
crying:
"Come
on!
We
can beat
them
yet!
Don't
leave
me,
for
God's
sake!"
²