A Stillness at Appomattox (59 page)

Sometimes
the
army's
stories
were
told
on
Confederates. The
Philadelphia
brigade
claimed
that
at
Spotsylvania
a ragged
Rebel
jumped
out
of
the
opposite
trench
and
came running
toward
the
Union
lines.
Just
as
he
reached
his
goal a
bullet
hit
him,
and
when
the
Federals
came
to
pick
him
up he
gasped:
"I'm
sorry
you
shot
me—I
was
coming
over
to
take the
oath
of
allegiance."
His
captors
confessed
that
they
had no
copy
of
that
famous
oath,
but
one
of
them
remarked
that they
did
have
a
canteen
with
a
little
whisky
in
it.
Reviving, the
Confederate
sat
up
and
said
eagerly:
"That
will
do
just
as well."
⁸

The
mail
service
caught
up
with
the
army
just
as
it
was leaving
the
Spotsylvania
Court
House
area,
and
for
the
first time
since
they
crossed
the
Rapidan
the
men
got
letters
from home.
They
also
got
newspapers,
which
they
read
with
eager curiosity,
and
as
they
read
these
papers
they
discovered
anew that
the
war
as
it
was
described
for
people
back
home
bore very
little
resemblance
to
the
war
which
they
themselves
were actually
fighting.
In
a
Massachusetts
battery
the
men
hooted at
newspaper
accounts
which
proclaimed
that
Lee's
army
was "utterly
routed
and
fleeing
in
confusion."
One
of
the
gunners remarked
disgustedly
that
this,
'like
so
much
of
the
trash published
by
the
papers
during
the
war,
would
have
been decidedly
important
if
true."
⁹

It
did
not
really
make
much
difference,
for
there
was
nothing
the
outside
world
could
tell
these
soldiers
anyway.
The army's
world
was
enclosed
by
cavalry
patrols
and
moving skirmish
lines,
and
in
the
obscurity
beyond
those
boundaries there
was
the
Rebel
army,
sometimes
out
of
sight
but
never out
of
touch.
The
normal
state
of
all
previous
armies—the state
in
which
most
of
the
soldier's
time
was
spent—was neither
marching
nor
fighting
but
quiet
life
in
camp,
barracks,
or
garrison.
An
army
might
march
far
and
fight
furiously,
but
when
all
of
its
days
as
an
army
were
added
up
it would
be
found
that
most
of
them
had
been
dull,
monotonous
days
of
inaction.
But
from
the
moment
the
Army
of the
Potomac
crossed
the
Rapidan
on
May
5
to
the
end
of
the war,
eleven
months
later,
there
was
no
inaction
whatever.

Instead
there
was
marching
or
fighting
every
day,
and
very often
both
together,
and
physical
contact
with
the
enemy
was never
wholly
broken.
¹⁰
The
final
grapple
had
begun,
and
the war
had
become
a
war
of
using
up—using
up
men
and
emotions
and
the
wild
impossible
dreams
that
had
called
the armies
into
being
in
the
first
place—and
everything
that Americans
would
ever
do
thereafter
would
be
affected
in
one way
or
another
by
what
remained
after
the
using
up
was completed.

The
armies
were
moving
on
parallel
lines.
They
were
never far
apart,
and
they
bumped
and
jostled
each
other
as
they moved,
a
fringe
of
fire
running
up
and
down
the
lines,
with cavalry
patrols
fighting
for
the
possession
of
lonely
road
crossings,
artillery
defending
the
fords
and
bridges
at
streams,
infantry
skirmishers
colliding
on
plantation
fields.
By
day
and by
night
there
was
always
the
chance
that
any
of
these
little tussles
might
develop
into
a
full-scale
battle.

There
were
many
wearing
night
marches,
and
the
men were
very
tired,
and
one
soldier
said
long
afterward
that
the very
appearance
of
the
army
had
changed,
as
if
everything that
had
happened
looked
out
of
the
faces
of
the
marching men:
"The
men
in
the
ranks
did
not
look
as
they
did
when they
entered
the
Wilderness:
their
uniforms
were
now
torn, ragged
and
stained
with
mud;
the
men
had
grown
thin
and haggard;
the
experience
of
those
twenty
days
seemed
to
have added
twenty
years
to
their
age."

This
soldier
remembered
that
there
was
much
straggling
in these
marches,
and
yet
it
was
not
the
familiar
business
of sloughing
off
the
fainthearts
who
always
dropped
out
of
ranks when
the
army
moved.
Now
good
men
who
wanted
to
keep up
were
dropping
by
the
roadside
because
they
could
not
take another
step,
and
the
nightly
bivouacs
had
a
strange
appearance.
An
average
company
might
have
fifteen
men
present when
it
grounded
arms
for
the
night.
Five
of
these
would promptly
be
detailed
for
picket
duty.
Of
the
ten
who
remained,
at
least
half
would
fall
to
the
ground,
too
exhausted to
collect
wood
or
water
or
build
campfires
or
do
anything else.
The
men
who
remained
on
their
feet
would
hunt
fence rails
or
sticks
to
make
a
fire,
and
would
collect
canteens
to get
water,
and
in
one
way
or
another
would
provide
a
meal for
the
company.
The
sure
sign
that
the
men
who
lay
inert and
did
nothing
were
not
shirkers
was
the
fact
that
these
men would
cook
coffee
and
meat
for
them.