A Stillness at Appomattox (76 page)

Now
and
then
higher
authority
considered
making
a
new assault.
One
day
a
note
from
II
Corps
headquarters
came
up to
General
Barlow,
asking
if
he
thought
that
the
works
in his
front
could
be
carried.
Barlow
was
one
of
the
few
general officers
in
the
army
who
actively
enjoyed
a
good
fight,
but this
time
he
advised
against
an
attack,
explaining
that
"the men
feel
just
at
present
a
great
horror
and
dread
of
attacking
earthworks
again.
...
I
think
the
men
are
so
wearied and
worn
out
by
the
harassing
labors
of
the
past
week
that they
are
wanting
in
the
spirit
and
dash
necessary
for
successful
assaults."
⁵

The
men
had
become
very
war-wise.
They
knew
better than
anyone
else
the
impossibility
of
carrying
the
Rebel trenches,
and
as
Hancock
said,
when
they
were
ordered
to attack
"they
went
as
far
as
the
example
of
their
officers could
carry
them"—no
farther.
Officers
who
could
persuade them
to
do
the
impossible
were
becoming
scarce.
There
had been
more
than
a
month
of
fighting,
and
the
best
company and
regimental
officers
were
getting
killed
off.
The
best
officers
were
always
going
into
the
most
dangerous
places,
and there
had
been
dangerous
places
without
number
in
the
past month,
and
the
law
of
averages
was
working.
The
famous II
Corps
had
lost
noticeably
in
efficiency,
not
merely
because its
best
enlisted
men
had
been
shot,
but
also
because
it
was no
longer
officered
as
it
had
been.
A
brigade
which
was
commanded
by
a
lieutenant
colonel,
its
regiments
led
by
captains,
and
its
companies
commanded
by
junior
lieutenants and
sergeants,
just
was
not
able
to
do
the
tilings
it
had
done before.
The
old
leadership
was
gone.
⁶

There
were
veteran
outfits,
of
course,
in
which
the
men more
or
less
led
themselves.
Yet
the
enlistments
of
many
of these
were
about
to
expire,
and
the
men
were
becoming very
cautious.
Every
man
in
the
army
knew
the
exact
date on
which
he
would
be
released
from
service,
and
as
that date
drew
near
he
resented
being
asked
to
run
risks.
Members
of
a
Rhode
Island
battery
complained
that
on
their
last day
of
service
they
were
thrown
into
an
exposed
position and
compelled
to
keep
up
an
expensive
artillery
duel,
and the
battery's
historian
exploded
in
anger:
"It
was
clear
to everyone's
mind
that
some
mean,
malignant
villain,
not worthy
of
wearing
shoulder
straps,
had
got
the
battery
into this
dreadful
position
purposely,
for
our
term
of
service
expired
the
next
day,
and
we
had
long
range
guns,
while
short range
guns
were
fired
a
quarter
of
a
mile
in
our
rear,
the shells
exploding
over
our
heads
instead
of
reaching
the
en
emy's
works."
⁷

A
week
passed
after
the
day
of
the
disastrous
assaults,
and another
week
began,
and
as
far
as
the
men
could
see
there was
no
change;
perhaps
they
were
to
remain
here
at
Cold Harbor
forever,
fixed
in
impregnable
trenches
that
could never
be
captured
and
would
never
be
abandoned.
The trench
system
imposed
its
routine,
which
was
not
pleasant. These
sandy
ditches
caught
and
held
all
of
the
sun's
heat,
so that
the
scanty
supply
of
water
in
canteens
became
hot
and distasteful,
and
the
men
tried
to
rig
little
awnings
out
of shelter-tent
halves
and
cowered
under
them,
hot
and
unwashed
and
eternally
thirsty.
A
New
Hampshire
soldier
predicted
that
trench
life
by
itself
"would
soon
become
more dangerous
to
the
Federal
army
than
rebel
bullets,"
and
a Pennsylvanian
remembered
that
what
his
outfit
wanted
most in
those
days
was
a
complete
issue
of
new
clothing—what they
wore
had
got
beyond
washing,
and
there
was
no
water to
wash
it
in
anyway.
⁸

When
Cutler's
division
was
briefly
taken
out
of
the
line
on June
8
for
a
short
stay
in
the
rear,
its
commander
noted
that this
was
the
first
day
in
more
than
a
month
in
which
no
man in
the
division
had
been
reported
killed
or
wounded.
One
of his
colonels
wrote
that
he
had
had
neither
an
unbroken night's
sleep
nor
a
change
of
clothing
since
May
5,
and
another
remarked
that
he
was
so
groggy
with
fatigue
that
it was
impossible
for
him
to
write
an
intelligent
letter
to
his family:
"I
can
only
tell
my
wife
I
am
alive
and
well.
I
am too
stupid
for
any
use."