A Stillness at Appomattox (79 page)

A
Massachusetts
soldier
on
the
II
Corps
front
told
how his
regiment
made
friends
with
a
Confederate
regiment
opposite
it
and
worked
out
a
fairly
extended
cessation
of
hostilities,
and
he
said
that
if
the
enlisted
men
of
the
two
armies had
the
power
to
settle
the
war,
"not
another
shot
would have
been
fired."
The
friendly
Confederate
regiment
was
at length
moved
away
from
there,
and
just
before
it
left
a Rebel
soldier
stood
up
on
the
rampart
and
called
out
a
warning:
"Keep
down,
Yanks—we
'uns
are
going
away."
As
soon as
the
replacements
came
in
the
firing
was
resumed.
When the
V
Corps
was
shifted
around
to
the
left
of
the
Union line,
so
that
it
faced
the
Confederates
across
the
Chicka-hominy
River,
the
118th
Pennsylvania
and
the
35th
North Carolina
put
in
the
day
sitting
on
opposite
banks
of
the
narrow
stream,
fishing
and
chatting.

A
soldier
in
a
New
York
heavy
artillery
regiment
wrote that
it
seemed,
now
and
then,
as
if
an
increasing
number
of Confederates
were
willing
to
slip
over
to
the
Union
side after
dark
and
surrender,
yet
he
added
wryly
that
"when
it comes
to
fighting,
one
would
not
suppose
that
any
of
them had
the
faintest
idea
of
surrendering."
Between
fights,
he said,
Northerners
and
Southerners
talked
things
over,
con
cluded
that
peace
would
be
a
very
fine
thing,
and
agreed that
"if
a
few
men
on
both
sides
who
stayed
at
home
were hung,
matters
could
easily
be
arranged."
¹⁸

Yet
the
soldiers
were
only
a
part
of
it,
and
what
happened to
them
out
along
the
rifle
pits
amid
the
choking
dust
was having
a
queer
reverse
effect
on
men
back
home
who
would never
know
what
it
was
like
to
charge
a
line
of
riflemen
in the
smoky
twilight,
gun
butt
raised
to
crush
a
human
being's skull.
For
this
was
the
year
when
the
shadow
of
death
lay all
across
America,
and
grotesque
shapes
moved
within
the shadow
and
laid
hold
of
men's
hearts
and
minds.
The
soldiers at
the
front
could
look
ahead
to
peace
without
seeing
it through
a
veil
of
hatred,
and
if
they
talked
lightly
about
the need
to
hang
a
few
stay-at-homes,
they
spoke
as
men
who had
seen
so
many
killings
that
a
few
more
might
not
make much
difference.
Yet
there
were
quiet
civilians
who
were talking
of
hangings,
too,
these
days.
They
were
men
of
years and
peace,
who
might
inspire
violence
but
who
had
never actually
seen
any
of
it,
and
the
war
had
worked
upon
them until
th
ey
could
feel
that
death
and
heartbreak
were
positive goods.

Some
were
men
who
had
always
lived
by
the
sword,
and they
were
beginning
to
see
in
this
war
a
chance
to
reach
a monstrous
goal,
with
an
undying
fire
blazing
across
a
wasteland
which
had
once
been
peopled
by
men
who
disagreed with
them.
But
others
were
moderates,
not
usually
given
to thoughts
of
vengeance
and
reprisal,
carried
away
now
by the
fury
of
war.

There
was
Gideon
Welles,
for
instance,
Secretary
of
the Navy,
a
white-whiskered,
brown-wigged
man,
God-fearing and
humorless
and
gossipy,
a
good
Connecticut
editor
and politician
who
lived
austerely,
fathered
a
large
family,
and worshiped
at
the
shrine
of
the
Union.
While
the
worst
of
the Cold
Harbor
fighting
was
going
on,
Welles
communed
with himself
in
his
diary,
seeing
death
and
suffering
as
abstractions,
remarking
sagely
that
no
man
had
been
prepared
for the
extraordinary
changes
the
war
had
brought.
It
often came
to
him,
he
wrote,
that
"greater
severity"
might
well
be invoked
against
the
South—yet
the
thought
had
to
be
dealt with
cautiously,
for
"it
would
tend
to
barbarism."
And
in his
quiet
study,
where
the
night's
peace
was
broken
by
no sound
worse
than
the
clatter
of
horse-drawn
cabs
on
the paving
stones
outside
the
curtained
windows,
Welles
reflected
on
the
business
of
hanging
one's
enemies:

"No
traitor
has
been
hung.
I
doubt
if
there
will
be,
but an
example
should
be
made
of
some
of
the
leaders,
for
present
and
future
good."

To
be
sure,
the
Southern
leaders
could
be
imprisoned
or exiled,
once
the
war
was
safely
won,
but
that
might
not answer.
People
would
try
to
rescue
them,
and
parties
would form
to
uphold
their
principles,
and
in
the
end
these
principles
might
revive
and
grow
strong
again.
Perhaps
ideas and
emotions
could
be
destroyed
forever,
if
the
men
who held
them
were
destroyed;
and
the
thought
led
Mr.
Welles to
set
down
his
conclusion:

"Death
is
the
proper
penalty
and
atonement,
and
will
be enduringly
beneficent
in
its
influence."

But
perhaps
hangings
would
not
be
possible,
since
there is
in
man
a
deep
tendency
toward
softness
of
heart.
In
such case,
Mr.
Welles
felt,
the
Rebel
leaders
could
at
least
be stripped
of
their
wealth
and
their
families
impoverished. The
effect
of
this
(wrote
the
good
family
man)
would
be wholesome.
Yet
it
did
not
really
seem
likely
that
any
of these
stern
things
would
be
done,
and
he
concluded
regretfully:
"I
apprehend
there
will
be
very
gentle
measures
in closing
up
the
rebellion."
¹⁹

Mr.
Welles
might
be
wrong
about
the
inevitability
of gentleness.
In
this
year
when
blood-red
fantasies
danced against
the
clouded
moon
of
war,
men
who
had
never
seen the
grotesque
indignity
of
violent
death
could
talk
easily about
the
good
fruits
that
might
grow
at
the
foot
of
the
gallows
tree,
and
devout
Christians
could
wonder
if
something precious
might
not
slip
too
easily
through
the
loose
meshes of
Christian
charity.
At
this
moment,
when
casualties
in
the Army
of
the
Potomac
had
averaged
2,000
men
a
day
for
a solid
month,
Abraham
Lincoln
was
waging
the
hardest
fight of
his
life
to
uphold
the
dream
that
peace
could
finally
be made
decently
and
justly,
without
malice
or
a
desire
to
have revenge.