A Stillness at Appomattox (99 page)

Meade
was
on
the
verge
of
removing
Warren,
just
when Grant
was
sending
Smith
into
exile.
Warren
was
increasingly given
to
broad
interpretation
and
spontaneous
revision
of
his orders,
and
Meade
could
hardly
fail
to
note
that
the
all-out attack
which
he
had
told
Warren
to
make
at
dawn
on
the crucial
eighteenth
of
June
had
not
actually
been
delivered
until
3:30
p.m
.
At
one
time
Meade
had
definitely
made
up
his mind
to
send
Warren
away,
but
the
trouble
was
reconciled somehow
and
by
July
1
Assistant
Secretary
of
War
Dana wired
Stanton
that
"the
difficulty
between
Meade
and
Warren has
been
settled
without
the
extreme
remedy
which
Meade proposed
last
week."
¹⁴

Meade
himself
was
showing
the
strain.
His
temper
was
always
bad,
but
as
June
wore
on
into
sultry
July
and
frustration followed
frustration
he
became
as
savage
as
a
wounded grizzly,
and
Dana
was
presently
telling
Stanton:
"I
do
not think
he
has
a
friend
in
the
whole
army.
No
man,
no
matter what
his
business
or
his
service,
approaches
him
without
being
insulted
in
one
way
or
another,
and
his
own
staff
officers do
not
dare
speak
to
him
unless
first
spoken
to,
for
fear
of either
sneers
or
curses."
Dana
added
that
a
change
in
command
seemed
probable.
¹⁵

There
was
probably
some
exaggeration
in
this.
Meade
and Grant
were
never
intimates,
but
in
the
main
they
got
along well
enough.
Nevertheless,
there
was
trouble.
Meade
had handled
the
Petersburg
assaults
about
as
ineptly
as
they
could have
been
handled,
and
his
angry
complaint
on
the
fourth day,
that
since
he
had
found
it
impossible
to
co-ordinate
attacks
each
commander
should
go
ahead
and
do
the
best
he could
on
his
own
hook,
went
far
to
merit
the
comment
it
got from
General
Wright—that
the
different
attacks
had
been
ordered
"without
brains
and
without
generalship."
¹⁶
Grant seriously
considered
taking
Meade
out
of
the
top
spot
and sending
him
up
to
the
Shenandoah
Valley,
and
he
appears
to
have
felt
that
if
this
happened
Hancock
was
the
man
to
take Meade's
place.
¹⁷

Yet
that
would
hardly
do,
either.
Hancock's
wound
still
refused
to
heal.
He
returned
to
duty
late
in
June,
but
a
wound which
remains
open
after
nearly
a
year
takes
something
out of
a
man,
and
Hancock's
great
days
were
over.
Like
Meade, he
was
getting
irritable,
and
he
was
quarreling
now
with General
Gibbon,
who
had
been
one
of
his
best
friends.
¹⁸
Worse
yet
was
the
fact
that
if
Hancock
was
not
himself
his own
immediate
command,
the
famous
II
Army
Corps,
was
in even
worse
shape.

The
II
Corps
had
been
fought
out
and
used
up.
It
had been
the
most
famous
corps
in
the
army.
It
had
stormed Bloody
Lane
at
Antietam,
it
had
taken
4,000
casualties
at Fredericksburg
without
flinching,
it
had
beaten
back
Pickett's charge
at
Gettysburg,
and
it
had
broken
the
Bloody
Angle
at Spotsylvania.
But
now
it
was
all
shot
to
pieces,
and
instead of
being
the
army's
strongest
fighting
unit
it
was
the
weakest. Nothing
but
a
long
period
of
recruiting,
drill,
and
discipline would
bring
it
up
to
its
old
level.

Proof
of
this
came
in
the
latter
part
of
June,
shortly
before Hancock
returned
to
command,
when
the
corps
was
sent
out to
the
Jerusalem
Plank
Road
in
an
effort
to
extend
the
army's left.
Lee
saw
the
move
and
sent
A.
P.
Hill's
veterans
down
to meet
it,
and
these
men
caught
the
corps
off
balance,
tapped at
its
flanks,
crumpled
it
up,
and
sent
it
flying.
The
fight
had not
been
a
particularly
hard
one,
and
comparatively
few
men were
killed
or
wounded,
but
the
manner
of
the
defeat
was eloquent.
No
fewer
than
1,700
men
had
been
taken
prisoner —more
prisoners
than
the
corps
had
lost
at
Antietam,
Fredericksburg,
and
Chancellorsville
put
together—and
whole
regiments
had
surrendered
without
firing
a
shot.
Among
these were
the
remnants
of
regiments
which
had
once
been
among the
very
best
in
the
army.
There
was
the
15th
Massachusetts, for
instance,
which
had
had
more
than
300
casualties
in
the West
Wood
at
Antietam
but
which,
when
forced
to
retreat from
that
doleful
little
grove,
had
proudly
brought
out
not only
its
own
flag
but
also
the
flag
of
a
Confederate
regiment with
which
it
had
come
to
grips.
In
this
latest
fight
the
15th surrendered
almost
entire,
flag
and
all,
after
no
more
than
a token
resistance.
Also,
the
corps
had
lost
four
pieces
of
artillery,
and
its
attempt
to
retake
these
guns
had
been
very feeble.
¹⁹