The Real Custer (30 page)

Seven thousand Confederates were captured, including eight generals, among them Ewell, Custis Lee, and Kershaw. At the Federal field headquarters after the battle, Kershaw recorded that “a spare, lithe, sinewy figure, bright, dark, quick-moving blue eyes; florid complexion, light, wavy curls, high cheek bones, firm set teeth—a jaunty close-fitting cavalry jacket, large top-boots, Spanish spurs, golden aiguillettes, a serviceable saber . . . a quick nervous movement, an air telling of the habit of command—announced the redoubtable Custer whose name was as familiar to his foes as to his friends.”
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Kershaw presented his sword to Custer, saying “I have met you on several occasions in battle, and I know of no officer to whom I would rather surrender my sword.” But Custer refused the honor, asking instead that it be given to the corporal of the 2nd Ohio who had captured the general. Ewell also tendered his sword, as did others, but Custer took none of them. General Ewell said, “Further fighting is useless; it is a wanton waste of life.” He told Custer that “if a white flag were to be sent out, the 30,000 men in our army would surrender.” But Custer said he had no authority to seek a truce.
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The Spanish spurs Kershaw noted Custer wearing may have been the pair loaned that day by captured Confederate artilleryman Colonel Frank Huger, a friend from the Class of 1860. He was the son of Confederate General Benjamin Huger of the Class of 1825. The intricately
carved spurs originally belonged to Mexican General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, and the elder Huger had received them from General Winfield Scott during the Mexican War. General Huger gave the spurs to his son Frank when he graduated from West Point. Young Huger was captured by his friend Custer at Sailor's Creek, and George kept Huger with him for the rest of the day, as he said, “to let you see how I am going to take you fellows in.”
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Also among the prisoners was Brigadier General Eppa Hunton, a brigade commander in Pickett's division, of the Hunton family whose home, Cerro Gordo, had been Custer's headquarters during the October 1863 debacle at Buckland Mills. Hunton was very sick and doubted he would survive imprisonment. Hearing about Hunton's condition, Custer sent his physician “with a bottle of imported French brandy,” Eppa recalled, “and furnished me with a hair mattress to sleep on. He was as kind as a man could be, and I shall never forget his generous treatment.”
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After the war Hunton served as a member of Congress from Virginia, and Eppa's son recalled that when some charges against Custer were referred to the House Military Affairs Committee, Hunton became his chief defender. “I never saw him more deeply and earnestly interested than in Custer's defense,” he recalled. “I think nothing came of the investigation and that the charges were never pressed.”
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Also on the committee with Hunton in the Forty-Third Congress was former Confederate cavalryman Pierce M. B. Young, elected from Georgia, who had traded meals with his friend Custer at Cerro Gordo the day of the Buckland Races.

Sheridan openly praised Custer for his conduct in the battle. He sent word of the victory to Grant, adding his opinion that “if the thing is pressed I think Lee will surrender.”
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Word came back shortly from President Lincoln: “Let the thing be pressed.”

Sheridan had already moved. Cavalry and infantry that had not been engaged in Sailor's Creek continued to harry Lee's men, and the day after the battle, Sheridan pressed on with the rest. Custer set off flying a red
and blue silk banner with crossed sabers, a personal standard that Libbie had sewn for him weeks earlier and that already bore the scars of battle from its “glorious baptism” at Dinwiddie. George assembled a personal escort of men who had captured Confederate battle standards, bearing their trophies in ranks behind him. After Sailor's Creek the honor guard carried over thirty rebel flags, and in the next few days they would have forty. Seeing Custer ride past with his colorful escort, an old soldier of the VI Corps observed, “Oh, yes, my boy, you have picked up the apples, but the Sixth Corps shook the tree for you.”
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As Custer set off in pursuit of the rebels, he passed General Kershaw and a group of Confederate prisoners and raised his hat to them. “There goes a chivalrous fellow,” Kershaw said, “let's give him three cheers.” Custer then had his band strike up the unofficial Confederate anthem, “The Bonnie Blue Flag,” to the whoops and yells of the prisoners.
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After Sailor's Creek, Lee's army crossed to the north bank of the Appomattox River and pressed west toward Lynchburg, pursued by II and VI Corps. V Corps and Merritt's cavalry stayed on the opposite bank, moving along the Southside Railroad and seeking to cut off Lee's retreat at Appomattox. “Lee's army was rapidly crumbling,” Grant wrote of these last days. “Many of his soldiers had enlisted from that part of the State where they now were, and were continually dropping out of the ranks and going to their homes.”
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But most of Lee's men were willing to fight as long as he led them.

Late in the afternoon of April 8, Custer came in sight of Appomattox Station, where he spied locomotive smoke. Four trains were at the station, their cars loaded with supplies for Lee's hungry army—the provisions the rebels had expected at Farmville. Custer quickly sent a regiment around the station to block the track toward Lynchburg, then galloped down the road and “enveloped the train as quick as winking.”
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They took the trains without losing a man, but the alert crew of one engine
managed to fire it before it could be seized. Custer assembled engineers and brakemen from his ranks and ordered the trains east down the line toward the advancing Federal infantry.

The timing was critical. As Custer was arranging the trains' movement, artillery fire broke out. Confederate Brigadier General R. Lindsay Walker had been sent with twenty-five guns from the Third Corps Reserve Artillery to secure the trains for Lee's approaching troops, and was firing on Custer from a nearby hill. “Not expecting a fight at that place, the enemy was somewhat disturbed and demoralized by the appearance of our forces,” Augustus Woodbury of the 2nd Rhode Island regiment wrote, “and especially indignant at the loss of his supplies, upon which he had almost laid his hand.”
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Custer hastily organized an assault, which made little progress against the grapeshot and canister from the massed guns. After several attempts and with the hour growing late, Custer grew impatient. “Boys,” he said, “the Third Division must have those guns. I'm going to charge if I go alone.” Custer led a final charge on the rebel artillery, overwhelming the defenders, and, said Captain Luman H. Tenney of the 2nd Ohio Cavalry, “our boys did not stop until they had passed the Court House where the camp-fires marked the location of the rebel army along the hillsides.”
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In addition to the twenty-five guns he had faced, plus five others, Custer's men seized a hospital train, between 150 and 200 supply wagons, and 1,000 prisoners from the reserve artillery and the lead elements of Lee's army heading for the station.
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As the rest of the Cavalry Corps arrived, Sheridan pressed toward Appomattox Court House as far as he could without infantry support, bidding Generals Ord, Gibbon, and Griffin to move up quickly to close the trap.
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“If General Gibbon and the Fifth Corps can get up to-night we will perhaps finish the job in the morning,” Sheridan wrote Grant. “I do not think Lee means to surrender until compelled to do so.”
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Sheridan was right. That night Lee held a war council with his Corps commanders, Longstreet, Gordon, and Fitz Lee. Earlier in the day, he
had told a doubting General Pendleton that “we have yet too many bold men to think of laying down our arms.” And even after the loss of their supplies to Custer, Lee wanted to make a final attempt to break out toward Lynchburg. Fitz Lee and Gordon would strike Sheridan with Longstreet guarding the rear, then the entire army would push through west. When Gordon asked where he should stop to make camp, Lee replied, “The Tennessee line.”
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That night Custer worked himself to exhaustion preparing for the critical day to come. His men were “so near the enemy they could almost hear each other breathe in the midnight darkness.”
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The general sat by a campfire waiting for the dawn and fell asleep upright with a coffee cup in his hand.

“It was a beautiful Sunday morning, fair dawn of a fairer day,” Chaplain Humphreys wrote of April 9, 1865. “The country was white and pink with the beautiful blossoms of the plum, the peach, and the pear.”
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But as Captain Tenney of the 2nd Ohio Cavalry penned in his diary, “9th. Sunday. Fighting commenced early.”
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Gordon's rebel infantry advanced strongly against the dismounted Federal cavalry, who pulled back slowly. Custer spied some men from the 10th Connecticut sheltering by a fence during the move and shouted to them, “Boys, this is your last fight. There is nothing but a battery over there. When you take that the war will be over.”
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The 14th Virginia Cavalry regiment claimed to have captured Custer around this time, “but in the confusion [he] made his escape.”
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The Confederates pushed ahead and managed to clear one of the roads to Lynchburg, allowing Fitz Lee's cavalry to try to flank the Federals on the left. But Charles Griffin and the V Corps had moved up behind the withdrawing Federal cavalry and mounted a vigorous counterattack. The rebels were pushed back hard, and when Lee sent word to Gordon
asking how the battle was proceeding, he replied to the courier, “Tell General Lee I have fought my corps to a frazzle, and I fear I can do nothing unless I am heavily supported by Longstreet's corps.”

Lee knew the end had come. “There is nothing left me but to go and see General Grant,” he said to Lieutenant Colonel Charles S. Venable, “and I had rather die a thousand deaths.” Lee sent word to Grant, who was approaching from the east, asking for terms. But along the front, the battle continued. Longstreet, seeing Gordon's Corps weakening, set his final battle line. Men dutifully fell into their places in the ranks, but this was not the army it once was. “Their faces were haggard, their step slow and unsteady,” a member of McGowan's South Carolina Brigade wrote. “Bare skeletons of the old organizations remained, and those tottered along at wide intervals.”
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Custer's division had moved to the right of the Union line, opening the way for the attack by V Corps. But his men were not out of the fight. He called his troops to mount and assembled them for a charge into the weakening rebel left flank and to their camps beyond. As Custer was waiting for Devin's division to deploy to his right, a Confederate soldier appeared on the field on a running horse with a white towel on the end of his sword. Captain Robert Sims, of Longstreet's staff, had been sent by Lee to inform Gordon that talks were under way with Grant, and then to request a halt to the Federal attack.
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“The enemy perceiving that Custer was forming for attack,” Sheridan wrote, “had sent the flag out to his front and stopped the charge just in time.” E. G. Marsh was with the 15th New York Cavalry at the front of the line when Sims rode up. Custer “did not wish to halt,” Marsh recalled. “He wished to whip them completely; but we had to stop and wait the arrival of the flag of truce, and listen to the message from Lee.”
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When Sims delivered his message asking for a cessation of hostilities, Custer replied, “We will do no such thing. We have your people now where we want you, and will listen to no terms but unconditional surrender.”
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