A Stillness at Appomattox (102 page)

Underneath
the
grousing
and
the
bills
of
complaint
the army
was
trying
to
maintain
a
sense
of
the
continuity
of
its own
experiences
and
traditions.
It
had
to
do
this,
because actually
this
simply
was
not
the
army
it
used
to
be.
Something
like
100,000
combat
men
had
come
down
across
the Rapidan
early
in
May
(the
flags
were
all
flying
and
everything
was
bright
and
blowing
and
the
dogwood
blossoms
lit the
shadows
in
the
woods)
and
60,000
of
them
had
been shot
while
many
other
thousands
had
been
sent
home
as time-expired
veterans,
and
so
much
the
greater
part
of
the men
who
had
started
out
were
not
with
the
army
any
more. There
were
86,000
men
in
the
ranks
at
the
end
of
June,
and most
of
them
were
new
men.
What
those
who
were
gone had
left
behind
them
was
the
confusing
raw
material
out of
which
a
new
morale
would
have
to
be
made.

Always
the
army
reflected
the
nation,
and
the
nation
itself
was
changing.
Like
the
army,
it
contained
many
new people
these
days.
The
war
had
speeded
everything
up.
The immigrant
ships
were
coming
faster,
there
were
more
factories
and
slums
and
farms
and
towns,
and
the
magical
hazy light
that
came
down
from
the
country's
past
was
beginning to
cast
some
unfamiliar
shadows.
The
old
unities
were
gone: unities
of
blood,
of
race,
of
language,
of
shared
ideals
and common
memories
and
experiences,
the
very
things
which had
always
seemed
essential
beneath
the
word
"American." In
some
mysterious
way
that
nobody
quite
understood,
the army
not
only
mirrored
the
change
but
represented
the
effort to
find
a
new
synthesis.

What
was
going
on
in
front
of
Petersburg
was
not
the
development
of
a
stalemate,
or
the
aimless
groping
of
frozen men
stumbling
down
to
the
last
dead
end
of
a
cold
trail. What
was
beginning
meant
more
than
what
was
ending,
even though
it
might
be
many
years
before
anyone
knew
just what
the
beginnings
and
the
endings
were.
Now
and
then there
was
a
hint,
casually
dropped,
as
the
country
changed the
guard
here
south
of
the
Appomattox
River,
and
the
choking
dust
hung
in
dead
air
under
a
hot
copper
sun.
The
men who
followed
a
misty
dream
had
died
of
it,
but
the
dream still
lived,
even
though
it
was
taking
another
form.

There
was
in
the
67th
New
York
Infantry
a
young
German
named
Sebastian
Muller,
who
got
off
an
immigrant
ship in
1860
and
walked
the
streets
unable
to
find
work
because he
could
speak
no
English
and
because
times
in
this
land of
promise
were
harder
than
he
had
supposed
they
would be.
The
war
came
and
in
1861
a
recruiting
agent
got
him, and
to
his
people
back
in
the
fatherland
Muller
wrote:
"I am
a
volunteer
soldier
in
the
Army
of
the
United
States,
to fight
the
rebels
of
South
America
for
a
sacred
thing.
All
of America
has
to
become
free
and
united
and
the
starry
banner
has
to
fly
again
over
the
new
world.
Then
we
also
want to
have
the
slaves
freed,
the
trading
of
human
beings
must have
an
end
and
every
slave
should
be
set
free
and
on
his own
in
time.
.
.
.
Evil
of
all
lands,
thievery,
whoring,
lying and
deception
have
to
be
punished
here."

Muller
served
in
the
67th
and
on
June
20,
1864,
the
regiment's
time
expired
and
it
was
sent
back
for
muster-out.
But he
had
enlisted
a
couple
of
months
late,
and
he
and
a
few others
were
held
in
service
and
were
transferred
to
the
65th New
York
to
serve
out
their
time,
and
two
days
after
the 67th
went
back
home
Muller
was
a
picket
in
an
advanced gun
pit
on
the
VI
Corps
front,
and
a
Rebel
sniper
drew
a bead
on
him
and
killed
him.
A
German
comrade
wrote
a letter
of
consolation
to
Muller's
parents:
"If
a
person
is
meant to
die
on
land,
he
will
not
drown.
If
death
on
the
battlefield is
to
be
his
lot,
he
will
not
die
in
the
cradle.
God's
dispositions
are
wise
and
his
ways
are
inscrutable."
The
chaplain added
a
note
saying
that
Muller
had
died
without
pain
and had
been
given
"a
decent
Christian
burial."
²⁹
That
was
that
.