A Stillness at Appomattox (107 page)

All
of
the
magazines
were
connected
by
wooden
troughs half
filled
with
powder,
and
these
troughs
met
at
the
place where
the
gallery
crossed
the
inner
end
of
the
main
shaft. The
engineers
had
promised
Pleasants
a
supply
of
wire
and a
"galvanic
battery"
to
touch
off
the
charge,
but
this
was another
delivery
that
was
never
made,
so
Pleasants
got
a supply
of
ordinary
fuses,
spliced
them
together,
introduced one
end
into
the
powder
in
the
trough,
and
strung
the
rest of
the
fuse
back
along
the
tunnel
for
about
one
hundred feet.
As
a
final
step,
earth
was
solidly
tamped
into
place,
filling
the
main
shaft
for
thirty-eight
feet
from
the
place
where it
met
the
lateral
gallery.
All
that
remained
now
was
to
light the
outer
end
of
the
fuse.
¹²

Pleasants
never
doubted
that
the
mine
would
blow
a
big hole
in
the
Confederate
line,
but
the
only
other
officer
of
any consequence
who
really
believed
in
it
seems
to
have
been Burnside
himself,
and
according
to
his
lights
Burnside
did his
best
to
make
a
success
of
the
attack
that
would
follow the
explosion.

His
army
corps
contained
four
divisions.
Three
of
these had
been
in
action
more
or
less
continually
since
the
army crossed
the
Rapidan,
and
they
had
had
a
solid
month
of trench
duty
in
front
of
Petersburg.
Each
of
these
divisions contained
about
3,000
men,
all
of
whom
by
now
were
very battle-weary.
The
fourth
division
had
never
been
in
action to
speak
of,
having
spent
practically
all
of
its
time
guarding wagon
trains
and
doing
other
back-area
jobs,
and
its
4,300 men
consequently
were
fresh.
Obviously,
a
fresh
division ought
to
be
used
to
spearhead
the
attack,
and
so—about
the time
Pleasants
was
beginning
to
dig
the
lateral
gallery— Burnside
brought
his
division
forward
and
told
its
commander,
Brigadier
General
Ferrero,
to
give
it
special
training
for
the
assault;
it
was
the
outfit
that
was
going
to
break the
Rebel
line
and
march
into
Petersburg
and
win
the
war. (Burnside
himself
was
so
confident
the
attack
would
succeed that
he
had
all
of
his
headquarters
baggage
packed
so
that he
could
move
right
into
Petersburg
on
the
heels
of
his
victorious
troops.)

Burnside's
plan
was
perfectly
logical.
The
three
divisions which
had
been
holding
the
trenches
were
worn
out—during the
last
ten
days
of
June
and
the
month
of
July
they
lost
more than
a
thousand
men,
altogether,
just
from
sharpshooter
and mortar
fire—and
the
men
had
adjusted
themselves
to
trench life
so
completely
that
they
looked
on
soldiering
as
being largely
a
business
of
getting
behind
a
protective
bank
of earth
and
avoiding
enemy
bullets.
If
unbloodied
troops
were available
it
was
only
common
sense
to
use
them,
and
in
picking
Ferrero's
division
Burnside
was
exercising
perfectly sound
judgment.
¹³

The
difficulty
was
that
an
imponderable
entered
into things
here,
deep
as
the
ocean
and
unpredictable
as
a
tornado at
midnight.
Ferrero's
division
was
made
up
entirely
of
colored
soldiers.

The
use
of
colored
troops
was
an
experiment
to
which
the Administration
had
been
driven
partly
by
the
demands
of
the abolitionists
and
partly
by
sheer
desperation,
the
supply
of white
manpower
having
slackened.
The
implications
of
this experiment
were
faced
by
few
people,
and
there
probably would
be
time
enough
to
worry
about
them
after
the
war had
been
won.
At
the
moment
the
great
riddle
was
whether it
was
possible
to
turn
colored
men
into
good
soldiers.

Most
of
these
ex-slaves
were
illiterate,
used
to
servile
obedience,
and
living
(presumably)
in
deep
awe
of
Southern white
men.
They
were
husky
enough,
and
yet
they
somehow lacked
physical
sturdiness
and
endurance,
¹⁴
and
they
had
been held
at
the
bottom
of
the
heap
for
so
long
that
they
seemed to
be
excessively
long-suffering
by
nature.
Somewhere,
far back
in
dim
tribal
memories,
there
may
have
been
traditions of
war
parties
and
fighting
and
desperate
combat,
but
these had
been
overlaid
by
generations
of
slavery,
and
most
colored
folk
saw
themselves
as
pilgrims
toiling
up
the
endless slopes
of
heartbreak
hill—pilgrims
whose
survival
depended on
the
patient,
uncomplaining
acceptance
of
evil
rather
than on
a
bold
struggle
to
overthrow
evil.