A Stillness at Appomattox (11 page)

Not
all
of
the
changes
were
popular.
One
which
was
bitterly resented
by
thousands
of
the
best
soldiers
in
the
army
was
a shake-up
which
consolidated
the
five
infantry
corps
into
three. Actually,
this
was
none
of
Grant's
doing,
Meade
having
put at
in
the
works
before
Grant
took
over,
but
it
was
announced while
all
the
other
changes
were
taking
place
and
it
was
generally
accepted
as
part
of
Grant's
program.
Meade
seems
to have
made
the
move
partly
because
he
felt
that
the
army would
work
better
with
fewer
and
larger
units,
and
partly because
there
were
not
as
many
as
five
qualified
corps
commanders
in
the
army
anyway.
The
consolidation
enabled
him to
shelve
several
generals
who
had
been
withering
on
the vine—the
best
of
them,
probably,
crusty
and
slow-moving George
Sykes,
famous
because
of
the
work
his
Regulars
had done
in
the
early
days.

What
made
this
shake-up
unpopular
with
so
many
men
was the
fact
that
the
I
Corps
and
the
III
Corps
ceased
to
exist, their
brigades
being
distributed
among
the
three
corps
which survived.
These
two
corps
had
been
famous
and
their
men had
been
cocky,
wearing
their
corps
badges
with
vast
pride, and
they
were
brought
almost
to
the
verge
of
mutiny
by
the change.
(One
army
historian,
writing
more
than
twenty
years later,
asserted
that
"the
wound
has
never
yet
wholly
healed
in the
heart
of
many
a
brave
and
patriotic
soldier.")
²³
The
two organizations
had
been
wrecked
at
Gettysburg
and
it
had never
been
possible,
somehow,
to
repair
the
damage
and bring
them
up
to
proper
strength.
Yet
the
consolidation
was unfortunate.
Heretofore,
each
corps
had
had
its
own
individuality
and
its
own
tradition,
and
these
had
done
much
for morale.
Just
as
the
three
which
remained
were
striving
to digest
the
miscellaneous
lot
of
new
recruits
which
were
coming
in,
they
were
given
the
unhappy
brigades
and
divisions from
the
two
corps
which
had
been
abolished.
The
result
was that
nobody
quite
felt
that
his
old
outfit
was
what
it
used
to be.
There
was
also
the
possibility
that
the
great
increase
in the
size
of
each
corps
would
put
a
new
strain
on
the
corps commanders.

In
the
midst
of
all
of
this
reshuffling
the
army
almost
lost John
Sedgwick.
Sedgwick
had
never
felt
it
necessary
to
assure
Washington
that
he
hated
Democrats
and
loved
emancipation,
nor
had
he
ever
concealed
his
admiration
for
Mc
Clellan,
and
these
things
had
made
him
suspect
with
Secretary Stanton.
Early
this
winter
Sedgwick
had
bluntly
told
the
War Department
that
Butler's
poorly
handled
attempt
to
capture Richmond
had
done
the
Union
cause
more
harm
than
good, and
since
Butler
was
a
pet
of
the
radical
Republicans—a
standing
test
of
the
other
generals'
allegiance
to
the
cause,
so
to speak—this
was
remembered
where
it
would
hurt.
In
February
Sedgwick
wrote
to
his
sister
that
the
army
grapevine
was predicting
a
reorganization
"to
get
rid
of
some
obnoxious
generals,"
and
he
admitted
that
he
himself
might
be
on
this
list. It
would
not
bother
him
much,
he
said,
if
this
turned
out
to be
true:
"I
feel
that
I
have
done
my
part
of
field
duty.
.
»
«,
I
could
even
leave
altogether
without
many
regrets."

So
when
Meade
began
to
make
changes
Stanton
told
him that
it
would
be
well
to
find
some
other
place
for
Sedgwick, and
after
some
argument
back
and
forth
it
had
finally
been agreed
to
put
Sedgwick
in
command
up
in
the
Shenandoah Valley.
It
would
have
been
an
odd
sort
of
demotion,
for
the valley
command
was
destined
to
be
very
important,
but
it
was all
upset
at
the
last
minute
when
Mr.
Lincoln
unexpectedly gave
the
job
to
Franz
Sigel,
and
in
the
end
Sedgwick
remained
in
command
of
the
VI
Corps.
²⁴

With
the
men
of
this
corps
he
was
very
popular.
One
day
in this
winter
of
1864
Wheaton's
brigade
of
the
VI
Corps
came in
to
camp
after
several
months
of
detached
service
in
western
Virginia.
The
brigade
detrained
in
a
miserable
cold
rain, and
since
all
of
the
good
camp
sites
had
been
taken
it
appeared
that
they
would
have
to
pitch
their
tents
in
a
muddy field,
with
no
shelter
from
the
elements
and
the
nearest
source of
wood
for
campfires
several
miles
away.
There
was
a
fine grove
near
by,
to
be
sure,
but
some
brigadier
and
his
entourage
had
long
since
pre-empted
it.
While
the
men
stood disconsolate
in
the
wet,
a
burly
horseman
in
a
muddy
cavalry overcoat
came
splashing
up—Sedgwick.
He
took
in
the
situation
at
once,
rode
over
to
the
little
grove,
told
the
brigadier and
his
henchmen
to
pack
up
at
once
and
move
to
some
other place,
and
ordered
Wheaton
to
have
his
brigade
take
over
the vacated
camp
site.
²⁵