A Stillness at Appomattox (129 page)

It
was
up
to
the
VI
Corps
to
pursue
the
enemy,
and
the pursuit
was
extremely
vigorous.
The
Vermont
Brigade
remembered
the
first
night's
march
out
of
Washington
as
one of
the
worst
it
ever
made.
The
weather
was
hot
and
the roads
were
dusty,
clogged
with
any
number
of
stragglers
and with
obstructions
which
Early's
men
had
thoughtfully
left
in their
wake.
By
the
time
the
veterans
had
seen
the
Confederates
out
of
Maryland
they
were
fully
ready
to
call
it
quits and
take
a
little
rest.

The
2nd
Connecticut
Heavy
Artillery
came
trailing
back to
Washington,
and
to
its
delight
learned
it
was
to
get
back its
original
assignment
as
heavy
artillery—it
had
been
frontline
infantry
beginning
with
Spotsylvania
Court
House,
and it
had
had
fearful
casualties—and
it
snuggled
down
in
a
fort near
Tenallytown,
dispossessing
an
Ohio
National
Guard
outfit
"with
its
gawky
officers"
and
luxuriating
in
new
uniforms, new
shoes,
and
regular
rations.
It
was
especially
delighted
to get,
at
last,
crossed
cannon
to
put
on
its
caps,
for
these
insignia
belonged
to
heavy
artillery
and
the
men
felt
that
this made
the
new
incarnation
official.
They
looked
fondly
at
the comfortable
living
quarters
in
the
fort
and
told
one
another that
they
were
going
to
sleep
for
a
week.
However,
the
very next
morning
orders
were
changed
and
the
regiment
was put
back
in
the
VI
Corps
infantry
column,
crossed
cannon and
all,
and
it
went
off
on
a
grinding
hike
to
the
Shenandoah Valley
to
keep
Early
from
launching
a
new
invasion,
and
it never
saw
the
Tenallytown
fort
again.
¹⁶

For
the
VI
Corps
the
next
two
weeks
were
a
nightmare. The
men
forded
the
Potomac
and
went
up
through
Lees-burg
and
Snickers'
Gap
to
the
banks
of
the
Shenandoah,
and down
at
City
Point
Grant
concluded
that
the
danger
was over
and
sent
orders
for
the
corps
to
come
back
to
Petersburg.
So
there
was
a
hard
forced
march,
and
just
as
the troops
reached
Washington
and
prepared
to
board
the
trans
ports
Early
sent
his
cavalry
riding
hard
up
into
Pennsylvania, where
the
men
burned
the
city
of
Chambersburg—another little
dividend
on
Hunter's
depredations
in
the
upper
Valley —so
once
again
orders
were
changed
and
the
corps
marched back
to
Harper's
Ferry
as
fast
as
it
could
go,
crossing
the Potomac
there
and
starting
up
the
Valley
again.

There
was
much
straggling
on
this
march,
due
to
heat
and general
exhaustion
and,
as
a
brigade
surgeon
confessed,
to "bad
whisky
from
Washington."
The
corps
had
no
more
than started
up
the
valley
than
orders
were
changed
once
more and
everybody
had
to
hurry
back
into
Maryland.
In
the
first days
of
August
the
men
made
a
bivouac
along
the
Monocacy River
not
far
from
Frederick,
wondering
bleakly
what
the people
in
Washington
were
going
to
think
of
next.

Corps
morale
was
down
at
low-water
mark
for
the
war. Originally
the
men
had
been
delighted
to
leave
Petersburg and
come
up
to
Washington,
and
their
appearance
as
saviors of
the
capital,
the
only
troops
who
had
ever
fought
under the
eye
of
Lincoln
himself,
made
them
think
very
highly
of themselves.
But
the
marching
since
then
had
been
harder than
anything
they
had
had
in
all
their
experience—it
was even
worse
than
the
man-killing
marches
they
had
made
in the
Gettysburg
campaign,
which
they
had
always
supposed were
the
worst
possible—and
when
they
got
to
the
Monocacy the
men
were
so
dead-beat
that
most
regiments
made
camp with
no
more
than
twenty
men
around
the
colors.
The
series of
aimless
marches
and
countermarches
showed
clearly
that Washington
did
not
know
what
it
was
doing,
and
one
veteran
admitted
that
by
this
time
"the
Sixth
Corps
was,
in army
parlance,
'about
played
out.'"
Another
man
wrote
that "the
thinking
soldiers
about
their
campfires
felt
a
discouragement
the
gloom
of
the
Wilderness
had
failed
to
produce."

Still,
the
campsites
by
the
Monocacy
were
pleasant,
and for
a
few
days
there
was
rest,
and
with
the
rest
men's
spirits rose
again.
One
of
the
2nd
Connecticut
heavies,
adjusted
at last
to
the
fact
that
the
comforts
of
the
Washington
forts would
be
forever
unattainable,
grew
almost
lyrical
when
he considered
the
present
bivouac: