A Stillness at Appomattox (140 page)

A
man
in
the
17th
Pennsylvania
Cavalry
gave
his
picture of
it:

"Previously
the
burning
of
supplies
and
outbuildings
had been
incidental
to
battles,
but
now
the
torch
was
applied deliberately
and
intentionally.
Stacks
of
hay
and
straw
and barns
filled
with
crops
harvested,
mills,
corn-cribs;
in
a
word, all
supplies
of
use
to
man
or
beast
were
promptly
burned and
all
valuable
cattle
driven
off.
.
.
.
The
work
of
destruction seemed
cruel
and
the
distress
it
occasioned
among
the people
of
all
ages
and
sexes
was
evident
on
every
hand.
The officers
and
soldiers
who
performed
the
details
of
this
distressing
work
were
met
at
every
farm
or
home
by
old
men, women
and
children
in
tears,
begging
and
beseeching
those in
charge
to
save
them
from
the
appalling
ruin.
These
scenes of
burning
and
destruction,
which
were
only
the
prelude
to those
which
followed
at
a
later
day
farther
up
the
Valley, were
attended
with
sorrow
to
families
and
added
horrors
to the
usual
brutalities
of
war,
unknown
to
any
other
field operations
in
the
so-called
Confederacy."
²²

Not
all
of
the
people
quite
got
the
point
of
what
was
being done.
Even
General
Hunter
had
felt
obliged
to
point
out
to his
men,
a
month
earlier,
that
there
were
in
the
Valley
many people
of
stout
Unionist
sympathy,
who
sheltered
Federal wounded
men
and
did
their
best
to
aid
the
Union
army; such
people,
he
pointed
out,
ought
to
be
given
a
little
protection,
which
unfortunately
his
own
army
did
not
seem
able to
provide.
Now
the
Pennsylvania
cavalryman
said
that
"the few
Union
people,
old
men,
women
and
children,
could
not be
made
to
understand
the
utility
or
necessity
of
the
measure, while
the
outspoken
Confederates
heaped
upon
us
maledictions.
.
.
.
The
common
hatred
of
open
foes
seemed
to deepen,
and
to
blot
out
forever
all
hope
of
future
goodwill between
North
and
South."
²³

The
soldiers
did
not
exactl
y
enjoy
their
job.
The
historian of
another
regiment
of
Pennsylvania
horse,
the
6th,
said
that his
regiment
was
lucky
enough
to
avoid
"the
detail
for
this unpleasant
duty,"
and
said
that
he
rode
that
day
with
the last
element
of
the
rear
guard,
marching
in
the
wake
of
the men
who
had
been
swinging
the
torch.
"The
day
had
been an
unpleasant
one,"
he
wrote,
"the
weather
was
hot
and
the roads
very
dusty,
and
the
grief
of
the
inhabitants,
as
they
saw their
harvests
disappearing
in
flame
and
smoke,
and
their stock
being
driven
off,
was
a
sad
sight.
It
was
a
phase
of
warfare
we
had
not
seen
before,
and
although
we
admitted
the necessity
we
could
not
but
sympathize
with
the
sufferers."
²⁴

A
Michigan
cavalryman
remembered
riding
past
a
little home
and
seeing,
in
the
gate
of
the
fence
by
the
road,
an
old woman,
crying
bitterly,
blood
flowing
from
a
deep
cut
in
one arm.
He
rode
up
to
her
and
she
told
him
that
some
soldier had
struck
her
with
his
saber
and
then
had
taken
her
two cows.
He
wheeled
and
spurred
after
his
regiment,
found
the officer
in
charge
of
the
herd
of
confiscated
cattle,
recovered the
two
cows—or,
at
any
rate,
two
cows
which
might
have been
the
ones—and
with
the
officer
he
tried
in
vain
to
find the
man
who
had
used
the
saber.
Then
he
took
the
cows back
to
the
woman,
who
thanked
him
in
tearful
surprise
and told
him
that
if
he
was
ever
captured
by
Mosby's
men
he should
have
them
bring
him
to
her
home,
and
she
would
give testimony
that
would
save
him
from
being
hanged.
²⁵

So
the
army
made
its
way
back
down
the
Valley,
leaving desolation
behind
it,
and
the
war
came
slowly
nearer
its
end in
the
black
smoke
that
drifted
over
the
Blue
Ridge.
The
war had
begun
with
waving
unstained
flags
and
dreams
of
a picture-book
fight
which
would
concern
no
one
but
soldiers, who
would
die
picturesquely
and
without
bloodshed
amid dress-parade
firing
lines,
and
it
had
come
down
now
to
burning
barns,
weeping
children,
and
old
women
who
had
been hit
with
sabers.
In
the
only
way
that
was
left
to
it,
the war
was
coming
toward
its
close.
Phil
Sheridan
passed
the word,
and
his
scouts
laughed
and
went
trotting
off
to
spy
on the
Rebels
and
play
a
clever
game
with
the
threat
of
a greased
noose;
and
the
guerillas
met
in
dark
copses
on
the edge
of
the
army
and
rode
out
with
smoking
revolvers
to
loll the
cripples,
and
now
and
then
one
of
them
was
caught.