A Stillness at Appomattox (141 page)

It
happened
so
with
a
group
of
Sheridan's
scouts,
who captured
a
Captain
Stump,
famous
as
a
Rebel
raider,
a
man they
had
long
been
seeking.
He
had
been
wounded,
and when
he
was
caught
they
took
his
weapons
away
and
brought him
to
Major
Young,
who
commanded
the
scouts,
and
Major Young
had
a
certain
respect
for
this
daring
guerilla,
so
he told
him.

"I
suppose
you
know
we
will
kill
you.
But
we
will
not
serve you
as
you
have
served
our
men—cut
your
throat
or
hang
you. We
will
give
you
a
chance
for
your
life.
We
will
give
you ten
rods'
start
on
your
own
horse,
with
your
spurs
on.
If
you get
away,
all
right
„
.
·
But
remember,
my
men
are
dead shots."

Captain
Stump
was
bloody
and
he
had
been
hurt,
but
he was
all
man.
He
smiled,
and
nodded,
and
rode
a
few
feet
out in
front
of
the
rank
of
his
captors—skinny
young
men,
130 pounds
or
less,
unmarried,
the
pick
of
the
Yankee
cavalry. Major
Young
looked
down
the
rank,
and
called
out;
"Go!
"

A
cavalryman
wrote
about
it
afterward:

"We
allowed
him
about
ten
rods'
start,
then
our
pistols cracked
and
he
fell
forward,
dead,"
²⁶

3.
On the Upgrade

From
the
Shenandoah
Valley
to
Chicago
it
is
perhaps
500 miles,
as
one
of
General
Grant's
unrationed
crows
might
fly, and
the
binding
threads
of
war
spanned
these
miles
and
tied valley
and
city
together
in
an
invisible
bond.

In
the
Valley,
as
August
came
to
an
end,
the
winds
from the
mountains
carried
away
the
last
of
the
smudge
from charred
barns
and
hayricks,
and
whether
or
not
anybody could
see
it
those
winds
came
from
the
hour
just
before
sunrise
and
there
was
a
promise
in
them.
In
Chicago,
the
hour looked
like
the
spectral
twilight
of
collapse
and
defeat,
and the
passenger
trains
were
unloading
a
large
assortment
of people
who
were
prepared
to
stake
a
good
deal
on
the
belief that
the
great
Union
of
the
States
was
dying.

With
that
belief
Abraham
Lincoln
himself
felt
a
certain agreement.
On
August
23
he
had
somewhat
mysteriously asked
members
of
his
cabinet
to
sign
a
curiously
folded paper,
which
he
then
tucked
away
in
his
desk.
None
of
the men
who
signed
knew
what
was
in
the
paper.
If
they
had known
they
would
have
gabbled
and
popped
their
eyes,
for in
Lincoln's
handwriting
it
contained
this
statement:

"This
morning,
as
for
some
days
past,
it
seems
exceedingly probable
that
this
administration
will
not
be
re-elected.
Then it
will
be
my
duty
to
so
co-operate
with
the
President-elect as
to
save
the
Union
between
the
election
and
the
inauguration;
as
he
will
have
secured
his
election
on
such
ground
that he
cannot
possibly
save
it
afterward."

A
pessimistic
appraisal,
which
since
then
has
often
been considered
far
too
gloomy,
hindsight
having
made
clear many
things
not
then
apparent.
But
men
in
wartime
have
to operate
without
benefit
of
the
backward
glance,
and
in
the summer
of
1864
the
war
looked
very
much
like
a
stalemate. Many
men
had
died
and
there
was
much
weariness,
and
as far
as
anyone
could
see
the
people
had
had
about
enough-** of
the
Administration
and
of
the
Administration's
war.

Lincoln
was
not
the
only
pessimist.
Horace
Greeley,
whose progress
through
the
war
years
was
a
dizzy
succession
of swings
from
fatuous
optimism
to
profoundest
gloom,
had recently
written:
"Mr.
Lincoln
is
already
beaten.
He
cannot be
re-elected."
His
pink
cherubic
face
fringed
by
delicate light
hair
which
always
seemed
to
be
ruffled
by
a
faint
breeze from
never-never
land,
Greeley
spoke
for
many
Republican stalwarts
when
he
wistfully
hoped
that
Lincoln
might
somehow
be
replaced
on
the
party
ticket
by
Grant,
or
Butler,
or Sherman.
In
such
case,
mused
Greeley,
"we
could
make
a
fight yet."
With
other
prominent
Republicans,
Greeley
had
been working
on
a
scheme
to
hold
a
national
convention
of
radical Republicans
at
the
end
of
September,
so
as
to
concentrate support
"on
some
candidate
who
commands
the
confidence
of the
country,
even
by
a
new
nomination
if
necessary."
¹

What
was
worrying
Lincoln,
of
course,
was
not
so
much the
prospect
of
his
own
defeat
as
the
conviction
that
this defeat
would
mean
loss
of
the
war.
In
this
judgment
he
may or
may
not
have
been
correct.
It
is
perhaps
worthy
of
notice that
one
man
who
was
very
well
qualified
to
form
an
expert opinion
on
the
matter
agreed
with
him
thoroughly.
When a
visitor
from
Washington
told
General
Grant
that
there
was talk
of
running
him
for
the
presidency,
Grant
hit
the
arms of
his
camp
chair
with
clenched
fists
and
growled:
"They can't
do
it!
They
can't
compel
me
to
do
it!"
Then
he
went
on to
show
how
Lincoln's
leadership
looked
from
the
special vantage
point
of
the
commanding
general's
tent
at
City
Point: "I
consider
it
as
important
to
the
cause
that
he
should
be elected
as
that
the
army
should
be
successful
in
the
field."
²