A Stillness at Appomattox (162 page)

To
a
man
in
the
Iron
Brigade,
this
raid
was
"the
most
vindictive
that
the
army
ever
engaged
in."
He
said
the
men
had been
infuriated
by
the
work
of
the
guerillas,
but
he
admitted that
"the
destruction
of
the
houses
of
peaceable
women
and children,
though
venomous
in
their
Union
hatred,
cannot
be justified,"
and
he
added
proudly
that
"the
Iron
Brigade
had no
share
in
the
vandalism."
¹⁸

The
year
drew
to
an
end:
1864,
the
year
of
the
Wilderness and
the
Bloody
Angle,
of
Cold
Harbor
and
the
Crater;
the year
that
killed
John
Sedgwick
and
saw
Abraham
Lincoln under
fire;
the
terrible
year
when
war
became
total;
the
year of
U.
S.
Grant.
In
the
Shenandoah
Valley
snow
drifted
over black
ruins,
and
what
was
left
of
Early's
army
huddled
in
a winter
camp
near
Waynesboro,
and
Sheridan
sent
the
VI Corps
back
to
Petersburg.
The
people
of
the
North
put
on
a big
campaign
to
give
the
soldiers
a
good
Christmas
dinner, and
boxes
and
barrels
of
turkeys,
doughnuts,
mince
pies,
and cakes
came
down
to
City
Point.
The
men
in
the
huge
hospital got
an
especially
lavish
turkey
dinner,
and
a
nurse
reflected afterward
that
"there
is
not
a
class
of
persons
in
the
world more
cheerful
than
a
ward
full
of
wounded
who
are
doing well."
New
Year's
Day
came
in
clear
and
cold,
and
below
Fort
Hell
details
went
out
to
cut
firewood
from
a
stand
of timber
between
the
lines.
They
found
Rebel
details
out
on the
same
mission,
and
the
woodsmen
declared
a
truce,
had
a chat,
and
then
pitched
in
together
and
cut
wood
until
dusk, at
which
time
they
made
a
fair
division
of
the
firewood
and went
back
to
their
respective
lines.
¹⁷

There
was
a
severe
winter
that
year,
and
life
in
the trenches
was
even
less
comfortable
than
usual.
Army
headquarters
frowned
upon
idleness,
and
there
were
drills
and work
details
for
everybody,
with
brigade
dress
parades
every afternoon
for
all
except
those
actually
on
the
firing
line.
Orders
came
through
to
comb
out
the
non-combat
details
and get
men
back
into
combat
roles,
and
a
clerk
in
V
Corps
headquarters
estimated
that
this
would
add
fully
6,000
men
to the
army's
combat
strength.
Discipline
became
sharper. Bounty-jumpers,
draftees,
and
substitutes
were
going
to
be made
soldiers
in
spite
of
themselves,
and
a
special
court
was set
up
at
City
Point
to
give
speedy
trials
to
deserters.
It hanged
seven
men
in
one
day.

The
army
began
to
get
back
some
of
its
old-timers.
Some were
men
who
had
been
wounded,
earlier,
recovered
now and
returning
to
their
old
regiments
for
duty.
Others
were men
who
had
been
mustered
out
when
their
enlistments
expired,
who
had
joined
up
again
and
were
coming
down
to the
front.
Some
of
the
new,
high-number
regiments
were
almost
entirely
made
up
of
such
veterans.
These
regiments would
be
as
good
as
any
the
army
ever
had.
¹⁸

Two
generals
the
army
had
lost—two
who
had
done
much, for
better
or
for
worse,
to
shape
its
fate.
One
was
Winfield Scott
Hancock,
still
plagued
by
his
Gettysburg
wound,
gone north
now
with
some
vague
mission
to
recruit
a
new
corps of
time-expired
veterans
and
bring
it
to
the
upper
Shenandoah
Valley;
a
mission
that
somehow
never
came
to
much, and
Hancock
was
out
of
the
war.
He
had
not
been
himself for
months,
had
never
really
been
the
same
since
Gettysburg, but
he
had
been
one
of
the
men
who
gave
spirit
and
color to
the
army
and
he
had
been
in
the
middle
of
its
most
desperate
fights.
The
army
would
not
be
the
same,
without
Hancock.
In
his
place
at
the
head
of
the
II
Corps
went
Andrew
A.
Humphreys,
Meade's
chief
of
staff,
a
hard
fighter
and the
sternest
of
disciplinarians.

The
other
loss
was
sheer
gain.
Ben
Butler
had
gone
home, and
although
technically
he
had
never
belonged
to
the
Army of
the
Potomac,
it
had
had
to
pay
for
a
number
of
his
mistakes.
In
December,
Army
and
Navy
had
mounted
a
big
expedition
to
take
Fort
Fisher
in
North
Carolina,
the
last
seaport
open
to
the
Confederacy,
and
since
the
operation
fell
in his
department
Butler
had
elected
himself
commander
of
it. He
had
planned
to
destroy
the
fort
by
exploding
a
ship
filled with
powder
as
close
to
the
ramparts
as
possible;
did
explode it,
at
dead
of
night,
damaging
the
fort
not
at
all,
making
in fact
so
little
impression
that
the
defenders
vaguely
supposed a
Yankee
boiler
had
burst.
Butler
then
got
troops
ashore, grew
discouraged,
ordered
them
aboard
ship
again,
and sailed
away
reporting
that
the
fort
could
not
be
taken.