A Stillness at Appomattox (168 page)

So
Grant
figured
it,
at
any
rate.
⁷
Lee
may
have
reasoned in
the
same
way,
or
he
may
have
followed
nothing
more subtle
than
the
born
fighter's
refusal
to
quit
as
long
as
he
can stay
on
his
feet
and
lift
his
fists
waist
high.
In
any
case
he was
going
to
play
out
the
string,
and
if
the
Northern
generals did
not
watch
him
very
carefully
the
triumph
which
was
so near
might
drift
off
into
nothingness
like
battle
smoke
blown down
the
wind.
So
Lincoln,
Grant,
and
Sherman
were
taking counsel,
in
the
armies'
nerve
center
at
City
Point.

Yet
they
had
not
met
just
to
discuss
means
of
insuring victory.
They
had
held
the
war
firmly
in
their
hands
for nearly
a
year
now;
a
few
more
weeks
of
vigilance
and
driving energy
and
it
would
all
be
over.
They
were
thinking
not
so much
about
the
ending
of
the
war
as
about
the
new
beginning
that
must
lie
beyond
that.
They
were
almost
incredibly different,
these
three—Sherman
quick,
nervous,
and
volatile, Grant
stolid
and
unemotional
and
relentless,
Lincoln
ranging far
beyond
them
with
brooding
insights,
his
profound
melancholy
touched
by
mystic
inexplicable
flashes
of
light—but each
held
the
faith
that
the
whole
country,
North
and
South together,
must
ultimately
find
in
reunion
and
freedom
the values
that
would
justify
four
terrible
years
of
war.

The
discovery
of
those
values
would
by
no
means
be automatic.
Much
hatred
and
bitterness
existed,
and
there could
easily
develop
a
program
of
revenge
and
reprisal
that would
make
real
reunion
forever
impossible.
There
was
talk of
hangings
and
of
proscription
lists
and
of
conquered provinces.
There
were
powerful
leaders
in
the
North
who meant
to
see
these
threats
carried
out
in
all
their
literal grimness,
and
it
was
not
in
the
least
certain
that
they
could be
kept
from
having
their
way.
So
the
principal
order
of business
for
the
President
and
the
two
generals
was
not
so much
to
checkmate
the
Confederacy
as
to
checkmate
the men
who
would
try
to
make
peace
with
malice
and
rancor and
a
length
of
noosed
rope.

When
the
Southern
armies
surrendered
the
two
generals would
be
the
ones
to
say
what
the
terms
of
surrender
must be,
and
they
would
take
their
cue
from
Lincoln.
If
the
terms expressed
simple
human
decency
and
friendship,
it
might
be that
a
peace
of
reconciliation
could
get
just
enough
of
a
lead so
that
the
haters
could
never
quite
catch
up
with
it.
On
all of
this
Lincoln
and
Grant
and
Sherman
agreed.

It
was
a
curious
business,
in
a
way.
The
Confederacy
had no
more
effective
foes
than
these
men.
Lincoln
had
led
the North
into
war,
had
held
it
firmly
to
its
task,
and
had
refused to
hear
any
talk
of
peace
that
was
not
based
on
the
extinction of
the
Confederate
Government.
Grant
seemed
to
be
the
very incarnation
of
the
remorseless
killer,
and
Sherman
was
destruction's
own
self,
his
trail
across
the
South
a
band
of
ruin sixty
miles
wide.
Yet
it
was
these
three
who
were
most determined
that
vindictiveness
and
hatred
must
not
control the
future.
They
would
fight
without
mercy
as
long
as
there must
be
fighting,
but
when
the
fighting
stopped
they
would try
to
turn
old
enemies
into
friends.

They
spoke
for
the
soldiers.
The
Northern
and
Southern armies
had
less
bitterness
now
than
they
had
had
when
the war
began.
On
every
picket
line
the
cry
"Down
Yank!"
and "Down
Reb!"
always
preceded
an
outburst
of
firing.
A veteran
in
the
V
Corps
spoke
for
the
rank
and
file
when
he said
that
the
opposing
troops
in
front
of
Fort
Hell
"decided that
we
would
respect
one
another,
as
the
lines
at
this
point were
very
close
and
to
keep
up
constant
firing
would
make
it very
uncomfortable
for
one
or
the
other."
⁸
These
were
the men
who
climbed
on
the
ramparts
to
give
three
cheers
for peace,
and
then
gave
three
cheers
for
each
other,
and
then returned
to
their
fighting,
and
they
did
not
need
to
be
told that
it
would
be
well
to
make
peace
mean
comradeship.
All they
needed
was
to
see
somebody
try
it.