A Stillness at Appomattox (171 page)

The
rain
refused
to
stop.
Grant
moved
headquarters
from City
Point
out
to
a
waterlogged
field
near
Gravelly
Run, toward
the
left
end
of
the
line,
and
he
remembered
that
the ground
was
so
soggy
that
a
horse
or
mule,
standing
quite motionless,
would
suddenly
begin
to
sink
out
of
sight
and would
have
to
be
pulled
out
by
a
squad
of
soldiers.
Men
asked
each
other
when
the
gunboats
were
going
to
come
u
p
and
suggested
that
what
the
army
needed
now
was
Noah rather
than
Grant.
The
top
echelons
in
the
Army
of
the Potomac,
remembering
an
occasion
near
Fredericksburg when
the
army
had
got
hopelessly
stuck
in
the
mud,
urged Grant
to
call
everything
off,
get
everybody
back
to
camp, and
start
again
a
week
or
two
later
when
the
ground
was drier.
Grant
himself
seems
to
have
wavered,
for
a
time.
First he
told
Sheridan
to
forget
about
the
railroads
and
smash straight
for
Lee's
flank
and
rear;
then
he
sent
another
mes
sage
suggesting
that
all
forward
movement
be
suspended until
the
weather
improved.
¹⁶

When
he
got
this
last
letter
Sheridan
rode
over
to
Grant's headquarters.
The
rain
was
still
coming
down
and
the
mud was
so
deep
that
even
Sheridan's
horse
could
manage
nothing better
than
a
walk,
sinking
to
his
knees
at
every
step,
but Sheridan
was
all
for
action.
To
Grant's
staff
he
expounded
on the
iniquity
of
delay—now
was
the
time
to
move,
Rebel cavalry
could
be
knocked
out
of
the
way
any
time
the commanding
general
pleased,
and
if
Lee
sent
infantry
out he
was
writing
his
own
doom.
Sheridan
tramped
back
and forth
in
the
mud
and
rain,
striking
his
hands
together.
An officer
asked
how
he
would
get
forage
for
his
13,000
horses
if the
roads
remained
impassable.

"Forage?"
echoed
Sheridan.
"I
’
ll
get
all
the
forage
I
want, I'll
haul
it
out
if
I
have
to
set
every
man
in
the
command
to corduroying
roads,
and
corduroy
every
mile
of
them
from
the railroad
to
Dinwiddie.
I
tell
you
I'm
ready
to
strike
out tomorrow
and
go
to
smashing
things."

Staff
suggested
that
Grant
liked
to
hear
that
sort
of
talk, partly
because
it
was
so
different
from
anything
he
ever
got from
top
generals
in
the
Army
of
the
Potomac,
and
urged

Sheridan
to
go
speak
his
piece
to
the
lieutenant
general. Sheridan
demurred:
Grant
hadn't
asked
him
to
come
over,
he was
just
sounding
off
to
relieve
his
mind.
A
staff
officer,
however,
slipped
into
Grant's
tent
and
suggested
that
it
would be
good
for
him
to
talk
to
his
cavalry
commander,
and
in another
moment
Sheridan
was
repeating
his
little
speech
to Grant,
strongly
backed
by
impetuous
Chief
of
Staff
John Rawlins,
with
his
pale
cheeks
and
feverish
burning
eyes.

Grant
made
up
his
mind:
the
move
would
go
on,
bad
roads or
no
bad
roads,
and
it
would
not
stop
until
there
had
been a
final
showdown.
Long
afterward
he
confessed
that
he
believed
the
country
to
be
so
desperately
tired
of
the
war
that unless
the
move
to
the
left
was
a
complete
victory
it
would be
interpreted
as
a
disastrous
failure.
¹⁷

On
March
31,
therefore,
with
rain
still
falling
and
the country
looking
like
the
bottom
of
a
millpond,
the
advance was
resumed.
Sheridan
still
had
Custer's
division
at
work behind
Dinwiddie,
fixing
the
bottomless
road
so
that
forage and
provisions
could
be
brought
in,
and
he
was
holding
most of
a
second
division
at
Dinwiddie;
and
he
sent
the
rest
of the
men
marching
north,
and
at
a
lonely
country
crossroads known
as
Five
Forks
they
ran
into
the
Rebels
in
strength.

Five
Forks
was
nowhere
at
all,
but
it
was
important
because
it
was
where
the
road
from
Dinwiddie
Court
House
to the
Southside
Railroad
crossed
the
east-and-west
road
that led
to
Lee's
right
flank
and
rear.
Lee's
army
could
not
stay
in Petersburg
if
the
Yankees
held
this
crossroads,
and
so
Lee had
scraped
his
last
reserves
to
make
a
fight
for
the
place. Dug
in
behind
temporary
breastworks
were
five
brigades
of infantry
under
the
legendary
George
Pickett.
With
the
infantry
was
practically
all
of
Lee's
cavalry.