A Stillness at Appomattox (174 page)

Sheridan
was
furious.
He
met
the
head
of
the
infantry column
in
a
gray
dawn
as
the
men
came
splashing
up
to
the rendezvous,
and
he
demanded
of
the
brigadier
commanding: "Where's
Warren?"
The
brigadier
explained
that
Warren was
back
with
the
rear
of
the
column,
and
Sheridan
growled: "That's
where
I
expected
to
find
him.
What's
he
doing
there?" The
officer
tried
to
explain
that
Warren
was
trying
to
make sure
that
his
men
could
break
contact
with
the
Confederates without
drawing
an
attack,
but
Sheridan
was
not
appeased. Later,
when
Warren
arrived,
the
two
generals
were
seen tramping
up
and
down
by
the
roadside,
Sheridan
dark
and tense,
stamping
angrily
in
the
mud,
Warren
pale
and
tight-lipped,
apparently
trying
to
control
himself.
⁸

Wherever
the
fault
lay,
the
early-morning
attack
that
had been
planned
could
not
be
made.
It
was
noon
before
the V
Corps
was
assembled,
and
by
that
time
the
Confederates were
gone.
During
the
night
Pickett
had
got
wind
of
the Yankee
move,
and
around
daybreak
he
took
his
entire
force back
to
the
breastworks
at
Five
Forks.

These
works
ran
for
a
mile
or
more
along
the
edge
of
the White
Oak
Road,
and
they
faced
toward
the
south.
At their
eastern
end,
for
flank
protection,
the
line
made
nearly a
right-angle
turn
and
ran
north
for
a
few
hundred
yards. With
his
men
in
and
behind
these
works,
and
cavalry
patrolling
both
flanks,
Pickett
seems
to
have
taken
it
for
granted that
he
was
safe
from
assault
for
the
rest
of
the
day.
With a
few
other
ranking
officers
he
retired
to
a
campfire
some distance
in
the
rear
to
enjoy
the
pleasures
of
a
shad
bake.

As
far
as
Sheridan
was
concerned,
however,
Pickett
was
in as
much
danger
as
he
had
been
in
before.
There
was
still
a wide
gap
between
his
force
and
the
rest
of
Lee's
army,
with only
the
thinnest
chain
of
cavalry
vedettes
to
maintain
contact,
and
in
that
gap
Sheridan
could
see
a
dazzling
opportunity.
He
had
his
cavalry
maintaining
pressure
along
Pickett's front,
and
he
had
a
whole
mounted
division
waiting
in
reserve,
ready
to
go
slashing
in
around
the
Confederate
right at
the
proper
time.
If,
while
the
cavalry
held
the
Southerners' attention,
he
could
drive
16,000
good
infantrymen
into
th
e open
gap
and
bring
their
entire
weight
to
bear
on
Pickett's left
flank,
just
where
the
Rebel
breastworks
angled
back toward
the
north,
the
war
would
be
a
good
deal
nearer
its close
by
nightfall.

The
16,000
good
infantrymen
were
at
hand,
and
a
comparatively
short
walk
would
put
them
into
position.
They were
dog-tired.
They
had
fought
all
of
the
day
before,
and they
had
spent
practically
all
of
the
night
and
morning
on the
march,
and
while
Sheridan
and
Warren
discussed
battle plans
they
were
catching
forty
winks
in
some
fields
near
a little
country
church.
When
Warren
at
last
came
over
to move
them
up
to
the
jump-off
line
they
were
sluggish,
and getting
them
formed
was
slow
work,
and
it
seemed
to
Sheridan —watching
the
afternoon
sun
get
lower
in
the
sky,
and
reflecting
that
the
whole
situation
might
be
very
different
by tomorrow
morning—that
Warren
was
not
doing
much
to
make things
go
faster.
⁴
But
the
men
would
fight
well
when
the time
came,
because
they
considered
themselves
a
crack
outfit and
they
had
a
great
tradition.

The
V
Corps
was
one
of
the
famous
units
of
the
whole Federal
Army.
Fitz-John
Porter
had
commanded
it,
and
it had
been
McCl
ellan's
favorite
corps,
and
in
general
orders he
had
held
it
up
as
a
model
for
the
other
corps
to
emulate, which
caused
jealousies
that
had
not
entirely
worn
away
even yet.
(It
caused
War
Department
suspicions,
too,
and
promotion
for
higher
officers
in
this
corps
was
harder
to
get,
it
was said,
than
in
the
rest
of
the
Army
of
the
Potomac.)
The corps
had
been
built
around
a
famous
division
of
Regulars, and
in
the
beginning
all
of
its
ranking
officers
had
been
Regulars,
mostly
of
the
stiff,
old-army,
knock-'em-dead
variety.
Its discipline
tended
to
be
severe,
there
was
strict
observance
of military
formalities,
and
the
Regular
Army
flavor
endured, even
though
many
of
the
old
officers
and
all
of
the
Regular battalions
had
disappeared.
⁵