A Stillness at Appomattox (175 page)

This
was
the
corps
which
Sheridan
now
was
preparing
to use
as
his
striking
force.
When
Grant
first
sent
the
corps
out to
operate
on
Lee's
flank,
he
did
two
curious
things.
He
detached
it
from
Meade's
command
and
put
it
entirely
under Sheridan,
promising
to
do
the
same
with
the
II
Corps
if Sheridan
needed
it—which
was
a
bit
odd,
considering
that
Sheridan
was
simply
the
cavalry
commander,
while
Meade commanded
the
Army
of
the
Potomac—and
he
specifically authorized
Sheridan
to
relieve
Warren
of
his
command,
if it
seemed
necessary,
and
to
put
someone
else
in
his
place.
⁶

Grant's
subsequent
explanation
of
these
acts
was
brief and
vague,
but
what
he
was
actually
trying
to
do
was
to find
a
solution
for
the
old,
baffling
command
problem
that had
beset
the
Army
of
the
Potomac
from
its
earliest
days.

Time
and
again
the
Army
of
the
Potomac
had
missed
a victory
because
someone
did
not
move
quite
fast
enough,
or failed
to
put
all
of
his
weight
into
a
blow,
or
came
into
action other
than
precisely
as
he
was
expected
to
do.
This
had happened
before
Grant
became
general
in
chief
and
it
had happened
since
then,
and
the
fact
that
Warren
had
been involved
in
a
few
such
incidents
was
not
especially
important. What
Grant
was
really
shooting
at
was
the
sluggishness
and caution
that
were
forever
cropping
out,
at
some
critical moment,
somewhere
in
the
army's
chain
of
command.
With the
decisive
moment
of
the
war
coming
up
Grant
was
going to
have
no
more
of
that.
Instinctively,
he
was
turning
to Sheridan,
Sheridan
the
driver—giving
him
as
much
of
the army
as
he
needed
and
in
effect
telling
him
to
take
it
and be
tough
with
it.

Sheridan
was
the
man
for
it.
As
Warren's
brigades
strug
gled
into
position
Sheridan
was
everywhere,
needling
the laggards,
pricking
the
general
officers
on,
sending
his
staff galloping
from
end
to
end
of
the
line.
He
rounded
up
the cavalry
bands,
which
had
made
music
on
the
firing
line
the evening
before,
and
he
put
them
on
horseback
with
orders to
go
into
action
along
with
the
fighting
men
when
the advance
sounded.
It
was
four
o'clock
by
now,
and
there would
not
be
a
great
deal
more
daylight,
and
at
last
the infantry
began
to
move.
Sheridan
spurred
away
to
send
the cavalry
forward
too.
There
was
the
peal
of
many
bugles
and then
a
great
crash
of
musketry,
and
thousands
of
men
broke into
a
cheer,
and
the
battle
was
on.

A
skirmisher
trotting
forward
a
few
hundred
yards
ahead of
the
V
Corps
turned
once
to
look
back,
and
he
saw
what neither
he
nor
any
of
his
mates
had
seen
in
a
dreary
year
of wilderness
fighting
and
trench
warfare,
and
he
remembered it
as
the
most
stirring
thing
he
had
ever
looked
upon
in
all of
his
life.
There
th
ey
were,
coming
up
behind
him
as
if
all the
power
of
a
nation
had
been
put
into
one
disciplined
mass —the
fighting
men
of
the
V
Corps,
walking
forward
in
battle lines
that
were
a
mile
wide
and
many
ranks
deep,
sunlight glinting
on
thousands
of
bright
muskets,
flags
snapping
in
the breeze,
brigade
fronts
taut
with
parade-ground
Regular
Army precision,
everybody
keeping
step,
tramping
forward
into battle
to
the
sound
of
gunfire
and
distant
music.
To
see
this, wrote
the
skirmisher,
was
to
see
and
to
know
"the
grandeur and
the
sublimity
of
war."
⁷

It
was
grand
and
inspiring—and,
unfortunately,
there
was a
hitch
in
it.

Warren
was
sending
his
men
in
with
two
divisions
abreast and
a
third
division
following
in
support,
and
by
some
mischance
he
was
hitting
the
White
Oak
Road
far
to
the
east of
the
place
where
he
was
supposed
to
hit
it.
Instead
of coming
in
on
the
knuckle
of
Pickett's
line,
he
was
coming
in on
nothing
at
all.
His
men
were
marching
resolutely
toward the
north
and
the
battle
was
going
on
somewhere
to
the west,
out
of
their
sight
and
reach.

The
left
division
in
the
first
line
was
commanded
by General
Ayres,
a
hard-bitten
survivor
of
the
original
old-army set
of
officers,
and
the
left
of
his
division
brushed
against
the left
flank
of
Pickett's
force
and
came
under
a
sharp
fire.
Ayres spun
the
whole
division
around,
brigade
by
brigade,
making almost
a
90-degree
turn
to
the
left—hot
enough
work
it
was, too,
with
Rebel
infantry
and
cavalry
firing
steadily
and
the ground
all
broken—and
as
he
turned
the
rest
of
the
corps lost
contact
with
him.
The
division
that
had
been
advancing beside
him
was
led
by
General
Crawford,
who
fell
a
good deal
short
of
being
one
of
the
most
skillful
soldiers
in
the army,
and
Crawford
kept
marching
to
the
north,
getting farther
away
from
the
battle
every
minute.
Most
of
the
third division
followed
Crawford,
Ayres's
men
were
for
the
moment so
entangled
in
their
maneuver
that
they
could
not
do
much fighting—and,
in
sum,
instead
of
crunching
in
on
the
Rebel flank
with
overpowering
force,
the
V
Corps
was
hardly
doing more
than
giving
it
a
brisk
nudge.
⁸