A Stillness at Appomattox (18 page)

It
was
the
last
night
for
many
young
men—the
last
night, in
a
sense,
for
the
old
Army
of
the
Potomac,
which
had tramped
down
many
roads
of
war
and
which
at
last
was coming
up
against
something
new.
The
men
were
bivouacked on
the
sharp
edge
of
a
dividing
line
in
the
war,
and
it
appears
that
somehow
they
sensed
it.
After
tonight,
everything was
going
to
be
different.
The
marching
and
the
fighting
were going
to
be
different,
and
the
comradeship
around
the
camp-fires
was
going
to
be
thinned
out
and
changed,
and
nothing they
had
learned
was
going
to
help
very
much
in
the
experience
that
lay
just
beyond
the
invisible
treetops,
where
a
wind made
a
stir
and
rustle
in
the
branches.

In
a
New
York
regiment,
in
Warren's
corps,
it
was
remembered
that
the
ordinary
songs
and
campfire
chat
were
missing,
and
the
men
were
uneasy.
They
felt
that
they
were
far down
in
the
enemy's
country,
and
this
dank
Wilderness
did not
seem
a
good
place
to
be,
and
they
carried
"a
sense
of ominous
dread
which
many
of
us
found
it
almost
impossible to
shake
off."
In
one
of
the
cavalry
regiments
the
chaplain brought
a
group
together
for
divine
service,
and
he
read
a text
about
buckling
on
the
whole
armor
of
God
and
urged the
men
to
"be
prepared
to
stand
an
inspection
before
the King
of
Kings,"
and
the
usually
irreverent
troopers
listened in
silence,
standing
with
firelight
flickering
on
brown
young faces,
and
some
of
them
wept.
⁷

In
Hancock's
artillery
park
the
gunners
found
many
un-buried
skeletons
from
last
year's
fight,
and
the
old-timers recalled
the
horror
of
that
fight,
where
men
with
broken backs
or
shattered
thighs
lay
in
the
underbrush
and
watched the
flames
that
were
going
to
burn
them
alive
creep
closer and
closer.
One
man
predicted
that
"these
woods
will
surely be
burned
if
we
fight
here,"
and
others
said
that
they
did not
fear
being
killed
nearly
as
much
as
they
feared
being wounded
and
left
helpless
for
the
forest
fires.
A
soldier
stood by
a
campfire
and
abstractedly
prodded
a
grinning
whitened skull
with
his
toe:
moved
by
a
gloomy
impulse,
he
turned
to his
comrades
and
cried:
"This
is
what
you
are
all
coming to,
and
some
of
you
will
start
toward
it
tomorrow."
Off
in the
woods
the
whippoorwills
began
their
remote
mournful whistling,
and
near
Wilderness
Tavern
pickets
in
the
dark wood
could
hear
a
dull
featureless
rumbling
far
away
to
the west
and
they
knew
that
somewhere
in
the
night
the
Rebels were
moving
in
great
strength.
⁸

Morning
came
in
clear,
with
a
promise
of
warmth
later
in the
day,
and
the
army
began
to
move
before
sunrise.
Warren's
corps
was
to
go
south,
sidling
toward
the
west
as
it went,
with
Sedgwick's
men
following
close
behind
and
Hancock's
corps
swinging
around
farther
to
the
left,
and
the troops
got
under
way
promptly.
As
they
moved,
Warren
sent one
division
west
on
the
Turnpike,
just
to
make
certain
the flank
was
protected,
and
the
colonel
who
had
the
advanced skirmish
line
in
this
division
rode
to
the
top
of
a
rise
and looked
westward.
The
roadway
here
was
like
an
open
glade pointing
straight
toward
Lee's
army,
its
dusty
white
floor lying
empty
in
the
dawn,
shadowy
woods
on
either
side; and
far
down
this
avenue
the
colonel
dimly
saw
a
column of
moving
troops,
with
men
filing
off
into
the
forest
to
right and
left,
and
he
sent
a
courier
hustling
back
to
his
division commander
with
the
message:
Rebels
coming
this
way
I
⁹

His
division
commander
was
Brigadier
General
Charles Griffin,
a
lean
man
with
a
big
walrus
mustache
and
a
knack of
exuding
parade-ground
smartness
even
when
he
was
unbuttoned
and
dirty:
an
old-time
Regular
Army
artillerist and,
like
many
such,
a
hard
case.
His
troops
liked
him
very much—once
when
he
came
back
from
sick
leave
the
men pulled
him
off
his
horse
and
carried
him
to
his
tent
on
their shoulders,
which
did
not
often
happen
to
generals—and
he had
very
advanced
notions
about
getting
his
guns
well
to the
front
in
battle.
It
was
said
that
in
one
fight
a
battery commander
whom
he
was
sending
forward
looked
at
the approaching
enemy
and
protested:
"My
God,
General,
do you
mean
for
me
to
put
my
guns
out
on
the
skirmish
line?" To
which
Griffin
answered
impatiently:
"Yes,
rush
them
in there—artillery
is
no
better
than
infantry;
put
them
in
the line
and
let
them
fight
together."
¹⁰
So
this
morning,
with Rebel
skirmishers
approaching,
Griffin
pulled
a
section
of guns
out
of
the
nearest
battery
and
sent
it
rolling
west
on the
Turnpike
to
support
his
own
skirmishers.
He
had
the rest
of
his
division
form
a
line
of
battle
astride
the
Turnpike, and
when
the
line
was
formed
he
ordered
it
to
advance.
If the
Confederates
wanted
to
start
something
here
he
would find
out
about
it
soon
enough.