A Stillness at Appomattox (21 page)

It
was
becoming
increasingly
obvious
that
this
was
no
rear guard
the
Federals
were
fighting.
(As
a
matter
of
fact,
it was
Confederate
General
Ewell’
s
whole
army
corps:
far
from looking
for
a
battleground
to
the
south,
Lee
was
making
his fight
right
here,
and
if
the
Federals
got
one
foot
of
Wilderness
ground
they
were
going
to
have
to
pay
for
it.)
One
of Sedgwick's
divisions
went
stumbling
up
a
cow
track
in
the woods,
and
at
what
seemed
to
be
a
suitable
place
the
men tried
to
form
a
proper
battle
line
and
go
on
to
close
quarters. But
the
trees
and
the
undergrowth
were
too
thick.
A
battle line
could
not
advance,
could
not
even
be
formed,
and
at last
the
separate
regiments
went
blindly
forward
in
column, giving
up
the
formation
in
which
they
could
fight
for
a
formation
in
which
they
could
at
least
move.
They
reached
ground that
had
been
fought
over,
and
around
them
was
the
pungent smoke
of
a
forest
fire,
and
they
plowed
through
burnt-over spaces
where
their
feet
kicked
sparks
and
smoke
puffs
out of
the
matted
ground.
Dead
men
lay
in
these
cinders,
their bodies
charred
and
partly
consumed,
and
a
fearful
stench
lay in
the
air.
¹⁶

There
was
no
enemy
to
be
seen
anywhere.
A
brigadier made
his
way
to
his
division
commander
and
asked
where he
should
put
his
men.
"Move,"
said
the
commander
grandly, "to
the
sound
of
the
heaviest
firing."
This
was
no
help
at
all, because
as
far
as
the
brigadier
could
tell
the
firing
came from
everywhere,
and
the
only
way
to
find
the
Rebel
battle line
was
to
blunder
into
it.
The
smoke
became
heavier
and heavier
as
the
men
advanced,
and
the
sound
of
rifle
fire and
shouting
men
and
crackling
flames
grew
louder,
and
the bullets
came
faster
and
more
deadly.
A
Wisconsin
soldier wrote
that
the
men
in
his
regiment,
quite
unable
to
see
where they
were
going
or
whom
they
were
shooting
at,
simply
knelt in
the
twilight
and
"fired
by
earsight."

There
was
a
high
wind,
and
it
whipped
the
little
flames in
the
underbrush
into
big
flames,
and
its
roar
in
the
treetops mingled
with
the
roar
of
battle
as
if
some
unimaginable tempest
were
lashing
this
dark
forest.
Men
who
fought
were aware
that
all
about
them
wounded
men
were
pathetically trying
to
drag
themselves
along
the
ground
away
from
the fires.

In
one
place
the
soldiers
came
to
a
swampy
ravine,
all
overgrown
with
scrub
pines.
The
ravine
was
not
a
hundred
yards wide,
but
the
farther
bank
was
completely
invisible.
There were
Rebels
there
in
plenty,
as
the
men
could
easily
tell; some
of
them
were
shooting,
and
others
were
using
axes
to cut
trees
for
breastworks,
and
the
wild
racket
told
just
what was
going
on,
but
from
first
to
last
there
was
no
one
to
be seen.
So
the
men
of
the
VI
Corps
piled
up
logs
and
scooped up
earth
for
breastworks
of
their
own
and
hung
on
in
the twilight,
trading
death
with
enemies
they
never
saw,
and
at times
the
noise
of
musketry
all
about
them
swelled
up
to
a clamor
such
as
they
had
never
heard
before
in
any
of
their battles.
There
was
no
sound
of
artillery,
because
guns
could not
be
advanced
or
fired
in
this
jungle—Griffin
had
long
since lost
the
two
guns
he
had
pushed
along
the
open
Turnpike— but
thousands
upon
thousands
of
men
were
firing
their
muskets
as
fast
as
they
could
load,
until
the
whole
Wilderness seemed
to
throb
with
the
endless
concussion.
¹⁷

These
VI
Corps
men
were
coming
up
on
the
north
side
of the
Turnpike.
South
of
it,
Warren
was
hurrying
about
through the
woods,
trying
to
get
his
other
divisions
up
on
Griffin's left.
Grant
was
still
sitting
on
his
stump
on
the
little
knoll behind
the
lines,
but
his
staff
officers
were
ranging
far
and fast
through
the
tangle,
and
the
orders
they
carried
were infusing
something
of
the
bearded
little
general's
relentless drive
all
down
the
army's
chain
of
command.
Nobody
had planned
to
fight
here
but
here
was
where
the
fight
was,
and if
in
the
past
the
Army
of
the
Potomac
had
never
quite
managed
to
get
all
of
its
men
into
action
that
fault
was
not
going to
be
repeated
now.