A Stillness at Appomattox (33 page)

As
so
often
happened,
the
Confederates
had
found
a
soft spot.
The
Union
flank
here
was
held
by
Sedgwick's
3rd
Division,
two
brigades
which
had
not
been
with
the
VI
Corps very
long.
Their
earlier
experience
had
mostly
been
in
the Shenandoah
Valley
under
the
command
of
a
flamboyant
and remarkably
inefficient
general
named
Milroy,
who
had
led them
to
a
number
of
defeats.
The
rest
of
the
corps
dubbed them
"Milroy's
weary
boys,"
and
considered
them
something less
than
full-fledged
members
of
the
club.

They
had
been
posted
in
the
woods
facing
west,
with
several
miles
of
unoccupied
country
between
the
end
of
their
line and
the
Rapidan
River,
and
during
the
day
Sedgwick
had worried
about
them.
He
had
sent
a
cavalry
regiment
over
to keep
an
eye
on
the
flank—a
regiment
of
recruits,
unfortunately, which
failed
to
do
its
job—and
a
bit
later
he
had
a
staff
officer
go
on
a
long
scout
to
make
sure
that
the
Rebels
were
not up
to
anything
sinister.
Everything
had
been
quiet
at
the time,
but
now
at
dusk
the
Confederates
broke
these
two
luckless
brigades
into
splinters,
and
throngs
of
disorganized
excited
men
went
rushing
through
the
thickets
past
Sedgwick's headquarters.

Sedgwick
was
on
his
horse
at
once,
galloping
over
to
the scene
of
the
disaster,
and
he
sent
his
staff
flying
along
the dark
woods
trails
to
bring
up
reinforcements.
The
men
who had
run
away
kept
on
running,
and
before
long
they
were scudding
back
past
army
headquarters,
bearing
wild
tales
of ruin
and
collapse,
while
a
mighty
sound
of
musketry
and cheering
went
up
from
the
woods
to
the
north.
²⁰

The
news
that
came
to
Grant
and
Meade
had
an
alarming sound.
Sedgwick
held
the
army's
extreme
right,
and
if
the Confederates
once
broke
his
line
and
got
well
around
it
the whole
army
was
cut
off
and
utter
disaster
might
be
in
the cards.
A
couple
of
Sedgwick's
brigadiers
who
tried
to
rally the
defeated
troops
were
captured,
as
were
several
hundred of
Milroy's
weary
boys,
and
at
one
time
Grant
and
Meade were
told
that
Sedgwick
himself
had
been
captured
and
that his
whole
corps
had
gone
to
pieces.
Various
officers
from
the beaten
brigades,
their
nerve
wholly
gone,
had
wild
tales
to tell,
but
Grant
and
Meade
seemed
quite
unshaken.

Meade
was
coldly
furious
with
two
staff
officers
who
came rocketing
in
to
tell
him
that
all
was
lost.
"Nonsense!"
he shouted.
"If
they
have
broken
our
lines
they
can
do
nothing more
tonight";
and
he
sent
the
Pennsylvania
Reserves
over
to stem
the
tide.
Another
officer
came
up
to
Grant,
crying
that he
had
seen
this
sort
of
thing
before
and
that
he
knew
just what
was
happening:
Lee
was
getting
around
to
where
he could
cut
the
army's
communications,
and
if
something weren't
done
about
it
they
were
all
in
a
terrible
pickle.
Grant heard
him
out,
and
then
he
blew
up,
ceasing
for
once
to
be the
phlegmatic
sphinx
of
legend.
He
was
sick
and
tired,
he declared
with
heat,
of
being
told
about
what
Lee
was
going to
do:
"Some
of
you
always
seem
to
think
he
is
suddenly
going
to
turn
a
double
somersault
and
land
in
our
rear
and
on both
our
flanks
at
the
same
time."
As
for
the
panicky
officer himself,
Grant
had
a
curt
order:
"Go
back
to
your
command and
try
to
think
what
we
are
going
to
do
ourselves,
instead of
what
Lee
is
going
to
do!"
²¹

Sedgwick,
meanwhile,
was
competently
busy.
He
pulled unshaken
troops
out
from
the
left
of
his
line
and
without
fuss or
apparent
haste
got
them
faced
north
and
sent
them
in
to halt
the
triumphant
Rebels.
(One
of
these
soldiers
remembered
how
his
own
colonel,
taking
his
cue
from
Sedgwick, went
along
the
line
telling
the
men:
"Don't
be
in
a
hurry,
boys —let
them
come
well
up
before
you
let
them
have
it!")
The Confederate
attack
was
checked,
at
last,
at
substantial
cost, and
once
things
were
stabilized
Sedgwick
put
in
the
rest
of the
night
drawing
a
new
line
more
to
the
right
and
rear
and getting
troops
into
it
so
that
the
army's
flank
could
be
more firmly
anchored.
Just
at
dawn,
with
the
job
finished,
the
Vermont
Brigade
came
tramping
up
from
the
scene
of
its
two-day fight
along
the
Flank
Road,
and
as
the
column
came
by
Sedgwick
the
soldiers
let
out
a
wild
cheer.
Sedgwick
waved
his hat,
and
a
staff
officer
noticed
that
he
"blushed
like
a
girl" with
pleasure
at
the
cheering.
²²