A Stillness at Appomattox (48 page)

Yet
when
night
came
down
the
high
command
felt
that
the general
picture
was
encouraging.
These
cruel
trenches
were not
invulnerable,
after
all,
and
what
twelve
regiments
had done
could
perhaps
be
repeated
with
a
bigger
force.
An
Ohio cavalryman
who
was
serving
as
orderly
at
Grant's
headquarters
saw
Grant
talking
with
Meade
about
it,
puffing
his
cigar as
he
talked,
and
he
heard
Grant
say:
"A
brigade
today-well
try
a
corps
tomorrow."
A
little
later
the
new
commander of
the
VI
Corps,
General
Horatio
Wright,
came
in.
Wright was
stocky
and
bearded,
slow-moving,
competent
rather
than brilliant,
not
beginning
to
fill
the
place
in
the
soldiers'
affections
that
Sedgwick
had
filled;
but
he
was
the
man
Sedgwick himself
had
once
designated
as
his
successor,
and
he
felt
that the
whole
trouble
today
had
been
failure
of
the
supporting troops.
He
said
earnestly
to
Meade:
"General,
I
don't
want
Mott's
troops
on
my
left;
they
are
not
a
support;
I
would rather
have
no
troops
there."

In
the
end,
the
generals
concluded
that
Lee's
army
might be
utterly
defeated
if
Upton's
technique
were
used
on
a
larger scale,
properly
supported,
and
Meade's
staff
immediately went
to
work
to
plan
an
enormous
blow
that
would
send
Hancock's
entire
corps
through
the
lines
and
would
bring
all
of Wright's
and
Burnside's
men
up
as
supports.

It
would
take
time
to
mount
an
attack
of
this
size,
and
it could
not
be
done
overnight.
So
on
May
11
the
troops
held their
lines,
and
another
great
train
of
wounded
was
started back
toward
Fredericksburg.
Yet
although
the
front
was
comparatively
inactive
there
was
a
steady
firing
all
day
long,
and the
toll
of
killed
and
wounded
on
both
sides
crept
constantly higher.
In
midafternoon
it
began
to
rain—a
sullen,
persistent drizzle
that
looked
as
if
it
might
go
on
for
days—and
when
the sun
went
down
the
air
turned
chilly,
and
the
battlefield
was smoldering
with
little
brush
fires
and
wreathed
in
flat
layers of
smoke
that
hung
low
in
the
rain.
When
night
came
it
was dull
and
starless,
and
long
after
dark
there
began
a
tramping of
great
columns
of
troops
as
the
men
followed
obscure
roads to
their
new
positions.
⁸

More
than
half
of
the
army
was
on
the
move.
Grant
and Meade
had
chosen
a
new
spot
for
their
break-through—the very
spot
that
Mott's
men
had
so
ingloriously
aimed
at,
made inviting
in
spite
of
its
banked-up
cannon
by
an
accident
of geography.

The
Confederate
lines
covering
Spotsylvania
Court
House were
uneven
and
they
did
not
run
in
straight
lines
for
more than
a
few
rods
at
a
time,
but
in
general
they
formed
two tangents—a
long
one,
opposite
the
Federal
right,
facing roughly
toward
the
north,
and
a
shorter
one
somewhat
to
the east
of
this
facing
northeast
and
east.
These
two
lines
did
not intersect.
Instead,
they
were
joined
by
a
great
loop
of
entrenchments
that
bulged
out
toward
the
north
to
cover
some high
ground:
a
huge
salient
nearly
a
mile
deep
and
half
a mile
wide,
dubbed
by
the
Confederates,
from
its
outline
on the
map,
the
Mule
Shoe.
It
was
the
western
side
of
this
salient that
Upton
had
attacked
on
May
10,
and
the
guns
that
had broken
up
Mott's
dispirited
formation
were
placed
at
the northernmost
tip
of
the
salient
where
the
lines
of
the
Mule Shoe
came
to
a
blunt
angle.

If
this
salient
could
be
broken,
Lee's
army
would
be
cut
in half.
By
military
teaching,
the
point
of
a
salient
was
a
hard place
to
defend,
since
the
fire
from
the
defenders
on
the
two sides
of
the
point
tended
to
diverge.
It
was
for
that
reason that
the
Confederates
had
stacked
up
so
many
guns
at
the broad
tip,
and
since
there
was
a
clear
field
of
fire
in
front
of this
place
the
guns
were
extremely
effective.
But
it
was
believed
that
if
a
solid
corps
of
infantry
made
a
sudden
rush
at the
very
moment
of
daybreak—a
rush
patterned
after
Upton
s, with
no
firing
and
no
stopping
until
the
parapet
was
reached —the
men
could
overrun
the
tip
of
the
salient
before
the
guns could
hurt
them
very
badly.
Then,
with
the
end
of
the
salient punched
in,
the
support
troops
could
come
piling
in
on
either side—and
there,
it
might
be,
was
the
recipe
for
victory.