A Stillness at Appomattox (56 page)

In
the
old
days
there
would
have
been
a
lull.
There
had been
continuous
fighting
or
marching
for
more
than
two weeks,
and
the
soldiers
had
neither
taken
off
their
clothing nor
had
an
unbroken
night's
rest
since
they
crossed
the Rapidan.
Losses
had
been
appalling.
Many
brigades
were
no

bigger
than
regiments
ought
to
be,
and
any
number
of
regiments
were
down
to
normal
company
strength.
Two
whole divisions
had
been
cut
up
so
badly
that
they
had
to
be
discontinued,
the
remnants
consolidated
with
other
units.
Behind
the
army
there
was
a
litter
of
broken
human
bodies
extending
all
the
way
back
from
Fredericksburg
to
the
crowded hospitals
around
Washington.

The
casualty
lists
told
a
story.
The
army
moved
south
from Spotsylvania
Court
House
a
little
more
than
a
fortnight
after it
had
crossed
the
Rapidan.
In
that
time
more
than
33,000 men
had
been
lost.
Averaged
out,
this
meant
that
2,000
men were
being
killed
or
wounded
every
twenty-four
hours.
Fredericksburg
and
Chancellorsville
together
had
taken
no
such toll
as
this.
Now,
instead
of
pulling
back
for
a
breathing
spell, the
army
was
going
to
plunge
even
more
deeply
into
action, with
every
prospect
that
the
killing
would
go
on
and
on
without
a
respite.

Grant
had
had
to
change
his
plans,
for
this
move
south
had not
been
on
his
program.
In
the
heat
of
the
fighting
around the
little
courthouse
town
he
had
told
Washington
that
he would
fight
it
out
along
this
line
if
it
took
all
summer,
and when
he
said
it
that
promise
made
sense.
Lee's
army
was smaller
than
the
Army
of
the
Potomac,
and
in
the
fighting thus
far
the
two
armies
were
losing
just
about
the
same
percentages
of
the
numbers
engaged.
If
they
were
applied
long enough
these
percentages
meant
certain
doom
for
the
weaker army.
The
mathematics
were
ugly
but
inexorable:
sooner
or later,
Lee's
army
would
be
too
thin
to
stand
the
hammering.

But
the
picture
had
suddenly
changed,
and
instead
of
forcing
a
decision
where
it
was,
the
Army
of
the
Potomac
now had
to
march
for
the
open
country,
trying
to
get
into
such
a position
that
Lee
would
have
to
stop
digging
invulnerable trenches
and
come
out
to
attack.
Those
deadly
percentages would
work
for
the
Federals
only
as
long
as
Lee
was
deprived of
reinforcements.
Grant
had
made
certain
arrangements
to bring
that
deprivation
about,
and
those
arrangements
had
unexpectedly
collapsed.

In
the
Shenandoah
Valley
there
was
a
little
Union
army under
Franz
Sigel,
moving
south
to
close
that
granary
and highway
of
war
to
the
Confederacy,
and
south
of
the
James River
Ben
Butler
was
leading
two
army
corps
up
toward
the Rebel
capital.
It
did
not
really
matter
very
much
whether either
of
these
generals
actually
reached
his
goal,
so
long
as both
of
them
kept
diligently
trying
to
reach
it.
But
both
men had
failed.

Sigel
met
a
scratch
Confederate
army
at
a
town
called Newmarket
and
was
driven
back
in
wild
rout,
a
devoted
and unskilled
soldier
failing
in
a
task
he
should
never
have
been given.
(How
differently
John
Sedgwick
might
have
done
it, if
the
demotion
Stanton
had
planned
had
been
accomplished!) Butler
had
done
no
better.
With
much
ceremony
and
scheming
he
managed
to
let
inferior
numbers
drive
him
into
a
broad peninsula
jutting
out
into
the
James.
The
Confederates promptly
dug
in
across
the
neck
of
the
peninsula,
leaving
him locked
up
as
securely
as
if
he
and
all
his
soldiers
had
been
in prison.

With
these
two
disasters,
everything
came
unstitched. Grant
got
the
bad
news
while
he
was
still
hammering
at
the Spotsylvania
lines,
and
the
evil
part
of
it
was
the
certain knowledge
that,
because
Sigel
and
Butler
had
been
beaten, the
Confederates
who
had
been
fighting
them
would
immediately
move
up
to
reinforce
Lee.
That
meant
that
to
"fight
it out
along
this
line"
was
no
longer
a
good
move.
The
Confederates
had
had
heavy
losses
in
the
past
fortnight—in
the first
week
of
the
action,
7,000
Rebel
prisoners
had
been
sent north,
and
more
were
coming
in—and
up
to
now
the
terrible percentages
had
been
working
for
the
North.
But
now
the defeats
along
the
James
and
the
Shenandoah
meant
that
Lee's losses
would
all
be
made
good.
In
effect,
the
Army
of
Northern
Virginia
was
going
to
be
about
as
strong
after
three
weeks of
fighting
as
it
had
been
before
the
fighting
began.
Plans which
had
been
based
on
the
assumption
that
it
would
be
a great
deal
weaker
would
have
to
be
changed.