A Stillness at Appomattox (57 page)

So
Grant
sat
down
at
his
field
desk
and
wrote
orders
for another
move
by
the
left
flank:
a
move
like
the
one
which took
the
army
out
of
the
Wilderness,
a
shift
east
and
south, maneuver
In
place
of
continued
fighting.
In
a
way
this
might be
playing
Lee's
game,
but
there
was
no
help
for
it.
Reinforced,
Lee
could
hold
his
Spotsylvania
lines
indefinitely.
If there
was
such
a
thing
as
a
road
to
victory,
it
led
around
those trenches,
not
over
them.
¹

As
the
army
began
to
move,
Grant
and
Meade
studied
the casualty
lists
together.
They
were
in
contrast,
those
two
soldiers.
Men
who
had
long
since
lost
their
enthusiasm
for
generals
looked
at
them
curiously
when
they
appeared
side
by side.
There
was
a
gunner
who
remembered
how
his
battery was
brought
forward
one
day
to
beat
in
some
Rebel
strong point
which
was
holding
up
an
infantry
advance.
Shortly
after the
guns
opened
Grant
and
Meade
rode
up
and
posted
themselves
under
a
nearby
tree
to
watch
the
fight.
Meade
was nervous,
moving
about,
constantly
stroking
his
beard,
fretting when
the
fight
went
badly.
Grant
stood
quietly,
a
cigar
in
his teeth,
his
face
utterly
expressionless
in
its
wreath
of
tobacco smoke,
and
he
seemed
like
a
man
forced
to
watch
something that
did
not
interest
him
at
all.
The
fight
failed,
and
the
open field
in
front
was
stained
with
blue
bodies,
and
the
two
generals
mounted
and
rode
off,
Grant
still
looking
as
if
he
had seen
nothing
in
particular.

"The
enlisted
men
looked
curiously
at
Grant,"
wrote
the gunner.
"And
after
he
had
disappeared
they
talked
of
him, and
of
the
dead
and
wounded
men
who
lay
in
the
pasture field;
and
all
of
them
said
just
what
they
thought,
as
was
the wont
of
American
soldiers."
²

Yet
the
contrast
between
the
two
generals
was
not
quite what
it
seemed
to
be.
Grant
was
the
stolid,
remorseless
killer and
Meade
was
the
sensitive
man
who
sparred
and
drew
back and
tried
at
all
times
to
conserve
the
lives
of
his
men;
yet
of the
two
it
was
Grant
who
winced
in
agony
at
the
price
men were
paying
for
the
fighting.
It
was
he
and
not
the
other
man who
felt
the
compulsion
to
look
at
the
unbroken
column
moving
across
the
back
of
the
stage,
the
men
who
marched
from life
to
death
and
carried
the
war
on
their
bowed
shoulders. It
seems
that
the
thought
of
this
wrung
some
kind
of
outcry from
him—must
there
be
all
of
this
killing?

It
was
Meade
who
laconically
gave
him
such
comfort
as could
be
given.

"Well,
General,"
said
Meade,
"we
can't
do
these
little
tricks without
losses."
³

The
whole
army
had
grasped
this
point,
accepting
it
without
enthusiasm
but
with
a
minimum
of
complaint.
Yet
the burden
of
the
losses
lay
everywhere,
and
now
and
then
it caused
an
outcry,
unheard
at
the
moment,
echoing
faintly down
the
years.
In
a
Wisconsin
regiment
a
devout
chaplain somehow
found
a
quiet
hour
and
managed
to
hold
divine services,
and
to
the
tanned
veterans
who
were
grouped
about him
in
the
firelight
he
preached
a
thumping
sermon
full
of hell-fire
and
eternal
punishment,
predestination
darkly
illumined
by
grace
abounding,
and
the
regiment's
colonel
was rubbed
where
it
hurt.
He
called
the
chaplain
to
his
tent
after the
services
and
told
him
off.

"I
don't
want
any
more
of
that
doctrine
preached
in
this regiment,"
said
the
colonel
sternly.
"Every
one
of
my
boys who
fall
fighting
this
great
battle
of
liberty
is
going
to
Heaven, and
I
won't
allow
any
other
principle
to
be
promulgated
to them
while
I
command
the
regiment."
⁴

A
Michigan
infantryman,
looking
back
on
the
fighting, noted
in
his
diary
that
General
Lee
must
be
a
great
strategist. No
matter
where
the
army
went,
the
Rebels
were
always
there in
front
of
it,
and
the
Rebel
line
always
seemed
to
hold
firmly no
matter
how
hard
it
was
hit.
And
the
soldier
mused:
"Now what
is
the
reason
that
we
cannot
walk
right
straight
through them
with
our
far
superior
numbers?
We
fight
as
good
as they.
They
must
understand
the
country
better,
or
there
is
a screw
loose
somewhere
in
the
machinery
of
our
army."