A Stillness at Appomattox (69 page)

In
other
ways,
too,
the
generals
had
been
brought
up wrong.
The
tradition
they
had
learned
was
that
of
close-order
fighting
in
open
country,
where
men
with
bayonets bravely
charged
a
line
of
men
firing
smooth-bore
muskets. That
used
to
work
well
enough,
because
the
range
at
which defenders
could
begin
to
kill
their
assailants
was
very
short. Between
the
moment
when
charging
men
got
into
that range
and
the
moment
when
they
actually
reached
the
enemy line,
the
defenders
could
fire
no
more
than
one
or
two shots
apiece.
Given
a
proper
advantage
in
numbers,
a
charging
line
was
bound
to
get
to
close
quarters
provided
the men
could
just
stand
the
gaff
during
the
last
hundred
yards of
their
advance.

But
the
rifle
came
in
and
it
changed
all
of
that.
The range
at
which
charging
men
began
to
be
killed
was
at least
five
times
as
great
as
it
used
to
be,
which
meant
that about
five
times
as
many
of
the
assailants
were
likely
to
be hit.
Furthermore,
men
on
the
defense
had
learned
how
to dig
deep,
solid
trenches
instead
of
standing
up
unprotected in
the
open;
and
the
trench
and
the
rifle
put
together
meant that
the
old
tradition
was
as
dead
as
Hannibal.
A
few
men, like
young
Colonel
Upton,
sensed
that
new
tactics
were called
for,
but
most
men
could
not
quite
get
the
idea.
The way
to
beat
the
enemy
was
to
pile
into
him
head
on,
and if
a
great
many
men
were
killed
that
way
it
could
not
be helped
because
to
get
killed
was
the
soldier's
hard
fate and
it
would
never
be
any
other
way.
¹¹

The
hard
fact
was
that
by
1864
good
troops
using
rifles and
standing
in
well-built
trenches,
and
provided
with
suitable
artillery
support,
simply
could
not
be
dislodged
by
any frontal
assault
whatever.
This
fact
had
been
visible
on
many previous
occasions,
if
anyone
had
thought
about
it.
At Gettysburg,
Slocum's
brigades
held
solid
log
trenches
on Gulp's
Hill,
and
in
the
reports
their
officers
submitted
after the
battle
there
is
evident
a
sort
of
dazed
bewilderment
that the
men
had
been
able
to
wreck
a
whole
Rebel
army
corps
at comparatively
small
cost.
One
Union
general
found
1,200 dead
Southerners
in
front
of
his
line,
estimated
that
four times
that
many
had
been
wounded,
and
noted
that
the trenches
"rendered
our
casualties
surprisingly
incompatible with
so
terrible
and
prolonged
an
engagement."
The
same thing
had
been
true,
with
the
shoe
on
the
other
foot,
at Spotsylvania.
Meade's
chief
of
staff
assessed
the
fighting there
and
wrote
that
behind
trenches
"the
strength
of
an army
sustaining
an
attack
was
more
than
quadrupled";
then he
revised
his
estimate
upward
and
said
that
"there
is

scarcely
any
measure
by
which
to
gauge
the
increased strength"
conferred
by
good
earthworks.
¹²

Yet
although
this
lesson
was
obvious
it
was
not
being
applied.
A
subtle
weakness
infected
the
system
of
command. Something
was
always
going
wrong,
someone
was
forever leaving
something
undone,
the
loose
ends
were
never
quite tied
up
in
time.
The
experience
at
Spotsylvania
was
the classic
example.
When
the
big
attack
on
the
salient
was made
no
one
really
knew
where
the
enemy
was,
how
the land
lay,
or
what
the
defenses
were
like.
The
man
who
had to
lead
the
charge
was
at
last
forced
to
ask,
in
bitter
jest, that
someone
at
least
point
him
in
the
right
direction
so that
he
might
not
miss
the
Rebel
army
entirely.

Taken
as
a
group,
the
generals
on
whom
the
army's
success
depended
so
greatly
seem
to
have
slipped
back
during the
campaign;
or
perhaps
they
simply
stood
still
while
the war
moved
on
ahead
of
them.
They
were
used
to
a
war of
successive
broad
panoramas,
in
which
a
corps
commander
could
always
find
some
spot
from
which
he
could get
a
fairly
good
general
view
of
his
whole
line.
Now
there were
no
more
panoramas
and
it
was
never
possible
for
anyone
to
see
more
than
a
fraction
of
the
field.
If
a
general rode
up
front
for
a
closer
survey
there
was
nothing
for
him to
see
but
the
backs
of
a
few
of
his
skirmishers.
Trench warfare
was
new
to
everybody
and
it
provided
unheard-of complications
for
an
army
acting
on
the
offensive.
What used
to
be
done
visually
had
to
be
done
nowadays
with maps.
(Just
to
make
things
worse,
practically
all
of
the maps
owned
by
the
Federal
commanders
contained
very bad
errors.)