A Stillness at Appomattox (78 page)

"Wilson,
what
is
the
matter
with
this
army?"

Wilson
replied
that
a
good
deal
was
the
matter—so
much that
it
would
hardly
do
to
go
into
detail—but
he
said
that
he could
easily
suggest
a
good
remedy.
One
of
Grant's
staff
officers
was
Colonel
Ely
Parker,
swarthy
and
massive
and
blackhaired,
a
full-blooded
Indian
of
the
Iroquois
persuasion.
Give Parker,
said
Wilson,
a
scalping
knife
and
a
tomahawk,
fill him
full
of
the
worst
commissary
whisky
available,
and
send him
out
to
bring
in
the
scalps
of
a
number
of
major
generals.

Grant
chuckled
mildly
and
asked
which
ones.
That
did not
really
matter
much,
said
Wilson;
just
tell
Parker
to
attack
the
first
ones
he
came
to
and
not
to
quit
until
he
had scalped
at
least
half
a
dozen.
After
that
Grant
would
have
a better
army.
¹³

The
soldiers
themselves
were
not
complaining
a
great
deal. They
felt
toward
their
officers
about
as
private
soldiers
usually
do,
but
there
is
little
to
show
that
Cold
Harbor
affected that
feeling
very
much.
Their
complaints
were
usually
like the
one
voiced
by
the
Michigan
private,
who
inquired
grumpily.
"Who
is
putting
down
this
monster
rebellion?
Is
it
the officers?"
These,
he
noted,
had
servants
to
wait
on
them,
and good
food
in
their
baggage
wagons,
whereas
"the
poor
wearied
soldiers
who
do
the
fighting"
got
nothing
but
dry
hardtack
to
eat
and
had
to
sleep
in
the
mud.
¹⁴

Clearly
enough,
the
soldiers
hated
Cold
Harbor
and
the trenches
and
the
dust
and
the
heat,
and
most
of
them
would have
agreed
with
the
New
York
private
who
wrote:
"A
fellow
sufferer
very
truly
remarked
that
we
are
in
a
very
bad state—the
state
of
Virginia."
¹⁵
Yet
there
is
nothing
to
show that
they
had
had
any
especial
loss
in
morale.
What
the men
left
in
writing
shows
weariness
and
a
longing
to
get away
from
the
sound
of
gunfire
for
a
while,
but
nothing more.
¹⁶
If
the
generals
were
clumsy,
most
of
them
had
always
been
that
way
and
there
was
no
reason
to
expect
them to
be
any
different.
The
Army
of
the
Potomac
seems
to
have spent
more
time
talking
and
thinking
about
its
opposite
number,
the
Army
of
Northern
Virginia,
than
about
its
own
high command.

Its
relationship
with
the
Confederate
army
was
unusual, a
queer
blend
of
antagonism
and
understanding.
At
times the
feeling
between
the
two
armies
was
downright
savage. A
man
in
Smith's
corps
complained
bitterly
that
long
after the
June
3
attacks
had
ended,
Confederate
riflemen
amused themselves
by
shooting
at
the
wounded
men
between
the lines.
Sometimes,
he
said,
they
even
fired
at
corpses.
There was
a
wounded
New
Hampshire
officer
who
lay,
helpless, twenty
yards
in
front
of
the
Union
trenches,
and
all
day
long the
Confederate
sharpshooters
kept
anyone
from
going
out to
help
him.
One
man
was
killed
in
the
attempt,
and
after that
the
Union
soldiers
tried
throwing
canteens
of
water
and bags
of
hardtack
out
to
the
wounded
man,
but
nothing
effective
could
be
done
for
him
as
long
as
the
Rebels
could see
to
shoot.
After
dark,
men
dug
a
shallow
trench
out
to where
the
officer
lay,
and
after
three
hours'
work
they
managed
to
get
him
back
to
safety.
All
of
the
soldiers
in
the
line set
up
a
cheer
when
the
officer
was
brought
in,
and
the
cheer promptly
drew
a
volley
from
the
Confederate
rifle
pits.
¹⁷

That
was
one
side
of
the
coin.
For
the
other
side,
there was
the
fact
that
the
pickets
constantly
arranged
informal truces,
meeting
between
the
lines
to
trade
knives,
tobacco, newspapers,
and
other
small
valuables,
and
as
they
traded they
talked
things
over.
One
of
these
peaceful
meetings,
unhappily,
broke
up
in
a
row.
A
Confederate
asked
a
Yankee who
was
going
to
win
the
Northern
presidential
election,
and the
Yankee
said
that
he
reckoned
he
himself
would
vote
for Old
Abe.

"He,"
said
the
Southerner,
"is
a
damned
abolitionist."

This
immediately
brought
on
a
fist
fight,
and
officers
had to
come
out
to
break
it
up.
Still,
men
who
felt
enough
at home
with
each
other
to
argue
about
politics
and
fight
with their
fists
over
it
were
hardly,
at
bottom,
sworn
enemies
estranged
by
hatred.