A Stillness at Appomattox (80 page)

For
of
all
the
men
who
controlled
and
directed
the
war, Lincoln
was
the
one
who
most
deeply
shared
the
spirit
that moved
across
the
steaming
trenches
at
Cold
Harbor—fight to
the
limit
as
long
as
the
fighting
has
to
go
on,
but
strike hands
and
be
friends
the
moment
the
fighting
stops.
Before the
war
even
began,
in
that
haunted
springtime
when
its dark
shape
was
rising,
Lincoln
had
tried
to
warn
North
and South
that
they
could
never
travel
on
separate
roads.
Win
or lose,
someday
they
would
have
to
get
along
with
each
other again,
and
whatever
they
did
before
that
day
came
had
better
be
done
in
such
a
way
that
getting
along
together
would still
be
possible.
The
soldiers
had
got
the
point
perfectly, and
they
expressed
it
very
simply:
Hang
a
few
troublemakers and
we'll
all
go
home.
Mysteriously,
the
fighting
seemed
to be
bringing
them
mutual
understanding,
and
they
may
almost
have
been
closer
to
each
other,
in
spirit,
than
they were
to
their
own
civilians
back
home.
Yet
there
was
nothing
they
could
do
about
it.
They
had
not
made
the
war
and they
would
not
end
it.
They
could
only
fight
it.

And
the
men
who
had
made
the
war—the
sharp
politicians and
the
devoted
patriots,
the
men
who
dreamed
the
American
dream
in
different
ways
and
the
other
men
who
never dreamed
any
dreams
at
all
but
who
had
a
canny
eye
for power
and
influence—most
of
these,
by
now,
were
prisoners of
their
own
creation.

The
hospitals
in
Washington
were
full
as
never
before, and
every
day
steamers
came
up
the
river
with
more
broken bodies
to
be
unloaded,
and
it
was
easy
for
those
who
watched this
pathetic
pageant
to
be
embittered
by
what
had
happened
to
these
men
rather
than
inspired
by
what
they
had dreamed
of.
It
was
hard
to
think
clearly,
and
the
act
of embracing
unmitigated
violence
could
be
a
substitute
for thought.

There
was
a
colonel
on
Grant's
staff
who
typified
the
trend perfecdy.
He
could
see
that
Southern
resistance
was
still
very strong,
although
he
did
not
seem
to
be
able
to
see
anything else
very
clearly,
and
he
was
going
about
the
tents
these days
smiting
an
open
palm
with
a
clenched
fist
and
growling:
"Smash
'em
up!
Smash
'em
up!"
²⁰
As
a
tactical
slogan this
had
its
faults,
since
logically
it
led
to
nothing
better than
Cold
Harbor
assaults,
but
it
was
a
perfect
expression
of the
growing
state
of
mind
behind
the
fighting
fronts.
Smash 'em
up:
the
war
cannot
be
settled,
it
can
only
be
won;
smash 'em
up—and
afterward,
on
the
pulverized
fragments,
we
can sit
down
quietly
and
decide
what
we
are
going
to
do
next.

If
the
war
was
to
be
won,
it
was
important
that
it
be
won soon.
It
had
been
born
of
anger
and
misunderstanding
and it
was
breeding
more
as
it
went
along.
It
was
pushing
men to
the
point
where
vengeance
seemed
essential,
driving
even a
man
like
Secretary
Welles
to
think
well
of
the
process
of dangling
a
political
opponent
by
the
neck,
with
convulsive feet
kicking
at
the
unsustaining
air.
The
longer
the
war lasted,
the
harder
it
was
for
people
to
think
beyond
victory, the
more
probable
that
victory
when
it
finally
came
would have
to
be
total
and
unconditional.
What
Lincoln
and
the soldiers
wanted
was
a
dream,
and
2,000
casualties
a
day
created
an
atmosphere
in
which
dreams
could
not
live.

So
a
Cold
Harbor
stalemate
was
unendurable,
and
among the
people
who
saw
this
was
General
Grant.
He
had
been commissioned
to
break
the
fighting
power
of
the
Confederacy,
and
he
still
hoped
that
it
could
be
done
by
one
bold stroke
rather
than
by
a
slow
process
of
grinding
and
strangling and
wearing
out.
Before
he
even
bothered
to
seek
a
truce
so that
dead
men
might
be
buried
and
wounded
men
brought back
within
the
lines—they
lay
there,
untended,
for
several days,
bullets
flying
low
above
them—he
set
things
in
motion for
a
new
move.
The
network
of
trenches
grew
deep
and strong,
but
even
as
they
took
on
their
air
of
grim
permanence the
army
that
crouched
in
them
was
given
a
new
objective.