A Stillness at Appomattox (81 page)

From
the
moment
he
crossed
the
Rapidan,
Grant's
ruling idea
had
been
to
go
for
Lee's
army
without
a
letup—to
keep that
dangerous
body
of
fighting
men
so
everlastingly
busy that
it
could
never
again
seize
the
initiative,
to
compel
it
to fight
its
battles
when
and
where
Grant
chose
rather
than
by Lee's
selection.
The
chance
for
decisive
victory
lay
that
way, and
in
the
past
month's
fighting
the
army
had
come
tolerably close
to
it
two
or
three
times.
To
stay
in
the
Cold
Harbor
lines would
be
to
give
up
all
hope
of
decisive
victory,
for
if
anything
was
clear,
it
was
that
no
offensive
at
or
near
Cold
Harbor
could
possibly
succeed.
General
Halleck
was
clucking
like a
worried
mother
hen,
urging
that
the
army
stay
put
and
conduct
a
siege,
running
no
risks
and
counting
on
time
and
general
military
erosion
to
wear
the
enemy
down.
²¹
But
even though
Grant
had
given
the
Army
of
the
Potomac
more
trench warfare
in
a
month
than
it
had
had
in
all
of
its
earlier
existence,
he
still
believed
in
a
war
of
movement.
He
had
taken Vicksburg
by
maneuver
and
he
had
one
maneuver
left,
and now
he
would
try
it.

Grant
had
a
basilisk's
gaze.
He
could
sit,
whittling
and smoking,
looking
off
beyond
the
immediate
scene,
and
what he
was
looking
at
was
likely
to
come
down
in
blood
and
ashes and
crashing
sound
a
little
later.
Right
now
he
was
looking all
the
way
across
the
James
River
to
a
peaceful,
sleepy
Virginia
city
named
Petersburg,
which
lay
on
the
southern
bank of
the
Appomattox
River,
twenty-odd
miles
south
of
Richmond,
near
the
point
where
the
Appomattox
flows
into
the James.

What
Grant
saw
when
he
stared
off
through
the
mists
toward
Petersburg
was
the
Confederates'
problem
of
supply. The
immediate
vicinity
of
Richmond
did
not
begin
to
produce enough
food
and
forage
to
support
either
Lee's
army
or
the Confederate
capital.
An
important
part
of
this
material
came down
from
the
Shenandoah
Valley,
over
the
Virginia
Central Railroad
and
the
James
River
Canal.
Even
more
important, however,
was
what
came
up
from
the
Deep
South,
and
most of
this
came
by
railroads
which
ran
through
Petersburg.
If the
Federal
army
could
seize
Petersburg,
the
Army
of
Northern
Virginia
and
the
civil
government
which
supported
it would
go
on
starvation
rations.
If,
at
the
same
time,
the
connection
with
the
Shenandoah
Valley
could
be
broken,
Richmond
could
no
longer
be
defended.

Yet
it
was
not
Richmond
itself
which
Grant
wanted.
He wanted
to
destroy
Lee's
army,
and
to
do
that
he
had
to
get it
out
of
its
trenches.
The
one
way
to
compel
it
to
move
was to
cut
off
its
supplies.
So
he
made
his
plans:
seize
Petersburg, block
the
line
to
the
Shenandoah,
and
let
hunger
drive
Lee's army
out
into
the
open.
Once
that
happened
there
could
be a
finish
fight,
under
conditions
in
which
the
Federal
army's advantage
in
numbers
ought
to
be
decisive.

Within
forty-eight
hours
of
the
failure
of
the
June
3
assaults
Grant
was
writing
his
orders,
and
by
June
7
Sheridan had
two
of
his
cavalry
divisions
on
the
road,
heading
west
for Charlottesville.
At
Charlottesville
Sheridan
was
to
meet
an army
under
Major
General
David
Hunter,
who
had
replaced Sigei
after
that
general's
inglorious
defeat
at
Newmarket. Hunter
had
the
troops
that
had
been
Sigel's,
another
division which
General
George
Crook
had
led
east
from
West
Virginia,
and
a
good
body
of
cavalry
under
Averell.
With
these men
he
had
marched
up
the
Valley
to
Staunton,
crushing
a small
Confederate
force
which
tried
to
delay
him,
and
at Staunton
he
was
turning
east,
burning
and
destroying
as
he came.
Grant's
idea
was
that
Hunter
and
Sheridan
would
join forces
and
come
down
toward
Richmond
together,
taking
the Virginia
Central
Railroad
apart
as
they
came
and
rejoining the
Army
of
the
Potomac
somewhere
below
the
James
River.
²²

Meade's
engineers
were
building
an
inner
line
behind
the

front
at
Cold
Harbor,
and
the
army
as
a
whole
was
shifting slowly
to
its
left,
with
Warrens
corps
lining
up
along
the Chickahominy.
A
fleet
of
transports
had
come
up
the
Pamun
key
to
the
base
at
White
House,
and
warships,
transports, barges,
and
a
great
number
of
pontoons
were
being
assembled at
Fortress
Monroe,
ready
to
go
up
the
James
on
order.
The arrangements
were
intricate
but
they
were
well
directed,
and finally,
late
in
the
afternoon
of
June
12,
Grant
and
Meade struck
their
headquarters
tents
and
rode
down
the
north
bank of
the
Chickahominy,
past
Despatch
Station,
to
make
a
new camp
beside
a
cluster
of
catalpa
trees
in
a
farmhouse
yard. As
night
came
on,
the
hot
air
was
filled
with
dust
as
100,000 soldiers
began
moving
out
of
the
positions
which
they
had
occupied
for
the
better
part
of
a
fortnight.