A Stillness at Appomattox (83 page)

Thoroughly
delighted
to
get
away
from
Cold
Harbor,
the men
of
the
Army
of
the
Potomac
were
also
deeply
surprised. For
once,
no
camp
rumor
had
warned
of
the
move,
and
up
to the
last
the
men
had
been
busy
elaborating
their
trench
system
as
if
they
were
to
stay
there
all
year.
Things
had
changed, one
veteran
mused,
"and
it
was
not
now
the
custom
to
inform the
rank
and
file,
and
the
newspapers
and
the
enemy,
of
intended
movements."
Another
man
was
reminded
by
this march
down
to
the
river
of
the
similar
march
two
years earlier,
under
McClellan,
and
it
seemed
to
him
that
everything
was
much
better
now
than
it
had
been
then.
Cold
Harbor
had
been
terrible,
and
what
led
up
to
it
had
not
been much
better,
but
morale
was
good
and
the
men
proved
it
by their
looks
and
actions.
On
the
earlier
march
they
felt
that they
had
been
beaten,
and
were
depressed;
now
they
felt
that they
were
on
the
way
to
victory,
and
they
stepped
out
with a
springy
step.
²⁴

Late
in
the
afternoon
of
June
13
the
advance
guard
reached the
James
River,
coming
down
to
it
past
an
impressive
plantation
once
owned
by
the
late
President
Tyler—the
"Tyler too"
of
the
rowdy
campaign
song.
The
river
was
broad
and
it glinted
in
the
afternoon
sun,
and
it
was
the
first
really
pleasant-looking
body
of
water
anybody
had
seen
since
the
campaign
began.
Yankee
warships
were
anchored
in
the
stream, white
awnings
spread
against
the
heat,
small
boats
coming ashore
with
rhythmical
dip
and
swing
of
dripping
oars.

An
officer
on
Meade's
staff
found
himself
blinking
and
gaping
at
these
Navy
people
as
they
came
ashore.
There
seemed to
be
something
wrong
about
them,
and
at
last
he
realized what
it
was.
They
were
all
clean,
their
persons
washed,
their uniforms
whole,
unfaded,
and
unsullied.
The
officer
discovered
that
he
had
got
to
the
point
where
he
was
suspicious
of anyone
who
was
not
dirty
and
in
rags.
He
was
used
to
soldiers,
and
where
soldiers
were
concerned,
"the
more
they serve,
the
less
they
look
like
soldiers
and
the
more
they
resemble
day-laborers
who
had
bought
second-hand
military clothes."
²⁵

Only
the
leading
echelons
of
the
army
reached
the
river that
evening.
They
included
a
swarm
of
engineers
who
immediately
went
to
work
to
lay
a
pontoon
bridge
over
to
the southern
shore.
The
army
had
never
built
such
a
prodigious bridge
before.
It
would
be
nearly
half
a
mile
long
and
it would
require
more
than
a
hundred
pontoons,
and
three schooners
had
to
be
anchored
in
the
deep
water
out
in
midstream
to
support
the
central
section
of
the
bridge.
The
sappers
got
to
work
without
delay,
tugboats
and
barges
bringing men
and
material
to
each
shore,
and
along
the
bank
where the
advance
guard
was
camped
there
was
a
great
chopping and
shoveling,
because
a
grove
of
huge
old
cypress
trees
had to
be
cut
down
and
it
was
necessary
to
build
a
causeway across
a
swamp
to
provide
an
approach
to
the
bridge.
Other details
went
to
work
to
put
a
half-ruined
wharf
in
proper shape,
a
little
upstream
from
the
place
where
the
bridge
was being
built,
and
the
transports
were
anchored
just
offshore to
take
men
aboard
as
soon
as
the
wharf
was
repaired.
As many
of
the
soldiers
as
could
get
down
to
the
water
went
in swimming,
whooping
and
splashing
as
they
began
soaking off
the
sweat
and
grime
of
weeks
of
fighting.

A
mile
or
so
from
the
water,
Gibbon's
division
was
camped on
the
plantation
of
Tyler-too.
The
enemy
was
many
miles away,
and
the
officers
announced
that
the
camp
need
not
be fortified.
Nevertheless,
as
soon
as
the
men
had
stacked
their muskets
they
began
to
dig
a
long
trench
all
across
the
western
edge
of
the
plantation,
and
before
they
went
to
bed
they had
the
place
in
shape
to
resist
a
regular
assault.
Meade's
assistant
adjutant
general
looked
on
their
handiwork
and
concluded
that
the
enlisted
man
was
convinced
that
a
rifle
pit was
"a
good
thing
to
have
in
a
family
where
there
are
small children."
²⁶