A Stillness at Appomattox (91 page)

Line
was
formed
close
to
the
Confederate
position.
Orders were
passed
in
a
whisper,
and
the
men
were
required
to
put their
canteens
in
their
haversacks
so
that
they
would
not rattle.
Just
at
dawn,
with
bayonets
fixed,
the
division
swept over
the
crest,
plunged
down
into
the
ravine,
and
made
for
the Rebel
position.
²⁰

The
position
was
strong,
but
there
were
few
Rebels
in
it, and
Potter's
tired
men
seized
the
hill,
dug
some
rifle
pits,
and looked
around
for
the
support
that
had
been
promised.
On their
right
a
division
of
the
II
Corps
had
been
told
to
make
a simultaneous
attack,
but
orders
had
gone
sour
somewhere and
the
attack
was
not
being
made.
(One
trouble
probably was
that
Hancock
had
finally
been
disabled
by
his
old
Gettysburg
wound
and
had
had
to
turn
the
corps
over
to
the
senior division
commander,
General
Birney;
in
any
case,
liaison
had broken
down
and
the
support
was
not
there.)

In
the
rear
things
were
no
better.
Another
of
Burnside's divisions,
Ledlie's,
had
been
supposed
to
follow
on
Potter's heels,
but
through
some
incredible
breakdown
in
staff
work nobody
had
told
Ledlie
about
it
and
he
and
his
men
were sound
asleep
when
the
attack
was
launched.
For
the
time
being
Potter's
men
could
do
nothing
but
dig
in
and
wait.

Birney
finally
got
his
attack
moving
and
it
was
successful, swamping
the
Confederate
defenses
on
the
Hare
house
hill, from
which
position
the
II
Corps
might
have
made
a
sweep toward
the
south,
taking
in
flank
what
was
left
of
the
Confederate
line.
But
control
of
the
fight
seems
to
have
slipped out
of
Meade's
hands,
and
no
unit
commander
up
front
was concerned
with
anything
except
what
lay
immediately
before him,
and
although
the
Confederate
line
had
been
broken
in two
places
before
noon
nothing
effective
was
done
to
exploit the
openings.

Several
hours
passed.
Burnside
finally
got
a
second
division forward
and
it
charged
through
Potter's
troops
and
attacked the
new
line
which
Beauregard
had
patched
up
there.
The men
had
to
cross
a
railroad
cut
and
climb
a
steep
slope
and there
was
a
Confederate
battery
placed
so
that
it
could
fire down
the
length
of
the
railroad
cut,
and
the
new
division
was broken
up
and
forced
to
retreat
with
nothing
accomplished. Toward
dusk,
Burnside
brought
up
Ledlie's
division,
and
it went
slamming
down
into
the
railroad
cut
and
up
the
far
side in
the
face
of
a
furious
fire.
There
were
confused
attacks
and counterattacks
all
up
and
down
the
slope,
and
men
used bayonets
and
clubbed
muskets
in
desperate
fights
for
gun pits.
The
39th
Massachusetts
won
an
advanced
position,
losing
three
color-bearers,
and
at
last
was
forced
back,
leaving its
colors
on
the
ground.
Its
colonel
asked
for
volunteers
to
go out
and
get
the
flags.
A
corporal
and
a
private
responded
and ran
out
to
get
them,
and
suddenly—and
quite
unexpectedly— the
Confederates
stopped
firing,
allowed
the
men
to
pick
up the
flags,
and
as
they
went
back
to
the
regiment
the
Rebels waved
their
hats
and
raised
a
cheer.
Night
came,
and
Ledlie's men
got
to
the
crest
of
the
slope,
seized
the
Confederate works
there,
and
then
had
to
stop
because
they
had
run
out of
ammunition.

So
once
more
the
Confederate
line
had
been
broken,
and Beauregard
wrote
afterward
that
it
then
seemed
to
him
that "the
last
hour
of
the
Confederacy
had
arrived."
But
the
Union command
system
just
was
not
functioning
this
day,
and
the story
at
twilight
was
a
repetition
of
the
story
at
dawn:
it
had occurred
to
no
one
to
have
troops
ready
to
follow
up
a
success,
and
there
had
not
even
been
any
routine
arrangements for
getting
ammunition
up
to
the
firing
line,
and
the
strategy which
had
enabled
the
army
to
fight
for
Petersburg
with eight-to-one
odds
in
its
favor
was
totally
wasted.
The
day ended
and
the
fighting
ended,
and
in
the
darkness
Beauregard
retired
his
entire
line
to
a
final
position
within
easy
gunshot
of
the
town.
²¹

There
was
still
a
chance.
Lee
was
getting
his
Army
of Northern
Virginia
down
to
Petersburg
with
driving
speed-lean
men
in
faded
uniforms
or
no
uniforms
hurrying
on through
the
night,
desperately
in
earnest
and
handled
by
a soldier
who
knew
precisely
what
he
was
doing
and
how
to
do it—but
he
had
not
got
there
yet
and
he
would
not
be
able to
get
there
until
several
hours
after
daylight
on
June
18.
A dim
awareness
of
this
fact
seems
to
have
been
astir
in
the headquarters
tents
of
the
Army
of
the
Potomac,
and
during the
night
Meade
issued
orders
for
an
attack
all
along
the
line at
the
moment
of
dawn.
²²