A Stillness at Appomattox (96 page)

It
was
the
railroads
that
made
Petersburg
important,
and about
the
time
the
two
armies
settled
down
to
unbroken trench
warfare,
Wilson
was
told
to
take
his
division
of
cavalry
and
ride
far
south
to
destroy
the
line
that
led
to
North Carolina.
His
men
tore
up
much
track,
burned
stations
and freight
cars,
and
wrecked
bridges
and
culverts,
but
Sheridan's retreat
from
Trevilian
had
left
Lee
with
a
temporary
surplus of
cavalry
and
these
rode
hard
and
fast,
overtaking
Wilson, boxing
him
in,
and
coming
close
to
destroying
his
entire
command.
He
got
back
within
the
Union
lines
at
last,
minus
his artillery
and
his
wagons
and
a
good
many
of
his
men,
and
his expedition
looked
like
a
flat
failure.
Actually,
it
had
accomplished
more
than
the
Federal
command
quite
realized.
The break
which
it
made
in
the
vital
Southern
railway
line
was
a
bad
one
and
it
was
not
fully
repaired
for
weeks,
and
while it
lasted
the
Confederates
were
burdened
with
one
of
their worst
supply
problems
of
the
war.
⁸

There
had
been
one
other
failure,
and
in
some
ways
it
was the
worst
of
the
lot.
When
Beauregard
pulled
his
troops
out of
the
Bermuda
Hundred
lines
in
order
to
save
Petersburg, Butler's
inactive
army
was
released.
For
twenty-four
hours the
way
was
open
for
it
to
move
forward,
cut
the
railroad
and highway
from
Petersburg
to
Richmond,
and
sever
all
communications
between
Beauregard
and
Lee.
Butler's
front-line commanders
saw
the
chance
and
tried
to
do
something
about it,
and
Grant
saw
it
and
sent
Wright
and
two
divisions
of
the VI
Corps
over
to
help,
but
Butler
flubbed
the
shot
completely.
He
hesitated
and
considered
and
then
launched
a
spate
of
orders
which
looked
good
on
paper
but
which
served only
to
confuse
the
generals
who
had
to
do
the
fighting,
and before
he
could
get
himself
rounded
up
Lee
sent
Pickett's division
in,
shoved
the
irresolute
Federals
back,
and
closed the
gap
for
good.

Somewhere,
in
the
tangled
mesh
of
politics
that
lay
between
Washington
and
the
fighting
fronts,
Butler
possessed influence
that
even
the
commander
of
the
armies
could
not break.
Grant
tried
to
have
him
removed,
and
failed.
Then
he
worked
out
a
scheme
by
which
Butler
would
retain
his
command
but
would
do
all
of
his
work
down
at
Fortress
Monroe, where
there
was
administrative
routine
to
be
handled,
leaving all
military
operations
to
Baldy
Smith,
his
second-in-command.
That
could
not
be
done,
either.
Butler
held
his
job
and he
held
it
on
his
own
terms,
although
Grant
warned
Halleck that
relations
between
Butler
and
Smith
were
so
bad
that
if Butler
stayed
Smith
probably
would
have
to
go.

In
the
end,
Smith
did
go;
and
in
the
end,
when
he
went,
it was
Grant
who
sent
him
away.
While
he
fought
his
losing fight
to
get
rid
of
Butler,
Grant
seems
to
have
done
a
good deal
of
thinking
about
Smith's
performance
on
June
15,
when he
captured
the
Confederate
forts
and
then
sent
his
soldiers to
bed
instead
of
into
Petersburg.
In
the
end
Grant
concluded that
Smith
was
a
man
he
could
do
without,
Butler
or
no Butler,
and
when
he
came
to
this
conclusion
he
acted
on
it. Smith
was
quietly
removed
and
sent
up
to
New
York—indignant,
protesting
bitterly,
writing
long
afterward
that
the real
trouble
was
that
Butler
had
got
Grant
drunk
and
then had
used
his
knowledge
of
the
fact
as
blackmail
to
make Grant
do
as
Butler
wished.
⁹

The
tale
can
be
taken
or
left
alone,
at
anyone's
choice. The
chief
trouble
is
that
it
is
too
simple,
explaining
too
much with
too
little.
There
is
of
course
no
reason
to
suppose
that Butler
would
have
been
above
blackmailing
Grant
or
anyone else
if
it
would
have
served
his
purposes,
but
something
much more
intricate
than
a
threat
to
let
one
small
cat
out
of
a
bag was
unquestionably
involved
in
the
fact
that
Butler
could
not be
fired.
His
political
power
had
been
moving
mountains
long before
he
had
any
opportunity
to
lay
Grant
under
threat
of exposure.

Everything
about
Butler
was
fantastic,
beginning
with
his personal
appearance:
lumpy
oversized
body,
arms
and
legs that
looked
as
if
they
had
been
attached
as
an
afterthought, eyes
that
refused
to
mesh.
As
a
Democratic
politician,
he
had in
1860
been
an
ardent
supporter
of
the
extreme
Southern viewpoint;
two
years
later
the
Southerners
were
announcing that
Ben
Butler
was
the
one
Yankee
who,
if
captured
by
Confederate
forces,
would
be
shot
without
trial.
Abolitionists made
a
hero
of
him
and
considered
him
a
great
friend
of
the Negro,
although
at
the
beginning
of
the
war
he
had
said
that he
would
not
interfere
with
slavery
in
a
slave
state,
and
when the
idea
of
enlisting
Negroes
as
soldiers
was
first
suggested
to him
in
New
Orleans
he
turned
it
down
flatly.
A
private
in
the 25th
Massachusetts
wrote
that
"as
a
military
governor
he
is
a none-such
.
,
.
but
as
a
commander
of
troops
in
the
field
he is
not
just
such
a
man
as
I
should
pick
out."
¹⁰