A Stillness at Appomattox (97 page)

Butler
was
the
archetype
of
the
fixer,
the
influence
man,
the person
on
whom
nothing
much
is
ever
proved
but
who
is
always
suspected
of
everything.
Devout
Confederates
believed that
in
addition
to
committing
an
illegal
hanging
and
insulting
Southern
womanhood
he
had
in
New
Orleans
personally stolen
silver
spoons
with
his
own
hands.
A
Northern
general who
served
under
him
for
a
time
in
Virginia
reported
that Butler
had
become
a
dictator
who
"made
laws
and
administered
them,
dealt
out
justice
and
inflicted
punishment,
levied fines
and
collected
taxes,"
and
he
added
that
the
air
about
him was
thick
with
rumors
and
hints
of
corruption.
A
good
part
of Butler's
territory
in
the
Norfolk-Hampton
Roads
area
was
a queer
no
man's
land
in
which
contraband
trade
seemed
to flourish,
with
cotton
shipped
into
the
Union
lines
in
return for
war
goods
which
went
to
support
Lee's
army.
Nobody
was ever
quite
sure
just
who
got
the
rake-off,
but
it
seemed
obvious
that
someone
must
be
getting
a
good
deal.
A
tremendous scandal
was
always
on
the
edge
of
breaking,
but
the
break never
quite
came.
There
was
always
something
soiled
about the
man,
but
he
remained
uncanny
and
untouchable.
¹¹

There
were
times
when
it
was
all
but
impossible
for
a
good man
to
work
under
him.
He
could
send
a
subordinate
an order
phrased
so
as
to
constitute
the
most
cruel
of
insults; then,
when
the
officer
protested,
Butler
would
write
a
smooth letter
insisting
that
no
insult
was
intended
and
that
he
had the
highest
personal
and
professional
regard
for
the
man
he had
insulted.
A
brilliant
lawyer,
he
knew
how
to
handle words,
and
none
of
the
professional
soldiers
who
tangled
with him
could
match
phrases
with
him.

Just
at
the
end
of
the
period
when
his
troops
might
have broken
out
of
the
Bermuda
Hundred
lines
he
sent
to
General Wright
a
curt
order
to
attack
the
Rebel
troops
in
his
front
at once.
The
situation
at
the
front
was
not
at
all
as
Butler
imagined
it
and
Wright
wired
back
that
the
proposed
attack
was impossible,
suggested
an
alternative
approach,
and
asked further
instructions.

Immediately
Butler
replied:
"At
7:10
this
evening
I
sent an
order
to
you
and
General
Terry
to
do
some
fighting.
At 10:30
I
get
no
fighting,
but
an
argument.
My
order
went
out by
direction
of
the
lieutenant
general."
When
Wright,
somewhat
baffled,
protested
against
what
he
termed
an
unmerited reproach,
Butler
blandly
replied:
"No
reproach
is
given;
a fact
is
stated,"
and
added
loftily
that
victory
could
not
be won
if
orders
were
not
obeyed.
¹²

In
his
campaign
to
keep
his
job
this
summer
Butler
held one
prodigious
trump
card
which
Grant
could
not
see.
This was
a
presidential
election
year,
and
just
when
Grant
was
trying
to
rid
himself
of
this
incompetent
general
the
leaders
of the
Republican
party,
very
much
against
their
will,
were
in the
act
of
renominating
President
Lincoln
for
a
second
term. It
was
no
time
to
rock
the
boat,
and
Butler
was
just
the
man who
could
rock
it
to
the
point
of
capsizing
it.

From
the
beginning,
Lincoln's
real
problem
had
been
political.
He
had
a
war
to
win
and
he
had
to
find
generals
who could
win
it,
but
above
everything
else
he
had
to
control
the war—not
merely
the
fighting
of
it,
but
the
currents
which would
finally
determine
what
it
meant
and
what
would
come of
it
all.
So
far,
the
war
had
brought
nothing
but
death: death
by
wholesale,
death
in
all
its
forms,
death
in
hospitals, in
blazing
thickets,
on
ridges
swept
by
exploding
shell,
in ravines
where
dust
and
battle
smoke
lay
thick
and
blinding. Unless
the
whole
thing
was
no
better
than
fever
and
madness, all
of
this
death
must
finally
be
swallowed
up
in
a
victory that
would
justify
the
cost.
The
spirit
that
would
infuse
this victory
must
have
infinite
breadth,
because
the
country
was fighting
no
enemy:
it
was
simply
fighting
itself.
The
death
of a
South
Carolinian,
brained
by
a
clubbed
musket
butt
in
a fort
in
front
of
Petersburg,
was
fully
as
significant
as
the death
of
a
Pennsylvanian
killed
by
a
Mini6
ball
in
a
swamp at
Cold
Harbor.
If
what
those
men
had
bought,
by
dying,
was to
be
principally
hatred
and
smash-'em-up,
then
both
deaths had
been
wasted
and
dust
and
ashes
were
the
final
truth.