Never Call Retreat (67 page)

Trying to bolster up his right, Lee had done what Grant supposed he might be compelled to do—he had drawn three brigades from the center of his line, already stretched thin past the point of safety. Late in the afternoon of April 1, Grant ordered an attack. Sometime after midnight there was a heavy bombardment, and then Meade sent his troops forward against the main Confederate position. Wright's VI Corps charged, lost 2000 men in a wild, confused early dawn assault where the Confederate trenches could be made out only by the flickering sputter of rifle-flashes along the parapet, broke through, and went triumphantly all the way to the edge of the Appomattox River. The long Petersburg campaign was over at last. Altogether, from the middle of June to the end of March, it had cost the two armies something like 75,000 casualties; this, finally, was the day of catastrophe. As the Federal patrols advanced toward the river they killed one more of Lee's legendary fighting men, the famous General A. P. Hill.

The most Lee could hope for now was to hold what was left of his position until night came and then make a desperate effort to get to Burkeville. He notified Richmond that the government must get out of the capital at once. Federal troops would enter the capital next day. Somehow, with the house coming down about his ears, Lee found time on April 2 to tell Mr. Davis that he was sending in the names of officers who were willing to help organize the new Negro troops.
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5. As in the Old Days

RICHMOND PEOPLE remembered how that last Sunday came in as a special sort of day. It was warm, with a mild breeze stirring the early blossoms on the capitol grounds; the city's churches were crowded, not because national affairs were at crisis but simply because it was a good day to go to church, with high spring in the air and Easter only two weeks away. One woman recalled it as "one of those unusually lovely days that the spring sometimes brings, when delicate silks that look too fine at other times seem just to suit." A Massachusetts soldier out in the siege lines confessed that spring reaches Virginia "with greater splendor" than New England ever sees, and felt that there had not been a finer day than this one since the creation. Secretary of the Navy Mallory wrote that in all the war the city had never looked more serene and quiet, and the woman who had put on her best silk said that she never saw a calmer Sunday morning—or a more thoroughly confused and alarming Sunday evening.
¹

The news from Petersburg came up shortly after the eleven o'clock services had begun, and an aide with a telegram from General Lee extracted President Davis from St. Paul's just as Dr. Minnigerode intoned the words: "The Lord is in His holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before Him." The congregation took Mr. Davis' departure calmly enough—after all, the President might get called out of church at any time, by almost anything—but other dignitaries were called out later, from this church and from others, and by early afternoon the tidings had gone all across the city: Lee was going to retreat, the government was to move out tonight, the Yankees would take over in the morning. Those who could leave the city were comparatively few; for most people there could be nothing now but a restless, fruitless stirring-about in the face of approaching catastrophe.
²

Richmond's fate was strange. Other cities, like Atlanta and Columbia, were burned and sacked by their enemies; Richmond was burned and sacked by her own people, and when the hated conquerors at last entered they came in as rescuers and protectors.

Ancient military protocol requires a retreating army to burn the supplies it cannot carry off, lest they be of use to the enemy. The army that had to leave Richmond now was taking the shortest road to extinction and it was leaving behind nothing that the Yankees especially needed, but the old ritual prevailed: possibly, for somebody, it eased the agony of dissolution. President and cabinet, clerks and servants and others of more or less consequence—all of these, amid much confusion, much jostling and running about, and gabble of frantic orders on gas-lit station platforms, got on the last trains of the Richmond & Danville line and went south out of Richmond. By midnight their exodus was over. Then the Richmond defense troops began to come back through the city, the men who had been holding the fortifications so long, going across the James now to meet, as they hoped, General Lee's troops from Petersburg somewhere on the road to Burkeville. As they left, dutiful officers went about setting fire to the rations and warehouses and warships and bridges that could not be taken along, and when the last of the cavalry patrols went out of the city Richmond was in flames, with all of its defenders bound elsewhere.

When the sun came up on April 3 it was a red ball, shining dully through heavy layers of smoke. In the murky streets there were thousands of men and women, breaking into army depots to get the bacon and flour and other things the army could not carry away, following this before long by breaking into stores and residences to take anything else of value; consuming barrels of whiskey that had not been dumped in the gutters soon enough. There was no chance to control the flames, and no chance to control the mob, which gleefully disabled the few fire engines that appeared. Like all wartime capitals, Richmond had drawn to itself much human refuse, including, at an estimate that will do until someone makes a better one, at least 5000 deserters from the now-absent armies. Until today these had been kept under restraint, because the city authorities could always call on the military; but now, with calamity dawning, the military was gone, all restraint had been removed, and the lawless had a field day. The day was frightening enough even without them. Just after dawn a new ironclad at the builders' dock, C.S.S.
Richmond,
blew up with a noise like the sky cracking open; then a government arsenal took fire, and when the flames reached its magazines the air was full of exploding shells, the crackle of the spreading fire blended with the crackle of thousands of rounds of small-arms ammunition, and a dense cloud of black smoke hung over the center of the city.

Somewhere around eight in the morning the United States Army came in—combat patrols, conquerors-on-parade and life-saving fire brigades arriving all at once. First, scattered cavalry details trotted into Capitol Square, with bright officers running into public buildings to hoist flags; then came more cavalry, followed by rank upon rank of infantry, whose bands played "The Girl I Left Behind Me" and "Dixie." Smoke from burning buildings lay across their shoulders, and the looters went scurrying at last for cover. Presently there came regiments of Negro soldiers, and men and women who had been slaves until this moment ran out to greet them with hysterical cries, seeing the substance of things hoped for in these black men who wore Federal blue. (The officer in command of these occupation forces was General Godfrey Weitzel, the same man who two years earlier in New Orleans had told Ben Butler that no good would ever come of putting Negroes into the army uniform.) Some of the soldiers stood guard over homes and stores, and others stacked their arms and went to work to fight the fire, blowing up buildings that stood where the flames were going so as to make gaps the flames could not cross. Some time that night the city became comparatively quiet. Most of the fires were out, although smoldering ruins still sent wispy smoke into the April night. The streets were crowded, but the looting had been stopped, and Capitol Square was piled with bundles of things the Federal soldiers had taken away from marauders on the chance the proper owners could some day claim them.
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The next morning—Tuesday, April
4
—Abraham Lincoln came to Richmond.

It was not really necessary for him to be here, and the way his visit was handled would have given a modern security officer the vapors. He came upstream in the
River Queen,
with Admiral Porter cruising just ahead in his flagship, U.S.S.
Malvern,
and the narrow river had not yet been swept clear of mines. Some distance below the landing, obstructions in the river kept the steamers from going farther, so Admiral Porter's 12-oared barge came alongside and President, Admiral, and three or four army and navy officers got in it and finished the trip that way. A tug carrying a guard of marines to escort the President through the city went astray en route, and when the party at last got ashore there were no guards except for ten sailors carrying carbines. For a mile and a half the President walked up the streets to the Confederate White House, where General Weitzel had his headquarters, his way obstructed by ecstatic crowds of colored people shouting "Glory, Glory, Glory!" and striving to get close enough to touch the hand or the garments of the man who was the embodiment of their freedom. Somehow the trip was made without mishap, and at last Abraham Lincoln sat down to rest in the office where Jefferson Davis had worked so long.
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Resting here, he presently had a caller; Justice John A.

Campbell, Assistant Secretary of War, last seen by Mr. Lincoln at the Hampton Roads conference. Campbell had not joined in the flight from Richmond, and he came now to urge the President to talk to the leading men of Virginia "as to the restoration of peace, civil order and the renewal of her relations as a member of the Union." This Mr. Lincoln was willing to do, although he was disappointed to learn that Campbell was present, not as an emissary of the government but simply as a private citizen anxious to make peace. (Somewhat bitterly, Campbell wrote later that the Confederate government seemed to have "a superstitious dread of any approach to the one important question of settlement by negotiation." Mr. Davis, he said, held that "his personal honor did not permit him to take any steps to make such a settlement," and as a result Campbell felt that "he became in the closing part of the war an incubus and a mischief.") In any case, Mr. Lincoln replied that his terms were as previously stated: no armistice, full restoration of national authority, and acceptance of emancipation. He gave Campbell a letter saying "If there be any who are ready for those indispensable terms, on any conditions whatever, let them say so and state their conditions, so that such conditions can be distinctly known and considered." After Justice Campbell left, Mr. Lincoln gave General Weitzel a specific order:

"It has been intimated to me that the gentlemen who have acted as the Legislature of Virginia, in support of the rebellion, may now desire to assemble at Richmond and take measures to withdraw the Virginia troops and other support from resistance to the General government. If they attempt it, give them permission and protection until, if at all, they attempt some action hostile to the United States, in which case you will notify them and give them reasonable time to leave; and at the end of which time, arrest any who remain. Allow Judge Campbell to see this, but do not make it public."
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Two days later Mr. Lincoln wrote to General Grant, telling him what was afoot and adding, "I do not think it very probable that anything will come of this." He had told Justice Campbell, he said, that "if the war be now further persisted in by the rebels" the rigors of the confiscation act would be applied, but that these penalties would be remitted "to the people of any state which will now promptly, and in good faith, withdraw its troops and other support from resistance to the government."
⁶
The case was intricate. He would make no treaty with the Confederate government, partly because he held that that government did not legally exist and partly because Mr. Davis showed no disposition to treat in any case. But he did want the war closed out quickly, and he was willing to make a temporary, limited use of "the gentlemen who had been acting as the Virginia legislature" if that would help. Perhaps it would be worth while to put one formal touch into a situation where all the ordinary formalities of peace-making were ruled out.

Justice Campbell was enthusiastic, and he may have read more into this than Mr. Lincoln meant to put there. Campbell agreed that the Federal government had the South in its grip, but he believed that the Southern spirit had not been broken and that "a prolonged and embarrassing war might still be continued." To use the state legislatures might bring something resembling treaties of peace; he had been assured that the North Carolina legislature was ready to act, and in the President's highly qualified proposal he appears to have seen a readiness to deal with a state legislature to settle all differences between the state and the United States. The President had suggested an expedient for a limited end, and Justice Campbell was looking for a pattern that would be applied everywhere to bring "a speedy and effectual pacification of the country."
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Mr. Lincoln's suspicion that nothing would come of this was quickly borne out, largely because the collapse of the Confederacy was proceeding so rapidly that negotiators could not catch up with it. He had hoped that certain Virginia gentlemen would remove Virginia's troops from the Confederate army, but before these gentlemen could do anything about it Grant and Lee settled the matter forever. On Palm Sunday, April 9, Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Courthouse.

Lee's attempt to take his army south for further battles was never much more than a flight from the inevitable. The defeat at Five Forks compelled him to make a wide detour. To escape from Petersburg he had to go north of the Appomattox River, march northwest for twenty-five miles, recross the river, and go ten miles west to Amelia Courthouse, which was on the Richmond & Danville railroad. Here Lee was to meet the troops from Richmond, and here he had ordered rations delivered. Once his forces were assembled and supplied, he must then move down the railroad toward Burkeville, twenty miles away—at which point his march to join forces with Joe Johnston would really begin. The trouble was that Grant had the shorter route; he was nearer to Johnston than Lee was, and he was also nearer to Burkeville. Instead of pursuing his retreating foe, Grant moved due west to get ahead of him, his van led by Sheridan, who was exactly the man for a hard-driving operation of this kind. The armies were running a race in which the Federals had all of the advantages. If Lee met the least delay his army was bound to lose.