Never Call Retreat (68 page)

Delay came in less than forty-eight hours. Lee reached Amelia Courthouse on April 4, to find that the Richmond troops would not arrive until next day. Worse yet, the expected rations had not been delivered. Whether Lee's orders had never been received, or had been ignored in the monumental confusion attending the government's flight from Richmond, made no difference; the result was simple calamity, because the army had nothing at all to eat, and twenty-four hours were lost while details combed the neighborhood in a largely unsuccessful attempt to find supplies. The result of all of this was that when Lee at last was able to resume the march, late on the afternoon of April 5, Sheridan and his cavalry and 50,000 of Meade's infantry were squarely across the railroad at Jetersville, halfway between Amelia and Burkeville. The Federals had won the race. Lee's only hope now was to make another wide detour, much longer than the first one, swinging far to the westward in a desperate attempt to get around the Federal flank. The chance that this could be done was too small to be seen with the naked eye; the men could neither be fed nor rested, and every mile the army moved took it farther away from Johnston.

To make matters worse, the march had to be made with energetic Federals on the flank, and on April 6 this brought new disaster. In the dreary low country by a stream known as Sayler's Creek, Sheridan's cavalry, Wright's VI Corps and other infantry elements struck the stumbling column, overwhelmed the rear guard, put 7500 Confederates out of action and destroyed a good part of Lee's wagon train. The rest of the Army of Northern Virginia managed to keep going— it had been marching and fighting, wholly unfed, for a solid twenty-four hours—and that night it got to the town of Farmville, where there was a small depot of supplies, crossed to the north side of the Appomattox River once more, and burned the bridge behind it. When it continued its march the river would at least protect it from any more flank attacks.

But by this time the army was not really marching toward anything. Its only possible course now was westward, to Lynchburg and the mountain country. If it went far enough, and if Sheridan was unable to get around in front of it again, it could perhaps find supplies and stay alive a little longer, but it could do no more than that. That night Sheridan sent Grant a telegram describing the situation and concluding:

IF THE THING IS PRESSED I THINK LEE WILL SURRENDER. A

copy of this reached Mr. Lincoln next morning, and he sent Grant a telegram of his own, quoting Sheridan's final sentence and adding: LET THE THING BE PRESSED.
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The Army of Northern Virginia kept moving, one heavy foot after another, marching through a trance. Hour by hour it diminished. Its line of march now was marked as it had never been marked before—by hundreds and hundreds of abandoned muskets, some just dropped by the roadside, others standing butt-upward, bayonets thrust in the ground: weapons discarded by men who had given up and drifted out of the ranks. Many of these men, beaten and weaponless, continued to tramp along with the army, staying where Lee was because he was the only man they could be sure about in their disintegrating world. Sooner or later, armed or unarmed, the soldiers would have to recross the Appomattox River—they were approaching its headwaters, and it was not much of a stream now—exposing themselves again to the constant thrusts of the hard-riding Yankee cavalry. It was believed that at Appomattox Station, where the line of march would once more touch the South Side railroad, there would be freight cars full of rations sent east from Lynchburg, and perhaps this was as good a reason as any to keep going. A week after the departure from Petersburg, Lee was informed that he had fewer than 8000 organized, effective infantrymen, armed and ready for combat.
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Time to end it, in short. On April 7 a note from Grant came through the lines, calling on Lee to surrender. Lee sent a reply asking what terms Grant had in mind, Grant wrote in return that he simply wanted Lee's army to lay down its arms and accept disqualification from further combat, and then Lee tried to broaden the scope of the inevitable meeting by writing that although he did not think that "the emergency has arisen to call for the surrender of this army" he would like to talk about the general subject of restoring peace between North and South.

Grant was bound by his orders from Stanton, and he also had Mr. Lincoln's curt "Let the thing be pressed," and he was unresponsive. He notified Lee that he could not engage in any such conversation and that the kind of meeting Lee proposed would do no good; the only thing to talk about was the surrender of Lee's army. Still: Grant believed that this surrender would mean surrender everywhere, and he hoped that "all of our difficulties may be settled without the loss of another life." . . . Then, on April 9, Sheridan forced the showdown. His cavalry won the race to Appomattox Station, capturing the supplies that represented Lee's last thin hope, and with two corps of infantry that came up after a hard all-night march the Federals drew an unbreakable battle line across the road to the west, the only road on earth that meant anything now to General Lee. The Army of Northern Virginia was at bay, at last, helpless, surrounded; Sheridan was in front and on the flank, Meade was close in the rear and coming up fast, no possible escape route was open to the north, and Lee sent Grant a flag-of-truce message saying that he was ready to talk surrender.
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The two men met that day in a house at Appomattox Courthouse, a few miles from the station. But before he went to this meeting Lee quietly spoke a few words that were both a judgment on the past and an omen for the future. To him, as he prepared to meet Grant, came a trusted lieutenant who urged him not to surrender but simply to tell his army to disperse, each man taking to the hills with his rifle in his hand: let the Yankees handle guerrilla warfare for a while and see what they could make of that. Lee replied that he would have none of it. It would create a state of things in the South from which it would take years to recover, Federal cavalry would harry the length and breadth of the land for no one knew how long, and he himself was "too old to go bushwhacking"; even if the army did break up into diehard bands of irreconcilables, "the only course for me to pursue would be to surrender myself to General Grant." This was the last anybody heard about taking to the hills. The officer who suggested this course wrote that Lee "showed me the situation from a plane to which I had not risen, and when he finished speaking I had not a word to say."
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The unquenchable guerrilla warfare this officer had been hinting at was perhaps the one thing that would have ruined America forever. It was precisely what Federal soldiers like Grant and Sherman dreaded most—the long, slow-burning, formless uprising that goes on and on after the field armies have been broken up, with desperate men using violence to provoke more violence, harassing the victor and their own people with a sullen fury no dragoons can quite put down.
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The Civil War was not going to end that way (although it was natural to suppose that it might, because civil wars often do end so) and the conquered South was not going to become another Ireland or Poland, with generation after generation learning hatred and the arts of back-alley fighting. General Lee ruled it out, not only because he was General Lee but also because he had never seen this war as the kind of struggle that could go on that way. He understood the cause he served with complete clarity. His South had meant neither revolution nor rebellion; it simply desired to detach itself and live in its own chosen part of an unchanging past, and Mr. Davis had defined it perfectly when he said that all his people wanted was to be let alone. Borne up by that desire, the Confederacy had endured four years of war, and it was breaking up now because this potential for inspiring the human spirit had been exhausted. With unlimited confidence the Confederacy had fought an unlimited war for a strictly limited end. To go on fighting from the woods and the lanes and the swamps might indeed plague the Yankees and infect a deep wound beyond healing, but the one thing on earth it could not do was give the South a chance to be left alone with what used to be.

Yet men have to live by their memories, and the memory of death and defeat is bitter enough to keep unforgiving men carrying their rifles across the hills for generations. Lee made it possible for men to turn this memory into a strange source of strength, a tragic and moving remembering that provided a base on which the present could be accepted and the future could be faced. Because of what happened when he and Grant at last met, Lee when he left Appomattox—a paroled soldier without an army—rode straight into legend, and he took his people with him. The legend became a saving grace. The cause that had failed became The Lost Cause, larger than life, taking on color and romance as the years passed, remembered with pride and with heart-ache but never again leading to bloodshed. Civil wars have had worse endings than this.

A little of it is due to Grant. It was not grim old Unconditional Surrender with whom Lee sat down to talk terms. Instead it was a sensitive man who angrily stopped his own soldiers when they began firing salutes in loud celebration of their victory, reminding them that the late members of the Army of Northern Virginia were their fellow citizens now, and calling on them to send rations into the Confederate camp. His terms were generous: Lee's soldiers were to lay down their arms, accept paroles, and then go to their homes, the officers keeping their side-arms, the men taking their horses so that they could do the spring plowing. Beaten men were not to be paraded through Northern cities and then held in prison camps while the government made up its mind how it might punish men taken in rebellion. Grant in fact made punishment impossible, inserting a clause specifying that these men were never to be disturbed by Federal authority as long as they observed their paroles and obeyed the laws. Sometime later, this kept vengeance-minded officials in Washington from putting Lee on trial for treason.

Counting men without arms, innumerable stragglers, and stray details that came in when they learned what had happened, Lee surrendered approximately 27,000 men at Appomattox. The contrast between that figure and the 8000-and-odd who could actually have stood in line of battle on April 9 tells all anyone needs to know about the way his army had been worn down on its long retreat. Lee returned to his camp, making his way through broken ranks of men trying numbly to adjust themselves to the blow that had fallen, and after a conversation with some of his officers around a camp-fire he told an aide to draft a farewell order to the army that was about to disband. The first version of this order did not suit him, and he struck out a few lines that seemed likely to keep hard feelings alive. At last he had what he wanted, and the next day it was published to the troops:

"After four years of arduous service, marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude, the Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources. I need not tell the brave survivors of so many hard-fought battles, who have remained steadfast to the last, that I have consented to the result from no distrust of them. But, feeling that valor and devotion could accomplish nothing that could compensate for the loss that must have attended the continuance of the contest, I determined to avoid the useless sacrifice of those whose past services have endeared them to their countrymen.

"By the terms of the agreement officers and men can return to their homes and remain until exchanged. You will take with you the satisfaction that proceeds from the consciousness of duty faithfully performed; and I earnestly pray that a merciful God will extend to you His blessing and protection.

"With an increasing admiration of your constancy and devotion to your country, and a grateful remembrance of your kind and generous consideration for myself, I bid you all an affectionate farewell."
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That was the end of it. Lee himself returned to Richmond, Grant started back for Washington, and a day or so later the Confederates formally paraded and gave up their arms and their flags, receiving a salute from the waiting Federals, giving a salute in return. Then the men who had been paroled broke ranks, and the Army of Northern Virginia went away from its last parade ground.

It would of course be easy to make too much of the general air of reconciliation. Lee's soldiers were hard, passionate fighters, they did not enjoy defeat, they were not ready to start loving their enemies with sentimental fondness, and there were wounds that would be a long time healing. And yet by any standard this was an almost unbelievable way to end a civil war, which by all tradition is the worst kind of war there is. Living for the rest of their lives in the long gray shadow of the Lost Cause, these men were nevertheless going on toward the future. General Lee, who had set the pattern, had given them the right words: ". . . unsurpassed courage and fortitude . . . steadfast to the last . . . the consciousness of duty faithfully performed." Pride in what they had done would grow with the years, but it would turn them into a romantic army of legend and not into a sullen battalion of death.

Here is how the legend worked. Fifteen years after the surrender, one of Lee's veterans—a soldier from South Carolina, who had been in the worst of it from beginning to end—sat down to write his memoirs, a little job of writing that did not get published until many years after its writer was dead. Looking back, he seemed to see something that was worth everything it had cost him, something indeed that a man would almost like to get back to if he only could. He wrote, remember, as one who had been through the mill and not as a starry-eyed recruit, and this is how he put it:

"Who knows but it may be given to us, after this life, to meet again in the old quarters, to play chess and draughts, to get up soon to answer the morning roll call, to fall in at the tap of the drum for drill and dress parade, and again to hastily don our war gear while the monotonous patter of the long roll summons to battle? Who knows but again the old flags, ragged and torn, snapping in the wind, may face each other and flutter, pursuing and pursued, while the cries of victory fill a summer day? And after the battle, then the slain and wounded will arise, and all will meet together under the two flags, all sound and well, and there will be talking and laughter and cheers, and all will say: Did it not seem real? Was it not as in the old days?"
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