Seven a.m., April 8, 1865
Farmville
Grant refused to succumb to his headache, which broken sleep had worsened. He would have preferred to go back upstairs to the hotel room and lie down with his eyes shut and the shutters closed. But finishing matters with Lee was a sight more important than any man’s discomfort.
He believed there was a fair chance that Lee would surrender. That very day.
Even the chatter of officers breakfasting punished him, though. Each laugh stabbed into his brain.
Lee’s response to his note had arrived with surprising speed, in the early hours. Equivocal, the answer insisted that Lee didn’t “entertain” Grant’s view of the hopelessness of his army’s plight, but Lee nonetheless inquired about the terms of surrender on offer.
Grant overlooked the show of pride and welcomed the evident opening to peace. Already that morning, he had dispatched an answer, sending copies in care of four separate couriers to ensure that it reached Lee as swiftly as possible. The heart of the message had read:
… peace being my great desire, there is but one condition I would insist upon, namely, that the men and officers surrendered shall be disqualified for taking up arms again against the Government of the United States until properly exchanged. I will meet you, or will designate officers to meet any officers you may name for the same purpose, at any point agreeable to you, for the purpose of arranging definitely the terms upon which the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia will be received.
Regarding the terms of surrender, Grant meant to be generous. Lincoln was right. All the demands to punish the South were folly. The challenge now was to knit the bones back together, not worsen the break. Nor did he feel much personal animosity. How could he hate Pete Longstreet? Or Cad Wilcox? Other old friends and comrades? He’d read enough history to know that quarrels were best patched up once the last blows landed. Made no sense at all to worsen the hurt.
Sitting there signing papers on which he struggled to focus, he wished he could take his fists to the hurt in his head. After reading a few lines, he’d have to stop and gather his wits again. A cascade of decisions had to be made, orders issued or corrected, queries from Washington answered. He told himself that he could endure it all, since he had no choice. Just had to last a little while longer.
A Reb colonel, looking a wreck, strode up to Grant, unimpeded, to surrender himself. He claimed that his regiment had just faded away, local boys who’d had themselves enough, and that he owned the hotel in which Grant sat.
Grant told him to go home.
George Meade was due to arrive, all coughs and sneezes and conscientiousness. If Meade could bear what appeared to be pneumonia and still command the Army of the Potomac, Grant reckoned he could push on with a headache.
A door slammed and sent needles through his brain.
He decided to travel along with Meade for the day. Probably best to take the same route as Humphreys, stay close to the Rebs. Had to be where he could easily be found. Didn’t want Lee’s response to go astray.
Wouldn’t it be grand to end it, though? To finish it today? With no more blood?
They called him a butcher, wounding him and mortifying Julia. And he supposed there was something to the charge. But everything he had done had been for one purpose, to end the war. He’d done it the only way that had seemed possible.
Now here they were, at last. John Rawlins was right, he had come a long way. From the hideous tanyard of his boyhood, all stink and blood and hides, from the loneliness that had crushed the juice from his soul in the Northwest, from all his subsequent failures, from that storefront in Galena, the humble vantage point from which he’d watched his country crumble. And all he’d wanted before the world took to shaking itself half to death was to care for his family and, maybe, make his wife proud of him, after all the humiliations she’d faced.
Out in the street, an endless line of wagons creaked along, interspersed with artillery trains so abundant these reserve battalions were superfluous, the long tail of the greatest army the United States had ever fielded, all of it his to command. And still more armies stood in his charge, from the Carolinas to the Trans-Mississippi and parts west. He had reached heights he never would have imagined, a power none of his countrymen had foreseen: The might of a Union renewed marched at his word.
Didn’t make his headache any better.
Ten a.m.
The road to New Store
“Keegan, give us a tune on your pipe,” Riordan teased, “in thanks for the joy of the day.”
“Bugger yourself, Daniel Riordan,” the former chief musician told his comrade. “And it’s still ‘Sergeant Keegan’ to you.”
“Is that all the spirit they learn a man in Mayo, then? Ah, look at the darling spring come all around us. And you begrudge the boys a blow on the tin?”
“Shut up, Riordan,” a fellow—no Irishman—told him.
“I’ll shut me gab when I’ve eats to fill it up, go piss yourself.”
“I’m too dry to piss my pants ’way you micks do.”
But they’d marched all night and the morning through and hadn’t the will or the strength to turn to fists. They just tramped on as mountains rose on the horizon, as distant as Galway. The truth of it was that the day herself was sweet, but men were sour. Riordan had thought his feet the equal of any march, but now they ached as though the bones were breaking.
At dawn, a frost had whitened the westering hilltops, thrilled by the sun. Come light, trees flowered pale and new green summoned color to the world, more than a hint. Men had no eyes to see, yet Riordan felt it. The queerest thing it was, to bear such misery and, just for a moment, to know the joy of a fresh draft of air in the lungs, to feel a vague and, perhaps, traitorous promise.
A half mile onward, Keegan said, “I couldn’t get up a jig to save me life. I’ve not the spit for it.” His voice sounded broken, bereft, and shamefully honest. No man should ever be as honest as that, Riordan was certain.
“At least the buggering Yankees aren’t upon us,” Riordan told his fellow survivor, another relic of their ravaged Louisiana Brigade, which hardly mustered the men to see to a slops pail.
Ghosts they all were, the living and the dead.
“You have to wonder at them,” he continued. “Why they’re not on to bothering us. When they were hugging us to death but yesterday.”
“Maybe they done give up,” a born-South voice heckled both of them. The mockery drew laughter. Every man knew the Yankees would never give up. Not now.
Riordan, who had grown ever quieter over the days—gone dark and deep and inward—could only marvel at the change in himself. He wished to speak to others again, as every good Irishman did, and were he not dry unto death himself he might have told them tales. Starved to the edge of dizziness, to a place beyond conscious hunger, he felt the need of others as never before. It unsettled him.
If Ireland had not taught him to look out for himself and damn the rest, Yankee prisons had finished his education. He killed with satisfaction and trusted no one, man nor woman. And yet, this day, he wished to live and rub against his fellows.
Of late, there had been demons in his dreams. He closed his eyes with reluctance and woke with relief. Sometimes he shook in the darkness or sat up gasping. No, marching all night was not the most hateful of doings, not to him.
Give him a good feed and he’d march forever. Broken feet no matter.
“Old Lee’s going to surrender,” a cracker voice said abruptly. “That’s why they ain’t all over us. Don’t need to bother. We’re just giving up.”
“Never going to happen, not this army.”
“What army? Any man here see anything looks like an army?”
“Done heard it. We’re going quits.”
“That’s malarkey, that is,” a scrunty mick scorned the argument. “If we were all to be given up, why would they have us marching off again?”
“Bobby Lee ain’t never going to give up.”
“An’t that a wonderful comfort?” Riordan asked. “Knowing he’ll fight till the last of us is dead. And not just the Irish.” He laughed, scrape-throated. “Now there’s your ‘equality’ for you. A bullet for every man, born high or low. Oh, I’m glad and gay I made my way to Americkee.”
“Left to my druthers,” a new voice called from the rank behind, “I’d give every officer two bullets.”
“Before or after you finished licking his ass? Rivers, you’ve got more brag in you than any half-dozen generals. And you’re just as useless.”
“Didn’t run how you did at Fisher’s Hill.”
“Only ’cause them feet are slow as your brain.”
“Jesus, would you save it for the Yankees?” Keegan begged.
“I’m saving it for the first gal I get my hands on,” another man said. “Been saving it up for months, mean to flood her over.”
And Riordan thought, again, of the cowering girl, left on the floor of her kitchen, and he shamed himself with imagining what might have been.
A soldier tried to start a song, but it didn’t catch. When they halted by a well, they found it dry.
Ten thirty a.m.
Prospect Station
“Where are my goddamned scouts?” Sheridan demanded.
He’d breakfasted earlier on a proper cutlet and felt fortified. Strong. Ready to fight. But first he had to locate the damned Rebs.
No one attempted to answer him. Not Merritt, mounted at his side, nor any of his staff men.
“Goddamned worthless,” he continued. “All of them.”
But the scouts weren’t worthless, and Sheridan knew it. He needed them to find the Johnnies now, though. He needed to hit the Rebs and hit them again until they begged for pity. Then he’d finish them off.
A message from Grant had ignited him. Grant believed Lee might surrender; they’d exchanged notes. And that was too soon for Sheridan. The Army of Northern Virginia couldn’t be let off. Its remnants had to be slaughtered.
The South had to learn it could never get back up.
And he, Philip Sheridan, needed to win the last victory of the war in the eastern theater, the one that mattered. He had to complete the work he had begun at Sailor’s Creek, to eradicate Lee’s army and prove himself the indisputable victor, rival to Sherman and second only to Grant. It was no longer about what had been done, but about what would be done after the war. And by whom.
He was the man to put the final arrow in Lee’s heart, to kill the myth. He had under his command the entire Cavalry Corps, as well as Charlie Griffin and the Fifth Corps, which had been subordinated to him again, and Griffin was marching up at whiplash speed, driving his men. Ord and his corps, sandwiched in between the cavalry and Griffin, would do as bid, too. Ord was ever unsure of himself, despite his mouth and swagger, and he secretly longed to be given instructions absolving him of the need to make decisions. Ord would fight, as long as he needn’t think.
Three corps would be enough to smash Lee’s vagabonds.
Oh, he was the man to do it, all right, but he had to act before Grant called off the game. So the scouts had been roused in the dead of night, to don their Reb disguises and head off, to find the exact location of Lee’s army.
And that army was close, he knew it. At dawn, Crook’s division had seized a locomotive and cars evacuated from Farmville the day before, the rail wagons loaded with feasts of rations as good as any his own army could provide. But there was more, far more. Ranging afar, his scouts had tapped the Reb telegraph lines, bringing him the intelligence that multiple trains with rations and arms had been dispatched to Lee.
But where were they headed? Where were they now? The options had narrowed, but Sheridan needed definite information. He had not an hour to lose. Sam Grant wanted peace a sight too badly.
Sheridan itched to ride forward, but Prospect Station had been appointed as the spot where he would wait on the scouts and a firm report. So he sat high on Rienzi, with the horse, too, growing restless, reading his master’s mood. For his part, Merritt just watched his divisions move westward at a walk, leaving a trail of droppings, dust, and hoofprints along another neglected Virginia road.
Normally, the sight of his men in column excited Sheridan. He loved the display of it all, the animal power waiting to be unleashed. But today he worried their movement might be errant: They couldn’t just wander the countryside, trusting to luck to guide them.
His escort tensed as hooves thumped up behind them.
Two riders approached at a gallop, outfitted as down-at-the-heels cavaliers, the man to the fore in a flopping planter’s hat, the other with a straw topper feathered and frayed.
How the devil had they avoided the pickets?
The officers and men gathered round relaxed: just Sheridan’s pet scouts.
The horsemen were glossed with sweat, and their stink preceded them. As Rebs, they were convincing.
The senior man, a sergeant Sheridan recognized, pulled his mount about, saluted, and called, “Appomattox Station, General. They’re at Appomattox Station. Counted four locomotives myself, but others say there’s eight.” As breathless as an asthmatic, he gasped, “Appomattox Station. That’s where they’ll be, them trains you want. No sign of their army yet, though. Nothing.”
“Good work. Fine work. Get yourselves some rations, boys. Nigger won’t stop his cook wagon, shoot him dead.”
And it was fine work. If he didn’t know exactly where Lee was, he knew where he’d be, which was a good deal better. Those trains, four locomotives and maybe more, would be the magnets to draw Lee’s shattered metal. Lee was heading for Appomattox Station, no doubt about it.
He had to do his duty and send Grant a message, but first he turned to Merritt.
“You heard him, Wes. Kill the horses if you have to. But get there before Lee.” He thought for a moment. “Put Custer in the lead.”
Three p.m.
Richmond–Lynchburg stage road
Northeast of Appomattox Court House
Gordon shook himself up and down, ridding flesh and bone of the saddle stiffness. Sometimes it was just grand to plant your toes anywhere but a stirrup. They’d been on the march for almost eighteen hours, with the usual misdirections and delays. At the rear of the army for days on end, they now were in the vanguard. At least there was less dust for a man to swallow.
Beside him, Clem Evans soothed his chestnut gelding. Turning to Gordon with that almost-smile he wore even in repose, Clem said, “Glad we stopped, John. Men do need a rest.” He gentled the back of a hand down the horse’s neck.
Clem, the eager killer and martial Methodist, was a kindly man when he took his ease with friends. Gordon just about loved him as a brother, not least for his blood-soaked innocence.
“I’d as soon push on,” Gordon told him. “Lee wants the army to close up, I understand. After what transpired day before yesterday. But I don’t like stopping, not now, when we’re this far.”
“Men are bone-worn, John. Those still by the colors.”
“Thought the Lord was on our side, Clem?” Gordon teased his subordinate. “Shouldn’t he get busy? Help us out? Put some git in our legs? Far as those railcars?”
Evans regarded him patiently. “He tests us sometimes, the Lord does.”
“Well, doesn’t the Scripture say ‘I can do all things through Him who strengthens me’?”
Clem’s look turned quizzical. “Indeed, it does. Philippians four: thirteen, as I recall.”
“Well, mightn’t he gird our loins for a few more miles? That must fall under the doing of all things.”
“‘He removes kings and establishes kings.’ Daniel two: twenty-one. But his hand doesn’t necessarily—”
“We’re not talking kings here. Just about moving this corps on along to Appomattox Station.”
“John … I’ve got men who’ve marched all through this war without falling out. Now their feet are bleeding through their shoes. Their bellies are empty and have been.”
“The loaves and fishes are waiting at that station, Clem. And they’re not going to come to us.” He watched Clem’s hand touch his side. “Those pins still ailing you, Clem?”
“Not substantially. Can’t say I won’t remember Monocacy, though.”
With that, the two generals let the matter rest. Their horses nibbled the spring grass. Overhead, a good sun shone, warming their shoulders. At last, Gordon said:
“Oh, hell. I guess it doesn’t matter now. It’s just my way, to want to push along, to get things done. Reckon I need my Fanny to soothe me some. Ulysses must return to his Penelope. And hope that Ithaca isn’t a total shambles.” He removed his hat and swept a palm across his forehead. “It’s over, and that’s the truth.”
To his wonderment, Evans seemed shocked. And not by his minor blasphemy.
“It true, then?” Evans asked. “They’re in correspondence?”
Gordon shrugged. “So I hear tell. Grant sent Lee a billet-doux and it seems there was an answer. As for the state of the romance, I’m uninformed.”
“I can’t believe it,” Clem said.
“Well, no need to credit rumors, I suppose. Not yet, anyway.”
“I can’t believe it. We’re not whipped. We’re not.”
It was Gordon’s turn to be startled. He knew Clem was a born innocent, that his faith in victory had always been unbounded, but surely …
“Clem, for the love of … this army’s not a third of what it was. Barely a quarter. We’ve fought as hard as men can fight, but…”
“‘One of your men puts to flight a thousand, for the Lord your God is He who fights for you.’ Joshua twenty-three: ten.”
“Joshua wasn’t fighting Ulysses S. Grant.” Gordon looked down at the earth, as if the right words might be written upon it. “Aren’t we supposed to accept God’s will with grace? Come on now, Clem. Wouldn’t you like to go on home to Georgia, see Allie again? The children? Take to the pulpit, the way you always planned? Leave all this behind? And praise God that you’re alive and mostly whole?”
“After what we’ve been through…”
“After all we’ve been through, we got whupped. Truth is we were finished after Stedman. Isn’t fair, but there it is.” He gripped his friend’s upper arm, meaning to comfort, unsure how. “Bible’s not a chronicle of fairness, as I recall. Trials and tribulations, Clem. We have to bear them, isn’t that what it says?”
Clem looked just about broken. As faithful and unsuspecting as a child, shocked by a cruel and unexpected betrayal. How on earth could he not have expected this? Was he utterly blind?
The division commander turned away, hiding his emotions.
Of all the heroes in Homer and cherished by Gordon, only Hector neared Clem Evans in character, in his innate sense of nobility and obligation. Hector, too, had been a magnificent killer.
Not all things on earth lent themselves to reason.
As for Gordon, he was damned sorry they’d lost. But he preferred to ponder the future now. And he would have a future, because he’d make one. Not least, he looked forward to merry fussing under Fanny’s nightdress. They would have a future, and a fine one.
Clem surprised him. Instead of speaking of the Cause, or of the sacrifices of his men, or of his cherished family, he said:
“Know who I feel sorriest for? If it really is the end? The Children of Ham, the coloreds. Imagine what’ll become of them, once they’re all turned loose with no guiding hand. It’s unchristian, it’s positively unchristian, John, to abandon them to a false messiah’s promises, to tempt them with lies of manna, milk, and honey. Given their proclivities…” He stared through the earth to the future. “I … fear for the Negro race.”
Gordon felt on firmer ground with that topic.
“We’ll see to the niggers, all right,” he assured his friend.
Four thirty p.m.
Appomattox Station
By the time Custer caught up with the head of his column, the men of the 2nd New York were having a grand time. Before the rest of Al Pennington’s bunch had closed, an advance party of the New Yorkers, a handful of men selected for railroad experience, had captured three trains with over fifty railcars.
Now they were tooting the whistles and shuttling the trains up and down the track, a few hundred yards each way, greeting Custer with a jolly pageant. Leaning from a locomotive’s cab, a sergeant waved his red scarf and hollered against the engine noise, unintelligible but thrilled at Custer’s arrival. Blackened by oil and engine soot, the fellow grinned like a painted coon in a minstrel show.
Pennington rode up and gave his report.
“Got ’em, sir, we took ’em just like that. Rebs didn’t even try to put up a fight. And every one of those cars is packed to the roof. Rations, blankets, uniforms, rifles … enough to furnish Lee’s army and build another.”
“There were supposed to be four trains. Or more. I count three, Al.”
“One got away, sir. Must’ve had a warning. We saw the smoke receding, off to the west. Wouldn’t know about any others, though.”
“Well … splendid. Grand. Capehart should be up in half an hour and we’ll resume the hunt. Meanwhile, put out pickets, in case our Southern brethren want their dinner back.”
“Already have, sir. And if I may—”
The familiar whistle of an artillery shell plunged toward the depot. It burst in an open lot behind the water tank.
A speck of dirt stung Custer.
“What the devil?”
More shells followed.
“They’re trying to hit the trains, they know we’ve taken them,” Custer shouted, pulling up the nag he’d been forced to ride. His best horse had been shot from under him back at Sailor’s Creek and another went lame. “Al, have those railroad men of yours move the trains off east.”
He scanned the horizon, his view interrupted by stands of poor timber and a sprawl of undergrowth.
Another explosive shell made his horse shy.
“Think I’ve got a sense of them,” Pennington told him. “Over that way. Not a half mile off, I’d say. Judging by the arcs.”
“Well, return their greeting, old fellow.”
“Damned poor ground for cavalry.”
“Worse for artillery.”
Pennington waved up his bugler to sound the assembly and sent a captain to order the trains shuttled eastward. The command proved unnecessary, since the soldiers on the throttles had judged the situation for themselves. Before the order reached the first cab, steam was up and driving wheels were turning.
The trains pulled off, whistling defiantly. Pennington dismounted three of his regiments and led them into the undergrowth himself, with Custer watching and waiting on his next brigade.
With the captured trains already to his credit, he figured that grabbing a few Reb guns would put cherries atop the cake.
Wouldn’t Phil be pleased?
The attack failed. Bleeding cavalrymen wandered out of the thickets or staggered down rutted wagon tracks, helped along by messmates. The lightly wounded cursed bitterly, while the worst hit muttered women’s names or stared blindly.
“It’s worse than a damned jungle,” Pennington explained. He’d lost his hat and his forehead had been scratched open. “Bastards hit us with canister. Couple batteries’ worth. Before we could even see them.” He sighed, then blasphemed mightily. “Let me round the boys up and we’ll try again.”
“Wait for Capehart. Scout them for now. Sounds like there may be more out there than we thought. Push out a skirmish line and snatch me a prisoner. I need to know who we’re facing, I need to know if they’ve got infantry with them. We’ve had enough surprises.”
A lone drop of blood traced down into Pennington’s eyebrow. “They can see us, that’s the thing. They ranged the depot fast enough. And they knew we were coming after them. But I couldn’t see them at all, it’s the queerest thing.”
“Either they know the ground, or they’re good at guessing. Just bring me a prisoner, we’ll set things straight soon enough.”
The Confederate guns shifted back to shelling the station. But the day’s first shots had been mostly luck, and they never got the range that close again. Instead of improving, their accuracy worsened, although they did hit a horse holder and four mounts.
The Rebs couldn’t see everything, but his men were as good as blind. It promised to be an interesting squabble.
* * *
“It’s their entire artillery reserve,” Pennington reported. “Got ahead of their army somehow. There’s a wagon train, too, bunched up along the stage road. And cavalry, a regiment or more. Fighting dismounted. They’ve got surplus artillerymen fighting with rifles, too.”
Surprised, Custer asked, “A Reb told you all that? So fast?” His features tightened. “You didn’t—”
Pennington smiled. “Better than a Reb. Snapped up a darkey teamster who’d run off. Scared as a rabbit when we brought him in. Seemed to think Yankees are cannibals. Guess he hasn’t heard it’s the Jubilee.”
“Anything else?”
“They got here late this morning. They’re waiting for Lee to catch up.” Pennington chewed his mustache. “They had no idea we were anywhere close. Which explains why the trains weren’t guarded.”
The head of Capehart’s column appeared down along the rail bed. With flags flying.
Methodical this time, Custer had Capehart dismount all of his regiments but one and move forward cautiously, with Pennington ready to move to his support.
The fighting soon bogged down. Capehart’s men stuck to it, though, playing hide-and-seek with the Confederates. Custer rode into the fray himself, following dirt tracks forward, the brambles forbidding entry to his horse. Once leaves sprouted fully, the tangles would be impenetrable even on foot. He didn’t intend to stay that long, of course. But it truly was an ugly piece of ground.
Afternoon light slanted through the trees, nature’s timepiece. Custer couldn’t see much, but his men saw him. It stirred them up and kept them moving forward.
Bullets zipped past, snapping twigs and thunking tree trunks. A soldier jerked, cried, “Mother!” and toppled forward.
Custer found Hank Capehart on foot, slashing at the briars with his saber.
“Thinking of taking up gardening after the war?” Custer asked.
“Not in goddamned Virginia. This sorry place…”
A dozen cannon blasts sounded in quick succession. Men screamed. Howled. Clutching their carbines, soldiers—good men—ran blindly rearward past Custer and Capehart.
A dazed lieutenant emerged from the undergrowth, clutching an arm attached only by a few tendons. Belatedly, the presence of his superiors registered on him.
“Canister,” he muttered. “Waiting for us. Canister.”
Custer offered the boy his horse, but the lieutenant just said, “Can’t,” and staggered rearward.
“Sound the recall,” Custer told Capehart.
“My bugler’s dead.”
* * *
When Wells’ brigade completed the division, Custer sketched out his plan for his three colonels.
“We’re going to make it stick this time,” he told them. “One regiment per brigade will remain mounted for a pursuit, but everybody else goes in on foot. We feint toward the center and get their attention. Then we envelop both flanks.” He examined the faces, each colonel’s expression serious in the gloaming. “I want to see spirit this time. I know what the men are thinking. ‘Why should I be the last to fall?’ I won’t have it. The war’s not over yet. And I will not have this division shamed by a pack of cast-off Reb artillerymen and cavalrymen who’ve been dining off their horses.”
“Wonder if they haven’t been reinforced?” Pennington said. “Been at it over three hours, quite a rumpus. If Lee’s anywhere close, he’d be pushing men forward.”
“No, Al, I don’t think so,” Custer told him. “If reinforcements had come up, we would’ve heard cheers. Just how it works, you know that.”
“Night attacks are bad enough,” said Bill Wells, the latecomer, “but from what I’ve seen of the terrain…”
“Just keep your men tight. You’ll have plenty of moonlight.”
“And that canister? Hell on tight formations.”
“Keep the men tight. But stay on the flanks.”
“About the bugles,” Capehart said, “I’d just as soon go in quiet. See if we can’t surprise them.”
“No. They’d hear us coming, anyway. Thrashing through that brush. Just do what I said. Spread out the regimental buglers. Make it sound as if the entire Cavalry Corps is after them, not just one division. I want them jumping out of their skins before they hear one carbine.”
The commanders set their pocket watches, straining to read the faces.
“All right,” Custer said. “Step off at eight thirty. That means everybody. Keep the men shoulder to shoulder. And go as fast as you can.” He drew himself up straight and added, “I want this finished before Devin gets up. I won’t have anyone else stealing our credit.”
* * *
The Rebs were played out. Custer’s men burst over them. Some Rebs fought, particularly the gun crews defending their pieces, but most ran away or surrendered, begging, “Don’t shoot, Yank! Done thrown down my gun, don’t shoot me, Yank!”
A few of Pennington’s men remembered the blasts of canister and ignored the pleas. But the savagery was brief.
Soon wagons were blazing, with prisoners herded rearward and Reb fieldpieces hitched to captured limbers. Even in the dark, Custer’s men were appalled by the condition of the Reb horses and mules.
A sergeant reported, “Got us a Reb general. Sick in the back of a wagon, puking sick. Near burned him alive, but his coon-boy stopped us.”
As regiments regrouped and adjutants counted heads, Custer said, “All right. Good work. Just splendid.” He turned to Wells, whose men had seen the least action. “Who did you hold in reserve, Bill?”
“Fifteenth New York. Augie Root’s desperadoes.”
“Send them on to the Court House. See if they can scare up any more Rebs. Or spot campfires. Phil’s going to want to know if Lee’s about.”
“If he was, he would’ve done something for these poor bastards,” Pennington said with a gesture toward their prisoners.
“Can’t just reason it out, Al. You know that. Bill, you tell Colonel Root to find the Rebs.”
“If they’re out there,” Pennington said. Tired and stubborn and just how he got sometimes.
“They’re out there,” Custer told him.
* * *
The 15th New York returned from their scout without their commanding officer, who had been shot from his horse in the village street. The acting commander, a major, reported to Custer and Wells:
“They’re out there, all right. Might be Lee’s whole army, judged by the campfires. See ’em spread out soon as you cross the ridge.” Catching his breath, the major added, “I told the colonel we were too far forward, sir. We’d already been fired on twice. But he wanted to locate their skirmish line, he was set on it.”
“Well, he did what he set out to do,” Sheridan commented. Recently arrived, he had been suffering Custer’s account of the day’s heroics when the 15th New York returned. “Thank you, Major. Brave work. See to your men.”
“Handsome way to go, I daresay,” Custer commented. “Augie Root has covered himself in glory.”
“And we’ll cover him with dirt.” Sheridan was weary and saddle-sore. And hungry, although he’d had a pleasant repast that afternoon. “Anything worth eating? That cook of yours catch up?”
“No cook, Phil. But carloads of bacon and all the trimmings besides. Didn’t dream the South had all those vittles left.”
Sheridan grunted. He’d had something better than fried fatback in mind. “I wonder what Bobby Lee’s been eating tonight.”
“Crow,” Custer said.
Ten p.m.
One mile northeast of Appomattox Court House
Gordon watched Lee rise—with some difficulty—from the blanket under his rump. Turning from the good warmth of the fire, Lee stared again at the campfires to the south and spreading westward, beyond his lines and blocking the army’s path. Gordon did not get up. Didn’t need to. He’d had all the looking he needed. From the high field that served as Lee’s headquarters this night, a man could see additional Yankee campfires, many more, to the northeast, crowding Longstreet’s lines and the army’s rear.
They were all but surrounded.
Longstreet heaved his big form up on his pins and stepped to Lee’s side. They made a somber pair.
“Only cavalry,” Longstreet said, following Lee’s gaze southward. “No reports of infantry ahead.”
Lee’s proud shoulders sagged, but his voice sought firmness. “I do not believe their infantry march with sufficient vigor. They have not the steel of our men, the force of character. They could not be there so soon.”
Gordon thought of the scarecrow bodies of his remaining soldiers, of their sunken eyes and caved-in bellies, the new bend in their backs and mouths hanging open because men lacked the strength needed to close them. Perhaps some scraps of steel remained in their hearts, but their bodies were flesh and blood.
Still, he’d wanted to push them harder himself. He always did. Clem had tried to talk sense to him. Wasn’t a man a tangle of contradictions, though? Homer understood.
Sprawled on his blanket, nearest to the fire, Fitz Lee said, “If it’s only cavalry, my boys can see to them, push them aside. If that’s what you want. Infantry, though…”
“There will not be infantry,” Lee said adamantly. “I do not believe their infantry will be up, not in our front. Not if we move briskly.”
“But if…,” Fitz Lee said.
Gordon had soured on Lee’s nephew. If Fitz’s performance had been poor at Five Forks, it hadn’t shown much improvement at Sailor’s Creek. Just wasn’t the man to command the Cavalry Corps. He’d been sound enough in command of a division, but leading the entire cavalry was too much for him. The mounted arm just had not been the same since Wade Hampton left. Weren’t all that mounted, either, at this point.
Nothing delighted the heart of an infantry soldier like the sight of a cavalryman forced to go on foot.
Returning to the fire, Lee warmed his hands. “I have asked Grant to state his terms, but he has not done so. Not with adequate clarity. He has offered a meeting.”
The three generals looked at him, not one willing to ask the question all wished answered.
“I am not unwilling,” Lee said. “But I fear punitive terms. He writes of paroling the soldiers, but my concern must be with our officers.”
“Grant’s not a cruel man,” Longstreet said. “No fool, either. If I know Sam, the terms he’ll offer won’t shame us.”
Anger colored Lee’s face. Or perhaps it was the fire’s cast. “Not cruel? The man dares speak of ending the ‘effusion of blood.’ To me! Grant!”
Gordon understood the outburst well enough. Lee still hadn’t cottoned to being whipped. It was hard for all of them, not least for the fervent spirits like Clem Evans, but Gordon suspected it was harder by far for Lee. He was much the elder of all present, a generation senior even to Longstreet. And his staff men had barely settled into their britches. Every other man around the campfire could look ahead to a future, if not necessarily an easy one. But what lay ahead for Lee?
Gordon was aware of the camp talk among the old Regulars, the suspicion that the Yankee government would imprison all the Confederate officers who’d turned their arms against the United States, in violation of their commissioning oaths. The Northern press had deemed them “traitors” many a time.
Might just sweep up all the Southern generals, West Point or not. Couldn’t rule it out. But Gordon reckoned the fuss would blow over quickly for men like him, men who’d worn no uniforms until the war, who’d never pledged to serve the Constitution. They’d be too much bother to prosecute. Even a country lawyer could make a spectacle of it, comparing them to George Washington, as men of conscience rebelling against oppression. Might take away their franchise and ban them from office, but there would be ways around such inconveniences.
As for the old Regulars … the Union might feel a thirst for bloody vengeance, but it would be tempered by practical concerns. If the Yankees treated Southern officers barbarously, the outcry from abroad would set things right. The Europeans hadn’t been willing to fight for the South, but they’d be glad to dent the North’s rival economy. No, the Yankees needed trade, it was their lifeblood. They wouldn’t hang men in droves if it meant a drop in shares on the New York Exchange.
Might they be fool enough to imprison Lee, though? Even hang him, as an example? They’d wreck any hope of reconciliation, they’d spark enough hatred to last a generation.
But men did foolish things.…
As if reading Gordon’s mind, Lee said, “I fear not for myself, but for the South. What shall become of us, gentlemen? What will be left us? Those people speak of liberty for all, but one hears echoes of tyranny in their voices. I fear some among them wish to destroy the South. Not merely our armies, not only the institution of Negro servitude, but … everything.”
“Not Grant,” Longstreet said stubbornly.
“But Grant is not the president, General Longstreet. Nor is he a minister of government. It is … it is not those who’ve fought us on the battlefield whom I dread. It is those who have stayed at home, baying for blood.”
“Yankees have shown a talent for tearing things down,” Fitz Lee put in. Fitz had survived grave wounds from Comanches and Yankees, only to send many good men to their graves.
Gordon knew how things would play out in the future, though. Thanks to that last name, to its magic spell, Fitz would come out fine, despite his failures. So he only said:
“We’ll find our way forward, all right. There’s always a way. We’re not going to disappear, we’ll still be here.”
“If a sight fewer in number,” Longstreet said wryly. Gordon found him a dark and brooding man, ferocious and conditioned to disappointment. Over the past hour Longstreet had veered between apologizing for Grant, his prewar friend, and evincing an appetite for slaughter worthy of the Old Testament.
Gordon could hardly tell from one moment to the next whether Longstreet intended to influence Lee to fight on or surrender. They were hardly exemplars of courage, any of them, each waiting for the other to speak up and press Lee to a decision, one way or the other. For his part, Gordon believed that further resistance was hopeless. As he’d told Clem that afternoon, they’d been finished after Fort Stedman.
He looked at Lee again. The fire crackled and flared, lighting a worn face.
Longstreet sat back down on his blanket, joining the others in awkward repose. Formality had broken down along with the army—in the past they would not have sat while Lee remained standing.
But Lee stood alone now. Struggling with his old-fashioned ideas of rectitude as plainly as a woman laughed or cried. After four years, the fate of a world would turn on his decision. Davis was impotent, Johnston’s army doomed, Forrest and all of the others out there useless. Whatever the formalities that might drag on for months, the Confederacy would die if Lee surrendered.
Gordon believed Lee’s eyes were growing wet. It shocked him and he found the sight intolerable.
Gripped by unreason, he rose and spoke from the far side of the campfire, no longer scheming Ulysses but Achilles, full of passion.
“By God, sir, we have to try. If the Federals only have cavalry in our path, we can sweep them away.” His voice rang out, or so it seemed to him. “My corps is good for it, we can open that road. And hold it open.”
All the while he spoke, he doubted his own veracity. All day—for days—surrender had seemed inevitable. He didn’t believe for a moment that one more attack could alter the course of the war. And yet, looking at Lee standing there, shouldering that incalculable weight, Gordon had found himself compelled to rush to his aid once more. He simply could not help himself.
An attack would spill more blood, to no good purpose. But it was fated, written.
And yet … what if they could open the road? And then push on toward Lynchburg and turn south? What if they reached Johnston, after all?
Fitz Lee, too, had risen. “My boys can lick their cavalry. Now, or anytime. If that’s all they have in our way, we’ll see to them smartly.”
“Have to hit them early, while it’s still dark,” Longstreet said, coming back to life. “I can hold off Meade and Humphreys, all of them.”
Renewed and suddenly eager, they fell to planning the details, how Gordon would punch through and swing to the left, holding open the Lynchburg road while the stripped-down wagon train and artillery passed. Longstreet would follow, relieving Gordon and serving as the rear guard. Once they were in the clear, they would turn south and march to join Joe Johnston.…
Their hope was the hope of children.
Two a.m., April 9
Clifton manor
Grant lay awake, head pounding. Sleep was impossible, lying awake unbearable. The mustard plasters the surgeon applied had been useless. Downstairs, staff men, exuberant and gay despite their weariness, had thumped a parlor piano until midnight, when Grant finally sent an orderly to hush them. He hated to spoil their revelry, but couldn’t bear the racket any longer.
His head felt ready to crack into pieces, his brain about to bust out of his skull. The headache was the worst he could remember, and he’d known fierce ones.
He couldn’t even fit a cigar to his mouth.
Lee had disappointed him. He’d expected an answer, even if it only announced another step in their dance. But none had arrived. He’d begun the past day optimistic that it might see the last hour of war, at least in Virginia. He’d written as much to Sheridan.
Hadn’t worked out.
Struggling with the pain was trial enough, but he had to fight against self-pity, too. He’d learned to fear the weakness, the indulgence, hidden inside him. Let a man pity himself for just one instant and good sense fled. Pain passed, but the consequences of folly dogged a man. He’d learned that lesson.
In all his life, the only pain he’d been unable to bear had been that crushing separation from Julia, when the Army sent him alone to the raw Northwest. He’d taken to drink and made the decisions that cost him his shoulder straps. But this headache, this new and startling level of torment, threatened to unman him.
He breathed in gasps, a substitute for tears.
Damn Lee. Damn him. The war needed to end, it was bloody filth. Lee knew it as well as he did.
Lightly, warily, knuckles tapped his door.
“Come in,” Grant called. He struggled to put his mind, his features, in order.
John Rawlins stood in the door frame, thin as a shadow. He held a lamp and a paper.
“Come in,” Grant repeated. “Can’t sleep, anyway.” He recoiled. “Easy with that light.”
“Still that bad?”
“Half wish somebody’d blow my head off my shoulders.” Grant eyed the paper.
“From Lee,” Rawlins told him. “His Royal fucking Highness, Robert E. Lee. The old pisser. Wait till you read it.”
“Read it to me. Not sure my eyes can point in the same direction.”
Rawlins shoved aside doilies and china dogs, settling the lamp on a dresser. Bending to the light, he read:
Lieutenant-General Grant,
Commanding Armies of the United States:
General: I received at a late hour your note of to-day. In mine of yesterday I did not intend to propose the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia, but to ask the terms of your proposition. To be frank, I do not think the emergency has arisen to call for the surrender of this army; but as the restoration of peace should be the sole object of all, I desired to know whether your proposals would lead to that end. I cannot, therefore, meet you with a view to surrender the Army of Northern Virginia; but as far as your proposal may affect the C.S. forces under my command, and tend to the restoration of peace, I should be pleased to meet you at 10 a.m. to-morrow, on the old stage road to Richmond, between the picket-lines of the two armies.
Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
R. E. Lee
General
“The high-toned sonofabitch,” Rawlins said, inflamed anew by the words he had read aloud. “It’s infamous, intolerable. He’s playing with us.”
Grant rested his face in his hands for a moment longer. Then he said:
“No, John. No, he’s letting himself down easy. Must be the hardest thing he’s had to do in his entire life, this surrender business. Hard enough for two lifetimes, for a man of his sort and breeding.” Grant closed his eyes to shut out the pain, but only locked it in. “Things have always gone his way, more or less. Now they aren’t going his way anymore. It’s a shock that requires adjustment.”
“He’s a scoundrel. Nothing but a high-flown scoundrel. You’re too damned soft.”
“Haven’t been charged with that in quite a while.”
“Really, we need to pound him. Phil’s right, at least about that much. The only way to make Lee see reason—if it can be done—is to destroy that army, smash it once and for all. Teach every goddamned Reb a lesson they’ll never forget. Grind them to dust.”
Grant took a drink of water from the bedside carafe, too wanton in his pain to use the glass. “And then what? Then what, John? You might befriend a man you’ve whipped, given time. But not a fellow you’ve humiliated.”
“You’re going to just accept it? This insult?”
Grant tried closing his eyes again. Didn’t help this time, either. “There’s no insult. Except to common sense. Or to his own soldiers.”
“And … this peace nonsense. You can’t negotiate a general peace, he has to know that. That’s for Lincoln, the politicians. He’s trying to pull a fast one, get you to commit to something that’ll drag you down, that would outrage every political hack in Washington.”
Grant shook his head. “You’re thinking like a politician yourself, John.” He almost smiled. “Soldiers are simpler folk. Even Robert E. Lee.”
“You know you can’t treat of peace. You can only take the surrender of his army.”
“I know it.” He was beginning to find Rawlins as exasperating as Lee. “Maybe my own words misled him. Lee … isn’t a dishonest man, I don’t believe.” He scratched his leg through underclothes gone gray. “Think there’s one fine house in all Virginia doesn’t have bedbugs?”
Impatient, fuming, oblivious, Rawlins asked, “You’re going to reply?”
“Of course I’m going to reply. But I won’t agree to meet him; that offer’s revoked until he starts talking sense. I’m not going to haggle and let this thing drag on.” Blue lightning shot through his skull again, but he mastered himself and continued: “Don’t worry. I won’t get too big for my boots, not about to let the president down. If any man knows his place…”
“You’ll let me see the message, though? Before you send it? Your future—”
“My future isn’t the issue.”
“Somebody has to think about it. If you won’t.”
Agitated and sleepless himself, Rawlins fell into one of his coughing fits. He shook out a blood-pinked handkerchief and shut it over his mouth.
When his friend, his true and trusted friend, recovered, Grant added:
“Lee can wait until morning, though. He made us wait long enough. Don’t want to write while I’m out of sorts myself, let spleen seep in.”
“He’s playing for time, Sam. You know it as well as I do. You need to bring him up short.”
“Like I said, he’s just playing out his pride. I believe … I think I’ve come to understand the man. To some degree.”
Lee. The great, the grand Robert E. Lee. Every lieutenant’s idol, hero to all.
Grant pondered things a bit longer, striving to think clearly. “Tell you, John … I wouldn’t be surprised if he comes at us one more time, one last attack in the morning. One final gesture of pride. Then he’ll fold his hand.”
Whittled sharp by consumption, Rawlins’ features became those of an inquisitor judging an unrepentant heretic.
“Well, if he does … if Lee does attack again, we’ll be ready for the sonofabitch.”