Killing Lincoln - Bill O'Reilly [12]
It’s no wonder that men begin to desert. Whenever and wherever the column pauses, men slip into the woods, never to return. The war is clearly over. No sense dying for nothing.
Lee has long craved the freedom of open ground, but now his objective is to retreat and regroup, not to fight. His strategy that his army “must endeavor to harass them if we cannot destroy them” depends upon motivated troops and favorable terrain. These are essential to any chance of Lee snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. But the fight will have to wait until they get food.
To lighten his army’s load and move faster, Lee orders that all unnecessary guns and wagons be left behind. The pack animals pulling them are hitched to more essential loads. A few days from now, as bone thin and weary as the soldiers themselves, these animals will be butchered to feed Lee’s men.
Everything about the retreat—starvation, poor morale, desertion—speaks of failure. And yet when messengers arrive saying that the Petersburg bridges were blown by his sappers once the last man was across, making it impossible for Grant to follow, Lee is optimistic. Even happy. He has escaped once again. “I have got my army safely out of its breastworks, and in order to follow me the enemy must abandon his lines and can derive no further benefits from his railroads or James River,” he notes with relief.
Grant’s army is sliding west en masse, racing to block the road, even as Lee feels relief in the morning air. Lee suspects this. But his confidence in his army and in his own generalship is such that he firmly believes he can defeat Grant on open ground.
Everything depends on getting to Amelia Court House. Without food Lee’s men cannot march. Without food they cannot fight. Without food, they might as well have surrendered in Petersburg.
Lee’s newfound optimism slowly filters down into the ranks. Against all odds, his men regain their confidence as the trenches of Petersburg recede further and further into memory and distance. By the time they reach Amelia Court House, on April 4, after almost two consecutive days on the march, electricity sizzles through the ranks. The men speak of hope and are confident of victory as they wonder where and when they will fight the Yankees once again.
It’s just before noon. The long hours in the saddle are hard on the fifty-eight-year-old general. Lee has long struggled with rheumatism and all its crippling agonies. Now it flares anew. Yet he presses on, knowing that any sign of personal weakness will be immediately noticed by his men. As much as any soldier, he looks forward to a good meal and a few hours of sleep. He can see the waiting railroad cars, neatly parked on a siding. He quietly gives the order to unload the food and distribute it in an organized fashion. The last thing Lee wants is for his army to give in to their hunger and rush the train. Composure and propriety are crucial for any effective fighting force.
The train doors are yanked open. Inside, great wooden crates are stacked floor to ceiling. Lee’s excited men hurriedly jerk the boxes down onto the ground and pry them open.
Then, horror!
This is what those boxes contain: 200 crates of ammunition, 164 cartons of artillery harnesses, and 96 carts to carry ammunition.
There is no food.
CHAPTER SIX
TUESDAY, APRIL 4, 1865
RICHMOND, VIRGINIA
While John Wilkes Booth is still in Newport, a hungry Robert E. Lee is in Amelia Court House, Ulysses S. Grant is racing to block Lee’s path, and Abraham Lincoln stands on the deck of USS Malvern as the warship chugs slowly and cautiously up the James River toward Richmond. The channel is choked with burning warships and the floating corpses of dead