This Hallowed Ground - Bruce Catton [252]
A great fire burned in Richmond when Union troops marched in. Retreating Confederates had fired various warehouses full of goods they could not take with them, and in the wild confusion of defeat these flames got out of hand; the victorious Unionists, coming at last into the capital city of the Confederacy, spent their first hours there as a fire brigade, putting out flames, checking looting, and bringing order back to the desolate town. Lincoln himself came up the James River in a gunboat — he had been at City Point, unable to tear himself away from the military nerve center while the climactic battle was being fought — and he walked up the streets of Richmond with a handful of sailors for an escort, dazed crowds looking on in silence; went to the Confederate White House, sat for a time at Jefferson Davis’s desk, and saw for himself the final collapse of the nation he had sworn to destroy.
Most of Grant’s army never got into Richmond, and neither did Grant himself. They were on the road, pushing along furiously to head Lee off and drive him into a pocket where he could be forced to surrender, Lee was making a good march of it — his Army of Northern Virginia always could cover the ground fast — but Confederate supply arrangements, never good, broke down completely, and the rations that were supposed to be delivered to him along the way never reached him. He lost a day while his details combed the countryside to impress provisions, and the loss of this day killed off whatever chance he may have had. Sheridan and his cavalry, followed by infantry, outraced him, curled around in front, and compelled him to drift west instead of following the roads that led to Joe Johnston.
It was a forced march for both armies, lit with jubilant hope for one, darkened by gloom for the other, a matter of hard trial for the foot soldiers of each one; a pressing on in the darkness, over bad roads, through a somber country where the fires of spring had not yet burned away winter’s brown, barren bleakness. One army had wagon trains filled with food, the other had few wagons and no rations; yet the soldiers of both armies drove on, marching away from mealtimes, knowing only that after four years of it they were at last coming to the end, with tomorrow and all that tomorrow might mean lying somewhere over the next horizon. Meade overtook a part of Lee’s army at Sayler’s Creek — a soggy little crossing in a bottomland ninety miles from nowhere — and destroyed nearly half of it, taking many prisoners, capturing among others the fabulous General Richard Ewell, who had been Stonewall Jackson’s trusted lieutenant back in the day when the future still was fluid. What was left of the Army of Northern Virginia slogged on over bad roads, taking the last lap on the march to extinction and a deathless legend: and the Army of the Potomac followed, pressing close behind, sending swift tentacles out on parallel roads to get in front and stop the march.
It came to an end at last on Palm Sunday — April 9, 1865 — when Sheridan and his cavalry and a whole corps of infantry got squarely across the road in Lee’s front. The nearest town was the village of Appomattox Court House, and the last long mile had been paced off. Lee had armed Yankees in his front, in his rear, and on his flank. There was