Day 38. April 7, 1862.
38
we have cringed before Slavery as long as we will….
April Monday 7 1862
Quite a pleasant morning but commenced to snow and rain towards evening. Capt Jones field officer of the day Lieut [illeg.] camp officer. Things looks as if we are going to have a storm. We are still camped at Winchester. The boys are waiting anxiously for the paymaster to come but he did not come today as was expected. Our main army is out near Woodstock and we can’t get no news. It is raining snowing and sleeting. I am not very well and I will look for better weather soon. I will close for the day
Civil War Weather in Virginia Robert K. Krick P. 54
“7a.m. 44; 2p.m. 45; 9p.m. 36. Snow and rain from 1P.M., 2.00 (inches, ed.).”
A Virginia Yankee in the Civil War The Diaries of David Hunter Strother David Hunter Strother P. 27
“APRIL 7, MONDAY.—Cloudy and mild. At headquarters saw a man who stated that in the Blue Ridge of Rockingham County were Union Virginians and refugees from conscription to the amount of a thousand men determined to resist the Confederate authorities and determined to fight to the end…. A snow storm beginning.”
The Civil War The Final Year: Told by Those Who Lived It Edited by Aaron Sheehan-Dean P. 29
“FREEDOM AND SLAVERY: VIRGINIA, APRIL 1864
Wilbur Fisk to The Green Mountain Freeman
Camp near Brandy Station, Va.
April 7th, 1864
There never before was a rebellion like this one. Generally a rebellion has been the outbreak of the people against the tyranny of the few. Their cause has usually been the cause of liberty, and more or less just. Knit together by the idea of freeing themselves from an odious despotism, and armed with justice, and backed by numbers, they have often succeeded, and history has applauded their bravery. In this war it has been different. The people have not rebelled against the few, but the few have rebelled against the people. Our government is the people’s, and against this government the proud slaveholder has rebelled. With Slavery as the corner stone they hope to rob our government of her honor, and erect within our borders a rival government, which every attribute of the Almighty must detest. Can they succeed? Is the glory of our nation to be destroyed forever? Is the great experiment which our forefathers have made, and which has been our pride and boast so long, to be a failure after all? If the North will do her duty, we answer, Never! And the North will do her duty. She knows what it is, and she does not fear it. Never in a war before did the rank and file feel a more resolute earnestness for a just cause, and a more invincible determination to succeed, than in this war; and what the rank and file are determined to do everybody knows will surely be done. We mean to be thorough about it too. We are not going to destroy the military power of the dragon Confederacy and not destroy its fangs also. We have as a nation yielded to their rapacious demands times enough. We have cringed before Slavery as long as we will.”
Note: Fast-forward to 1865:
Raising the White Flag: How Surrender Defined the American Civil War David Silkenat P. 193-194
“Lee’s departure from Petersburg put the Army of Northern Virginia on the path to surrender. Beaten down after months of siege, Lee’s army limped westward in a vain effort to resupply at Danville before reuniting with Joseph Johnston’s Army of Tennessee, which was then licking its wounds in Smithfield, North Carolina, after its defeat at Bentonville. Plagued in retreat by Grant’s larger, better supplied, and more maneuverable army, the Army of Northern Virginia suffered from a series of disastrous defeats, most significantly at Sailor’s Creek on April 6, where Lee lost one-fifth of his remaining army. These defeats on the battlefield were only one factor in the rapid collapse of Lee’s army. Between Five Forks and Appomattox, the Army of Northern Virginia shrank by nearly half; only a portion of its losses were the result of combat. Malnourished for months and without rations since they left Petersburg, many rebel soldiers could not maintain the forced marches, fell by the roadside, and were subsequently captured by pursuing Union cavalry. Soldiers who deserted during the Appomattox Campaign cited multiple factors that drove them to abandon their regiments. Hunger and exhaustion played a significant role and helped to blur the lines between soldiers who chose to desert and those who physically could not continue.”
Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era James McPherson P. 847-848
And, 1865:
“For Robert E. Lee and his army the dreams had turned into a nightmare. Reduced to 35,000 men, the scattered divisions from Petersburg and Richmond rendezvoused at Amelia Courthouse thirty-five miles to the west, where the starving men expected to find a trainload of rations. Because of a mixup they found ammunition instead, the last thing they needed since the worn-out horses could scarcely pull the ordnance the army was carrying. A delay to forage the countryside for food proved fatal. Lee had intended to follow the railroad down to Danville, where he could link up with Johnston and where Jefferson Davis on April 4 issued a rallying cry to his people: “Relieved from the necessity of guarding cities… with our army free to move from point to point… and where the foe will be far removed from his own base… nothing is now needed to render our triumph certain, but… our own unquenchable resolve.” But the foe was closer to Danville than Lee’s army was. Racing alongside the retreating rebels a few miles to the south were Sheridan’s cavalry and three infantry corps. On April 5 they cut the Danville railroad, forcing Lee to change direction toward Lynchburg and the Blue Ridge passes beyond.
But this goal too was frustrated by the weariness of Lee’s despondent men and the speed of Union pursuers who sniffed victory and the end of the war. Stabbing attacks by blue cavalry garnered scores of prisoners, while hundreds of other southerners collapsed in exhaustion by the roadside and waited for the Yankees to pick them up. Along an obscure stream named Sayler’s Creek on April 6, three Union corps cut off a quarter of Lee’s army, captured 6,000 of them, and destroyed much of their wagon train. “My God!” exclaimed Lee when he learned of this action. “Has the army been dissolved?”
Not yet, but it soon would be. As the remaining rebels trudged westward on April 7, Grant sent Lee a note under flag of truce calling on him to surrender. Lee responded with a feeler about Grant’s terms. The northern commander offered the same terms as at Vicksburg: parole until exchanged. Since Lee’s surrender would virtually end the war, the part about exchange was a mere formality. As the tension mounted on April 8– Grant had a splitting headache and Meade suffered from nausea– Lee parried with a vague proposal to discuss a general “restoration of peace,” a political matter on which Grant had no authority to negotiate. Grant shook his aching head and commented: “It looks as if Lee meant to fight.”
Lee did have that notion, intending to try a breakout attack against Sheridan’s troopers blocking the road near Appomattox Courthouse on the morning of April 9. For the last time rebel yells shattered the Palm Sunday stillness as the gray scarecrows drove back Union horsemen– only to reveal two Yankee infantry corps coming into line behind them. Two other Union corps were closing in on Lee’s rear. Almost surrounded, outnumbered by five or six to one in effective troops, Lee faced up to the inevitable.”
Note: Danville railroad: the song “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” is purported to regard this line’s destruction. “Virgil Caine” was a fictitious man (in the lyrics) who worked on the line. Another interpretation of the song is it regards Virginians left in poverty the last year of the war.
April 7, 1865: Sheridan telegraphs Grant (two of the most famous lines of the war), “If the thing is pressed I think that Lee will surrender” to which Lincoln replies, “Let the thing be pressed.” The next day, Grant sends a missive to Lee, starting the surrender process, the settling of the blood (something’s happened just now, here we go):
“HEADQUARTERS ARMIES OF THE U.S.
April 7, 1865, 5 P.M.
GENERAL R.E. LEE, Commanding C.S.A:
The results of the last week must convince you of the hopelessness of further resistance on the part of the Army of Northern Virginia in this struggle. I feel that it is so, and regard it as my duty to shift from myself the responsibility of any further effusion of blood, by asking of you the surrender of that portion of the Confederate States army known as the Army of Northern Virginia.
U.S. GRANT,
LIUET.-GENERAL”
Note: Lee writes back fast after Grant’s note is carried across the Confederate line:
“April 7th, 1865.
GENERAL: I have received your note of this day. Though not entertaining the opinion you express of the hopelessness of further resistance on the part of the Army of Northern Virginia, I reciprocate your desire to avoid useless effusion of blood, and therefore, before considering your proposition, ask the terms you will offer on condition of its surrender.
R.E. LEE, GENERAL.”
Note: Just as there was a first shot, there would be a last shot:
A Stillness at Appomattox Bruce Catton P. 372-379 (selections)
(1865)
“It was April 7 now, and Grant was in the little town of Farmville by the Appomattox. Evening had come, and the troops in Farmville had lighted bonfires all along the main street, and Grant was sitting on the veranda of the homely country hotel there when the head of the VI Corps came marching through on its way to the north side of the river. As they marched between the fires the men saw the unassuming little general on the porch, and they suddenly realized that this man was at last leading them to the victory they had dreamed of for so long. They broke ranks briefly, seized brands from the bonfires and made torches, and then paraded past Grant, waving the burning torches and yelling hysterically. Brigade bands materialized, and the VI Corps marched by to music. Men who had no torches waved their caps, and the corps went on out of the firelight into the darkness, crossing the Appomattox. After they had passed, Grant went inside the hotel and wrote a formal note to be delivered to Robert E. Lee under a flag of truce, inviting Lee to surrender.
Of this note the soldiers knew nothing. They knew only than in all of its existence the Army of the Potomac had never been driven as hard as it was being driven now. Wagon trains were left far behind, whole brigades and divisions marched without food, and every rod of the way the army dribbled stragglers. These stragglers found the foraging in this part of Virginia very good, since marching armies had not previously been here, but the land’s plenty was of little help to the men who remained in the ranks. The army was moving too fast to bother with foraging details.
Another soldier in the 20th Maine said that “we never endured such marching before,” and another man in the V Corps remembered making a forty-two-mile march that went clear through from one sunrise to another. Whenever the column stopped for a five minute rest, he said, men would drop in their tracks and go instantly to sleep, and when the column moved on many of the men who stumbled to their feet, shouldered their muskets, and went lurching down the road would still be sound asleep. The very utmost men could do was demanded of them now, and the only reality was the road itself.
It was a bad road to march on, like all the roads of war—deeply rutted, fouled by the march of the cavalry up ahead, by turns heavy with mud or deep with the dust that would make marching a gray choking agony. Yet this was the road the army had been marching toward from the very beginning, and many thousands of men had died in order that this road might at last be marched on; for this was the road to the end of the war, and on over the horizon to the unimaginable beginnings and endings that would lie beyond that. Also, and more intimately, it was the beginning of the long road home.
It was April 8, by now, and tomorrow would be Palm Sunday, and the land was rich and warm with spring. Below the Appomattox, that day, the road wound interminably through deep woods, so that dusk came down early. Ord’s divisions were on the road, and all of the V Corps, together with much artillery, and the artillery was supposed to have the road while the infantry filed along on each side. But the road was very narrow, so that there was much crowding and confusion, and the men were very tired and quarrelsome, and some time after dark a tremendous fight broke out between infantry and artillery. Infantry complained that the gunners were driving their six-horse teams recklessly, forcing men off the road and causing injuries. Gunners declared that infantrymen were hitting artillery horses over the head with musket butts. Everybody was hungry, irritable, and half out of his mind with fatigue, and the yelling and cursing and hitting and general uproar went up from the dark lane for an hour or more.
When it was finally settled it was after midnight, and the troops were led off the road to make a supperless bivouac. They got very little rest—one regiment at the tail of the column complained that it was roused just fifteen minutes after it turned in—because couriers came riding in from Phil Sheridan, who was a few miles farther on, near a little place called Appomattox Court House. He had his cavalry squarely in front of the Rebel army, and he was writing that if the infantry could be there first thing in the morning they could probably wind the whole business up.
P. 377
The Federals got across the Lynchburg Road, swung into line of battle facing east, and marched toward the firing and the shouting. As they marched, dismounted cavalry came drifting back, and the troopers waved their caps and cheered when they saw the infantry, and called out: “Give it to ’em—we’ve got ’em in a tight place!”
In a clearing there was Sheridan, talking with Griffin and other officers of the V Corps; Sheridan, talking rapidly, pounding a palm with his fist; and the battle line marched on and came under the fire of Rebel artillery. One brigade went across somebody’s farm, just here, and as the firing grew heavier a shell blew the end out of the farmer’s chicken house, and the air was abruptly full of demoralized chickens, squawking indignantly, fluttering off in frantic disorganized flight. And here was the last battle of the war, and the men were marching up to the moment of apotheosis and glory—but they were men who had not eaten for twenty-four hours and more, and they knew Virginia poultry from of old, and what began as an attack on a Rebel battle line turned into a hilarious chase after fugitive chickens. The battle smoke rolled down over the crest, and shells were exploding and the farm buildings were ablaze, and Federal officers were waving swords and barking orders in scandalized indignation. But the soldiers whooped and laughed and scrambled after their prey, and as the main battle line swept on most of this brigade was either continuing to hunt chickens or was building little fires and preparing to cook the ones that had been caught.
The Confederates had scattered the cavalry, and most of the troopers fled south, across the shallow valley that ran parallel with the Lynchburg Road. As the last of them left the field the way seemed to be open, and the Confederates who had driven them away raised a final shout of triumph—and then over the hill came the first lines of blue infantry, rifles tilted forward, and here was the end of everything: the Yankees had won the race and the way was closed forever and there was no going on any farther.
P. 379
Out from the Rebel lines came a lone rider, a young officer in a gray uniform, galloping madly, a staff in his hand with a white flag fluttering from the end of it. He rode up to Chamberlain’s lines and someone there took him off to see Sheridan, and the firing stopped, and the watching Federals saw the Southerners wheeling their guns back and stacking their muskets as if they expected to fight no more.
All up and down the lines the men blinked at one another, unable to realize that the hour they had waited for so long was actually at hand. There was a truce, they could see that, and presently the word was passed that Grant and Lee were going to meet in the little village that lay now between the two lines, and no one could doubt that Lee was going to surrender. It was Palm Sunday, and they would all live to see Easter, and with the guns quieted it might be easiest to comprehend the mystery and the promise of that day. Yet the fact of peace and no more killing and an open road home seems to have been too big to grasp, right at the moment, and in the enormous silence that lay upon the field men remembered that they had marched far and were very tired, and they wondered when the wagon trains would come up with rations.
One of Ord’s soldiers wrote that the army should have gone wild with joy, then and there; and yet, he said, somehow they did not. Later there would be frenzied cheering and crying and rejoicing, but now… now, for some reason, the men sat on the ground and looked across at the Confederate army and found themselves feeling as they had never dreamed that the moment of victory would make them feel.
“…I remember how we sat there and pitied and sympathized with these courageous Southern men who had fought for four long and dreary years all so stubbornly, so bravely and so well, and now, whipped, beaten, completely used up, were fully at our mercy—it was pitiful, sad, hard, and seemed to us altogether too bad.” A Pennsylvanian in the V Corps dodged past the skirmish line and strolled into the lines of the nearest Confederate regiment, and half a century after the war he recalled it with a glow: “…as soon as I got among these boys I felt and was treated as well as if I had been among our own boys, and a person would of thought we were of the same Army and had been Fighting under the Same Flag.”
Down by the roadside near Appomattox Court House, Sheridan and Ord and other officers sat and waited while a brown-bearded little man in a mud-spattered uniform rode up. They all saluted him, and there was a quiet interchange of greetings, and then General Grant tilted his head toward the village and asked: “Is General Lee up there?”
Sheridan replied that he was, and Grant said: “Very well. Let’s go up.’”
Note: Army of Northern Virginia: if you factor in all those who deserted, the number is 80% of the soldiers in the ANV who were done for: killed outright, died of disease, captured at least once, discharged due to disability, died of wounds later, or went missing.
Note: This day in 1862, Lincoln signs the Treaty between the United States and Great Britain for the Suppression of the African slave trade, which ends the Atlantic slave trade. However, the slave trade continues. (The Clotilda, 7/9/60, is said to be the final ship of captives to set down on American shore. It wasn’t.)
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we can’t get no news….
Virginia today it rains until snow tapers down, becomes a scattering of light out across the atmosphere, white awakening.
And in southwestern Tennessee? “…the rain had washed the blood from their clothes and blankets, making the Earth red….” Dr. David Jasper Noblitt, 44th TN, surgeon writing from the “Mickey House,” a Confederate field hospital on 4/7/62.
In 3 years, April 4th, Lincoln will ask the band– whichever band, just some band– The Clash? Lil Nas X? The Dead Kennedys? – to play Dixie for me as he walks “still smoldering” Richmond after the surrender before sitting on the red velvet chair at the theatre (he has just a week left to live). Dixie, a favorite of both sides. Dixie: Lincoln asked ’em to play again after he sat at Jeff’s desk at the ‘White House’ of the Confederacy. Lincoln asked the band to play Dixie elsewhere: at the sack of Petersburg, the taking of Atlanta. The soundtrack of the war. I wish I was in Dixie, away, away. He is a man who circles the flames, singing it still.
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