April 8, 1865---"I will strike that man a blow."

APRIL 8, 1865:  
                 

“I will strike that man a blow.” --- Robert E. Lee

I

After traveling through the North incognito with his “secret fiancée” Lucy Lambert Hale (the daughter of U.S. Senator John Parker Hale of New Hampshire), John Wilkes Booth returned to Washington D.C.. His trip with Miss Hale was something of a farewell tour. He visited old friends, bought them expensive gifts, and paid for lavish dinners in New York, Boston, Hartford, Providence, and elsewhere, telling his companions that he would definitely never see them again.  

During his trip he was vociferous in his support of the South and got into several brawls in New England and New York. Most people just thought he was peculiar. Although Booth was a popular and in-demand actor, he hadn’t worked since March 18th when he’d finished a run as Duke Pescara in The Apostate at Ford’s Theatre, and occasionally admitted to his friends that he “was broke” or had decided to spend all his money. Booth had earned over $20,000.00 in 1864 (about $500,000.00 today), and was indeed spending it like a sailor on shore leave.

Perhaps ominously, his last stage performance occurred just one day before his failed attempt to kidnap President Lincoln. Booth brooded on that failure for days. Shortly before his whirlwind vacation with Lucy Hale, he informed his fellow conspirators of a change of plans. 

One evening, well into his cups, he bragged, “I was so close to Lincoln on Inauguration Day I could have shot him easily.” After his shocked drinking buddy responded, “John, what good would that do?”  Booth said dramatically, “I will go down in history!”    

II

The Army of The Potomac is on the move. 

Shortly after receiving General Lee’s response to his message suggesting surrender, Grant begins putting the behemoth that is The Army of The Potomac into motion.  The news that supply trains are waiting for Lee at Appomattox Station has galvanized him, and it galvanizes the entire army. Shortly after Custer’s cavalry thunders off into the night toward Appomattox Station, the army begins marching. It is a few minutes shy of 12:30 A.M. on the eighth of April, 1865. 

At first some of the men complain. They have not slept enough. They have not eaten. Grant rides up and back along the line telling the grousers, “Boys, you can eat after the war is over! You can sleep after Lee surrenders!  Now step it up!”  The stragglers are rounded up and put in the vanguard where the press of men behind them keep them moving quickly.

It is not quick enough. “Double time! Quick march!” Grant shouts. A pair of conflicting premonitions have gripped Grant, the first being that if he can beat Lee to Appomattox Station he will win the war today, the second being that if Lee beats him to Appomattox Station the United States will remain cloven in two. The first makes him euphoric. The second fills him with dread. 

Carefully schooling himself he lets only the euphoria show. It is contagious. Soon the men are singing. Not long afterward they begin to run at an easy pace. It grows faster as the miles melt away.

Grant has ordered that the supply wagons be left behind. This means no food. Some of the men try to leave the line to go foraging. They are rounded up and put in the vanguard just like the stragglers. 

A few of the men have beef jerky and other things in their haversacks. The men behind them are eating out of those haversacks on the run. Somehow, the infantry manages to graze as it moves. A few men are felled by stitches. “Get up and come along!” the other men yell at them. And so they struggle to their feet and lope, then walk, then run.

Grant lets nothing stop them. Passing rainstorms are ignored. The men are allowed only one five minute rest per hour, and after the first break many men elect to keep marching rather than suffer the resulting painful cramping of their legs. One man who’d said of Sailor’s Creek, “I’d never been in a fight like that before,” now says, “I’ve never been on a march like this before.” It is a week of firsts. 

As the army moves forward Grant struggles with his reply to Lee’s response to his note about surrender. With one thing and another it takes Grant six hours to craft his reply, laying out what he thinks are generous surrender terms. He just hopes that his courier finds Lee in the same place as yesterday. 

Grant does not give vent to his worry that The Army of The Potomac has some four times the distance to move as does The Army of Northern Virginia toward the same goal. He can only hope that Custer’s men reach the train station before Lee’s men do.  Just the same, he dispatches more cavalry units to support Custer. At the same time he sends Lee his terms for the surrender of the Southern army: 

APRIL 8, 1865

General R. E. LEE:

Your note of last evening, in reply to mine of same date, asking the condition on which I will accept the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia, is just received. In reply I would say that, 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 yell, for the purpose of arranging definitely the terms upon which the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia will be received.

U.S. GRANT,

Lieutenant-General.

Grant is driving his army forward at a breakneck pace that many Confederates would recognize. A Blue tide is coming in.

III

Abraham Lincoln makes ready to leave City Point. Before he does, he takes a last carriage ride around the area, admiring “a very tall and beautiful oak [that put me in mind of] our mighty Western oaks.” He caught a box turtle, which Tad immediately made a pet of. And he visited the Military hospital where he held the hand of a young man cited for bravery. As the boy died he smiled at the President. “There has been war enough,” Lincoln said sadly.   

That night Lincoln recites from Hamlet (Act III, Scene 2) for the entertainment of his guests aboard the River Queen:

Duncan is in his grave.

After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well.

Treason has done his worst; nor steel nor poison,

Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing

Can touch him further.

IV

“I will strike that man a blow. And I will do it in the morning,” Robert E. Lee thundered as he read Grant’s latest communication.

“General,” said James Longstreet, “I wouldn’t trouble to answer that.”

“No, it must be answered,” Lee said, and he dashed off a quick reply. 

HEADQUARTERS ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA,

APRIL 8, 1865

Lieut. Gen. U.S. GRANT:

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.

R. E. LEE,

General.

Lee intended for that picket line to be in Appomattox Station. “Peter, get the men up. We must move the army.”

After sending Longstreet on his way, Lee took a walk around the encampment to see that everything was going according to orders.

Just at that point Lee was approached by a coterie of junior officers who inquired --- very respectfully --- if the rumors of impending surrender had any truth to them. One of the men stated flatly that surrender would be the best thing for the troops, who were clearly suffering.

Lee reacted badly and completely out of character for him. 

Waspishly, he reminded the speaker that even suggesting surrender qualified as an offense worthy of execution by firing squad. Then Lee declaimed:

Surrender? I trust it has not come to that! We certainly have too many brave men to think of laying down our arms. They still fight with great spirit while the enemy does not. Besides, if I were to intimate to General Grant that I would listen to terms, he would at once regard it as such an evidence of weakness that he would demand unconditional surrender, and sooner than that I am resolved to die. Indeed we all must determine to die at our posts.

Lee whirled on his heel and stalked off angrily. But he did look around him. 

Despite orders, here and there, men refused to rise, and some of them were crying piteously. Lee tried to hearten them: Just one more brief march.  Come on son. For your mother. For your wife. For your comrades.

Lee was anything but cruel. As a matter of fact, and much to the amusement of his officers, Lee spared the life of a chicken destined for the stewpot who had escaped her pen and taken up residence under his camp bed, where she laid his morning breakfast egg every day. Lee wouldn’t travel without the chicken, and was often heard asking, Where is the hen? Where is the hen?” as the army made ready to move.  But in his own depleted state Lee had lost his sense of perspective. That, and the sense he held all throughout the war, that The Army of Northern Virginia was invincible, drove him to ask of his men the impossible. And on this day he asked it again.  

How could the men disappoint him? He was their Bobby Lee, their Marse Robert. The exhausted and the famished tried to get up on their feet. Some couldn’t. Lee realized then and there that the officer he had dismissed so brusquely was right. The men had reached a condition of utter collapse. Again and again he encouraged them. Most of the men got to their feet. A few couldn’t. And a few never would again. 

Lee mounted Traveller, and pointed over in the direction of Appomattox Station. The trains are there, he told the men. Right over there. The order to march was given. 

It was a terrible march. Though the Lynchburg Road was straight and well-paved most of the men had no stamina left at all. Some had not eaten in a full week. Many stumbled on for a while and then collapsed. 

The spirit is willing but the flesh is consumed, and even Robert E. Lee cannot inspire the dying not to die and the dead to live. The twelve mile march takes most of the night.  By its end Lee will have less than 8,000 men to face the Union armies. He will be outnumbered ten-to-one.

V

The Battle of Appomattox Station:

George Custer, still the youngest General in the Union army, has been riding hard all night at the front of his troops. Fortunately, Philip Sheridan has had scouts out spying the land, and the road Custer’s men are following is a deserted country track. It carries them in a wide loop south of the Lynchburg Road, but it is also the best way to approach Appomattox Station without being discovered by unfriendly eyes. 

Just like the land north of the Lynchburg Road, the landforms here are also a help to the Union cause. The road is bordered by woodlots, overgrown thickets and brambles, and that soft slippery soil known as “Virginia Quicksand.” It isn’t a welcoming area. In fact, it’s rather bleak. But it serves Custer’s needs to perfection. Lee’s army will not be able to leave the Lynchburg Road if it comes to it. His units will become separated in the woods, his men tangled in the underbrush, his wagons mired in the soil. 

After several hours of riding at the full gallop, a picket pulls up beside Custer. There is someone in the darkness, riding hard on the tail of Custer’s brigades. Custer has the man brought to him. He is a Union soldier and what he says makes Custer smile. Grant has sent more cavalry after Custer, and the infantry is dashing down the Lynchburg Road at an incredible pace. Right now, the picket tells Custer, Lee is surrounded on the east and the south. And the north is impassable.

Custer asks if Lee’s troops are at Appomattox Station yet. The answer is no, but they may be moving in that direction. West.

With that, Custer puts his spurs to his horse. 

It is just before dawn when Custer and his men reach Appomattox Station. Their horses are lathered. They’ve had a hard nightlong ride. But when they come within sight of the train station they can make out the shadowy forms of three long trains on the rails, two of the locomotives pointed head to head.  There is also a wagon train parked nearby. And each train is pulling at least a dozen boxcars, maybe more. In the misty pre-dawn darkness, Custer can see Confederate guards standing by the trains. Something in their stance tells Custer they are not especially alert. A few are sitting on the ground propped up against the wheels of the locos, dozing or sleeping. 

There are crates piled on the platform, wagons filled with cargo, and the shapes of more crates peek through the open boxcar doors. 

“Gentlemen?” Custer asks. His cavalymen come roaring out of the darkness, and take the station with hardly a shot being fired. 

Custer’s men whoop and holler as they mount to the locomotive cabs, throwing the frightened Southern engineers bodily to the ground. There is still steam in the boilers. Playfully, they begin butting the locomotives’ cowcatchers together with satisfying bangs, crunches, and screeks of metal on metal.    

Custer tells the jokesters to stop fooling around. If you want to do something useful, he tells the men, get those machines the hell out of here so the rebels can’t fight us over them.  And so, the three trains full of ordnance, supplies and food chug off into the darkness.  

Custer inspects the wagon train, which is the one that rolled away from Farmville. Burn it, he orders. Burn it all.  And so the Confederates’ rations, their precious rations, go up in smoke. 

As the morning of the eighth grows lighter, Custer sees a body of men in gray coming up the road from the east. That means he is west of Lee and The Army of Northern Virginia.  And behind Lee, at a distance, there is an ominous dustcloud, the kind of dustcloud made by an army on the march, a huge dustcloud. Under that dustcloud are the better part of 80,000 infantrymen of The Army of The Potomac, coming hard.    

Men who were there claim that the battle flags, regimental colors, guidons and banners of Lee’s army outnumbered the men.  “The ground where the Army of Northern Virginia had been brought to bay had blossomed out with a great row of poppies and roses.”  

But for the moment the Army of Northern Virginia isn’t “at bay.” It still means to fight. It advances slowly with a queer collective loping stride as if it is a single giant organism thinking twice about attacking its smaller prey. 

The battle begins with Confederate canister. The artillery is not very accurate, and there are relatively few guns involved. Regardless, Custer pulls his men back from the artillery, discovering as he does so, a supply dump full of Confederate cannons. His men spike most of them. 

Motion to the north, along the Lynchburg Road, catches Custer’s eye. A long wagon train --- apparently the source of the unloaded howitzers --- is pulling out fast, heading west for Lynchburg. He lets it go.

Things start to happen quickly then, seemingly all at once. 

The dustcloud far to Lee’s rear has sprouted two brothers. Grant has apparently divided his forces, and now a hydra-headed monster is coming to devour Lee from separate directions.  

At the same time as the Confederate artillery wagons pull away, a line of men in blue becomes distinct on the Lynchburg Road. The infantry vanguard of The Army of The Potomac is very near, and bringing up behind The Army of Northern Virginia. One infantryman later calculates that he has marched 42 miles in just over ten hours. 

The additional cavalry that Grant dispatched after Custer’s ride suddenly pours onto the field from the south.

Men in the main body of Lee’s force are hanging back; many begin running across the fields in order to escape. 

While all this is going on, a fourth railroad train full of military supplies pulls into Appomattox Station with a jaunty blast on its whistle. But as soon as the engineer realizes the station is under fire, he jams the train into reverse with such suddenness that he nearly derails the whole thing. Running backward at full bore, the train heads back to Lynchburg. Lee can only watch it go.

The Battle of Appomattox Station devolves into a strangely noncommittal affair that lasts all day. The Confederate big guns fall mostly silent, and infantry --- actually artillerists acting as infantry --- begin to advance. It is clear that they are unsure of themselves. Custer charges them, scattering the lot, capturing about 500 prisoners. He also captures thirty cannons, but this brings him in range of Lee’s main body, which charges. It is not much of a charge, but rather than take casualties, Custer withdraws to the town of Appomattox Court House to wait for the rest of the Union army to arrive. No one counts the dead and wounded.

The sun goes down in red fire.  

VI

The Moon rises. It is what we call today “waxing gibbous.” At 98% it is nearly full, and it casts a silver-tinged light over the ruined land around Appomattox Station. 

Robert E. Lee is standing under that moon. A silver-gray nimbus surrounds him, giving the silver-gray general an ethereal look. He has called, for one of very few times, a War Council. His officers, Longstreet, Gordon, and Fitzhugh Lee, gather around him, their faces grave.

No one writes down much of what is said at the meeting, other than noting the fact that no one wanted to suggest surrender, and so it is pure speculation as to what actually occurs or who said what. But the meeting may have gone something like this:

Lee begins speaking. It is easy to imagine his voice, a strong baritone made weak and hoarse by weariness. He has slept and eaten little more than his men, and his uniform is loose on him, a little rumpled, a little baggy. 

“Gentlemen,” Lee says. “I need your advice. We are facing another battle in the morning. I’m glad of any observations or suggestions you may have.”

The men look at each other. They all know what Lee is asking them. 

Someone says, General, there is plenty of fight left in the Army.

--- Hear, hear. 

--- Agreed.

Lee looks at them, and says dully, I am concerned about the men. They are very nearly used up. 

--- Not the best of them.

No, answers Lee, not the best of them. But I saw something today that I have never seen in the history of our army. The men ran today. They ran. I am sorry. It was all my fault. And he adds just like after Gettysburg, I thought they were invincible. 

--- General, the men are just tired. They need food and rest, and they’ll be the same men they’ve always been.

Lee says, I cannot ask for finer men, nor could I ask them to do more. They have done everything I’ve asked, and more. But today, they ran.  Perhaps I’ve asked too much of them. Do you think . . .?

--- They definitely have fight left in them. 

--- Yes, sir. Today was just a very bad day.

--- Too much was happening at once. Morale just went to hell, sir. The supply train, oh, excuse me General, but may God damn that coward of an engineer. I will hang that man myself when I find him.

--- Same with the artillery train. They’re back in Lynchburg tonight.

--- And the Yankee cavalry came in at the same time, don’t forget. 

--- It was a mistake using artillerists as infantry. We might as well have asked pigs to sing. 

--- The damned Yankees have the other three supply trains. remember. They sure didn’t run them eastward, and they couldn’t have run them to Lynchburg, that’s definite, sir. So they must be in Appomattox Court House town.

--- If we can capture those trains there’ll be food in plenty, and new rifles, and boots, and, you’ll see General, it’ll be a new army. We might even get some of these stragglers back. If we want them.

Lee says, I want every true-hearted man. I can’t blame the men for being dispirited. Nothing has quite worked out the way in which I planned it.

--- It’s Commissary. If the food had been at Amelia Cour ---

Lee smiles tiredly. There’s little point of discussing that now. Let’s save our energy, General. Can we take the town?

--- Absolutely, sir, yes we can.

--- General, there isn’t much in front of us but cavalry. We outnumber them. We can punch right through them. Do that, and we get the trains. Do that, and we can send a speeded rider to Lynchburg. Those other trains, the artillery, will all be back here in a few hours. 

Do we know who’s in front of us? Lee asks.

--- George Custer, sir. He’s a bit of a showboat.

--- He’s the Union’s version of Georgie Pickett, sir.

Everybody laughs at that, even Lee.

--- When we pressed him today, he withdrew. 

--- True.

--- Are you sure it’s only cavalry?  I thought I saw some infantry today.

--- Dismounted cavalry.

--- No, they were infantry.

--- Couldn’t be. The Yankees are a day behind us at least. Do you know how fast they’d have to be moving to get here that fast? They haven’t moved that fast in four years. They aren’t going to suddenly start now. They aren’t the Army of Northern Virginia.

Lee smiles at that.  You remind me, he says, it is almost four years to the day since Fort Sumter. 

--- Well, so it is.

--- I suspect it was some of Sheridan’s boys, General Lee. He’s had scouts shadowing us all along. We keep seeing them in the woods. One of our fellows shot at one the other day. Got him too. 

If it is infantry, Lee says, and they are here in force, I may have to realistically consider ---

--- No sir!

--- No.

--- No. You’d break the boys’ hearts, sir.   

    

--- General Lee. There’s always time to consider surrender.

--- And that time is never, sir.

Lee sighs. Never may come sooner than we expect. But I take it that it’s agreed?  Attack?

--- Attack.

--- Attack.

--- Attack, sir. 

Lee nods. We’ll attack at first light, then. Make your preparations.