March 30, 1865---Goop

MARCH 30, 1865:    

The rain pours down in sheets over Petersburg. 

Little actual fighting occurs this day. Men who want to fight are frustrated when wet powder will not ignite, when damp cartridges misfire. The roads have turned to slow moving rivers of mud and the fields of Virginia are sodden, turning the grainy soil to quicksand. Wagons sink into the ooze up to their axles. Men flop around like spastic marionettes as they struggle to walk. Horses lose their balance, breaking legs as they careen over in the muck. Riders leap from saddles, sometimes to safety, sometimes breaking ankles as they get caught up in stirrups, sometimes being crushed under the weight of their falling mounts, sometimes ending up coated in thick clinging mud. At their respective headquarters, Grant fumes and Lee stews.  The Union General is convinced that one more push may win the war. The Confederate General is convinced he can fight his way out of the trap. 

Mother Nature has given the Confederacy one more day of grace, but Lee can accomplish nothing much with it. Instead, by the light of an oil lamp --- the day is too dim to see well --- he scratches out orders for General Longstreet and General Pickett, his old Gettysburg warhorses, to move their troops away from Richmond to bolster the Confederate lines at Petersburg. Lee knows he is robbing Peter to pay Paul. He has always managed to balance his books before, and he is hoping he will this time too. In response to these orders, weary troops in heavy wet gray wool begin shuffling southward. 

Grant’s men dig in the goop, like moles. If they can extend their lines --- hawsers of manpower ---  just far enough, Lee’s increasingly gossamer-thin lines will snap. 

For everyone, it is frustrating and slow going. The rain pounds down, muffling other sounds. Men begin asking each other when the gunboats will arrive. They begin asking for Admiral Noah to take command.

At 11:00 A.M., Ulysses S. Grant has had enough. He sends an order to Philip Sheridan to abandon the village of Dinwiddie Court House. The Spring Offensive is being postponed. 

At 3:00 P.M., Sheridan himself, windblown and soaked to the skin, almost unrecognizable under a layer of dirt and mud comes pounding up to Grant’s door on Rienzi. While the horse is stabled, the bandy-legged long-armed troglodytish cavalryman confers with his commander. Sheridan refuses to hold back: “I’ll corduroy every road, and every mile of them from here to Dinwiddie Court House!” he insists. “I’m ready to move out tomorrow and go smashing things, General!”

Grant smiles --- and rescinds his orders. The war is on again. 

The Richmond Daily Dispatch fumes at the Yankees, reviling them for Sherman’s depredations on the March; at the same time, the Daily Dispatch tries to justify the “Confederate Army of New York’s” attempt to burn the city on the night after the Union’s Thanksgiving Day. 

Their editorial reads in part:

 . . . If any one ever doubted the appropriateness of the title once bestowed upon the [New York] Herald by a New York contemporary of "the Satanic Press," let him read the following:

‘South Carolina is honestly hated by the whole North as the prime mover of secession . . .  the proudest spirit in the Southern oligarchy, that, in its contemptible pride, had the impudence to look upon . . . the better people of the North as beneath her . . . Hence, the Northern people can see her cities burn with much less concern than they would feel if those terrible blows fell upon any other people . . . When soldiers burn cities, it is, ordinarily, a bad sign for the discipline of the army . . .  but in the present case we know that the burning of cities and farms is . . .  evidence that  . . . the men . . .  feel the unconquerable national hate for that pestilent people who have caused all this trouble. Why should they withhold their hands? South Carolina never withheld hers . . . Through Georgia the army was manageable, and respected the property and the people . . . So soon as it touched the North Carolina line it was again a disciplined force; but in all the space between, across the whole of South Carolina, it was a scourge, inflicting the wild and passionate vengeance of the people who sent it.’

In the same number of the Herald which contains the above, we have the finding of a military commission in the case of Captain R. C. Kennedy, an alleged Confederate spy, charged with setting fire to "Barnum's Museum" and one of the "down- town" hotels, and sentenced to be hung therefore. The Court says:

‘The attempt to set fire to the city of New York is one of the greatest atrocities of the age. There is nothing in the annals of barbarism which evinces greater vindictiveness. It was not a mere attempt to destroy the city, but to set fire to crowded hotels and places of public resort, in order to secure the greatest possible destruction of human life . . . In all the buildings fired, not only non-combatant men, but women and children, were congregated in great numbers; and nothing but the most diabolical spirit of revenge could have impelled the incendiaries to acts so revolting.’

Compare the finding of the Court with the above extract from the Herald --- Comment is unnecessary. "The burning of Southern cities" is a matter of congratulation; of Northern cities, "the greatest atrocities of the age," and deserving the gallows [Kennedy the conspirator was hanged in New York on March 25^th, 1865]. Would the Court have accepted in Kennedy's defence the Herald's plea for Sherman's soldiers; an "unconquerable national hate for the pestilent people who have caused all this trouble."