APRIL
1, 1865:
“The
Yankees are odious . . .” --- Governor John Milton of Florida
I
Declaring that "Death
would be preferable to reunion," the fire-eating Governor of Florida,
John Milton, commits suicide at his planation “Sylvania” in Marianna, Florida,
by blowing his brains out with a shotgun.
II
The Battle of Five Forks:
After days of unrelenting rain, mud, and
inconclusive combat against smaller, weaker, and more poorly armed opponents,
General Ulysses S. Grant U.S.A. is demanding that his forces deliver a knockout
punch to The Army of Northern Virginia, and that they do it today.
Robert E. Lee is not far away,
on a hill named Edge and in a house called Turnbull. The fifty-eight year old
Confederate General is exhausted. He has barely slept for days, catching a
quick catnap here and there in a rocking chair. His aide-de-camp, Colonel
Walter H. Taylor II, Adjutant General of the A.N.V. fusses over Lee, making
sure that he has a blanket when he sleeps and that his brief naps are not
interrupted. When Lee awakens,
invariably there are messages and a line of visitors he must see.
Nevertheless, Lee is sleeping
at most an hour or two a day in snatches. He is living on hardtack and strong
coffee. This has aggravated his angina
(Lee, it is now believed, had a silent heart attack around the time of
Gettysburg), and the consistently poor news from the battle lines has agitated
him. Normally the soul of rectitude, the General has been sharp with his men
and impatient of foibles.
Lee has known that he will have
to give up Richmond and Petersburg for some time; the question is when, and the when is getting closer. Today, he sends Jefferson Davis a telegram
advising him to accelerate plans for the evacuation of the Confederate capital.
Davis, who has also known that time is short, responds petulantly, saying that
Richmond holds too many “valuables” for the evacuation to be rushed. Lee balls
up the President’s answer and tosses it into a corner, uncharacteristically
swearing.
Lee has good reason to swear.
He has been working without respite to plan a major strike at Grant’s army, while
at the same time arranging for the evacuation of Richmond and Petersburg both,
and the evacuation of his own forces. He is moving both a government and four
small and widely dispersed armies. This means that he needs wagons, and
hundreds of them, workmen, and thousands of them, railcars, and scores and
scores of them, locomotives, hundreds of thousands of tons of food and water
for the men and fodder for the animals, ambulances and medical supplies,
barrels, horseshoes, nails . . .
The list goes on and on.
While his troops wait for
battle in their revetments, slaves toil and struggle to load everything. Not
only is the loading backbreaking work, but ultimately it must all be unloaded
--- more backbreaking work. Lee, who owns slaves, wherever they are now, watches
for a moment the army’s slaves sweat and grunt, thankful at least that human
bondage has freed his men to fight. Lee is an uncomfortable slaveowner; he
treats his own “servants” more like favored children, and believes that the
peculiar institution will fail when God wills it. Yet, he has commanded an army
that has tormented runaways and enslaved (and re-enslaved) or killed captured
blacks in Union blue. Like Jefferson, Lee hates the institution but makes use
of it. Like Jefferson, Lee calls himself an enemy of slavery. Like Jefferson,
Lee never emancipates a single slave himself.
By far the hardest part of all
this effort is coordinating it among thousands and thousands of men. The army’s
columns must move out in sequence; the wagon trains must roll, the trains move,
everything on a strict timetable. Else, confusion, even disaster. Lee writes
Orders, clear, simple straightforward. He must make sure these Orders reach the
right eyes. To the Commanders --- these
brigades down this road, those brigades down that road. To the Army Engineers --- shore up that bridge crossing, corduroy this
road. To the cavalry --- watch for
Yankee movements. To the railmasters --- the Government’s trains must have priority through to Danville.
To the Commissary --- send a half million rations to the rendezvous point at
Amelia Court House, where all four of Lee’s columns will meet, eat, sort things
out, and refit.
And then there is the battle.
Lee knows there will be real battle today. The weather is (finally!) clearing,
and the heat is rising. A thick mist hangs like ground cover, making the dark
early morning hours eerie as wraithlike forms appear and disappear on the still
air.
Lee sits down and writes out an
Order to Major General George Pickett, he of the infamous Charge at Gettysburg:
Hold
Five Forks at all hazards. Protect road to Ford's Depot and prevent Union
forces from striking the Southside Railroad. Regret exceedingly your forces'
withdrawal, and your inability to hold the advantage you had gained.
The last is a slight sting for
Pickett’s withdrawal from Dinwiddie Court House yesterday in the face of Philip
Sheridan’s overwhelming numbers. But from Five Forks there is no place left to
go. Pickett is in the same position as was Joshua L. Chamberlain and his 20th
Maine Regiment at Little Round Top at Gettysburg; if Pickett is flanked, Lee’s
whole line will cave in.
A crossroads, from whence it
takes its name, Five Forks is also crucial for control of the local byways.
White Oak Road has just been battled over the day before, and overnight Pickett
has wisely built a defensive wooden fort near the intersection.
Most of the day passes without any
shooting. General Gouvernor K. Warren U.S.A. is slow to move his men into position,
and the Union attack does not go off until 4:00 P.M. Pickett, lulled into thinking that there will
be no action along his part of the front his day absents himself to attend a
shad bake.
As soon as the 15,000 Union
infantrymen of the Fifth Corps step off, they draw fire from the Confederates.
The heavy fire causes consternation and confusion among the Union units, some
of which maneuver away from the action and some of which stay their appointed
courses. This causes potentially disastrous gaps to open in the Union line.
But before the Confederates can
exploit these gaps, both Gouvernor Warren and Philip Sheridan swing into their respective
saddles and race down to the smoky chaos of the front line, rallying the men as
they go. Reorganized, the Union troops all push toward the Five Forks
intersection, driving the Confederates before them like a herd of brown and
gray cattle. The Union troops manage to successfully cut the roads at Five
Forks. All contact between Pickett and Lee comes to an abrupt end. Lee knows
there is trouble when his telegraph line to Five Forks goes dead.
It is too late. Even Pickett’s
new fortification has been overrun without much ado. Pickett and his Generals return
from the shad bake to discover that the Union has taken nearly 2,500 prisoners.
Of the 10,000 men in gray who fight in the battle, 3,000 are listed as
casualties (including those captured).
Pickett, already too well known
for his famed disaster, is treated shamefully by the Press, both North and
South when his troops are routed. To this day, “Authentic Pickett Fish Frys”
are held in locations throughout the South.
On the Union side, Warren is
relieved of his command immediately after the battle. When he asks Sheridan to
reconsider, Sheridan dismisses him with a nasty, “Reconsider, hell!” Entreaties
to Meade and Grant are ignored.
With control of the five roads
in Union hands, the Southside Railroad remains Lee’s only tenuous link to the
outside world. Lee knows that it will go next. With the losses at Five Forks,
his army is nearly a shell of itself. He knows he cannot hold.
Bitterly, Lee sends word to
Jefferson Davis that their position in Richmond is no longer tenable.
