APRIL 5, 1865:
“You
May Keep The Champagne . . . but you must return the Negro” --- William H.
Seward
I
In Washington D.C., Secretary
of State William H. Seward is thrown from his carriage and sustains a broken
jaw and severe facial lacerations. He is knocked unconscious, and for a time it
is feared that he will die. A message is
telegraphed to President Lincoln at City Point, Virginia; by the time it
reaches him in Richmond, Seward has regained consciousness and is out of
danger. At first, Lincoln makes plans to return to Washington, but when he gets
word of Seward’s awakening, decides to remain in Virginia. Seward is bedbound
for several weeks and must wear a grotesque jaw split of metal and leather. He
is fed opiates for the pain, which is excruciating.
II
Prior to receiving word of his
Secretary of State’s injuries, Abraham Lincoln has had a constructive day in
Richmond. After a good night’s sleep on the well-guarded U.S.S. MALVERN (which
has at last forced its way to Richmond past the Confederate mines and
obstructions in the James River) Lincoln decides to pay several social calls
before he returns to City Point. His first visit is a courtesy call on Anna
Lee. The Confederate General-in-Chief’s wife, who offers tea, is cool but gracious
to the President, who likely shared with her the idea of a pardon for Robert E.
Lee if only he would lay down his arms. Lee, of course, is not there to either
accept or decline.
President Lincoln’s second call
of the day is paid on new mother Sallie Pickett, another General’s wife.
Lincoln is a good friend of the Picketts, and as a Congressman arranged for
George Pickett’s admission to West Point back in the 1850s. Taking the newborn
in his arms, he coos to the baby, also named George, “And if you’re good, I
will arrange a full pardon for your Daddy.”
The third call is the most
businesslike, and Lincoln is there by invitation. John A. Campbell, a former
Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, was one of the three Confederates who
attended the Hampton Roads Conference in February. Campbell, now the
Confederate Assistant Secretary of War, is the highest-ranking Confederate
official remaining in Richmond.
Although the Hampton Roads
Conference was a failure, Campbell was the most amenable of the three Commissioners
to a peace closest to Lincoln’s terms (the overall demeanor of the participants
was such that Seward afterward sent each man a case of champagne by special
courier with a note reading, “You may keep the champagne, but you must return
the Negro”).
Lincoln is hopeful that
Campbell may have ideas about ending the war quickly and with no further agony,
and indeed Campbell does not disappoint. Campbell suggests that he can call the
Confederate State Legislature into session in order to pass a rescission of
Virginia’s Ordinance of Secession. With Virginia out of the Confederacy and
back in the United States, the tottering Danville Government will lose all
credibility and the Legislature can demand that the Army of Northern Virginia
cease operating within the State’s borders. The war will effectively be over.
Lincoln is so anxious for peace
that he agrees to the idea, but reminds both Campbell and himself that he needs
to discuss it with his Cabinet.
III
Of all the men who march with Robert E. Lee it
is the Union Prisoners of War who have it worst. When there was little food for
the Johnny Rebs the Billy Yanks got less. Now there is none for anyone. The
starving Confederates have begun to follow the example of their prisoners,
boiling roots and leaves into thin, mostly indigestible, soups. Like the
Yankees they have begun to dig for insects and earthworms to supplement their transparent
diets. To still desperate hunger pangs, they have taken to gnawing on twigs and
bark --- anything to stop the screaming of their stomachs. The most recent
P.O.W.s are still relatively hale compared to their captors, but those who have
been prisoners the longest are beginning to show signs of noma, a wasting
disease in which the flesh recedes from the jaws exposing the bone beneath, and
a sign of mortal starvation. For such men, taking more than just the slightest
sustenance is usually fatal.
According to the histories,
Robert E. Lee’s face was “grave” that morning at Amelia Court House. Strangely
enough, little else has been recorded about that day. No one recorded what the
men of the Army of Northern Virginia were thinking or saying amongst themselves.
Lee’s own later recollections are terse, the pain more inferred than evident.
Others’ memoirs are clinical, almost detached in tone. Speculation based on
limited evidence is the only tool available to the writer dedicated to
describing the scene.
It is not beyond possibility
that Robert E. Lee shivered as he surveyed the boxcars of the train waiting on
the siding at Amelia Court House. Perhaps --- for a bitter and dark moment
quickly put aside --- Lee even contemplated the idea of surrender. Perhaps his
logical and often steely military mind suffered a collapse into confusion, even
panic, as boxcar door after boxcar door slid noisily back on its tracks to
reveal ---
Ninety-six caissons bursting
with small arms and howitzers, 200 crates of ammunition, and 164 crates of
horse tack ---
but not a scrap of food. No
beans, no cornmeal, no bread, no hardtack; no bacon, no beef, no pork; no
coffee, no bread, no sugar. Nothing to
eat at all.
Lee has been a maestro,
conducting a four-part symphony, and now, suddenly, just as his composition is
reaching its crescendo, it is as if the string section has gone deathly silent.
How can he carry on a war without food for his men?
At first there is the
inevitable uncertainty. Rumors fly: The
food train has been diverted to Farmville; no, Burkeville; no, Burke’s Station.
The food train is still expected to arrive; it is just delayed. But perhaps,
other voices counter, it never left Richmond at all.
 |
| Modern Amelia Station |
Perhaps Lee would have quailed
had he known that among the warehouses that burned in Richmond were several
packed with food earmarked for the army. But he does not know that. What he
does know is that he must feed his
starving men.
 |
| A Richmond warehouse |
Quickly, he organizes men to
collect whatever food there is in the village. There is little enough. Amelia
Court House is not much of a place, and foodstuffs are in short supply here as
everywhere in the region after the hard winter. The town cannot sustain an
additional population of 20,000 for any period of time; indeed, the residents
were hoping they could restock their shelves from the army’s stores. Still,
each man gets a mouthful of something.
While this is going on, Lee
dispatches wagons to travel through the countryside on foraging expeditions,
collecting whatever they can from the local farmers. Most of the wagons return
nearly empty.
Others do not return.
The Battle of Amelia Springs:
The food train may be at
Burkeville; but, wisely, in the growing fog of war, someone in Richmond before
its fall was thoughtful enough to dispatch a wagon train as well as an iron
horse to the rendezvous point. Moving slowly, even more slowly than the
struggling army, by other roads the wagon train has reached the little town of Painesville,
just outside the slightly larger town of Amelia Springs, ten miles west of
Amelia Court House, but only two miles north of Union-held Jetersville.
Upon receiving word of the
appearance of an unexpected wagon train, the Union command in Jetersville
deduces --- correctly --- that it is a Rebel supply train, and dispatches
cavalry to deal with it. The Union troops do not just raid the train or wreck
it. They burn it, and the Army of Northern Virginia’s last remaining local food
supply goes up in smoke. Even though General Fitzhugh Lee C.S.A.’s cavalry
drives off the marauders in blue, little of the food is salvageable. And
instead of returning directly to Jetersville, the Union cavalry makes a long
arc through the area, seizing and burning some of Lee’s foraging wagons.
Lee has to know that he is
running out of time. Union units are now moving alongside him, and a few have
gotten in front of him. The jaws of a trap are beginning to close. But for twelve
critical hours Lee does nothing.
Many historians have wondered
why Lee did not move out of Amelia Court House very quickly rather than
spending time in the town overnight. There are numerous theories. One is that
he was awaiting the completion of a pontoon bridge over the Appomattox River,
which meandered both in front of and behind his line of march. Another is that
he was awaiting the arrival of the missing food train. A third is that he was
awaiting the return of his foragers. But perhaps the most obvious and simplest
reason was sheer exhaustion. His desperately hungry men just as desperately
needed rest, as did Lee himself. His recurrent “rheumatism” (in truth angina)
had redoubled its pain once he discovered that there was no food waiting for
his men at Amelia Court House. The fifty-eight year old Commander was, for
once, pushed beyond his limits.
There have been many armies
throughout history. All armies have natural limits beyond which they break.
Undoubtedly, Lee feared that his great Army of Northern Virginia had reached
that point at Amelia Court House. For four years the outgunned, undersupplied
and poorly fed army had performed literal miracles in the field against its far
mightier opponent. Lee had begun to believe his men were truly invincible, but
this belief was not confirmed until that day at Amelia Court House.
For against all odds, the
starving army elected to keep marching. Lee made no grand speeches that day.
But such was his mens’ faith in him that when Lee asked them to move even
further west, they did. If any of Lee’s men elected not to go with him, they
were few and their names are lost to history. But on the morrow, the Army of
Northern Virginia would exhibit a kind of superhumanity --- for they would not
only march with their belt buckles scraping their spines, they would also
fight.
IV
The Early County (Georgia) News
publishes a bitter editorial about the war:
This
has been 'a rich man's war and a poor man's fight.' It is true that there are a
few wealthy men in the army, but nine tenths of them hold positions [that
allow them to] always get out of the way
when they think a fight is coming on, and [they] treat the privates like dogs . . . There seems to be no chance to get
this class to carry muskets.
While the clock ticks against
Lee in Virginia, and Confederate citizens lose heart in Georgia, Confederate
forces at Cowpen’s Landing, North Carolina seize and burn a Union supply ship
loaded with food and weapons. Other Confederate troops put the troop transport
U.S.S. MYSTIC to the torch.
