April 7, 1865---"Not yet."

APRIL 7, 1865:                    

“Not yet.” --- General James Longstreet C.S.A.

 

I

General Ulysses S. Grant U.S.A. is becoming concerned about Phil Sheridan.

Grant expects a little hyperbole from his best cavalry commander --- after all, cavalrymen are the fighter jocks of the Nineteenth Century --- but he has begun to question Sheridan’s honesty. 

Near-hourly reports are flooding in to City Point from central Virginia. In each, Sheridan reports that Lee’s army is on the verge of collapse, that his men are starving, that Confederates are surrendering in droves, and yet The Army of Northern Virginia never seems to stop moving forward. Grant has ordered Sheridan to entrap Lee’s columns, and Sheridan says he has done so, but still the campaign goes on. Grant had estimated that Lee should have surrendered by April fifth, but that day has come and gone. Even allowing for optimism, it is incredible that the fighting continues. Something is wrong.

Very troubling to Grant is a report of the Battle of High Bridge. What should have been a simple skirmish cost the Army of The Potomac almost a thousand men, and Grant is even more disquieted by the report that Confederate losses were in the single digits. Sheridan admits having been sniped at and nearly hit.  Word is that The Army of Northern Virginia is on the move again, after Sailor’s Creek, a battle that should have broken them. None of this makes the A.N.V. sound like an army on the verge of collapse. 

With every westward step, Lee draws nearer to Lynchburg --- and to the Blue Ridge Mountains.  Grant boils every time he imagines another ten month siege. He shudders inwardly when he imagines Lee’s men reaching safety at the line of the Blue Ridge. God damn Sheridan.

Grant confers with Lincoln about conditions in central Virginia. The President, sensing that Grant is impatient to visit the front himself, decides politely to return to Washington, and makes arrangements to leave the next day. Lincoln would really prefer to stay in City Point for what he senses is the imminent end of the war; even more so, he would like to ride with Grant to the front; but even Lincoln knows that is impossible.

As Grant himself is making preparations to leave, a new message is received from Sheridan asking Grant to come to Jetersville. Again Sheridan references Lee’s imminent surrender. “Go,” says the smiling President to his General, “I will see you in Washington.” And he would.

To make better time, Grant sets out with only a few men and a small guard. It is a much more dangerous act than it seems. At this moment in history nobody can say who is control of Virginia. There are armed Confederate “stragglers” everywhere, and gun-happy holdouts who would love to draw a bead on the Union General-in-Chief. At the same time that Grant is racing from City Point to Jetersville, John C. Breckinridge, the Confederate Secretary of War is traveling from the Richmond area down to Danville, with a side trip to confer with Lee. The two men’s trajectories cross, though they never see each other. 

Arriving in Jetersville later at night, Grant is briefed by Sheridan. He interviews a few Confederate prisoners, and his upset at Sheridan recedes.

For Sheridan is right. Lee’s army is on the verge of collapse. The only thing that seems to be holding the Rebel army together is Lee’s own strength of will, which he has somehow managed to imbue into most of his men.  

But Lee is no longer in true control of the field. For the last two days Sheridan and The Army of The Potomac have been corralling Lee and The Army of Northern Virginia like errant cattle, keeping them in line and driving them forward like a herd of swine. Lee cannot go where he wishes anymore; he can only move in a single direction, forward, away from the pincers of Sheridan’s grasping blue claw. April 6^th was indeed a dark day for the South. And April 7^th, as Grant discovers after speaking with Sheridan and with the Confederates he holds captive, was little better. Grant asks for time alone. He needs to think. 

Late at night, Grant writes to Lee the first of what become known as the "Surrender Letters":

APRIL 7, 1865

General R. E. LEE:

The result 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 C. S. Army known as the Army of Northern Virginia.

U.S. GRANT,

Lieutenant-General

II

The Army of Northern Virginia is on the march again. Lee has, for the moment at least, decided to put off his planned linkage with Joseph E. Johnston. Instead, he is moving due west. Once he reaches Lynchburg he will have time to plan his next moves. 

Lee and his men have barely slept and most have barely eaten. Given the hindsight of so many years it seems impossible that Lee could think that his army would ever reach Lynchburg. The General is counting on his men to demonstrate the same legendary speed and maneuverability they showed during the Overland Campaign when they outraced Grant to Petersburg and Richmond. 

Lee doesn’t seem to understand, or perhaps want to understand, that The Army of Northern Virginia is not the same army it was a year ago. Ten months in the trenches have worn it down, and a week with no food at all has condemned it. Lee is no longer engaged in a contest of thrust-and-parry with “Those People”; he has become a quarry, whose only task now is to evade, dodge, and escape the tightening ring in which his men find themselves. 

Still, he presses on. 

The Gray army crosses the Appomattox River over High Bridge. High Bridge has two decks, an upper for trains and a lower for wagons, horses, and pedestrians. The river, swollen by the Spring rains, is cresting, and its broad floodplain is filled to the brim. Although the bridge is 160 feet high water is lapping at the bottom of the wagon deck. After the army is safely across, Lee orders the bridge destroyed. 

Six miles down the road, the army reaches Farmville. Both the bridge and the town have been held for the last 24 hours by forces under the command of James Longstreet C.S.A., and Longstreet has the only news Lee really wants to hear.

A commissary wagon train is in Farmville. 

The ecstatic men begin to draw rations. Fires are built, water is boiled. Soon enough the first men in line at the wagons are eating for the first time in a week. The welcome smells of frying bacon, perked coffee and toasting bread soon fill the air. 

Soon, men are overcome, laughing and crying with joy, and some few, replete after seven days, light their long-ignored clay pipes or stretch out for well-deserved naps. 

Their idyll ends with shocking suddenness as a rearguard scout comes pounding up to Lee on a lathered horse. “General!” he shouts. “The Yankees are coming up the road behind us! They’re going to cross the bridge!”

Lee is stunned. Hadn’t he ordered High Bridge destroyed?  He quickly calls for the head of the demolition team. The man is frightened at being questioned by Lee:

“General, I swear by God we fired the bridge. It was a-burning like a bonfire when we left it. It cain’t be standing, suh. It cain’t be.”  

“You fired it? You set it afire?”

“Yessuh suh.”

“Why didn’t you use explosives to bring it down?”

The man looks heartsick. “I doan know, suh. I --- we --- I mean, I --- I just didn’t think of explosives, suh. But . . . It was burnin’ like a bonfire, suh . . . I’m . . . Oh, God, Gen’l, forgive me, please!”

Lee forgives the man. Though many a commander might have had the man punished and some even shot, Lee cannot do that. He knows that he is ultimately responsible for this debacle. The lack of rations has made his men’s thinking sluggish and simple, and Lee has not seen it --- not until now.

High Bridge had indeed been set afire, and it had burned spectacularly --- the entire upper superstructure was rendered unusable. But, standing on twenty piers, it hadn’t collapsed into the river. And the fire hadn’t done much to the lower wagon deck soaked as it was with river water. The first Federals to reach the bridge had simply dipped their canteens in the torrent of the river in order to douse the small fires on the lower deck. Once the fires were out, the Union army began to cross the Appomattox. 

The Union column is a bare six miles from Farmville when Lee gives the order to save the commissary wagons at all costs. The teamsters whip their horses into sudden movement. The chuck wagons speed off, still with frying bacon and perking coffee on their burners as the cooks try to douse the glowing coals of their stoves on the go. 

The men who are still in line waiting for food utter a collective heart cry as the wagons move away. A few desperate souls chase them. Men busy unloading provisions as the wagons jerk into motion toss cracker boxes, and whatever else they can quickly grab, from the tailgates of their rolling wagons, hoping that the soldiers on the ground can gather them up. 

Lee orders the men into formation for march, but before the Rebel column can even begin to move out of Farmville the Yankees arrive in force. It is just after 2:00 P.M. on Friday afternoon. 

The Battle of Cumberland Church:

 A running battle developed in the streets of Farmville as the Confederates withdrew from the town. Pressed by the Yankees, enraged at having their food snatched away from them, the Southerners put up a tremendous struggle as they moved down the road away from Farmville. The Federals were amazed at the unexpected force of the resistance --- from where were these rebels drawing their strength?  It was a small battle as things were reckoned in the Civil War, but Lee’s column inflicted a relatively staggering 700 casualties on the Union --- nearly ten percent of the 7,500-plus Federals engaged --- while suffering only 250 themselves. Among the Union dead was Brigadier General Thomas A. Smyth, the last Union general officer killed in the war. 

Although Cumberland Church is often referred to today as “the last Confederate victory of the war” it wasn’t, no matter the calculation. Nor did it deserve the tiresome title it sometimes gets of “the last battle of the Civil War.”  

At Cumberland Church, the A.N.V. was down to perhaps 10,000 to 12,000 men, and though they fought like furies when pressed, there was a brittle glass shard quality to the Confederate army by the end of the first week of April. They had shattered at Sailor’s Creek, and only the small chips of the army remained, painful and injurious to the incautious, but not really dangerous. 

By April 7, 1865, none of Lee’s men could be called “effectives” by any standard used at the height of the war. All of them, except perhaps the officer corps, truly needed to be hospitalized for extreme malnutrition. Even water was becoming harder to find as they moved westward through the empty center of the State. 

Lee didn’t rack up a victory at Cumberland Church. Nor did he make his escape from Grant. Cumberland Church was at best a pyrrhic victory that only delayed the end of the Civil War for perhaps one more day. As the sounds of battle died down, the South’s clock ticked the louder. The Confederacy had just about 48 hours left to live.

III

 John Surratt, a former Seminarian-turned-Confederate spy arrived in Montreal to discuss plans with the local Confederate Commissioner, Edwin Gray Lee --- plans to blow up the Federal White House. After squirreling away some money --- Federal greenbacks --- to buy gunpowder and to pay his explosives expert, Surratt immediately turns back for Washington D.C. 

IV

In North Carolina, a confederate raiding party manages to seize and scuttle the Union supply ship U.S.S. MINQUAS. Quartermaster and Commissary supplies are destroyed but no lives are lost.

V

A few minutes before midnight on April 7th, somewhere in the vicinity of Devereaux Station --- modern day Clifton, VA --- Robert E. Lee and James Longstreet are discussing the day’s events. They are interrupted by a courier under flag of truce bearing General Grant’s letter asking Lee to surrender. Lee reads it silently, and passes it to Longstreet, “my old war horse,” as Lee calls him. 

“Gloomy Pete” scans the message. He looks at Lee. “Not yet,” Longstreet advises his Commander. 

Lee nods imperceptibly. “Please wait for my reply,” Lee tells the courier. 

Lee writes:

April 7th, 1865.

General: 

I have received your note of this date. 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.

At the moment Lee is playing for time. When the courier interrupted them, Lee and Longstreet happened to be discussing plans for refitting the army. For the Fates seem to have smiled on Robert E. Lee at last. Not far off, in the town of Appomattox Station, wait three trains of full consist. Each train is carrying boxcars full of food --- food --- pistols, rifles, bullets, gunpowder, howitzers, shells, cannonballs, medical supplies, uniforms, shoes, boots, underdrawers, belts --- in short, everything the Army needs to carry on the war for months.  Even the Commissary Wagon Train from Farmville is waiting at Appomattox Station. And best of all, this is no pipe dream. Lee not only knows the supplies exist he has pickets guarding them. It seems that at least some of his messages to Danville got through. He even knows of a fourth train coming directly from Lynchburg in the morning. His men have perhaps twelve miles to march, and then another twenty five to Lynchburg where they can rest and recuperate before they join with Johnston?  Or head for the hills?  

Lee is still debating the wisdom of each choice. In the meantime, his exhausted men are resting. There is no rush. They can practically see Appomattox Station from where they are (or practically could if it was daylight anyway), and Lee does not have the heart to force his men to suffer through another night-blind night march. In the morning they can just take a comfortable, if long, walk to the train station. 

Lee has not abandoned all wisdom. He has told his officers the news --- and they have congratulated him warmly --- “You’ve done it, General, you’ve done it! The Yankees are in for it now” --- but he has asked that they say nothing to the men. Just in case. 

How word of the trains at Appomattox Station reaches Grant in Jetersville no one ever knows.

After reading Lee’s response and sensing what is between the lines, Grant tells Sheridan sadly, “It looks like Lee means to fight it out.”  

Grant decides his men have had enough rest. He rouses the army --- the entire field Army of The Potomac --- and orders them to march at the double-quick for Lee’s latest position. Grant is finally going to get ahead of Lee, whatever it takes, because Grant knows that if Lee reaches those trains before him --- and all Lee has to do is decide to go at any moment  --- it will be a whole new war.  

Grant and Sheridan dispatch their fastest cavalry right to Appomattox Station. General George Custer is about to win the Civil War.    

April 6, 1865---"Let the 'thing' be pressed."

APRIL 6, 1865:   
              

“Let the thing be pressed.” --- Abraham Lincoln

 

I

After returning to City Point from Richmond, President Lincoln announces his desire to visit Petersburg. His visit to Petersburg is short and unmemorable, forgotten to history in comparison to the drama of his stay in Richmond.

Also forgotten is a brief episode which took place as the President of the United States was motored by gunboat up the Appomattox River toward Petersburg and toward Robert E. Lee’s receding army. As he stood on the deck of the U.S.S. MALVERN President Lincoln took note that the ship was negotiating the stream quite close to the river’s northern shore. 

“Are there mines and obstructions here as on the James?” he asked.

“Oh, no, sir,” answered a sailor. “The south shore is still held by Confederate militia and pickets. General Lee’s army is somewhere directly in front of us. We keep to this side of the river so we don’t draw fire. We’ve been shot at along this stretch before, but their rifles can’t reach us at this range. The far side of the river is enemy territory, Mr. President.”

The President digested this for some time as the shoreline slipped by. After the MALVERN bested a bend in the river, Mr. Lincoln said, “I would like to go ashore. On the south shore.”

Admiral David Dixon Porter, who had appointed himself Lincoln’s guide and protector during his visits to Richmond and Petersburg tried vainly to talk Lincoln out of it. 

“Mr. President, such a thing is far too dangerous.”

“More dangerous than visiting Richmond?”

“Well, sir, yes, quite possibly. We’d already taken Richmond. Here, this is still the front line.”

The President was firm. “That,” he pointed to the far shore, “is United States territory, and the President of the United States need have no fear to go there or anywhere in the country. Please put me ashore. I won’t be long.”

“Sir, you could be killed or captured.”

“No, Admiral. Not today. It is not my time yet. A man knows these things.”

After a few more minutes’ argument, Porter reluctantly ordered the MALVERN to anchor near the southern shore of the Appomattox, and Lincoln, along with his now-regular Marine guardsmen, was put over the side in the Admiral’s gig. 

When Lincoln stepped ashore, he uttered a single word, “Virginia,” and after a few moments of gazing about him, told his guardsmen, “Boys, I want to be alone for a moment. Do not follow me. That is an order from your Commander-in-Chief. You need not worry. I can take care of myself.”

And with that, the President of the United States vanished into a stand of trees. 

The next few minutes crawled by with excruciating slowness for the Marines. A minute no doubt felt like a quarter-hour to the President’s worried guard. It was probably no more than five minutes though, before Lincoln reappeared. “We can go now. Thank you.” 

Abraham Lincoln never confided to anyone in the few short remaining days of his life what he had thought or done in those few minutes alone on “enemy” soil.  It’s likely that he claimed all of Virginia --- and all of the South --- as sovereign United States territory. If that is what he did, it is difficult to imagine that he spoke the words of a conqueror or a colonizer planting an alien flag. Rather, imagination lends itself to the image of Lincoln as a supplicant treading on holy ground; perhaps he even removed his shoes. 

History gives us only one obscure hint: After returning from his trip to Petersburg, Lincoln never uttered the word “enemy” again, and he actively discouraged anyone else from doing so.  When Lincoln saw Confederate P.O.W.s at City Point upon his return there, he took in their ragged, skeletal appearance, took in the sight of them gnawing on “bread as hard as hard cheese,” and muttered, “The poor fellows,” to General Grant, before ordering that all Confederate prisoners be given full, nourishing meals and decent clothes. And after his return to Washington on the ninth of the month, he chided Edwin Stanton about Stanton’s use of the word “enemy”:  “We must never, ever say that word again. We must never think it.”

II

Lincoln’s nemesis is, like him, a man who does not use the word “enemy.” Robert E. Lee habitually refers to the Yankees as “those people,” and today “those people” are bedeviling him beyond reckoning. Today is, as it will become known, “The Black Thursday of The Confederacy.”  

Black Thursday begins in darkness as The Army of Northern Virginia withdraws from the village of Amelia Court House. Their stay there has been a disaster. Not only did the expected commissary train never arrive with the half-million rations expected, but a wagon train of food and supplies was destroyed by Federal cavalry nearby. And worse yet, if things could be worse, Robert E. Lee’s decision to remain in the town for the better part of 24 hours has allowed the main body of the pursuing Union troops to draw even with the Army of Northern Virginia. 

To make up for lost time, Lee decides on a night march to begin ‘round about midnight. But even this decision turns out to be a bad one. Lee’s men haven’t had any kind of a real meal in almost a week now. Skeletal men in the trenches at Petersburg have become wasted. Simply by moving forward they are consuming calories they cannot replace. Their bodies are in that last stage of starvation where they feed on themselves. Muscle tissue suddenly and completely vanishes, and with it the last of their stamina. A chronic lack of Vitamin A means that most of the men are night-blind. As they march they step in ruts, lose their balance, twist ankles, fall. They collide with each other in the pitch darkness. Hunger-induced vertigo makes them logy and lightheaded, nauseous. Many are developing dry heaves since their empty stomachs can disgorge nothing. 

It is an eerily silent army for a line of almost 20,000 men. Almost no one has the energy to talk, concentrating instead on putting one dragging foot ahead of the other. There are still a few hardcore wisecrackers. One Mississippian announces, “I’m in this fight because I love my country, but if this war is over I swear I’ll never love no damn country this way again.” 

If this war is over . . .  . A growing awareness begins to fill men’s minds.

The men begin to drop haversacks and cartridge boxes; they are too heavy to carry. Lee’s army molts its warrior skin, becoming more and more with every passing moment just a line of struggling, brave, men. One after another, men struggle to the swales, planting their rifles upside-down by the bayonet point into the Virginia loam. Come daylight, the rifles will stand in a crooked line of strange sentinel trees, memorials of the ultimate futility of war.

In the night, many men fall away from the column; they can go no further. Some faint even as they struggle forward. A few begin to exhibit metabolic failures, becoming edematous, struggling to breathe. A few of the weakest simply die. Lee’s retreat is becoming a death march.

At the head of the line, Lee rides on. Traveller is tired and hungry and much thinner than he was, but he too bravely puts each equine foot forward. Lee is enervated. He has not slept more than a few hours a night since the Battle of Fort Stedman. The pain in his chest cavity is constant and aching. He is red-eyed and haggard, and living on little food, eating more than most of his men only because his officer corps knows that if Lee falls from the saddle in exhaustion the army will fall too. 

The fifty-eight year old General still has the love of his men. He left more than a few exhausted fellows back in Amelia Court House, men who wept at the thought of disappointing their beloved General. Even now, men who fall behind are calling out in varying soft Southern accents, “Ahm sorry, Bobby Lee, but I cannot go no fuhthar.”

Their love perhaps has blinded them to Lee’s increasingly poor judgement. Lack of food and of rest has impaired Lee as much as it has impaired most of his men. The reality is that the war might have ended --- should have ended --- at Amelia Court House. To an army on the move, food is a more important and potent weapon than a rifle, and to ask men to fight without it is nothing short of madness. But Lee has convinced himself that the missing food train is at Burkeville --- or at least that more food can be gotten through Burkeville. The town lies right on crossing of the Richmond and Danville Line and the Southside Railroad. Either the food train from Richmond is there or another can be sent quickly from Danville, the new Confederate capital, a town bursting at the seams with tens of thousands of tons of war materiel and commissary reserves. The train from Danville is there. Or will arrive. Perhaps both trains are waiting. Lee makes his men no promises. He just asks them to trust in him. And they do. 

Less than 20 miles separate Amelia Court House and Burkeville, but the road runs through Union-held Jetersville. Lee must detour around that town, and in doing so double the distance his men must go. It will be hard, but . . .  

It is a little-known fact that Walter H. Taylor II, Lee’s Adjutant throughout the war, claimed in his memoirs (published after Lee’s death) that Lee had never requested that a food train be sent to Amelia Court House. Taylor, in fact, remembered no orders relating to Amelia Court House at all. Given that Taylor transcribed most of Lee’s Orders, his recollections would appear to be definitive. And there are no Orders regarding Amelia Court House in the Official Records. But the O.R. is notoriously incomplete regarding Confederate records at the war’s end (many had been burned in Richmond). And in fact, Lee’s four widely separated columns all came together at Amelia Court House. They could not have done so without orders, even verbal ones. What Taylor did recall was an ambiguously-worded request that “Materials sufficient for the Army of Northern Virginia to maintain its effective war footing” be sent up the line. And in fact, it appears this was done. The train containing caissons, ammunition and horse tack might have qualified in the mind of a harried Confederate war clerk sitting in the midst of a burning riotous city as “materials sufficient to maintain an effective war footing.” Ask anyone, and they will think of weapons as critical to an army. Food will be an afterthought. Perhaps that is what happened at Amelia Court House. 

If so, it would not have been the first time that Lee issued an obscure Order that cost his side the battle and ultimately the war itself. Jefferson Davis himself (and numerous subsequent historians) noted “Lee’s habit of issuing broad orders and leaving the details to subordinates.” Recall, if you will, Lee’s order to Richard Ewell at Gettysburg to take Little Round Top “if practicable.” At the time the order was issued, Little Round Top was unoccupied by anyone, but Ewell did not think its seizure was “practicable.” Shortly thereafter, the Union took the height, and it became the anchor of the Union line on the second day of that terrible contest. 

Lee, tired and in pain those three days, lost Gettysburg for the want of a nail. And now he is about to lose the war for want of another. The man must, on some level, know it. Usually ramrod-straight and impeccable in appearance, he is slumping and slovenly-looking. And just like at Gettysburg, Lee’s impaired judgement is not allowing him to see the full picture of what is going on. For the Union attacks, constant and localized, and not merely picket skirmishes. Phil Sheridan is testing Lee’s line all along its length, probing for weaknesses. And he is finding them. Taking captive the large majority of the men who have dropped out of Lee’s line of March, Sheridan questions them, is shocked at what he sees and hears, and his understanding now is that the Army of Northern Virginia is fragmenting moment by moment. He sends a message to Grant who passes it on to Lincoln:

“If the thing is pressed I think that Lee will surrender.”

Lincoln responds:

“Let the thing be pressed.”

General Grant (lower left with hat on) confers with General Meade (seated) at City Point

III

Despite his increasing awareness of Lee’s precarious condition, Ulysses S. Grant is taking no chances. Lee has slipped his neck from the noose too many times for Grant to be complacent about the outcome of the macabre chase that is occurring in central Virginia. And Lee has not only slipped his neck from the noose; time after time, on the seeming verge of defeat Lee has managed to wring a hard a bloody victory out of their contests. Grant is still convinced that somehow “Lee will strike a blow that will fall with savage force” on The Army of The Potomac. 

Lt. Colonel Robert E. Lee circa 1859

Grant knows the clock is ticking against Lee, but he also knows that that the clock is ticking against him. If Lee manages to escape Grant this time around, popular opinion in the war-weary North may press for peace. 

Lt. U.S. "Sam" Grant in Mexico, 1847

Or, Lee may just reach the Blue Ridge Mountains. If The Army of Northern Virginia can do that, then it can splinter into a thousand Partisan Ranger Units. Grant will be fighting a host of Mosbys. Or nightmarishly, he will be fighting ten score Mosbys and numberless William Quantrills and Bloody Bill Andersons. The war could go on for years, generations even; entire clans of bushwhackers could be awaiting their birth, and the United States could become one vast Missouri, a failed State of continental proportions. 

Grant knows he is winning, but the winning is hard, and perhaps it will not be total. “Lee is in a bad fix,” Grant tells his staff, “but if I were in his place, I think I could still get away with part of my army.” Grant sighs. “I suppose Lee will.” 

Then the stocky General squares his shoulders. “I don’t want to follow him. I want to get ahead of him.” 

Orders are sent to Philip Sheridan to step up the pace.

IV

Suffering from the same strange battlefield myopia that afflicted him at Gettysburg, Robert E. Lee compounded his mistake of spending too much time at Amelia Court House. 

This mistake, like the others Lee would make in the coming hours, was the right thing to do if all other things had been equal. But they were not equal. Lee did not seem to grasp just how exhausted and hungry his men really were, how much their lack of food had caused them mental confusion, or just what the positions of the Confederate army and the Federal army were, relative to each other, and both figuratively and literally. His Military Intelligence system broke down completely on Black Thursday, and he marched blind.

Lee ordered his column to divide into three parallel lines. This would have been the smartest thing to do if indeed he was fighting off pickets, skirmishers, and small troops of reconnaissance in force. In three parallel columns his forces then could have been mutually supportive. 

But Lee was not fighting small forces. He was battling three immense Union columns of The Army of The Potomac, each bigger than his entire army combined. Until Lee divided his forces the three Union columns had struggled to coordinate their movements against the smaller single Confederate line. By dividing his strength Lee actually aided his enemies. His decision allowed each Union column to act independently in attacking its corresponding Confederate column. 

Lee also mistook the positions of his columns versus the Federal columns. The Federals were not, as he believed, behind him and in pursuit of him. In fact, they were in parallel, shadowing him. He had Union troops to both the north and south of his central line of march, bracketing him. And he was marching into the Appomattox River Valley, a narrowing funnel in which he gave U.S. Grant the power to decide where the Southern army could and couldn’t go.

Perhaps not worst, but no good at all, was the fact that as soon as the main line divided itself into columns communications almost completely broke down between them as the men tottered off in different directions. Lee had only imperfect ideas of where things were happening and when they were happening. “The woods are full of stragglers” the Federal soldiers reported as Confederates, lost in the dark, blundered into them.   

Things were already very bad for the Army of Northern Virginia, but at least Lee’s lines were moving, if sluggishly and fitfully, toward Burkeville, where the expected commissary trains waited at the Danville & Richmond Railroad depot. 

The first of a series of disasters that would unmake the Army of Northern Virginia began to unfold at 4:00 A.M. near Burkeville, when Union forces captured the train station there (rumor had it that at least one food train was seized too).  The Yankees now stood between The Army of Northern Virginia and the Confederate capital at Danville, cutting Lee off from his Government.

Instead of trying to move on Burkeville, Lee immediately issued orders --- which even he later admitted were “the most cruel marching orders ever issued” --- to bypass Burkeville and head for Lynchburg, almost eighty miles away. 

General E. Porter Alexander, one of Lee’s most trusted men, tried vainly to talk Lee out of issuing the Order to march on Lynchburg, particularly by the route Lee designated, which necessitated crossing the Appomattox River. Such a crossing, Alexander pointed out, was a bottleneck that would slow the army, a spot where the Yankees could easily mount an attack. Lee, most uncharacteristically, sent him away with sharp words:  “I know the men and animals are exhausted, but it is necessary to tax their strength. I have time to consider what you’ve said. Now go and attend to your orders, Mr. Alexander.”

Lee was tired. He was physically and mentally exhausted and in increasing pain from “the rheumatism” that plagued him. But he was also tired of chasing will-o’-the-wisp rumors of food. At least he knew for a certainty that Lynchburg would have food. 

The men in the ranks who hailed from the Shenandoah Valley were not so certain. The Valley was a desert now, and Lynchburg, fought over so many times, was practically a ghost town. And though they had faith in Lee, they had no faith in the Confederate Commissary Department. If it still even existed at this point.  No one really knew.  

Lee’s Orders directed the men to head for a place called High Bridge across the Appomattox River. He dispatched General James Longstreet to seize the bridge. Once over the bridge, Lee calculated that the army could re-form at Farmville, where (it was yet again rumored) there were more than adequate provisions. 

V

Black Thursday is marked by battles:

The Battle of High Bridge:

When Longstreet’s forces arrived to take High Bridge they found it already held against them by Union troops who were trying to burn it. If successful, Lee would have had to take the overland route (what General Alexander had counseled) which was, ironically enough, easier and somewhat shorter. In what amounted to the only successful Confederate engagement of the day, Longstreet managed to take the bridge intact. The Confederates suffered nominal casualties, although General James Dearing C.S.A. (the last Confederate General to be killed in the Civil War) was lost there. The Union suffered nearly 900 men killed, wounded and missing. 

The Battle of Rice’s Station:

Having taken High Bridge, several hours later Longstreet’s men defended it successfully against a Union assault at Rice’s Station, the furthest point south on Lee routes of march. A second Union assault to regain the bridge was ended by darkness.

The Battle of Sailor’s Creek:

While small battles and skirmishes flared all day long along Lee’s routes of march, a large force under General Richard S. Ewell C.S.A. and General Custis Lee C.S.A. (Robert E. Lee’s son) fought a major engagement with the Union Sixth Corps at Sailor’s Creek.

The Battle of Sailor’s Creek (as it was spelled in 1865; it is now usually spelled “Sayler’s” or, alternatively, “Saylor’s” and sometimes the battle is referred to as “Lockett Farm” or “Hillsman’s House” or “Hillsman’s Farm” and by several other names) is universally considered “The Waterloo of the Confederacy.” It is often also referred to as “The Last Battle of The Civil War” (count them!) or “The Last Battle of The Army of Northern Virginia” (it wasn’t). But, as Lee himself advised Jefferson Davis, “A few more Sailor’s Creeks and it will all be over.” 

It would not take that much.

The Battle of Sailor’s Creek was actually three separate interlocking engagements, one at Lockett’s Farm, another at Little Sailor’s Creek, and a third at Marshall’s Crossroads. The battles began when Lee’s columns found themselves blocked by Philip Sheridan’s forces after Sheridan got ahead of Lee’s columns as per Grant’s orders earlier that day. 

The constant daylong and nightlong hit-and-run attacks by the Union had finally paid off. Lee’s forces were moving in a piecemeal fashion, disjointed and out of step with one another, stopping and going each at their own pace. Huge gaps had opened both between Lee’s columns and inside Lee’s columns. One particularly heavy skirmish near Holt’s Corners had caused General Ewell to call a halt and prepare for a set-piece assault, an assault which never came. The halt, though, put Ewell’s column two hours behind the rest as he began moving forward again. 

Ewell had no artillery, and when he came upon a large Union force under the direct command of Philip Sheridan at Little Sailor’s Creek, he knew he could not dislodge them. But before Ewell could maneuver away effectively, the Union troops charged. 

“Go get them boys!” Philip Sheridan shouted. “They’re demoralized as hell!” 

The Blue line crashed into the Gray line, which, against all expectations did not break. The Confederates actually managed to get off one killing volley which brought down many of the men involved in that first Union charge. It looked like a Confederate victory was at hand. The strange wail of the Rebel Yell sounded over the hills of Virginia for what turned out to be the last time. As the Graybacks charged, the Union survivors gave way ---

“I saw a young fellow of one of my companies jam the muzzle of his musket against the back of the head of his most intimate friend, clad in a Yankee overcoat, and blow his brains out.” 

But then a massive number of Union reinforcements poured onto the field. Having shot their bolt, most of the Confederates nevertheless continued the attack with empty rifles. In just a few moments, Sailor’s Creek degenerated into an atavistic tribal contest. 

Coming at the Billy Yanks with nothing but combat knives and bayonets, the Johnny Rebs, those who were not shot down, slashed and stabbed their way through their enemies. Upending their rifles, they smashed skulls open with rifle butts; Yankee brains lay in the dirt. Enraged, the Confederates hacked at the fallen bodies, cut the throats of the dead and the living, and moved on. Men in gray and butternut who had discarded their weapons along the trail attacked men in blue with rocks and with their fists and feet, kicking and punching. Many of the Federal soldiers did likewise, and the battle became a one-on-one brawl between several thousand men in the same place. They rolled in the mud, grunting and cursing, gouging eyes, and crushing throats. 

“I well remember the yell of demonic triumph with which [a] simple country lad clubbed his musket and whirled savagely upon another victim,” observed one officer.

A Union commander from a Massachusetts regiment noted, “One Berkshire man was stabbed in the chest by a bayonet and pinned to the ground as it came out near his spine. He reloaded his gun and killed the Confederate who then fell across him.” 

A path near Marshall's Crossroads

Friendly fire killed many. The dazed and often incoherent Confederates were fighting on adrenaline alone, and any movement within their field of vision evoked a response. A line of Confederates, seeing a body of men rushing toward them, opened fire reflexively, killing men coming to their aid.  

The Battle of Sailor's Creek

Recalled a surviving Confederate:   

“I saw a young fellow of one of my companies jam the muzzle of his musket against the back of the head of his most intimate friend, clad in a Yankee overcoat, and blow his brains out.”  

Confederate rage reached its apex when men turned savage began attacking their enemies with their nails and teeth, biting at cheeks and eyes and ears, tearing great hunks of flesh from their enemies. This was combat but it had the unhealthy look of cannibalism. 

Violence on this scale spread across the entire battlefield. Lockett’s Farm and Marshall’s Crossroads became the stages of grisly sights. At Marshall’s Crossroads, Union cavalry rode down the furious Confederates and with sword and sabre and pistol and rifle did in the men who survived the trampling of fear-maddened hooves.   

Little Sailor's Creek

Those who still could, ran.

Lee arrived on the field at this point. After watching the combat for a few moments, his proud head dropped into his hand as he looked away. “My God! Has all the army been dissolved?” he asked himself in a low tone.

“No,” answered one of his companions, General William Mahone, “Here are men ready to do their duty.”

      

The battle raged for five terrible hours. 

Starvation began to tell, however, hunger and weakness, as the day went on. Wearied Confederates suffered seizures from overexertion and fell and died. Men who had reached the limits of adrenaline collapsed, shaking and in tears, unable to comprehend what was happening.

And still the Federals continued to pour onto the field.  There seemed to be no end to their numbers.  

     

In the end, almost seven thousand Confederates surrendered, begging for food and water. More than 2,000 lay dead upon the field, so thick in places that a horse could not walk there.  The almost 9,000 lost men represented much more than a third of Lee’s entire remaining army. Among the losses were eight of Lee’s general officers taken captive: Richard S. Ewell, Joseph B. Kershaw, Montgomery Corse, Eppa Hunton, Dudley M. DuBose, James P. Smith, Seth Barton, and Lee’s oldest son, George Washington Custis Lee, called “Mr. Custis” by his father.

Of the 16,000 Federal soldiers in the battle the Union lost 1,148 men, killed, wounded, or captured. 

The Army of Northern Virginia was shattered by the Battle of Sailor’s Creek. After the battle, some of Lee’s men were still like the crusty Virginian P.O.W. who jeeringly told his Union captor, “Over? Over? This war’s not over, sir. It hasn’t even begun yet, sir.” And there were those --- thousands --- who refused to take the Loyalty Oath to the United States after becoming prisoners. Even promises of hot meals, clothes, and home didn’t sway the firmest of them. Yes, there were still many men “ready to do their duty” after Sailor’s Creek. But there were many more who couldn’t even pick up their rifles afterward, men who were too physically weak, or too mentally troubled to hear another order, men who recoiled in horror at the blood and bits of brain on their broken rifle stocks, men who burned out utterly on the horrendous battlefields at Sailor’s Creek becoming zombie-like, other men who were deeply shamed and terrified at what they did and what they became for however short a time. Many men in Confederate uniform began asking themselves just what they were fighting for. Was life under the United States flag so terrible that they had to join a fratricidal war to undo their old allegiance? Why, when they had farms and homes and wives and children and hardworking slaves to help with the planting, did they go haring off after another man’s dream? Where was that smart-talking man now? Who was that man to begin with? A rich planter? A politician? A slave-trader? A cotton broker? What, in God’s good name, do such men have to do with me? they ask. What about the endless roll call of the dead? Where will it all end? Marse Robert is an honorable man, for sure, and they will follow him into the jaws of hell itself --- in fact they already have, time and again --- but is The Cause really worth what they have seen, what they cannot ever truly forget? 

And there is still no food.   

After darkness fell on the battlefields of Sailor’s Creek furtive figures began scouring the ground, searching in the blackness. They knelt, cutting strips of bleeding meat from the carcasses of the dead horses that littered the field. Some sat down and chewed and swallowed the meat raw, while others carried it back to the temporary encampment of the Confederate army. Other men hacked at the legs of the animals; their harvest would be pot-boiled to make a poor kind of hoof soup that the weakest men could ingest. The men of the Army of Northern Virginia ate, however poorly, for the first time in days. If anyone made use of the hundreds of human bodies that lay strewn across the ground, no one later remembered it.

A modern painting of Lee, representing him circa 1865. Four years of war had aged him immensely

Robert E. Lee lay restless on his camp bed, alone, in a smallish tent quickly erected to keep him dry from the constantly passing showers that had begun with dusk. These are light Spring rains heralding new life, but on this night Lee was preoccupied with death. What he had seen at Sailor’s Creek haunted the troubled dreams he suffered during his brief snatches of sleep. He had seen his invincible Army of Northern Virginia made all too mortal. He had taxed his men and they had paid --- too much. And tonight, his beloved Mr. Custis was a prisoner of the Yankees. Logic told him Mr. Custis would be safe. As a father his instincts were to fear. 

Blearily he rose, and stepped into the night. The stars appeared and vanished behind the white fleece of the clouds as they moved against the India ink palette of the sky. Sitting himself down cautiously, Lee sighed deeply. And by the light of a lantern set on a camp stool, Robert E. Lee contemplated what he had once believed to be unthinkable.      

General George Custer U.S.A. accepting the struck Confederate colors at Appomattox Court House