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Page 29
The counter assaults of the Confederates, however, were in vain. They
inflicted terrible losses, and were themselves mowed down by
thousands; but they could not and did not retake the angle. Hancock
and his heroes could not be dislodged. The battle of Spottsylvania
died away with the night into sullen and awful silence, which was
broken only by the groans of thousands of wounded men who could not be
recovered from the bloody earth on which they had fallen. The
antagonists lay crouching like lions, only a lion's spring apart, and
neither would suffer the other, even for the sake of their common
American humanity, to recover his dead.
In the retrospect it seems marvelous that within the memories of men
now living and not yet old, so awful a struggle as that of the Death
Angle in the Wilderness could have taken place between men of the same
race and language, born under the flag of the same Republic, and
cherishing the same sentiments and traditions and hopes.
APPOMATTOX.
Appomattox was not a battle, but the end of battles. Fondly do we hope
that never again shall Americans lift against Americans the avenging
hand in such a strife! Here at a little court-house, twenty-five miles
east of Lynchburg, on the ninth of April, 1865, the great tragedy of
our civil war was brought to a happy end. Here General Robert E. Lee,
with the broken fragments of his Army of Northern Virginia, was
brought by the inexorable logic of war to the end of that career which
he had so bravely followed through four years of battle, much of which
had shown him to be one of the great commanders of the century.
The story of the downfall of the Confederacy has been many times
repeated. It has entered into our literature, and is known by heart
wherever the history of the war is read. Generally, however, this
story has been told as if the narrator approached the event from the
Union side. We have the pursuit of General Lee from Petersburg
westward, almost to the spurs of the Alleghanies. We follow in the
wake. We see the unwearied efforts of the victorious host to close
around the retreating army which has so long been the bulwark of the
Confederacy. We hear the summons to surrender, and the answer of "_Not
yet_;" but within a day that answer is reversed, and the stern wills
of Lee and his fellow-commanders yield to the inexorable law of the
strongest.
Only recently, however, the story has been told with great spirit from
the Confederate side, by General John B. Gordon, who was at that time
at the right hand of his commander-in-chief, and who stood by him to
the last hour. General Gordon's account of the final struggle of the
Confederate army and of the surrender is so graphic, so full of
spirit, so warmed with the animation and devotion of a great soldier,
that we here repeat his account of
THE DEATH STRUGGLE.
We always retreated in good order, though always under fire. As we
retreated we would wheel and fire, or repel a rush, and then stagger
on to the next hilltop, or vantage ground, where a new fight would be
made. And so on through the entire day. At night my men had no rest.
We marched through the night in order to get a little respite from
fighting. All night long I would see my poor fellows hobbling along,
prying wagons or artillery out of the mud, and supplementing the work
of our broken-down horses. At dawn, though, they would be in line
ready for battle, and they would fight with the steadiness and valor
of the Old Guard.
This lasted until the night of the seventh of April. The retreat of
Lee's army was lit up with the fire and flash of battle, in which my
brave men moved about like demigods for five days and nights. Then we
were sent to the front for a rest, and Longstreet was ordered to cover
the retreating army. On the evening of the eighth, when I had reached
the front, my scout George brought me two men in Confederate uniform,
who, he said, he believed to be the enemy, as he had seen them
counting our men as they filed past. I had the men brought to my
campfire, and examined them. They made a plausible defence, but George
was positive they were spies, and I ordered them searched. He failed
to find anything, when I ordered him to examine their boots. In the
bottom of one of the boots I found an order from General Grant to
General Ord, telling him to move by forced marches toward Lynchburg
and cut off General Lee's retreat. The men then confessed that they
were spies, and belonged to General Sheridan. They stated that they
knew that the penalty of their course was death, but asked that I
should not kill them, as the war could only last a few days longer,
anyhow. I kept them prisoners, and turned them over to General
Sheridan after the surrender. I at once sent the information to
General Lee, and a short time afterward received orders to go to his
headquarters. That night was held Lee's last council of war. There
were present General Lee, General Fitzhugh Lee, as head of the
cavalry, and Pendleton, as chief of the artillery, and myself. General
Longstreet was, I think, too busily engaged to attend.
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