TOWSER WELCOMES TOM TO THE WHITE HOUSE--LINCOLN RE-ELECTED
PRESIDENT--GRANT COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF--SHERMAN MARCHES FROM ATLANTA
TO THE SEA--TOM ON GRANT'S STAFF--FIVE FORKS--FALL OF
RICHMOND--HANS ROLF FREED--BOB SAVES TOM FROM CAPTURE--TOM TAKES A
BATTERY INTO ACTION--LEE SURRENDERS--TOM STRONG, BREVET-CAPTAIN U.
S. A.
The warmest welcome Tom had at the White House was given him by Towser.
The next warmest was given him by Uncle Moses and the next by Lincoln.
The staff was glad to see him back, but many of them were jealous of the
President's evident liking for him and would not have sorrowed overmuch
if he had not come back at all. The patient President found time, amid
all his myriad cares, to listen to Tom's story and to make Secretary
Stanton give a captain's commission to Jim Grayson, who was sent to his
own mountains to gather recruits for the Union army. For Towser, time
existed only to be spent in welcoming his young master home. He clung
close to him, with slobbering jaws and thumping tail, through the first
day, and the first night he managed to escape from Uncle Mose's care in
the basement and to find Tom's attic room. Thenceforth, as long as Tom
stayed at the White House, Towser stretched his yellow bulk across the
threshold of his door every night and slept there the sleep of the
utterly happy.
There were no utterly happy men under the White House roof. Lincoln's
presidential term was drawing to a close. He was renominated by the
Republicans, but his re-election at times seemed impossible. The
Democrats had put forward Gen. George B. McClellan, once chief commander
of the Union forces, but a pitiful failure as an aggressive general. A
discontented wing of the Republicans had nominated Gen. John C.
Fremont. Fremont had not fulfilled the promise of his youth. At the
beginning of the war, he had been put in command at St. Louis, had
proved to be incompetent, and had been retired. He was still strong in
the hearts of many people, but Lincoln feared the success, not of
Fremont, but of McClellan. John Hay once said to the President:
"Fremont might be dangerous if he had more ability and energy."
"Yes," was the reply, "he is like Jim Jett's brother. Jim used to say
that his brother was the greatest scoundrel that ever lived, but in the
infinite mercy of Providence he was also the greatest fool."
Family sayings, when they are not loving, are apt to be bitter. One of
the Vanderbilts said of a connection of his by marriage that he was
"more kinds of a fool to the square inch than anybody else in the
world."
McClellan, who seemed practically certain of success in August, 1864,
was badly beaten in November, when the battle of parties was fought out
at the polls. Fremont had retired from the contest early in the
campaign. At the first Cabinet meeting after the election, November 11,
1864, the President took a paper out of his desk and said:
"Gentlemen, do you remember last summer I asked you all to sign your
names to the back of a paper, of which I did not show you the inside?
This is it. Now, Mr. Hay, see if you can get this open without tearing
it."
Its cover was so thoroughly pasted up that it had to be cut open. This
done, Lincoln read it aloud. Here it is:
"Executive Mansion,
Washington, August 23, 1864.
"This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable
that this Administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be my
duty to so co-operate with the President elect as to save the Union
between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured
his election on such ground that he cannot possibly save it
afterwards.
A. LINCOLN."
In that memorandum is the sign-manual of a great soul. Lincoln,
believing his own defeat was written in the stars, thought, not of
himself, but of how he, defeated, could best save the cause of the Union
from defeat. A small man thinks first of himself. A big man thinks first
of his duty.
Life was happy at the White House now. The President had been re-elected
and it was clear that long before his second term was over, he would
have won a victorious peace. The South was still fighting with all the
energy brave men can show for a cause in the righteousness of which they
believe, but after all the energy was that of despair. Grant was now in
supreme command of the Union forces, East and West. He had been
commissioned Lieutenant-General and put in command March 17, 1864. In
commemoration of this event, the turning point in the great struggle,
Lincoln had had a photograph of himself taken. But two copies of it were
printed. One Lincoln kept himself. One he gave Grant. Here is the one
given Grant.
[Illustration: ABRAHAM LINCOLN]
The new Lieutenant-General was hammering away at Richmond. The
Mississippi, now under Union control, cut the Confederacy in two. All
the chief Southern seaports, except Savannah and Charleston, had been
captured. And in this same month of November, 1864, Gen. William
Tecumseh Sherman, who ranked only second to Grant in the United States
army, cut loose from Atlanta, Georgia, captured two months before and
began his famous march to the sea, with Savannah as his destination. He
illustrated his own well-known saying: "War is hell." If it was hell in
Sherman's time, what word can describe the horror of it in our day? He
swept with sword and fire a belt of fertile country, sixty miles wide,
from Atlanta to the sea. He found it smiling and rich; he left it a bare
and blackened waste. He had destroyed the granary of the Confederacy and
before the next month ended he had made his country a Christmas present
of the remaining chief Southern seaport, Savannah. He wrote to Lincoln:
"I beg to present to you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah, with
one hundred and fifty heavy guns and plenty of ammunition and also
twenty-five thousand bales of cotton." Cotton was worth a dollar a pound
in those days.
Early in 1865 Sherman swung northward from Savannah, forced the
surrender of Charleston, South Carolina, and joined Union forces
advancing from the North at Goldsboro', North Carolina, March 23. Six
days later Grant began the final campaign against the Confederacy. Six
days before, Lincoln had said to the boy:
"Tom, would you like to see some more fighting?"
"Yes, Mr. President; very much."
"Well, you needn't tell anybody, but I guess there'll be some to see
before long near Richmond. I've had you ordered from special service at
the White House to special service with the Lieutenant-General. Here's
the order and here's a letter to General Grant. I wouldn't wonder if he
put you on his staff."
"How can I thank you, Mr. Lincoln?"
"The best way to thank anybody is to do well the work he gives you to
do. Good-by, my son, and good luck."
[Illustration: GEN. W. T. SHERMAN
St. Gaudens' Statue, New York]
With a pressure of Lincoln's huge hand Tom was sped on his rejoicing
way. Two days later he was at Grant's headquarters, at City Point,
Virginia, near Fortress Monroe. He saluted and handed the General
Lincoln's letter. The soldier sat, a silent sphinx, for a moment. Then
he looked up at Tom with a quizzical but not unkindly smile, and said:
"Have you learned anything since you brought me dispatches at Fort
Donelson and Vicksburg?"
"I hope so, General."
"Sometimes the President sends me people for political reasons. I
suppose he has to. But I don't take them if I know it. Have you any
political influence behind you?"
"Not a bit, sir." Tom laughed at the thought.
"You laugh well. You and Horace Porter ought to get on together. He
laughs well, too. You can serve on my staff.
"I thank you, General."
Tom saluted and walked away, to find Horace Porter, whom he found to be
a very nice fellow indeed. One of the first things the nice fellow did
for him was to get him a good horse. There was no lack of horses at
headquarters. The difficulty was not to find one, but to choose the best
of many good ones. Tom, who had a good eye for a horse, found one that
exactly suited him except as to color. He was of a mottled gray. The boy
did not much care for such a color, but he knew it had its advantages.
It does not advertise its presence. Where a black, a white or a bay
horse would stand out and make a mark for hostile sharpshooters, a
mottled gray might well elude their view. And the horse, apart from
this, was just what he wanted. He paced fast, he galloped fast, and he
walked fast, which is a rare and precious accomplishment in a horse. The
average horse walks, as a rule, slower than the average man. In an hour,
he covers a quarter-of-a-mile less ground. One question remained to be
settled.
"Can he jump?" asked Tom.
"Jump, is it?" answered the soldier-groom. "Shure, the cow that jumped
over the moon couldn't lift a leg to him."
"You bet your life he can jump," said Horace Porter. "General Grant has
ridden him twice and I saw him put Bob over a fence or two."
[Illustration: BOB]
Not long afterwards Tom did bet his life on Bob's jumping. He was named
Bob before the United States took him. He had been captured the month
before and had come across the lines with his name embroidered by some
woman's hand on his saddle-blanket and with his late owner's blood upon
his saddle. He was a tall, leggy animal who showed a trace of Arabian
blood and who needed to be gentled a bit to get his best work out of
him. His mouth was appreciative of sugar and his eyes were appreciative
of kindness.
Both dogs and horses talk with their eyes.
"I like my new master," was what Bob's eyes said to Tom.
It was through a chance suggestion of Colonel Porter that the boy saw
most of what he did see of the final fight for freedom. Porter had
presented Tom to Gen. Philip H. Sheridan, who was then at City Point,
receiving Grant's final instructions for the twelve-day campaign that
ended in the fall of Richmond and the surrender of Lee's brave army.
Sheridan was a stocky, red-faced young Irishman, a graduate of West
Point, and a born leader of men, especially of cavalrymen. He liked the
clear-eyed lad who stood respectfully before him. He had done too much
in his own youth to think Tom was useless because he was so young.
Porter saw that the boy had made a good impression. He ventured a
suggestion.
"Why don't you take young Strong with you, General?"
Sheridan turned sharply to Tom, asking:
"Can you ride?"
"Oh, yes, sir. I've ridden ever since I can remember."
"Well, that's not so very long a time. But I'll take your word for it.
Would you like to go with me?"
"I'd like it better than anything else in the world, General."
Tom had rejoiced in the idea of being with Grant, but he knew that the
commander-in-chief must stay behind his lines and that his staff could
catch but glimpses of the fighting, when they were sent forward with
orders, whereas with Sheridan he might be in the very thick of the
fighting itself. His ready answer and the joy that beamed in his eyes
pleased the fighting Irishman.
"Can I borrow him of General Grant?" Sheridan asked Porter.
"I'll answer for that," Porter replied. "The General told me to put
Strong to whatever work I could find for him to do."
"Come ahead," said Sheridan. "You'll see some beautiful fighting!"
Sheridan loved fighting, but he made no pretense of never being afraid.
He thought a general should be close to the front, to keep his soldiers'
spirits high.
"Are you never afraid?" Charles A. Dana, then Assistant Secretary of
War, once asked him.
"If I was, I should not be ashamed of it. If I should follow my natural
impulse, I should run away always at the beginning of the danger. The
men who say they are never afraid in a battle do not tell the truth."
* * * * *
March 29, 1865, the twelve-day campaign began. The cavalry swung out
towards Five Forks, where Lee's right wing lay behind deep
entrenchments. April 1, Sheridan attacked in force. Americans fought
Americans with stubborn bravery on both sides. The issue was long in
doubt. Sheridan and his staff were close to the firing-line, so that Tom
had but a few hundred yards to gallop under fire when his general said
to him:
[Illustration: STATUE OF GEN. PHILIP H. SHERIDAN
Sheridan Square, Washington, D. C.
Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York.]
"Tell General Griffin to charge and keep charging."
Griffin's order to his troops was so quickly given that it seemed an
echo of the order Tom brought him. It was the boy's business to return
forthwith and report upon his mission, but he simply couldn't do it.
There were the Confederate lines manned with hungry soldiers in the
remnants of their gray uniforms, the Stars-and-Bars flying above them.
And there were battalions of blue-clad cavalry, men and horses in prime
condition, straining to start like hounds upon a leash. Griffin's order
was the electric spark that fired the battery. The men shouted with joy
as they spurred their horses into a mad gallop. The shout was answered
by the shrill "rebel yell" from the dauntless foe in the trenches. The
charging column shook the ground. In its foremost files rode
Second-lieutenant Tom Strong, forgetful of everything else in the world
but the joy of battle. Musketry and artillery tore bloody lanes in the
close-packed column. Men and horses fell in heaps upon the blood-stained
ground. But the column went on. At dusk of that April day it poured over
the parapets so bravely held. Even then the fight was not over. There
was still stout resistance. The two armies were a mass of struggling
men, shooting, stabbing, striking. The battle had become a series of
duels man to man. Tom, pistol in hand, rode at a big Kentuckian, but the
gray-clad giant dodged the bullet, caught his own unloaded musket by the
muzzle, and dealt the boy a blow with its butt that knocked him off his
horse and left him senseless on the ground.
A few minutes later, when he came to his senses, he felt as if he were a
boy annexed to a shoulder twice as big as all the rest of his body. It
was on his shoulder that the blow of the clubbed musket had gone home.
The fall from his horse had stunned him. Bob was standing over him, as
Black Auster stood over Herminius, nuzzling at the outstretched hand of
this silent, motionless thing that had been his master. They had been
together for less than a week, but a day is often long enough for a
horse to find out that his master is his friend. Tom had been more
careful of his horse's comfort than of his own. Now the good gray had
stood by him and over him, perhaps saving him from being trampled to
death in that fierce last act of the Drama of Five Forks. Bob whinnied
with joy as Tom's eyes slowly opened again. He thrust his muzzle down
along the boy's cheek and the boy caught hold of the flowing mane with
his right hand and pulled himself upon his feet again. His left arm hung
useless by his side. One glance told him the battle was won. The duels
were over. The Confederates were in full retreat. A stream of prisoners
was already flowing by him. He mounted and followed it to Sheridan's
headquarters. There the skillful fingers of a surgeon found that no
bones were broken. The swollen shoulder was dressed and bandaged. The
healthy blood that filled Tom's veins did much to make a speedy cure.
So did the joy of victory. Sheridan had done what Grant had given him to
do. He had driven back Lee's right flank and cut the railroad by which
Lee must escape from Richmond, if escape he could.
Richmond was doomed. The next morning, Sunday, April 2, 1865, Jefferson
Davis, President of the Confederate States of America, sat in his pew in
St. Paul's Church, Richmond. The solemn service began. Soon there was a
stir at the door, a rustle, a turning of heads away from the chancel,
where the gray-haired rector stood. Swiftly a messenger came up the
aisle. Davis rose from his knees to receive the message. The service
stopped. Every eye was bent upon the leader of the Lost Cause. He put on
his spectacles, opened the missive, and read it amid a breathless
silence. It told him that the Cause was lost indeed. It was from Lee,
who wrote: "My lines are broken in three places. Richmond must be
evacuated this evening." There was no sign of feeling upon Jefferson
Davis's impassive face, as he read the fateful dispatch. Without a
word, without a sign, he left the church with the wife whose utter
devotion had helped him bear the burden of those terrible years, during
which proud hope gradually gave way to sickening fear. Davis was not of
those weak men who despair. There was still a little hope in his heart,
despite the tremendous blow Lee's letter had dealt him. He walked down
the aisle with head as high as though he were marching to assured
victory. But through the congregation there ran the whisper "Richmond is
to be evacuated." A panic-stricken mob poured out of the church with
faltering steps behind Jefferson Davis's firm, proud ones. Early that
afternoon the Confederate Government fled. Early the next morning,
Monday, April 3, 1865, Gen. Godfrey Weitzel marched his negro troops
into the Confederate capital. The flag of the free floated from the dome
of the Statehouse, which almost from the earliest days of the war had
sheltered what was now indeed the Lost Cause. It was raised there by
Lieut. Johnston L. De Peyster, a youth of eighteen, who had carried it
wrapped around the pommel of his saddle for some days, hoping for the
chance that now came to him. The second Union flag that was raised that
day in Richmond was over Libby. The prison gates gave up their prey. The
prisoners poured out, some too weak to do more than smile, others in a
frenzy of joy. Major Hans Rolf, reduced by hunger to a long lath of a
man, had lost none of his spirit.
"Now, boys," he shouted, "three times three for the old flag!"
The cheers rang out in a feeble chorus and then there rang out Han's
contagious laughter.
"Ha! ha!" he roared. "We're free, boys, we're free."
By that Sunday night, the fate of Petersburg was sealed.
Grant had ordered an assault in force at six o'clock Monday morning, but
the Confederates abandoned their works in the gray dawn and our troops
met little resistance in taking over the town. "General Meade and I,"
says General Grant in his "Personal Memoirs," "entered Petersburg
on the morning of the third and took a position under cover of a house
which protected us from the enemy's musketry which was flying thick and
fast there. As we would occasionally look around the corner, we could
see ... the Appomattox bottom ... packed with the Confederate army.... I
had not the heart to turn the artillery upon such a mass of defeated and
fleeing men and I hoped to capture them soon."
"Let us follow up Lee," Meade suggested. He was a better follower than a
fighter. He had followed Lee before, from Gettysburg to Richmond,
without ever attacking him.
"On the contrary," Grant replied, "we will cut off his retreat by
occupying the Danville railroad and capture him. He must get to his food
to keep his troops alive. We will get between him and his food."
With constant fighting this was done. By Wednesday, April 5, the Union
lines were drawn about the Confederate army. Sheridan, hampered by
Meade's slowness, was urgent that Grant should come to the front. He
sent message after message to that effect to Grant on Wednesday. A
scout in gray uniform was entrusted with the second message. He was made
up to look like a Confederate scout, but he was Tom Strong. He had put
on his disguise at Sheridan's headquarters. As he stood at attention to
receive his orders, Sheridan laughed and said:
"You make a good 'Johnny Reb.' Do you chew tobacco?"
Surprised at the question, Tom said he didn't.
"Well, you may have to begin the habit today. You're to take this
message to General Grant. If you're caught, chew it--and swallow it
quick."
He handed the boy a bit of tinfoil. It looked like a small package of
chewing-tobacco, but it contained a piece of tissue-paper upon which
Sheridan's message was written.
The ride from the left flank to the center was not without danger. Tom,
duly provided with the password, could go by any Union forces without
difficulty, but the country swarmed with Confederates, some of them
deserters, many of them straggling detachments cut off from the main
army and seeking to rejoin it, all of them more than ready to capture a
Union soldier and his horse.
The boy climbed a little clumsily into the saddle. His left shoulder
still felt like a big balloon stuffed full of pain. But there was
nothing clumsy in his seat, as Bob shot off like an arrow at the touch
of Tom's heel on his flank. It was a beautiful, bright April morning,
too beautiful a day for men to be killing each other. Evidently,
however, it did not seem so to the commander of a company of Confederate
cavalry, who had laid an ambush into which Tom gayly galloped. He heard
a sharp order to halt. He saw men ride across the road in front of him.
He whirled about, only to see the road behind him blocked. He was fairly
trapped. But there was one chance of escaping from the trap and Tom took
it. His would-be captors had come from the left of the road, its
northern side, for he was traveling east. On the south was a high
rail-fence, laid in the usual zigzags, one of the few which had not fed
the camp-fires of Northern Virginia. It was a good five feet high; it
was only a few feet away; Bob was standing still for a second in
slippery mud. It was not at all the kind of place to select for a jump,
but the Confederates had selected the place, not Tom. He remembered
Colonel Porter's saying "You can bet your life Bob can jump," and he bet
his life on Porter's being right. He put Bob at the fence. The gallant
gray, as if he sensed his master's danger, took one bound toward the
rails, gathered himself together into a tense mass of muscle, and rose
into the air like a bird. As he flew over the top-rail, carbines cracked
behind him, but as he leaped southward across the countryside, a ringing
cheer followed him too. The brave Southerners rejoiced in the brave feat
that took their captive into freedom. Their jaded horses could not
follow. There was no pursuit.
It took Tom some hours to double back towards Grant's headquarters. He
met long lines of Union cavalry, infantry, and artillery pressing
forward to strengthen Sheridan's forces. They were going west and they
choked every road and lane and path by which the boy sought to go east.
They had begun their march at three o'clock that morning. They had had
no breakfast. They carried no food. Their wagon-trains were miles in the
rear. It was their fourth day of continuous fighting. They had a right
to be tired, but they were not tired. They had a right to be hungry, but
they were not hungry. When the air was full of victory, what did an
empty stomach matter? Cheering and singing, they swept along. The end of
four years' fighting was in sight. The hunted foe was trying to slink
away to safety, as many a fox, with hounds and huntsmen closing in upon
him, had tried to do on these Virginian fields. Never were huntsmen more
anxious to be "in at the death" than were those joyous Union soldiers on
that memorable April day.
It was nearly night when the boy reached headquarters, saluted the
commander-in-chief, said "A message from General Sheridan," and handed
over the little tinfoil package.
"You can go back with me," said Grant. "That horse of yours is Bob,
isn't it?" Grant never forgot a horse he had once ridden.
Within an hour the General and his staff, with a small cavalry escort,
started for Sheridan's headquarters. By ten that night the two were
together. Sheridan was almost crying over the orders Meade had given
him. By midnight Sheridan was happy. "I explained to Meade," say the
"Personal Memoirs," "that we did not want to follow the enemy; we wanted
to get ahead of him; and that his orders would allow the enemy to
escape.... Meade changed his orders at once."
That change of orders incidentally put Tom Strong the next day into the
hottest fight of his life. This was the battle of Sailor's Creek, almost
forgotten since amid the mightier happenings of that wonderful April
week, but never forgotten by Tom Strong. Our forces had attacked Lee's
retreating legions, retreating toward the provision trains that were
their only hope of food. The fight was fierce. We had attacked with
both infantry and cavalry, but our gallant fellow-countrymen held their
lines unbroken. Then with a thunder of wheels our field artillery came
into action. The Confederate guns were shelling the hillside up which
the plunging horses drew our cannon. There were six horses in each team,
an artilleryman riding each near horse and holding the off horse of the
pair by a bridle. Tom had come up with orders and was standing by
General Wright as the guns bounded up the hillside. Bob stood behind his
master, whinnying a bit with excitement.
General Wright snapped his watch shut impatiently.
"They're ten minutes late," he complained. "We're beaten if we don't get
'em into action instantly. Good Heavens! there goes our first gun to
destruction!"
A Confederate shell had struck and burst close to the leaders. A
fragment of it swept the foremost rider from his seat and from life. The
two horses he had handled reared, plunged, jumped to one side. The six
horses were huddled into a frightened heap. The two other soldiers could
do nothing with the leaders out of control. The gun stopped short. And
behind it stopped all of one of the two lines of advancing artillery.
"Take that gun into action!"
Tom heard the General's brief command and ran toward the huddled horses.
He sprang into the saddle, seized both bridles, and drove on. As he did
so, another Confederate shell burst beside the off horse. Its fragments
spared the foremost rider this time, but they dealt death to one of his
two comrades. The man in control of the wheelers threw his right arm out
and toppled over into the road, dead before the heavy cannon-wheel
crashed and crushed over him. The leaders, so skillfully handled that
their very fear made them run more madly into danger, tore ahead,
keeping the other four horses galloping behind them, until the gun was
in position. It roared the news of its coming with a well-aimed shot
into the midst of the enemy's forces.
[Illustration: TOM TAKES A BATTERY INTO ACTION]
Its fellows fell into line and followed suit. The infantry and cavalry
attacked with renewed spirit. Sullenly and savagely, fighting until
darkness forbade more fighting, Lee's troops withdrew towards the west,
with the Union forces pounding away at them. They left a mass of dead
upon the battlefield, lives finely lost for the Lost Cause, and they
also left as prisoners six general officers and seven thousand men. More
than a third of all the prisoners taken in the battles before the final
surrender were taken at the battle of Sailor's Creek. Tom had stuck to
his new arm of the service through the three hours of fighting. The guns
had been continually advanced as the Southerners retreated. They had
been continually under fire. Nearly half the gunners had been killed or
wounded. When the fight was over, Tom remembered for the first time his
own wounded shoulder. He had never thought of it from the moment when he
had sprung upon the artillery horse. Now it began to throb with a
renewed and a deeper pain, as if resenting his ignoring of it so long,
but the new pain also vanished when he rejoined General Wright and heard
him say:
"Mr. Strong, you helped to save the day. I shall recommend you for
promotion for distinguished bravery under fire."
The boy saluted, his heart too full to speak. As he rode away upon Bob,
some of the joy in his heart must have got into Bob's heels, for Bob
pirouetted up the main street of the little town of Farmville, late that
night, as though he were prouder than ever of his master.
Farmville was now headquarters. Grant was there, in a bare hotel, not
long before a Confederate hospital. It was from the Farmville hotel that
he wrote to Lee a historic note. It ran thus:
"Headquarters Armies of the U. S.
5 P.M., April 7, 1865.
"General R. E. Lee,
Commanding C. S. A.:
The results 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
Confederate States army known as the Army of Northern Virginia.
U. S. GRANT,
Lieut.-General."
Under a flag of truce, this note reached General Lee that evening, so
near together were the headquarters of the contending armies in those
last days. His letter in reply, asking what terms of surrender were
offered, reached Grant the next morning while he was talking on the
steps of the Farmville hotel to a Confederate Colonel.
"Jes' tho't I'd repo't to you, General," said the Colonel.
"Yes?"
"You see I own this hyar hotel you're a-occupyin'."
"Well, sir, we shall move out soon. We are moving around a good deal,
nowadays. Why aren't you with your regiment?"
"Well, you see, General, I am my regiment."
"How's that?"
"All the men wuz raised 'round hyar. A few days ago they jes' begun
nachally droppin' out. They all dun dropped out, General, so I jes'
tho't there wan't any use being a cunnel without no troops and I dun
dropped out too. Here I be? What you goin' to do with me, General?"
"I'm going to leave you here to take care of your property. Don't go
back to your army and nobody'll bother you."
That was a sample of the way in which the beaten army was melting away.
Not even the magic of Lee's great name could hold it together now. But
the men who did not drop out fought with heroism to the bitter end.
The next day, Saturday, April 8, 1865, Sheridan captured some more of
Lee's provision trains at Appomattox Station and on Sunday, April 9,
Lee's whole army attacked there, still seeking to cut its way out of
its encircling foes. Its brave effort was in vain. Held in a vice, it
threw up its hands. A white flag flew above the Confederate lines.
Grant had spent Saturday night struggling with a sick headache, his feet
in hot water and mustard, his wrists and the back of his neck covered
with mustard-plasters. On Sunday morning, still sick and suffering, he
was jogging along on horseback towards the front, when a Confederate
officer was brought before him. He carried a note from Lee offering to
surrender. "When the officer reached me," writes Grant, "I was still
suffering with the sick headache; but the instant I saw the contents of
the note, I was cured." The ending of the war ended Grant's headache.
* * * * *
The two commanders met at Appomattox Court House, a sleepy Virginian
village, five miles from the railroad and endless miles from the great
world. It lies in a happy valley, not wrapped in happiness that April
day, for Sheridan's forces held the crest at the south and Lee's were
deployed along the hilltop to the north. A two-hour armistice had been
granted. If that did not bring the end desired, that end was to be
fought out with all the horrors of warfare amid the peaceful houses that
had straggled together to make the peaceful little town.
At the northern end of the village street, surrounded by an apple
orchard, stood a two-story brick house with a white wooden piazza in
front of it. It was the home of Wilmer McLean, a Virginia farmer upon
whose farm part of the battle of Bull Run had been fought at the
outbreak of the war. Foreseeing that other battles might be fought
there--as the second battle of Bull Run, in 1862, was--he had sold his
property there and had moved by a strange chance to the very village and
the very house in which the final scene of the great tragedy of this war
between brothers was to be played. Here Lee awaited Grant.
The Union general had gone to Sheridan's headquarters before riding up
to the McLean house. Sheridan and his staff had gone on with him. Least
important of the little group of Union officers who followed Grant into
the presence of Lee was Tom Strong, but the boy's heart beat as high as
that of any man there.
[Illustration: THE McLEAN HOUSE, APPOMATTOX COURTHOUSE]
It was in the orchard about the house that the myth of "the apple-tree
of Appomattox" was born. Millions of men and women have believed that
Lee surrendered to Grant under an apple tree at Appomattox. That apple
tree is as famous in mistaken history as is that other mythical tree,
the cherry tree which George Washington did not cut down with his little
hatchet. Washington could not tell a lie, it is true, but he never
chopped down a cherry tree and then said to his angry, questioning
father: "Father, I cannot tell a lie; I cut it down with my little
hatchet." That fairy story came from the imagination of one Parson
Weems, who did not resemble our first President in the latter's
inability to tell lies. Perhaps the myth of the apple tree will never
die, as the myth of the cherry tree has never died. In 1880, when
Grant's mistaken friends tried to nominate him for a third Presidential
term, other candidates had been urged because this one, it was said,
could carry Ohio, that one Maine, and so on. Then Roscoe Conkling of New
York strode upon the stage to nominate Grant and declaimed to a hushed
audience of twenty thousand men:
"And if you ask what State he comes from,
Our sole reply shall be:
HE comes from Appomattox
And the famous apple tree!"
The twenty thousand were swept off their feet by the magic of that myth.
Grant was almost nominated--but not quite.
The historic interview began in the room to the left of the front door
in the McLean house. Two very different figures confronted each other.
Grant had not expected the meeting to take place so soon and had left
the farmhouse where he had spent the night before in rough garb. He
writes: "I was without a sword, as I usually was when on horseback in
the field, and wore a soldier's blouse for a coat, with the
shoulder-straps of my rank to indicate to the army who I was.... General
Lee was dressed in a full uniform, which was entirely new, and was
wearing a sword of considerable value, very likely the sword which had
been presented by the State of Virginia.... In my rough traveling suit,
the uniform of a private with the straps of a lieutenant-general, I must
have contrasted very strangely with a man so handsomely dressed, six
feet high and of faultless form. But this was not a matter that I
thought of until afterwards."
Lee requested that the terms to be given his army should be written out.
Grant asked General Parker of his staff, a full-blooded American Indian,
for writing materials. He had prepared nothing beforehand, but he knew
just what he wanted to say and he wrote without hesitation terms such as
only a great and magnanimous nation could offer its conquered citizens.
After providing for the giving of paroles (that is, an agreement not to
take up arms again unless the paroled prisoner is later exchanged for a
prisoner of the other side) and for the surrender of arms, artillery,
and public property, he added: "This will not embrace the sidearms of
the officers nor their private horses or baggage. This done, each
officer and man will be allowed to return to their homes, not to be
disturbed by United States authority so long as they observe their
paroles and the laws in force where they reside." There are some
mistakes in grammar in these words, but there are no mistakes in
magnanimity. When Lee, having put on his glasses, had read the first
sentence quoted above, he said with feeling:
[Illustration: LEE SURRENDERS TO GRANT]
"This will have a happy effect upon my army."
He went on to say that many of the privates in the Confederate cavalry
and artillery owned their own horses; could they retain them? Grant did
not change the written terms, but he said his officers would be
instructed to let every Confederate private who claimed to own a horse
or mule take the animal home with him. "It was doubtful," writes Grant,
"whether they would be able to put in a crop to carry themselves and
their families through the next winter without the aid of the horses
they were then riding." Again Lee remarked that this would have a happy
effect. He then wrote and signed an acceptance of the proposed terms of
surrender. The war was over. The first act of peace was our issuing
25,000 rations to the army we had captured. For some days it had lived
on parched corn.
[Illustration: GEN. U. S. GRANT]
The news of the surrender flashed along the waiting lines like wildfire
and the Union forces began firing a salute of a hundred guns in honor of
the victory. "I at once sent word," says Grant, "to have it stopped. The
Confederates were now our prisoners and we did not want to exult over
their downfall." This was the spirit of a great man and of a great
nation. It was not the soldiers who fought the war who kept its rancors
alive after peace had come, It was the politicians, who tore open the
old wounds and kept the country bleeding for a dozen years after the
Lost Cause was lost.
On the morning of Tuesday, April 10, 1865, Grant and Lee again met
between the lines and sitting on horseback talked for half an hour. Then
Grant began his journey to Washington. His staff, including Tom, went
with him. When they reached their goal, Second-Lieutenant Strong found
he was that no longer. For General Wright had done what he had told Tom
he meant to do. The recommendation had been heeded. Lincoln himself
handed the boy his new commission as a brevet-captain.
"I was glad to sign that, Tom," the President told him, "and even
Stanton didn't kick this time."
"You don't know how glad I am to get it, Mr. President," was the reply.
"Now I'm a boy-captain, as my great-grandfather was before me."
"I'm not much on pedigrees and ancestry and genealogical trees, my boy,"
answered Lincoln. "Out West we think more of trees that grow out of the
ground than we do of trees that grow on parchment. But you're right to
be proud of an ancestry of service to your country. When family pride is
based on money or land or social standing, it is one of the most foolish
things God Almighty ever laughed at, but when it is based on service,
real service, to your country, to your fellowmen, to the world, why,
then, Tom, it's one of the biggest and best things in God's kingdom. But
remember this, son,"--Lincoln's eyes flashed in their deep sockets--"if
a boy has an ancestor who has done big things, the way to be proud of
him is to do big things yourself. Living on the glory of what somebody
else has done before you is a mighty poor kind of living. I never knew
but one man that was perfect and I'd never have known he was if he
hadn't told me so. Nobody else ever found it out. But if we can't be
perfect, we can grow less imperfect by trying every day to serve our
fellowmen. Remember that, Tom."