Grant and Lee

The Lion and the Fox: Grant, Lee and the Road to Appomattox
David C. Hanson, Virginia Western Community College

        On May 3, 1864, after three long years of fighting, the two best generals of the Civil War finally faced each other across the Rapidan River, about sixty miles north of Richmond, Virginia. One was a small, slouchy man with reddish-brown hair, 42 years old, unimpressive in his appearance, but coldly efficient and determined, like a lion stalking his prey. The other was a tall, erect man with broad shoulders and gray hair, 57 years old, naturally elegant, charismatic and bold.

The Gray Fox: Robert E. Lee
        On the Southern side of the Rapidan was General Robert E. Lee: dignified, strikingly handsome, charming, and confident, yet pious and unassuming. A scion of the First Families of Virginia, he was the son of Henry “Light-Horse Harry” Lee, a colonel in the Continental Army and later governor of Virginia. At the time of Robert’s birth, his father had fallen into debt; a notorious rogue, he died in disgrace when Robert was still a boy. Young Robert eventually became the man of the house, managing the family estate in Alexandria, after his two older brothers left home. In 1824 Lee’s family connections landed him an appointment to West Point. There he adapted well to the discipline of the cadet corps. Lee graduated second in the class of 1829, with no demerits in four years (remarkably), earning the top honor of “corps adjunct.” Upon graduation, Lee accepted a commission as a lieutenant in the Army Corps of Engineers, where he excelled in coastal fortifications. In 1831 he married Mary Custis, great-granddaughter of Martha Washington. Between 1832 and 1845 the Lees had seven children. In 1847 Lee served with distinction in the war against Mexico as captain of Engineers. Lee learned valuable lessons in Mexico about strategy and tactics, the importance of reconnaissance, and the nuances of field command (planning, coordination, communication, delegation of responsibility), lessons that later would prove to be invaluable. Lee served as superintendent of West Point from 1852 to 1855; then he accepted command of the 2^nd cavalry, on duty in Texas, where he spent his time chasing marauding Comanche Indians and outlaws.
        While back home in Arlington attending to some family affairs, Lee was urgently called to Washington on October 17, 1859, to take command of marines and Maryland militia already en route to Harpers Ferry. Abolitionist John Brown and a band of followers had attempted to seize the federal arsenal and armory there, hoping to spark a rash of slave insurrections. By the time Lee arrived, Brown’s raiders and some hostages were barricaded in the engine house, surrounded by local townspeople and militia troops. The next morning, Lee and the marines busted through the door, killed two of Brown’s men and captured the rest. The hostages were all unharmed. Brown was hanged for treason, and Lee returned to his command of the 2nd cavalry in Texas in February 1860.
        Shortly after the 1860 election the secession movement began and Lee was called back to Washington. Soon after Lincoln’s inauguration on March 4, 1861, Lee was offered the command of the U.S. Army (perhaps partly because he was a Virginian, but mostly because he had been old General Winfield Scott’s favorite officer in Mexico). He declined the offer on April 20, stating, “although opposed to secession and deprecating war, I could take no part in an invasion of the Southern States.” After thirty years of service, Lt. Colonel Robert E. Lee resigned from the U.S. Army. Two days later he was appointed major general in command of Virginia’s armed forces. In June, Virginia’s forces were merged into the Confederacy and Lee became one of the top generals (along with A. S. Johnston, Joe Johnston, and Pierre G. T. Beauregard).
        General Lee was in Richmond battling paperwork when the first major engagement between the Union and Confederate armies took place at Manassas on July 21, 1861. In August, Lee received his first field assignment: to coordinate operations in western Virginia where a federal army had invaded from Ohio and was threatening key railroad lines. The Confederate soldiers there were poorly trained, poorly supplied, sick and hungry. To make matters worse, rain turned the roads to mud. The attack never got in gear and Lee returned to Richmond feeling discouraged and chastened. Next, Lee spent some time helping to strengthen Confederate defenses along the coast of South Carolina and Georgia. In March of 1862 he was ordered back to Richmond to serve as President Jefferson Davis’ military chief of staff. When Gen. George McClellan began his massive but slow-paced invasion of the Virginia Peninsula near Yorktown, Lee and Johnston coordinated the defense of Richmond. Johnston was severely wounded at the Battle of Fair Oaks, and Lee became the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia.
        In June 1862 Lee commanded an army comprised of eight infantry divisions, including three divisions led by Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, and a cavalry brigade led by Jeb Stuart, for a total of about 86,000 men. Arguably the ablest commander of the Civil War, Lee led the Army of Northern Virginia, with great skill and determination, for three years. Time after time, attacked by larger but poorly led armies, Lee demonstrated his genius for bluffing, baffling, intimidating, and defeating his adversaries (Seven Days, Second Manassas, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville). Twice Lee broke away from his defensive position in front of Richmond and took the war into enemy territory (Antietam and Gettysburg), hoping for a stunning victory to hasten an end to the war, only to be forced to withdraw back home to Virginia.
        Still, “Uncle Robert” had earned the devotion and trust of his men. He believed the Army of Northern Virginia was invincible, and both Rebel and Yankee soldiers had come to believe it, too. But the odds were stacked heavily against Lee and he sensed it from the beginning of the war. An irresistible tide kept coming from the North, washing over the Old Dominion in waves of bluecoats. Lee was stuck in the piedmont of central Virginia, defending the Confederate capital with slowly dwindling manpower and supplies, in an increasingly frustrating and hopeless situation.
        Now, in the spring of 1864, time was running out General Lee and the Confederacy. But the war was far from over; there was still plenty of fight left in Lee and his men. There was a chance that Northern voters, sick and tired of the endless fighting, might turn against Lincoln and the Republican party, electing Democrats who would agree to a negotiated end to the war; Lee only had to hold on until the November elections. Lee still had some advantages. He knew the terrain like the back of his hand, his men were tough and confident, and they would be fighting mostly from behind defensive fortifications. Lee’s army was down to about 45,000 infantry and 8,000 cavalry. With reinforcements on the way from other detachments, soon he would have about 60,000 men under his command. From his vantage point on Clark’s Mountain, high above the Rapidan floodplain, Lee sat on his big gray warhorse Traveller, planned his defensive strategy, and waited. Repeatedly Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia had mauled and repulsed the larger Army of the Potomac, and he was confident that once again he could whip the Yankees and send them reeling back to Washington.

The Lion: Ulysses S. Grant
        On the northern side of the Rapidan, preparing to lead the Army of the Potomac back into Virginia, a quietly intense man in an unbuttoned blue uniform sat comfortably on his large bay horse, Cincinnati. Lee was about to be faced, for the first time, with an adversary who could not be outfoxed or chased back to Washington. Lee had easily bested McClellan, Pope, Burnside, and Hooker, but he had not faced the latest Union commander, the little man on the big horse. Aptly described by one of his many biographers, Jean Edward Smith, “Ulysses Grant [was] the son of an Ohio tanner, a man indistinguishable in a crowd even in uniform . . . modest, rumpled, sometimes a bit seedy, Grant was an ordinary man gifted with an extraordinary talent for making war. His simple exterior cloaked a formidable intellect and a rock-solid self-confidence that was equal to any crisis on the battlefield. He had a topographer’s feel for landscape, a photographic memory when it came to maps, and a command of the English language at its incisive best.” When Grant issued an order there was never any misunderstanding about what he meant. With a rare ability shared by few men (one being Robert E. Lee), Grant could calmly survey a battle in progress--seemingly oblivious to the chaos, carnage and eminent personal danger--and see strategic opportunities. Often in tense battles he could be found sitting on a stump, whittling a stick and smoking a cigar, occasionally jotting one of his crisp orders on a slip of paper and passing it to an orderly.
        Ulysses Grant was born in 1822, the son of an Ohio tanner. Except for an uncanny gift for handling horses Grant had been an ordinary boy. At the age of 17 his father secured “Ulyss” an appointment to West Point. Upon arrival at the academy Grant found that his name was entered not as Ulysses Hiram Grant but incorrectly as Ulysses Simpson Grant. (His mother was Hannah Simpson, whose grandfather had fought with George Washington in the Revolutionary War.) Despite his objections, the new cadet was U. S. Grant from then on. His classmates jokingly called him “Uncle Sam” Grant, and upperclassman William T. Sherman, reunited with Grant over 20 years later in Tennessee, would still affectionately call him Sam. To say that Grant did not excel at West Point would be a generous under-statement. He finished 21st out of 39 in the graduating class of 1843. Only in horsemanship was he exemplary. (During graduation exercises Grant rode a massive horse named York, known for being nearly impossible to handle, and made a record-setting jump that stood for the next 25 years. It was said that when Grant was on horseback “the horse and rider were as one being.”)
        Grant was commissioned a brevet second lieutenant in the 4th Infantry Regiment, stationed in Missouri. In March 1846 the 4th Infantry was sent to the Rio Grande in anticipation of war with Mexico. After a modest taste of battle, where he handled himself and his men well, Grant was appointed quartermaster of his unit. He protested his removal from “sharing in the dangers and honors” of service at the front, to no avail. This experience served him well, however, as his knowledge of supply logistics would prove invaluable, later on, as the commander of large armies in the field.
        After the war Grant was promoted to the rank of first lieutenant in the regular army. In 1848 he married Julia Dent, sister of his West Point roommate Fred Dent, and his unit was assigned to frontier duty on the Canadian border. In 1852 Grant’s regiment was sent to San Francisco. Grant was posted at Fort Vancouver, eight miles north of Portland, Oregon. He dabbled in business speculation and demonstrated a talent for losing money. Separated from his wife and children, in financial distress, Grant began to exhibit a weakness for alcohol. An exaggerated reputation for drunken binges would follow him like a dark cloud for the rest of his life. (Apparently his metabolism did not handle liquor well. A fellow officer at Fort Vancouver later remarked that “one glass would show on him and two or three would make him stupid.”) Grant became impatient with his inability to secure a promotion to captain, adding to his frustrations. He resigned as regimental quartermaster and requested an order to return east. Two weeks later he received notification of his promotion to captain in the regular army, but he continued to suffer from loneliness and abruptly resigned on April 11, 1854 (allegedly to avoid a court-martial for being drunk on duty). Grant seemed to give up drinking once he was reunited with his wife Julia and their children but he never could “find himself” in civilian life. For several years he tried and failed as a farmer and businessman. When the war broke out in 1861, Grant was a 38-year-old clerk in his brothers’ leather goods store in Galena, Illinois. The call for volunteers to put down the rebellion probably saved Grant from a pathetic life of poverty, despair, and obscurity.
        Grant was commissioned a colonel in command of the 7th District Regiment of the Illinois militia in May 1861. His unit was sworn into Federal service as the 21st Illinois Volunteer Infantry in June. In August Colonel Grant led his unit on a mission to destroy a band of 1,200 Rebel guerillas in northeastern Missouri who had been tearing up railroads and bridges, only to find that the Confederates had fled. Soon afterwards Grant received word that he had been made a brigadier general. Grant was in command of 13,000 Union forces deployed near Quincy, Illinois. On February 6, 1862, Grant captured Ft. Henry on the Tennessee River, followed by Ft. Donelson, on the Cumberland River, a week later. The surrender of 15,000 Confederates at Ft. Donelson was the first important Union victory of the war. When the Confederate commander, Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner (an old friend from West Point), asked for terms of surrender, Grant gave his legendary reply: “No terms except complete and unconditional surrender can be accepted.”
        In April 1862, Grant won a costly tactical victory at Shiloh but he was removed from command. Major General Henry Halleck determined from his desk in St. Louis that Grant had handled his army poorly at Shiloh. But generals who won battles were few and far between in the Union army that year; by November 1862 Grant was back in command and moving south toward Vicksburg. Here his quartermaster experience from Mexico was invaluable as his army marched down into Mississippi, fore-going the standard lines of supply and communication, essentially living off the land. After a siege, the 30,000-man citadel on the Mississippi River surrendered (unconditionally) to Grant on July 4, 1863.
        In October, Grant slipped into Chattanooga, where Union forces had been trapped for over a month by the Confederate Army of Tennessee. The siege was broken when a supply line was established across Moccasin Point to Brown's Ferry, west of Chattanooga. The Confederates were chased into Georgia when four of Gen. George Thomas' infantry divisions boldly charged up Missionary Ridge ("like a swarm of bees," Grant said). Grant was a hero, and President Lincoln had found a general “with the habit of winning.”
        In February 1864 Lincoln asked Congress to re-establish the rank of lieutenant general. Grant’s appointment was confirmed on March 2. Lincoln and Grant met on March 8, and the president explained that what he wanted was a general in chief who would take responsibility for conducting the war, call on him for whatever assistance was needed, and then take action. Grant assured Lincoln that he would do his best with the means at hand, “and avoid annoying him or the War Department.” Both men could not have been more pleased. Grant did not want the president looking over his shoulder, and Lincoln (unlike Jeff Davis) did not want to have to second-guess his commanding general. Aside from periodic updates of a general nature, Grant never bothered Lincoln with detailed plans and Lincoln never asked for them. Two weeks later Grant met with Sherman and outlined his strategy. There were two large Confederate armies still in the field and both had to be destroyed. Sherman neatly summed it up years later: “He was to go for Lee and I was to go for Joe Johnston. That was the plan.”
        As commander of all Union armies, Grant was responsible for 21 corps (totaling over nearly 550,000 troops). He found that many soldiers had been enjoying a comfortable life far from the action. This included oversized cavalry and artillery regiments that had spent the entire time far from the action in Washington or scattered elsewhere. Grant wanted every available unit immediately brought to the front. He reorganized the army, consolidating the five infantry corps into three, quietly shelving several poor generals. Historian Bruce Catton summarized it well when he wrote, “there was a change, and before long the men felt it. There was a perceptible tightening up, as if someone who meant business had his hands on the reins now.”
        Much of the North’s superiority in numbers had dissipated by 1864, but with 120,000 men, Grant had at least a 2:1 advantage when he began what would become known as the Wilderness campaign. Grant was determined to press his advantage without hesitation or remorse. Relentless is a word often used to describe Grant’s approach to war: “Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can and as often as you can and keep moving on.” Across the Rapidan, General Pete Longstreet, who had been one of Grant’s best friends at West Point, prophetically warned, “That man will fight us every day and every hour till the end of the war.”
        Grant’s plan called for three Union armies simultaneous moving toward Richmond: the Army of the Potomac, led by the irascible George Meade (who had defeated Lee at Gettysburg but never managed to get the credit he deserved), would roll south across the Rapidan with roughly 120,000 men; a second force of 30,000 men (the Army of the James), commanded by Ben Butler, would move up from the south; and a third, smaller army located in the Shenandoah Valley, commanded by Franz Sigel, would drift east across the Blue Ridge. Grant himself would go south with Meade and the Army of the Potomac. Grant explained that all the armies would contribute to the victory simply by advancing, even if they won no battles. Lincoln remarked: "Oh yes! I see that. As we say out West, if a man can't skin he must hold a leg while someone else does." (Grant, the son of a tanner, appreciated the remark and recalled it in his memoirs.)
        As is often the case in war, things in Virginia did not go exactly according to Grant's plan. Under Butler's inept leadership the southern advance up the James River sputtered, then stalled, when confronted by a smaller force commanded by Gen. Beauregard that President Davis had recently assigned to defend Petersburg and the southern route to Richmond. Sigel proved to be equally ineffective in the Shenandoah Valley. Success depended on Grant, Meade and the Army of the Potomac. Grant had two options: move right and try to get around Lee to the west; or move left, quickly slipping through the Wilderness and getting around Lee to the east, forcing him to fight in the open. Grant chose the direct route, through the Wilderness, where his lines of supply would be shorter and less vulnerable to Jeb Stuart’s cavalry and John Mosby’s pesky guerillas. Besides, Grant wanted to get on top of Lee’s Army as soon as possible and stay there.
        On the morning of May 4 Grant brought three corps across the dark river and entered the Wilderness. As Catton described it in his classic account, A Stillness at Appomattox, “This was a mean gloomy woodland . . . the last place on earth for armies to fight, and the entire Army of the Potomac was marching straight into it.” A year earlier, Hooker had led the Army of the Potomac to defeat in this same area, and the sun-bleached skulls of half-buried bodies served as chilling reminders. The Wilderness was an area of second growth trees (small pines, scrub oaks, dogwoods and cedars), dense under-brush, irregular ridges and knolls, with dark little steams running through shallow, swampy ravines, some of which had steep banks covered by nasty thickets. Two roads ran east and west (the Orange Turnpike and the Orange Plank Road) from Fredericksburg, through Chancellorsville, to Orange Court House; a third, the Brock Road, went south. In between were various aimless lanes wandering nowhere in particular. Lee’s mighty Army of Virginia lay somewhere to the west, and the Yankees could feel it in the air.

The Lion v. the Fox
        From his vantage point on top of Clark’s Mountain, Lee must have had a grim smile when he saw that Grant had chosen nearly the exact same route that Hooker had used in the disastrous Chancellorsville campaign. The Wilderness would give his army cover, and the dense growth could neutralize Grant’s advantage of artillery and superior numbers. On May 5 Lee sent A. P. Hill and Dick Ewell east along the Orange Turnpike and Orange Plank Road, hoping to strike the Federals as they marched south. Longstreet was forty miles away at Gordonsville, protecting Lee’s flank, and Lee sent word to Longstreet to get his corps up as quickly as possible. Lee and Stuart rode with Hill along the Orange Plank Road, and soon there seemed to be chaotic fighting breaking out in all directions. The dry underbrush caught fire and smoke began to fill the air. Soldiers stumbled around, trying to stay in formation, and the armies seemed to disappear. Hill and Ewell had trouble coordinating their parallel advances and they lost track of each other in the dense tangle of trees and undergrowth. Two miles to Lee’s left, Ewell was in a tough fight with Gouvernour Warren’s Union corps. Just as Lee was about to shift a division toward Ewell, Hill’s men came under attack. Lee, Stuart and Hill all could have been captured or killed, but Hill led a brilliant defense throughout the day against a Federal force that outnumbered him at least 2:1 and the fighting subsided with neither side holding the advantage. It was a long night, as the smell of smoke and burning bodies hung in the air, skirmishers nervously fired at ghosts, and the wounded men cried out for help as the burning brushfires slowly roasted them.
        The Federals attacked again at dawn and Hill’s tired divisions were quickly overrun. Just in time, some of Longstreet’s reinforcements began to arrive, and Lee personally averted a rout by rallying a brigade of Texans. Longstreet led a counterattack until he ran into stiffening Federal resistance, and Hill managed to reorganize his units and unite with Ewell at the center of the Confederate line. Somehow in all the confusion, Longstreet was shot in the throat by a Confederate minie¢ ball, and the momentum stalled. (The year before, Stonewall Jackson had sustained a mortal wound from “friendly fire” just a few miles away.) Sporadic firing continued through the evening, but the Battle of the Wilderness was over. In two days of intense fighting, Grant had advanced less than ten miles and had suffered over 17,000 casualties; Lee lost less than half that number. But if Lee thought Grant might retreat back across the Rapidan like the Union commanders that preceded him, he soon realized that was not going to happen. At dusk, the Army of the Potomac pulled back from its firing lines and started to move, not north to lick its wounds, but south toward Spotsylvania Courthouse, six miles away, with the objective of getting between Lee and Richmond.
        Grant might not have won the love of his men, but he had earned their respect and confidence. As the Union columns began their march into the darkness they realized it was not “another skedaddle” back across the river; they were headed deeper into “Bobby Lee’s backyard.” For certain Grant was leading them into more fighting, possibly death, but the road to victory went south, and that was where they were going. Along the crowded road came a group of officers at a jingling trot, preceded by shouts of “Give way!” Riding in the lead was the quiet little man on the big horse, making his way to the head of the column. The men started cheering, Grant’s big horse reared, and he told his staff to quiet the troops or they might alert the enemy. But Lee did not need the sound of cheering Yankees to tell him what he already knew in his gut. Word spread that the Union army was on the move, and someone asked Lee if it was true that Grant was retreating. “General Grant is not going to retreat,” Lee replied. “He will move his army to Spotsylvania.” Lee also ordered a night march and the race was on.
        With Fitzhugh Lee’s cavalry harassing the Federal columns marching down the Brock Road, Longstreet’s corps (now led by Gen. Richard Anderson), reached Spotsylvania first, on May 8, and set up a defensive line that was soon backed up by Ewell’s corps. Once Lee arrived on the scene he put the men to work building a network of field entrenchments (trenches, felled trees). On May 10 Grant launched a series of assaults that continued for ten days of bitter fighting. A steady rain turned Spotsylvania into a muddy, bloody quagmire. Meanwhile Phil Sheridan circled around toward Richmond with 12,000 horsemen; the real mission was to lure Jeb Stuart’s cavalry into the open. Stuart took the bait with 4,000 riders and got ahead of Sheridan, blocking his path at Yellow Tavern. Stuart was mortally wounded in the battle that ensued. Like Stonewall Jackson, Stuart was irreplaceable. (Back at Spotsylvania Grant suffered a similar loss; Gen. John Sedgwick, “the canniest and most deeply loved of all the [Union] army’s higher officers” [according to Catton], was shot in the head by a Confederate sharpshooter. Grant later remarked that losing Sedgwick was worse than losing an entire division of troops.)
        In the week since crossing the Rapidan, Grant had lost 32,000 men. Lee had suffered 18,000 casualties, including fifteen generals either killed or seriously wounded. Lee got one bit of good news on May 18; Davis finally agreed to send Gen. Pickett and his men up from the James River to rejoin Lee’s army. On May 20 Grant resumed his relentless campaign to get around Lee, so Lee moved as well. The armies briefly butted heads at North Anna, about 20 miles south of Spotsylvania, then fought again 20 miles further south at a place called Cold Harbor.
        Richmond was only about seven miles west of Cold Harbor, there was no more room to shift again to the left without running into the Chickahominy River, and Grant was running out of patience (patience never having been one of his virtues to begin with).   Grant was determined to break through the seven-mile-long defensive perimeter Lee had established, with the objective of splitting Lee’s army in half, opening the way to Richmond in the process of destroying the Army of Virginia once and for all. On June 3 Grant ordered a series of attacks by three corps straight into the teeth of Lee’s entrenched batteries, and each successive wave of bluecoats was slaughtered. Grant finally gave up after 3,500 men lay dead or wounded in front of Lee’s trenches (total Union casualties at Cold Harbor were 7,000). There is a fine line between bold, gutsy determination and foolish perseverance; inevitably an aggressive commander crosses it. Lee crossed that line at Gettysburg, and Grant crossed it at Cold Harbor. (In his memoirs Grant wrote, "I have always regretted that the last assault at Cold Harbor was ever made... no advantage whatever was gained to compensate for the heavy loss we sustained.") Cold Harbor had a chilling effect on the Army of the Potomac for several weeks. Officers found it difficult to order a frontal attack; many of the men seemed to have lost their nerve.
        Grant’s judgment at Cold Harbor certainly can be questioned, but Lee revealed an unflattering side of himself there, too. War was nasty business, and established rules and customs of military engagement often served to preserve a sense of order, civility and decency. But by June 1864, both Grant and Lee were beginning to lose some of their humanity. In the aftermath of battle, it was customary for the defeated commander to send a request for a suspension of shooting, under a white flag, to care for the wounded and bury the dead. On June 5 a message from Grant to Lee proposed a ceasefire long enough for both sides to collect their wounded. Lee sent back a stiffly worded reply agreeing to the removal of the dead and wounded on the condition that “a flag of truce be sent as is customary.” While both Union and Confederate wounded lay crying and whimpering in the sun, alongside rotting corpses, Grant and Lee exchanged notes three more times. Finally Lee was satisfied with Grant’s offer to follow protocol and on June 7, four days after the battle, the litter bearers found only two wounded men still alive.
        In a month of hard fighting—from the Wilderness, to Spotsylvania, to Cold Harbor—Grant’s army suffered nearly 60,000 casualties to Lee’s 30,000. Back home in the North, there were demands for the removal of “Butcher Grant” and growing opposition to Lincoln’s election for a second term. Grant understood this and was not idle. After Cold Harbor he had decided to march his entire army of 100,000 men on a thirty-mile march, undetected, across the James River for an attack on Petersburg. He sent Phil Sheridan up North to drive Jubal Early out of the Shenandoah Valley but kept just enough cavalry to screen his movement of four corps across the James via an amazing 2,100-ft. long pontoon bridge. At first indications that Grant was moving toward the James and Petersburg, Lee believed it was a feint. By the time he sent word to Richmond that Grant indeed would likely cross the James, Grant already had two corps across the river.
        Petersburg was a central railroad hub located on the Appomattox River, about 20 miles south of Richmond. It was the last obstacle between Grant and the Confederate capital, and the last line of defense between the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia. On June 15 the first Union corps to cross the James reached the outskirts of the town. Petersburg was guarded by Beauregard’s small force of no more than 3,000 men, but the Confederate breastworks and trenches looked strong and “Cold Harbor syndrome” made the 16,000 Federals skittish. Commanded by Gen. William “Baldy” Smith, the 18th Corps tentatively advanced, nearly broke through, and then lost their nerve and hastily withdrew. Two more Union corps soon arrived, swelling the ranks to 48,000 men. Several more fainthearted efforts over the next few days failed to push into the town; with reinforcements from Hill, Petersburg was now defended by about 10,000 Confederates. By June 18 Lee had arrived with 45,000 men; Grant’s opportunity and hasten the end of the war had been lost.
        “The King of Spades” (as Lee was called) put the men to work digging a line of fortifications along a line east of Petersburg, and Grant did likewise. Lee had told Early that once Grant got to the James River, “it will become a siege, and then it will be a mere question of time.” Neither Lee nor Grant had wanted a siege, but here they were beginning one on June 18, 1864. Technically it was not a siege since Lee had supply and communication lines heading north to Richmond and southwest to Danville; but he was pinned down between Grant and Richmond, unable to maneuver, powerless to strike back. Grant was not inclined to risk another “Cold Harbor” and so both sides dug in and waited. It was, as Lee had told Early, only a matter of time. The rival lines of forts and trenches stretched for over forty miles from the east side of Richmond all the way down to the southwest edge of Petersburg. Some Confederate and Union pickets in the trenches around Petersburg reached an unofficial truce of sorts: “Don’t fire as us and we won’t fire at you.” Nothing appreciable would be gained by unprovoked shooting, the war was bound to end sooner or later, and everyone really just wanted to go home. (The soldiers often remarked that if not for the generals and politicians, the war would have long since ended with a handshake.) But the artillery officers kept sending a steady barrage of mortar shells across the lines, and the men in the trenches were tired, hungry, and anxious for the war to end sooner rather than later.
        Siege warfare can be pretty boring, but there were a couple of exceptions to the tedium. The first one was the so-called Battle of the Crater. A coal miner from Pennsylvania came up with the bold idea of digging a 500-foot tunnel and planting an explosive charge under the Confederate line. It seemed a bit far-fetched, but Gen. Burnside figured there was not much to lose if it failed, and he approved the plan. After three weeks of determined effort, the tunnel was finished. Grant expressed doubts but gave it the go-ahead and arranged a diversion to draw away some of Lee’s divisions. On July 30 the explosive charge was ignited: an enormous blast shook the ground like an earthquake and sent dirt, rocks and smoke flying like nothing anyone had ever seen; 170 feet of the Confederate line had been blown up and in it its place was a crater 60 feet across and 30 feet deep. Adding to the uproar and the Confederates’ confusion was a furious bombardment of Union artillery. At first the plan was a great success; then it turned disastrous. While their commander, Gen. James Ledlie, sat back safely out of danger getting drunk, the hapless brigade of black soldiers picked to lead the Federal charge swarmed into the crater, instead of around it, and got trapped there, barely able to move, as more divisions joined the mad rush. The assault turned into a chaotic and confused mob. Instead of overseeing the operation, Burnside was a quarter-mile back at his headquarters, oblivious to what was happening, sending more divisions toward the melee. The Confederates regained their composure from the explosion and proceeded to slaughter 3,800 Federals “like fish in a barrel.”
        After the “Battle of the Crater” not much else happened for the next eight months. Then on March 25 Lee decided it was time do something bold. Lee hoped to punch a hole through the Federal line and advance far enough to wreck Grant’s supply railway, forcing the left flank of the Union line to withdraw. Fort Stedman was one of the weaker spots, just 200 yards from the Confederate line, and a pre-dawn attack was launched at the fort. Before the Federals realized what had happened, the Confederates assault, led by General John Gordon, overran Fort Stedman and seized the Union trenches behind it. Grant had sent Old Burnside packing after the Crater fiasco, and his former chief of staff, Gen. John Parke, was temporarily in command of the IX Corps now under attack. Parke efficiently organized a counterattack. The Confederates had broken through but they could not get past the secondary defenses, and Lee sounded the recall. Many of Lee’s men could not get back and were captured. The attack on Fort Stedman was a desperate gamble that failed, having cost Lee 4,000 men that he could not afford to lose and accomplishing nothing.
        The key to a successful siege is not just the patient use of superior strength; it is knowing how to tighten the noose. While Grant had Pemberton’s army bottled up at Vicksburg, as the artillery pounded the beleaguered city, the Union lines crept closer and closer. Facing starvation, the Confederates surrendered, but they were on the verge of being overrun by Grant’s encroaching army. Since beginning the siege of Petersburg, except for a lull in the winter, Grant had been using his superior manpower to extend his lines further to the west, steadily stretching Lee’s undermanned defenses. Lee knew that eventually Grant would either get around behind his flank or stretch the Confederate line so thin that the Federal troops could walk through it. There was nothing he could do to prevent this from happening.
        Sheridan returned with his cavalry from the Shenandoah Valley and on March 29 Grant sent him to sever the Southside Railroad, running west from Petersburg to Lynchburg. This was Lee’s principal supply line, in effect, his lifeline. Guarding the Confederate line at a crossroads called Five Forks was George Pickett with five brigades of infantry and most of Lee’s cavalry. On April 1 the Battle of Five Forks commenced with Sheridan’s cavalry charging into the Confederate lines, along with three infantry divisions from Warren’s V Corps. Pickett’s force was wiped out. Grant ordered an attack on the center of the Petersburg lines first thing the next morning. Lee pulled out of Richmond that evening, and the Confederate government hastily evacuated Richmond, heading by rail to Danville. There was nothing else for Lee to do but put his army on the road toward Amelia Courthouse. There he hoped to find rations for his tired and hungry men, then follow the rail line south to Danville, and eventually hook up with Johnston in North Carolina. As Lee left Petersburg behind and headed westward he was upbeat on April 3: “I have gotten my army safely out of its breastworks, and in order to follow me, the enemy must abandon his lines and can derive no further benefit from his railroads or the James River.” But there were no rations at Amelia Courthouse. The supply train had been diverted to carry the Confederate government from Richmond to Danville.
        Lee pushed his beleaguered army west toward Lynchburg [see map]. Along the way, three Union corps clashed with the Confederates at Saylor’s Creek, and Lee lost 8,000 of his men, a third of what was left of the Army of Northern Virginia. Lee hoped to find rations at Appomattox Station, and the rumor of food, plus devotion to Lee, kept the men moving. They had not slept or eaten since leaving Petersburg. Some men wandered aimlessly and collapsed along the side of the road. Behind the army was a trail of starved horses, broken-down wagons, abandoned artillery, discarded muskets. The Army of Northern Virginia had once numbered 80,000 men; now Lee had barely 8,000 infantry and 3,000 cavalry fit for battle.
        Lee reached Farmville on April 7, destroying the bridges across the Appomattox River to slow the pursuit, and his starved men began to unload rations from a supply train. Just then two divisions of Federal infantry from Gen. Andrew Humphrey’s corps began to advance into the town and the supply train quickly rolled away. (Humphrey had discovered one bridge Lee’s army neglected to burn.) Lee had to fight off this threat; and instead of getting some desperately needed food and rest, his army was forced to move on toward Appomattox Station, where they hoped to catch up with the supply train. Lee confidently reassured his son, Gen. Rooney Lee, “I will get you out of this.”
        Grant reached Farmville later that day. While Lee led his army in another night march, Grant rested in a Farmville hotel and wrote a message inviting Lee to surrender. “General: The results of the last week must convince you of the hopelessness of further resistance…. I feel it is so, and regard it as my duty to shift from myself the responsibility of any further effusion of blood, by asking you the surrender of that portion of the C.S. Army known as the Army of Northern Virginia.” When Lee received the note, he passed it without comment to Longstreet (who had recovered from his wound received at Spotsylvania). Old Pete grimly replied, “Not yet.” Lee wrote a cagey reply, suggesting that he shared Grant’s wish to “avoid the useless effusion of blood” but was not beaten. On April 8 Lee received a second note from Grant, delicately proposing that, upon their surrender, the Confederates would be paroled, and that Lee could send someone in his place (implicitly to spare Lee the humiliation of having to surrender his army in person). This time Lee wrote a remarkably audacious response, agreeing to meet for the purpose of “the restoration of peace” but not surrender. On April 9 Grant wrote back; he had “no authority to treat the subject of peace” (i.e., negotiate a political settlement) but he was most anxious to see an end to the fighting. Grant may have felt the same irritation he had experienced with Lee’s frosty intransigence in the exchange of notes at Cold Harbor, but he did not show it. He calmly told his aide: “It looks as if Lee still means to fight.”
        Was it stubborn pride, devotion to duty, or an unwillingness to grasp the reality of the situation? Lee’s army was almost completely surrounded, out-numbered now at least 5:1, and most of his starved and exhausted men were on the verge of collapse without another Union shot being fired. Sheridan’s cavalry, backed by endless lines of blue infantry, stood between Lee and the supply train at Appomattox Station, eager to finish the job and go home. Further delays would be futile and disastrous, but Porter Alexander and other generals were counseling Lee to “stand and fight to the last man” or to “take to the woods like rabbits” and carry on a guerilla war. In the end, Lee realized that the war had been lost and it was time to think about what was best for the country. At this moment he rose from military commander to statesman. Lee told his staff “there is nothing left for me to do but to go and see General Grant, and I would rather die a thousand deaths….” (A strong indication that Lee had already made up his mind is the fact that he had put on his best uniform that morning, later explaining to his men that “I have probably to be General Grant’s prisoner today, and I thought I must make my best appearance.”)
        Grant allowed Lee to name the time and the place for the meeting. Lee’s aide selected the town of Appomattox Court House and the home of Wilmer McLean. (Ironically, McLean had moved there to escape the war, after a Union shell destroyed his house in Manassas in the first big battle of the war, and now the war found him again.) The migraine that had plagued Grant for days had suddenly been cured with the receipt of Lee’s notice of surrender, but he had to make a 16-mile ride to reach McLean’s house. The ride on Cincinnati gave him plenty of time to reflect on his long journey from the Rapidan, through the Wilderness with its ghosts, to Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor, across the James to Petersburg, and along the Appomattox River to victory.
        Lee arrived first, in his crisp gray uniform and with his engraved sword at his side. He waited in the parlor until Grant arrived, 30-minutes later, at 1:30 p.m. Grant was wearing his usual private’s coat with general’s bars (he never liked dressy uniforms). Lee rose; the two men shook hands and sat down. Both men seemed nervously tense, and Grant began with small talk about the Mexican war. Then Lee impatiently raised the matter of his army’s surrender and they got down to business. After a brief discussion, essentially confirming the terms stated in the exchange of notes between the lines, Grant wrote the terms down and handed the paper to Lee. General Lee fidgeted, wiped his classes, then silently read. He paused to point out a mistake in the wording, then read on. The significance of the key phrase did not go unnoticed: “…each officer and man will be allowed to return to their homes, not to be disturbed by the United States Authority so long as they observe their parole and the laws in force where they may reside.” Lee and his men would be free to go, on their word of honor not to take up arms against the United States. “This will have a very happy effect upon my men,” Lee remarked.
        Grant said that unless Lee had any suggestions to make he would have an official copy prepared for signing. He probably said it as a rhetorical courtesy, not expecting Lee to request any revisions (in effect, to negotiate better terms), but Lee took the opportunity to request that his men be allowed to keep their own horses. (It was the Cold Harbor negotiations all over again! But this time Grant held all the cards.) Grant gently pointed out that he could not agree to a substantive change in the terms of surrender (a condition, in effect), at this point. Lee sighed and sadly acknowledged Grant’s point. Just then, Grant saw a solution, what today would be called a win-win. “I will not change the terms as now written, but I will instruct the officers… to let all the men who claim to own a horse or a mule [to] take the animals home with them to their little farms.” It was a minor point but a magnanimous gesture by Grant. “This will have the best possible effect upon the men,” Lee responded. “It will be very gratifying and will do much toward conciliating our people.”
        Grant ordered that rations be issued at once to Lee’s hungry men and instructed that loud celebrations be discouraged. Grant later explained that he felt a profound sadness “at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought.”

Epilogue
        After surrendering his army to Grant on April 9, 1865, Lee retired to private life. In June 1865 a federal grand jury indicted Lee, Johnston, Longstreet, and a number of other generals from the Confederate high command for treason. President Andrew Johnson refused to intervene, arguing that Lee and other "traitors" had to face punishment. Grant confronted Johnson in the White House and insisted that the terms of Appomattox had to be honored: "I will resign the command of the army rather than execute any order to arrest Lee or any of his commanders so long as they obey the law!" Johnson backed down and Attorney General James Speed instructed the federal prosecutor to drop the proceedings.
        Had the South somehow won its fight for independence, Lee might have succeeded Davis as president of the Confederacy. As it was, Lee served as president of Washington College in Lexington, Virginia. The trustees probably expected him to be mostly a figurehead, good for fund-raising, but he was a hands-on president. Just as he had personally handled much of the staff work of the Army of Northern Virginia, he took a keen interest in the faculty, students and curriculum at Washington College. He had little to say and less to write about the war, but he strongly advocated reconciliation. In 1870 Lee suffered a stroke, then contracted pneumonia, and died at the age of 63.
        Grant, the victor, served two terms as President of the United States during the difficult period of Reconstruction. He tried to strike a balance between Northern Republicans who wanted to punish the South and empower the freedmen, and Southern Democrats who wanted to restore the status quo. This would have been a monumental challenge for an adroit politician. Superb in command of an army, Grant was an undistinguished chief executive with mediocre political skills and poor business instincts. Grant himself was scrupulously honest but he was too trusting of others who were not. His administration was embarrassed by scandal; then ex-president Grant was swindled by a crooked businessman and lost everything. In a last-ditch effort to wipe out his debts and provide for his family, Grant wrote his personal memoirs in a race against throat cancer. He died in 1885 at the age of 63. Grant’s book was his final achievement, regarded as one of the best military memoirs ever written.
        It is a testament to Grant’s efforts at reconciliation, and a measure of his respect from both sides of the bloody conflict, that Grant’s pallbearers at his funeral included an equal number of Confederate and Union generals. Among the leaders of the parade of mourners, along with comrades Winfield Scott Hancock, William T. Sherman and Phil Sheridan, were old adversaries John Gordon, Fitzhugh Lee, and Joe Johnston.

© David C. Hanson, September 2002

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