Excerpt from Appomattox
© 2000 ProofmarkJoshua Lawrence Chamberlain
The Fifth Corps had a very hard march that day, made more so in the afternoon and night by the lumbering obstructions of the rear of Ord's tired column, by courtesy given the road before us, the incessant check fretting our men almost to mutiny. We had been rushed all day to keep up with the cavalry, but this constant checking was worse. We did not know that Grant had sent orders for the Fifth Corps to march all night without halting, but it was not necessary for us to know it. After twenty-nine miles of this kind of marching, at the blackest hour of night, human nature called a halt. Dropping by the roadside, right and left, wet or dry, down went the men as in a swoon. OfÞcers slid out of saddle, loosened the girth, slipped an arm through a loop of bridle-rein, and sunk to sleep. Horses stood with drooping heads just above their masters' faces. All dreaming&emdash; one knows not what, of past or coming, possible or fated.
Scarcely is the Þrst broken dream begun when a cavalryman comes splashing down the road and vigorously dismounts, pulling from his jacket front a crumpled note. The sentinel standing watch by his commander, worn in body but alert in every sense, touches your shoulder. "Orders, sir, I think!" You rise on elbow, strike a match, and with smarting, streaming eyes read the brief thrilling note from Sheridan&emdash; like this, as I remember: "I have cut across the enemy at Appomattox Station, and captured three of his trains. If you can possibly push your infantry up here to-night, we will have great results in the morning." Ah, sleep no more! The startling bugle notes ring out. 'The General'&emdash;'To the march!' Word is sent for the men to take a bite of such as they had for food: the promised rations would not be up till noon, and by that time we should be&emdash; where? Few try to eat, no matter what. Meanwhile, almost with one foot in the stirrup you take from the hands of the black boy a tin plate of nondescript food and a dipper of miscalled coffee&emdash; all equally black, like the night around. You eat and drink at a swallow; mount, and away to get to the head of the column before you sound the 'Forward.' They are there&emdash; the men: shivering to their senses as if risen out of the earth, but something in them not of it! Now sounds the 'Forward,' for the last time in our long-drawn strife; and they move&emdash; these men&emdash; sleepless, supperless, breakfastless, sore-footed, stiff-jointed, sense-benumbed, but with flushed faces pressing for the front.
By sunrise we have reached Appomattox Station, where Sheridan has left the captured trains. A staff ofÞcer is here to turn us square to the right, to the Appomattox River, cutting across Lee's retreat. Already we hear the sharp ring of the horse-artillery, answered ever and anon by heavier Þeld guns; and drawing nearer, the crack of cavalry carbines; and unmistakably, too, the graver roll of musketry of infantry. There is no mistake. Sheridan is square across the enemy's front, and with that glorious cavalry alone is holding at bay all that is left of the proudest army of the Confederacy. It has come at last&emdash; the supreme hour! No thought of human wants or weakness now: all for the front; all for the flag, for the Þnal stroke to make its meaning real. These men of the Potomac and the James, side by side, at the double in time and column, now one and now the other in the road or the Þelds beside. One striking feature I can never forget&emdash; Birney's black men abreast with us, pressing forward to save the white man's country.
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