Claude P. Foster
"THE WHOLE COLUMN SEEMED CROWNED WITH RED"
The day after the surrender Grant rode over to Lee's headquarters to discuss
with him the formalities of surrender; later that day Meade rode over to pay
his respects. Already the leader of the grand armies were binding up the
wounds of war, taking the road to reunion. Formal surrender was arranged for
the twelfth, and General Chamberlain was designated to receive it on behalf
of Grant. Grant, Meade, and Sheridan had all left Appomattox by that day,
but Lee stayed on to the bitter end, though he did not witness the actual
stacking of arms.
The description of that ceremony comes, appropriately enough, from
Chamberlain himself.
It was now the morning of the 12th of April. I had been ordered to have my
lines formed for the ceremony at sunrise. It was a chill gray morning,
depressing to the senses . . . We formed along the principal street, from the
bluff bank of the stream to near the Court House on the left, - to face the
last line of battle, and receive the last remnant of the arms and colors of
that great army which ours had been created to confront for all that death
can do for life . . .
Our earnest eyes scan the busy groups on the opposite slopes, breaking camp
for the last time, taking down their little shelter-tents and folding them
carefully as precious things, then slowly forming ranks as for unwelcome
duty. And now they move. The dusky swarms forge forward into gray columns
of march. On they come, with the old swinging route step and swaying
battle-flags. In the van, the proud Confederate ensign - the great field of
white with canton of star-strewn cross of blue on a field of red, the
regimental battle-flags with the same escutcheon following on, crowded so
thick, by thinning out of men, that the whole column seemed crowned with red.
At the right of our line our little group mounted beneath our flags, the red
Maltese cross on a field of white, erewhile so bravely borne through many a
field more crimson than itself, its mystic meaning now ruling all.
The momentous meaning of this occasion impressed me deeply. I resolved to
mark it by some token of recognition, which could be no other than a salute
of arms. Well aware of the responsibility assumed, and of the criticisms
that would follow, as the sequel proved, nothing of that kind could move me
in the least. The act could be defended if needful, by the suggestion that
such a salute was not to the cause for which the flag of the Confederacy
stood, but to its going down before the flag of the Union. My main reason,
however, was one for which I sought no authority nor asked forgiveness.
Before us in proud humiliation stood the embodiment of manhood: men whom
neither toils and sufferings, nor the fact of death, nor disaster, nor
hopelessness could bend from their resolve; standing before us now, thin,
worn, and famished, but erect, and with eyes looking level into ours, waking
memories that bound us together as no other bond; - was not such manhood to
be welcomed back into a Union so tested and assured?
Instruction had been given; and when the head of each division column comes
opposite our group our bugle sounds the signal and instantly our whole line
from right to left, regiment by regiment in succession, gives the soldier's
salutation, from the "order arms" to the old "carry" - the marching salute.
Gordon at the head of the column, riding with heavy spirit and downcast face,
catches the sound of shifting arms, looks up, and taking the meaning, wheels
superbly, making with himself and his horse one uplifted figure, with
profound salutation as he drops the point of his sword to the boot toe; then
facing to his own command, gives word for his successive brigades to pass us
with the same position of the manual, - honor answering honor. On our part
not a sound of trumpet more, nor roll of drum; not a cheer, nor word nor
whisper of vain-glorying, nor motion of man standing again at the order, but
an awed stillness rather, and breath-holding, as if it were the passing of
the dead!
As each successive division masks our own, it halts, the men face inward
towards us across the road, twelve feet away; then carefully "dress" their
line, each captain taking pains for the good appearance of his company, worn
and half starved as they were. The field and staff take their positions in
the intervals of regiments; generals in rear of their commands. They fix
bayonets, stack arms; then hesitatingly, remove cartridge-boxes and lay them
down. Lastly, - reluctantly, with agony of expression, - they tenderly fold
their flags, battle-worn and torn, blood-stained, heart-holding colors, and
lay them down; some frenziedly rushing from the ranks, kneeling over them,
clinging to them, pressing them to their lips with burning tears. And only
the Flag of the Union greets the sky!
What visions thronged as we looked into each other's eyes! Here pass the
men of Antietam, the Bloody Lane, the Sunken Road, the Cornfield, the
Burnside-Bridge; the men whom Stonewall Jackson on the second night at
Fredericksburg begged Lee to let him take and crush the two corps of the Army
of the Potomac huddled in the streets in darkness and confusion; the men who
swept away the Eleventh Corps at Chancellorsville; who left six thousand of
their companions around the bases of Culp's and Cemetery Hills at Gettysburg;
these survivors of the terrible Wilderness, the Bloody-Angle at
Spottsylvania, the slaughter pen of Cold Harbor, the whirlpool of Bethesda
Church!
Here comes Cobb's Georgia Legion, which held the stone wall on Marye's
Heights at Fredericksburg, close before which we piled our dead for
breastworks so that the living might stay and live.
Here too come Gordon's Georgians and Hoke's North Carolinians, who stood
before the terrific mine explosion at Petersburg, and advancing retook the
smoking crater and the dismal heaps of dead - ours more than theirs - huddled
in the ghastly chasm.
Here are the men of McGowan, Hunton, and Scales, who broke the Fifth Corps
lines on the White Oak Road, and were so desperately driven back on that
forlorn night of March 31st by my thrice-decimated brigade.
Now comes Anderson's Fourth Corps, only Bushrod Johnson's Division left, and
this the remnant of those we fought so fiercely on the Quaker Road two weeks
ago, with Wise's Legion, too fierce for its own good.
Here passes the proud remnant of Ransom's North Carolinians which we swept
through Five Forks ten days ago, - and all the little that was left of this
division in the sharp passages at Sailor's Creek five days thereafter.
Now makes its last front A.P. Hill's old Corps, Heth now at the head, since
Hill had gone too far forward ever to return: the men who poured destruction
into our division at Shepardstown Ford, Antietam, in 1862, when Hill reported
the Potomac running blue with our bodies; the men who opened the desperate
first day's fight at Gettysburg, where withstanding them so stubbornly our
Robinson's Brigades lost 1,185 men, and the Iron Brigade alone 1,153, - these
men of Heth's Divisions here too losing 2,850 men, companions of these now
looking into our faces so differently.
What is this but the remnant of Mahone's Division, last seen by us at the
North Anna? Its thinned ranks of worn, bright-eyed men recalling scenes of
costly valor and ever-remembered history.
Now the sad great pageant - Longstreet and his men! What shall we give them
for greeting that has not already been spoken in volleys of thunder and
written in lines of fire on all the river-banks of Virginia? Shall we go
back to Gaines' Mill and Malvern Hill? Or to the Antietam of Maryland, or
Gettysburg of Pennsylvania? - deepest graven of all. For here is what
remains of Kershaw's Division, which left 40 per cent of its men at Antietam,
and at Gettysburg with Barksdale's and Semmes' Brigades tore through the
Peach Orchard, rolling up the right of our gallant Third Corps, sweeping over
the proud batteries of Massachusetts - Bigelow and Philips, - where under the
smoke we saw the earth brown and blue with prostrate bodies of horses and
men, and the tongues of overturned cannon caissons pointing grim and stark in
the air.
Then in the Wilderness, at Spottsylvania and thereafter, Kershaw's Division
again, in deeds of awful glory, held their name and fame, until fate met them
at Sailor's Creek, where Kershaw himself, and Ewell, and so many more, gave
up their arms and hopes, - all, indeed, but manhood's honor.
With what strange emotion I look into these faces before which in the mad
assault on Rives' Salient, June 18, 1864, I was left for dead under their
eyes! It is by miracles we have lived to see this day, - any of us standing
here.
Now comes the sinewy remnant of fierce Hood's Division, which at Gettysburg
we saw pouring though the Devil's Den, and the Plum Run gorge; turning again
by the left our stubborn Third Corps, then swarming up the rocky bastions of
Round Top, to be met there by equal valor, which changed Lee's whole plan of
battle and perhaps the story of Gettysburg.
Ah, is this Pickett's Division? - this little group left of those who on the
lurid last day of Gettysburg breasted level cross-fire and thunderbolts of
storm, to be strewn back drifting wrecks, where after that awful, futile,
pitiful charge we buried them in graves a furlong wide, with name unknown!
Met again in the terrible cyclone-sweep over the breastworks at Five Forks;
met now, so thin, so pale, purged of the mortal, - as if knowing pain or joy
no more. How could we help falling on our knees, all of us together, and
praying God to pity and forgive us all!
JOSUHA LAWRENCE CHAMBERLAIN,"The Passing of the Armies"