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Since the news of Appomattox nothing had surprised him, and he was not surprised now he was merely interested. "You couldn't have helped it, I suspect," he remarked. "I didn't know whose it was, you see," answered Christopher; "the horses were new." "You'd have done it anyway, I reckon. At such moments it's a man's mettle that counts, you know, and not his emotions.
And Molly confirmed the statement: "I let him have no more than is good for him, major, barrin' Patrick's Day and the First of April, that's Five Forks, when he always dhrinks as many fingers at a time. Then he's in arrest till Appomattox, nine days close, and then I let him out for a bit again. Never fear, major, I'm the dishbursin' officer of the family, an' the grocer has his orders."
His men traveled light and fast; for, poor fellows, they had little enough to carry! But Grant was an eager pursuer. Until the sixth day that desperate flight and chase continued. Lee soon saw that he could not get to Danville, as he had hoped to do, and thereupon changed his plan and struck nearly westward, for open country, via Appomattox Court House.
The infantry marched about as rapidly as the cavalry could. Sheridan sent Custer with his division to move south of Appomattox Station, which is about five miles south-west of the Court House, to get west of the trains and destroy the roads to the rear.
At the time of the massacre Abraham Piercey had a plantation adjacent to the Appomattox River and, perhaps, somewhat upstream from the James. Here "at Master Abraham Pierse his plantation some five miles off the Colledge people" four persons, 3 men and a boy were killed.
The air castles, the hopes of Southern prosperity and the poor whites elevation and wealth were blasted, when two years after that gallant dash at Gettysburg, that ragged, starved, wretched host surrendered at Appomattox. The blasted hopes of the poor white caused him to drift further away from the aristocrat who had fooled him into a foolhardy and disastrous struggle.
Lee and I then separated as cordially as we had met, he returning to his own lines, and all went into bivouac for the night at Appomattox. Soon after Lee's departure I telegraphed to Washington as follows: HEADQUARTERS APPOMATTOX C. H., VA., April 9th, 1865, 4.30 P.M. HON. E. M. STANTON, Secretary of War, Washington.
Long after the time when the people of the regions watered by the Hudson and the Merrimac are beginning to button up their overcoats, and to think of weather strips for their window-sashes, the dwellers in the land through which flow the Appomattox and the James may sit upon their broad piazzas, and watch the growing glories of the forests, where the crimson stars of the sweet gum blaze among the rich yellows of the chestnuts, the lingering green of the oaks, and the enduring verdure of the pines.
The same record shows the number of cannon, including those at Appomattox, to have been 689 between the dates named. There has always been a great conflict of opinion as to the number of troops engaged in every battle, or all important battles, fought between the sections, the South magnifying the number of Union troops engaged and belittling their own.
Miss Wollaston was born on the election day that made James Buchanan president of the United States and Doctor John within a few days of Appomattox. But one would have said, looking at them here at the breakfast table on a morning in March in the year 1919, that there was a good deal more than those ten years between them.
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