United States or Togo ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
On the 10th of June, General Butler sent a force of infantry, under General Gillmore, and of cavalry under General Kautz, to capture Petersburg, if possible, and destroy the railroad and common bridges across the Appomattox. The cavalry carried the works on the south side, and penetrated well in towards the town, but were forced to retire.
I proceeded at an early hour in the morning, still suffering with the headache, to get to the head of the column. I was not more than two or three miles from Appomattox Court House at the time, but to go direct I would have to pass through Lee's army, or a portion of it. I had therefore to move south in order to get upon a road coming up from another direction.
On the next morning the two generals met in a house on the edge of the village of Appomattox, Virginia, Lee resplendent in a new uniform and handsome sword, Grant in the travel-stained garments in which he had made the campaign the blouse of a private soldier, with the shoulder-straps of a Lieutenant-General. Here the surrender took place.
At break of day, April 8, Merritt and Mackenzie united with Crook at Prospect Station, and the cavalry all moved then toward Appomattox depot.
It is an extraordinary place, this City Point; a military city sprung up like a mushroom in a winter. And my breath was quite taken away when I first caught sight of it on the high table-land. The great bay in front of it, which the Appomattox helps to make, is a maze of rigging and smoke-pipes, like the harbor of a prosperous seaport.
The marching of the Confederate army was over forever, and Lee, suddenly brought to a sense of his real situation, sent orders to cease hostilities, and wrote another note to Grant, asking an interview for the purpose of surrendering his army. The meeting took place at the house of Wilmer McLean, in the edge of the village of Appomattox, on April 9, 1865.
When these had been concluded and the congregation were talking as usual in the yard a messenger arrived with a newspaper, which the Yankees had sent ashore from one of their gunboats, and which contained the details of General Lee's surrender of his army five days previously at Appomattox. My heart sank within me. My fondest hopes were crushed.
The Washington Artillery, under Captain Richardson, of New Orleans, a famous battery throughout the war, which claims the distinction of firing the first gun at Bull Run and the last at Appomattox, was with Longstreet to aid him with their brass six-pounders.
Sergeant White, who had been on the lookout for the trains ever since sending the despatch, found them several miles west of Appomattox depot feeling their way along, in ignorance of Lee's exact position.
At Bull Run, Calhoun's doctrine seemed to be in the ascendancy; at Gettysburg, Webster's argument seemed to have the more cogency; at Appomattox Lee withdrew his support from Calhoun, and allowed Daniel Webster's plea that the Union must abide and be now and forever, one and inseparable. The Northern statesman, Daniel Webster, was probably the greatest political genius our country has produced.
Word Of The Day