An 1865 photograph of High Bridge showing repairs in progress following the Battle of High Bridge.
If it succeeds, they could end the war by sundown.
Washburn’s cavalry ride for an hour. But then they are ambushed by rebel cavalry. Washburn, fearing nothing, gives chase. But it’s a clever trap. The rebels draw the bluecoats in as they link up with the other Confederate force defending the bridge. Suddenly, Confederate artillery rains down on Washburn and his men.
Washburn is within a quarter mile of the bridge, his force largely intact. But then comes the crackle of gunfire from behind him. Three years of combat experience tells Washburn that he is in trouble; Confederate cavalrymen have found his infantry. High Bridge must wait.
About 1,200 Confederate horsemen wait to attack Washburn’s cavalry and infantry, which together number slightly more than 800—but only about 80 of those are cavalry. Rebel horses and riders hold in a long line, awaiting the order to charge and crush the tiny Union force.
Colonel Washburn remains cool, surveying what could be a hopeless situation. Infantry is no match for the speed and agility of cavalry. His infantry lie on their bellies and peer across at Confederate cavalry. They have had no time to dig trenches or build fortifications, so hugging the ground is their only defense. Washburn is cut off from the rest of Grant’s army, with no hope of rescue.
He decides that his only hope is to be bold—a quality this Harvard man possesses in abundance.
After conferring with General Read, Washburn orders his tiny cavalry to assemble just out of rifle range, in columns of four, then addresses the ranks. He barks out his plan and reminds the infantry to follow right behind the Union riders to punch a hole through the rebel lines.
On Washburn’s command, the Fourth Massachusetts trot their mounts forward. Outnumbered by more than fifteen to one, they shut out all thoughts of this being the last battle of their lives. They ride hard. Their fate comes down to one simple word: “Charge!”
An illustration showing the kind of desperate hand-to-hand fighting that often took place between Union and Confederate cavalry.
The audacity of the Union cavalry charge and its succeed-at-all-costs desperation ignites panic in the rebel force. The battlefield splits in two as Washburn’s men punch through the first wave of the rebel line. The Union charge at Chatham, for a brief instant, is a triumph.
But, stunningly, after the cavalry charges, Washburn’s infantry does not move. Even as the Confederate defenses crumble, as Washburn organizes his men for the secondary attack that will smash an escape route through the rebel lines, the foot soldiers are still on their bellies, sealing their own doom.
General Rosser senses what’s happening and doesn’t waste a second. The Texan yells for his Confederate cavalry to counterattack.
Major General Philip H. Sheridan.
The fight becomes a brutal test of courage and horsemanship. “I have been many a day in hot fights,” Rosser will marvel later, “but I never saw anything approaching that at High Bridge.”
Suddenly, the battle is over.
The Confederates have lost a hundred men.
The Union has lost everyone.
The failure of the Union infantry to obey Washburn’s orders to attack determined their fate.
Rosser leads his weary men back toward Rice’s Station, content in the knowledge that he has single-handedly saved the Confederacy—for the moment.
Lee will now have his escape. Or at least it appears that way.
Chapter
10
THURSDAY, APRIL 6, 1865
On the Road to Farmville, Virginia
Afternoon
UNION GENERAL GEORGE MEADE’S INFANTRY finally finds the tail end of the Confederate column about ten miles away from the High Bridge fight. A hard rain is falling. In the first of what will be many firefights on this day, small bands of Union soldiers begin shooting at the Confederate rear guard.
Meanwhile, in Rice’s Station, Lee assesses the situation. Hearing the ferocity of the firing from High Bridge, he assumes that the Union force is much bigger than the group of men who galloped past him earlier. If Lee had any cavalry at his disposal, they would act as his eyes and ears, scouting ahead and returning with the truth. But he doesn’t. Lee can only guess at what’s happening—and he guesses wrong.
Fearing that General Sheridan and his Union cavalry have already leapfrogged out in front, Lee holds his men in Rice’s Station. At a time when it is crucial to be on the move, he chooses to remain in place.
An 1865 photograph of Major General Philip “Little Phil” Sheridan meeting with generals under his command. From left to right: Wesley Merritt, Sheridan, George Crook, James William Forsyth, and George Armstrong Custer.
As Lee waits, Sheridan’s three cavalry divisions are searching high and low for the Army of Northern Virginia. His three commanders are Generals George Armstrong Custer, Thomas Devin, and George Crook. Custer is the youngest and most aggressive, a blond-haired dynamo—he had roomed with the Confederate Thomas Rosser at West Point.
Custer leads the Union cavalry on their search-and-destroy mission against the Confederate column. At midmorning, he discovers the heart of the column, perhaps six miles from High Bridge. Custer does not hesitate. His division attacks. Then, upon meeting resistance, the young general stalls, in order to allow another cavalry division to attack. In this way, he slowly works his way up the Confederate line.
Custer’s strategy succeeds. By two P.M. his division pours into the small town of Marshall’s Crossroads, where they are met by a lone artillery battalion. The Confederate cannons are no match for Custer’s horsemen. He captures the small force and sets the rebel guns ablaze. But then another Confederate force counterattacks, pushing Custer out of the town. The Confederates dig in immediately, knowing that more fighting is imminent. The rebels hope to hold on long enough for Lee’s main army to reinforce them.
George Custer, however, is not to be denied. He scribbles a message to Crook and Devin, requesting help. Within an hour, their divisions are on the scene.
All afternoon, the three Union divisions initiate mounted and dismounted cavalry charges against the dug-in rebels.
The rebels, brilliantly led by Major General Richard “Fighting Dick” Anderson, hold fast, repelling each and every charge.
As daylight turns to evening, Custer assembles his men for one final charge. He orders the regimental band to play, hoping to strike fear into the enemy. Seeing the cavalry, Confederate officers call an immediate retreat. Their goal is to reach Lee at Rice’s Station.
Custer and the Union cavalry ride fast and hard into Anderson’s lines before they can escape. More than 2,600 Confederates are captured.
Brigadier General Thomas C. Devin.
Chapter
11
THURSDAY, APRIL 6, 1865
Sayler’s Creek, near Jetersville, Virginia
Late Afternoon
LEE KNOWS THAT HIS FIGHTING FORCE is splintered. Near a country estate called Lockett’s Farm, the Jamestown Road crosses over Big Sayler’s Creek and Little Sayler’s Creek at a place called Double Bridges. There are, as the name implies, two narrow bridges. The military wagons must all funnel into a narrow line and cross one at a time.
Grant’s army is now in sight. In the Confederates’ attempt to rush across the bridges, the wagons become tangled. Horses and mules balk in their traces, sensing the panic and confused by the noise. One of the bridges actually collapses from the weight, and the Confederate advance comes to an abrupt halt.
Within minutes, the Union attacks. Sweeping down from the high ground, General Meade’s infantry pounces on the terrified Confederates, who abandon their wagons and race into the woods on foot.
The Confederate infantry waits a few hundred yards ahead of the chaos, watching. Four thousand of Lee’s troops stand shoulder to shoulder, ready to meet the Union attack.
An Alfred Waud battlefield sketch of a scene during the Battle of Sayler’s
Creek. Waud, an artist who worked for Harper’s Weekly, provided many of the Civil War illustrations used in that publication.
At first, the Confederate infantry line holds. But under heavy Union artillery fire, the men begin to fall back.
They must make a mile-long retreat over open ground that offers almost no cover. The rebel infantrymen topple the wagons that made it across the bridges, using them as cover. The sun cannot set quickly enough for these men. With 10,000 Union troops almost on top of them, darkness is the rebels’ only hope.
But night does not come soon enough, and the fighting begins. The Confederates take terrible losses. Artillery shells and bullets strike any man who dares to stand still. Many soldiers quit the war right then and there, convinced that this endless wave of blue is unbeatable.
Letters and memoirs of Confederate soldiers will reflect this dreadful campaign. “At three o’clock in the afternoon,” one Confederate soldier will remember, “we reached Sayler’s Creek, a small creek that at the time had overflowed its banks from the continuous rains of the past few days, giving the appearance of a small river. We halted a few minutes, then waded across this stream and took our positions on the rising ground one hundred yards beyond.”
The hill is grassy, but the site of the Confederate stand is toward the back of the rise, under the cover of broom sedge and pine shrubs. Now the rebels hold the high ground. Any force attacking Lee’s army will be exposed to fire while wading Sayler’s Creek. If the men get across safely, they will then have to fight their way uphill to the rebel positions.
At five thirty, the Union artillery opens fire on the grassy hill from just four hundred yards away. The rebels have no artillery of their own and cannot fire back.
The shelling lasts twenty minutes. Under cover of that heavy fire, long blue lines of Union infantry wade the creek and slowly march up the hill. The Confederates do not retreat. Instead, they lie flat on the ground, muskets pointed at the stream of blue uniforms picking their way up the grassy slope. A Confederate major steps boldly in front of the line and walks the entire length, exposing himself to fire as he reminds the rebels that no one is allowed to shoot until ordered to do so. He later recalls the instruction: “That when I said ‘ready’ they must all rise, kneeling on the right knee; that when I said ‘aim’ they must all aim about the knees of the advancing line; and that when I said ‘fire’ they must all fire together.”
Everything, as one officer notes, is as “still as the grave.” The advancing line of blue moves forward, slowly ascending the hill. Some of the men wave white handkerchiefs, mocking the Confederates, jeering that they should surrender. But the rebels say nothing.
“Ready!” comes the cry from the Confederate lines.
A unit of Union artillery.
“The men rose, all together, like a piece of mechanism, kneeling on their right knees and their faces set with an expression that meant—everything,” a Confederate officer will write.
On the cry of “Aim!” a line of horizontal musket barrels points directly at the blue wall. Then: “Fire!”
“I have never seen such an effect, physical and moral, produced by the utterance of one word,” marvels the Confederate major. “The enemy seemed to have been totally unprepared for it.”
The front row of Union soldiers falls in bloody chaos. The second line turns and runs down the hill.
In that instant, the Confederate force is overcome by righteous indignation. The memory of that hard overnight march in the rain, the starvation, the craziness brought on by exhaustion—all of it blends into a single moment of fury. The rebels leap to their feet and chase after the bluecoats.
The Union soldiers gather themselves. They stop, turn, and fire. Knowing they are outgunned, the Confederates retreat back to their positions, only to be surrounded as the Union force quickly counterattacks.
And this time Union soldiers sprint up the hill, overrunning the Confederate positions. The fighting becomes hand-to-hand. The battle degenerates into butchery and a confused struggle of personal conflicts. “I saw numbers of men kill each other with bayonets and the butts of muskets, and even bite each other’s throats and ears and noses, rolling on the ground like wild beasts,” one Confederate officer will write.
An illustration showing close combat between Union and Confederate infantry soldiers that appeared in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine.
Robert E. Lee has spent the afternoon on horseback trying to find his own army. He sits astride Traveller, looking down from a distant ridgeline. “The disaster which had overtaken the army was in full view,” one of his officers will later write. “Teamsters with their teams and dangling traces, retreating infantry without guns, many without hats, a harmless mob, with massive columns of the enemy moving orderly on.”
This “harmless mob,” Lee realizes, is his own Army of Northern Virginia.
“My God,” says a horrified Lee. “Has the army been dissolved?”
Although the event will be little remembered in history, witnesses will swear they have never seen more suffering or such desperate fighting as during the final moments of the Battle of Sayler’s Creek.
* * *
Night falls, and so ends what will come to be known as the Black Thursday of the Confederacy. Half of Lee’s army is gone. All of his remaining generals, except Pete Longstreet, think the situation is hopeless. Lee continues to plan, still looking for a way to save his army and get to the Carolinas. Yet even he is devastated. “A few more Sayler’s Creeks and it will all be over,” he sighs.
Still, Lee cannot bring himself to utter the one word he dreads most: surrender.
An Alfred Waud sketch of Confederate troops with their muskets held butt upward to signal surrender.
Chapter
12
FRIDAY, APRIL 7, 1865
City Point, Virginia
Dawn
LINCOLN IS DESPERATE FOR NEWS from the front. The time away from the White House was meant to be a working vacation, and it has clearly revived him. The incredible sadness he has carried for so long is gone, replaced by serene joy. Mary Lincoln has joined her husband at City Point, bringing with her a small group of guests from Washington. The mood in the nation’s capital has turned festive since the fall of Richmond. Mary and her guests plan to visit Richmond in the morning; the burned-out husk of a city has become a tourist attraction. Lincoln will stay behind on the riverboat and tend to the war. Still, he is glad for the company. He tells jokes and makes small talk, all the while wondering when the next telegram from General Grant will arrive.
Early on the morning of April 7, just hours after the battle at Sayler’s Creek, Lincoln receives the news for which he’s been waiting. Grant’s telegram states that Sheridan has ridden over the battlefield, counting Confederate dead and captured, particularly the many top Confederate generals now in Union custody. “If the thing is pressed,” Grant quotes Sheridan as saying, “I think Lee will surrender.”
A Mathew Brady portrait of Mary Todd Lincoln taken in 1861.
Lincoln telegraphs his heartfelt reply: “Let the thing be pressed.”
Chapter
13
PALM SUNDAY, APRIL 9, 1865
Appomattox Court House
THE END HAS COME. The Army of Northern Virginia is cornered in a quiet little village called Appomattox Court House. Lee’s 8,000 men are surrounded on three sides by Grant’s 60,000. After escaping Sayler’s Creek, the rebels reached Farmville, only to be attacked again. Forced to flee before they could finish eating their rations, they raced across High Bridge. The Union army crossed right behind them. Grant was then able to get ahead and block Lee’s path to the Carolinas.
Lee’s final great hope for a breakout came the previous night. He had entrusted his toughest general, John Gordon from Georgia, with punching a hole in the Union lines. The attack began at five P.M. Three hours later, after encountering wave after never-ending wave of blue-clad soldiers—too many for his men to beat back—Gordon sent word back to Lee t
hat he had “fought my corps to a frazzle.”
In other words, Gordon could not break through.
Union soldiers standing in front of the courthouse at Appomattox Court House, April 1865.
Lee’s proud shoulders slumped as he received the news. “There is nothing left for me to do but go and see General Grant,” he said. The man who had succeeded his entire life, excelling at everything and failing at nothing, was beaten. “I would rather die a thousand deaths,” he said.
* * *
Wearing his dress uniform, polished black boots, and clean red sash, Lee rides forth. A spectacular ceremonial sword is buckled around his waist. He expects to meet Grant once he crosses over the Union lines, there to surrender his sword and be taken prisoner.
Lieutenant General Grant, portrait by the famous illustrator N. C. Wyeth. Wyeth is best known for his illustrations in Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, and other adventure and fantasy books.
Lee and a small group of aides ride to a spot between the Union and Confederate lines. They halt their horses in the middle of the country lane and wait for Grant to meet them.
And they wait. And they wait some more. It becomes increasingly obvious that the Union forces are preparing for battle. Lee can see it in the way the artillery crews are positioning their cannons toward his lines.
And Grant is miles away, suffering from a severe migraine headache. Lee sits astride his horse, painfully vulnerable to a sniper’s bullet despite his flag of truce. After about two hours with no response, Lee sees a Union soldier riding out. The soldier informs Lee that the attack will be launched in a few moments. For his own safety, Lee must return to the Confederate lines.
Lincoln's Last Days Page 3
