Appomattox: Paper Read Before the New York Commandery Loyal Legion of the United States; October Seventh, 1903 (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Appomattox: Paper Read Before the New York Commandery Loyal Legion of the United States; October Seventh, 1903

At noon of this day General Ord, of the Army of the James, joined us with two divisions of the Twenty-fourth Corps under General Gibbon, and Birney's division of the Twenty-fifth Corps, - colored troops; Ord, by virtue of seniority, becoming commanding officer of the whole. He was a stranger to us all, but his simple and cordial manner towards Sheridan and Griffin, and even to us subordinates, made him welcome. We pushed on, - the cavalry ahead.

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. Officers 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, - one knows not what, of past or coming, possible or fated.

Scarcely is the first broken dream begun when a cavalry man 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!"

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