CHAPTER XIII.

The last retreat of Gen. Lee's army.-Two notable pictures.-Gen. Lee conceives a new prospect of action.-A fatal miscarriage at Amelia Court-House.-No food for the army.-Terrible sufferings of the retreat.-General despair and misery.-Action at Sailor's Creek.-Condition of the army at Appomattox Court-House.-Apparition of the white flag.-Correspondence between Generals Lee and Grant.—Authentic and detailed account of their interview at McLean's House.-Contradiction of various popular reports of this event.-Gen. Lee announcing the terms of surrender to his officers.-Scenes in the encampments.-Gen. Lee's last address to his troops. -His return to Richmond.-Last tokens of affection and respect for the Confederacy.

NIGHT gave Gen. Lee the time he wanted to collect his forces for retreat, and the morning of the 3d April found him across the Appomattox, with the remains of his army well got together, heading away from Richmond. In the light of that morning were two notable pictures. A pall of smoke, with the golden light weaved in its folds, hung in the sky above Richmond; beneath roared and surged a sea of fire, reaching from the island-dotted river to the tall trees that fringed the hill on which the Capitol stood; skirting this sea, pouring down Church Hill, was the victorious army glistening with steel and banners, now ascending Franklin street, curying at the Exchange Hotel to the upper streets that led to Capitol Square, making this curve the point where passionate music clashed out its triumph, and each body of troops took up the cheer of victory, and cavalrymen waved their swords, and the column swept up the hill as if in sudden haste to seize the green patch of ground where stood the dumb walls of the Capitol of the Confederacy. Away from this scene of sublime horrour was the other picture: an army tattered, brown, weather-beaten, moving through the woods. and on blind roads, with straggling, distressed trains, the faces of its soldiers turned from Richmond, but ever and anon looking curiously to the sky, and to its pillars and drapery of smoke, and the black horrour that stood there all day, while the forest pulsed in glorious sunshine, and quiet fields peeped out in the garniture of Spring.

The last game of war had now truly commenced between Lee and Grant, the former aiming to save his army, which he had already extricated beyond his hopes, and the latter making every endeavour to cut off and capture or destroy it. In the morning of the 3d April, Gen. Lee showed remarkable spirits, and had evidently obtained a new confidence. A correspondent of the London Times, who faithfully and vividly described the retreat, relates that on this morning Gen. Lee remarked: "I have got my army safe out of its breastworks, and in order to follow me, my enemy must abandon his lines, and can derive no further benefit from his railroads and the James River." Anyhow, a reflection of this sort was just. Gen. Lee had yet an army of twenty-five thousand men; it was foot-loose, ready to move in any direction; the men were exhilarated, relieved from the confinement of siege and emerging into the open country; and having already accomplished so much, the commander might yet hope to use his army with effect, especially if opportunity occurred to fall in detail upon the forces into which Grant would necessarily have to divide his army, with a view to a comprehensive and vigorous pursuit.

In that pursuit, the possession of the Southside Railroad had given the enemy all the advantages of the interiour line. Lee was alive to this disadvantage; the very privates of his army understood it. Men who carried muskets were heard to say to their comrades: "Grant is trying to cut off 'Uncle Robert' at Burkesville junction" (the point of meeting of the Southside and Danville roads); and the answer was: "Grant has got the inside track and can get there first." This was the plain truth of the situation.

Grant held the Southside road, and was pressing forward troops under Sheridan towards the Danville road, to which he had a straight cut without a particle of obstruction, except a small force of cavalry under Fitzhugh Lee. Gen. Lee, on the contrary, was moving by a circuitous route on the north bank of the Appomattox, encumbered by a huge wagon train, and having in front of him a swollen river, which proved, indeed, a terrible delay when every moment counted. So great were these obstacles, that there is little doubt Grant might have effectually intercepted the retreat at Amelia Court-House, if he had made extraordinary exertions to do so, and concentrated the forces under Sheridan and Meade. As it was, Gen. Lee did not succceed in reaching this point until the

5th April; the bridges over the Appomattox being swept away, or rendered useless by the freshets which covered the low grounds and prevented access to them. The troops finally crossed on pontoons at two or three places; and although suffering severely from want of rations, they pushed forward in good spirits to Amelia Court-House.

In the suburbs of this pretty little village the trains encamped, and the travel-worn troops bivouacked in the fields. The morale of the army was excellent; it had not yet been put to the test of any great suffering. It still presented a formidable spectacle in lines of veterans with bristling bayonets, led by such heroic commanders as Longstreet, Gordon and Mahone. The important, vital concern was, to provision it; and a fortnight before, Gen. Lee, in view of the exigencies of retreat, had given urgent and precise orders that large supplies of commissary and quartermaster's stores should be sent forward from Danville to Amelia Court-House. But at the latter place he found not a ration. His orders had been disregarded; and now, in the second stage of retreat, aiming at Lynchburg in the direction of Farmville, his army faced a new enemy in hunger, and staggered under an accumulation of distress that only the hardiest natures could endure.

The line of retreat penetrated a region of hills, where good positions might be taken for defence; but the straggling woods, the pine barrens, and the small patches of clearing, afforded but little prospect for subsistence. Half the army was broken up into foraging parties to get food; opportunities of desertion diminished it at every step; men who plucked from the trees leaves and twigs to assuage their hunger, dropped out by the wayside, famishing; jaded horses and mules sunk under the whips of the teamsters, and broken wagons choked the roads. The retreat became slow and slower. The numbers and excellence of the enemy's cavalry gave them a fatal advantage. The reserve train, containing nearly all the ammunition of Lee's army, was attacked and burned in the first stages of retreat, and the fate awaiting other portions of the army train was foreseen. Its unwieldy size and slow movement made it an easy prey, and it was incessantly attacked, and large sections carried off or destroyed. From this time commenced the most distressing scenes of the march. Hunger brought with it the demoralization it never fails to produce in a large number of men; nearly

every hour of the day there was an attack of cavalry, a running fight; the woods rocked with the explosions, where burning wagons filled with ammunition and shells had been abandoned; and when night came, and the army paused in the hasty field-works thrown up for their protection, the wolves were heard again upon the track, and the incessant cry of "cavalry," and fierce volleys of fire, prevented the jaded men from catching even one undisturbed hour of sleep.

The retreat continued. Hunger, thirst, and weariness continued. For the four or five days, during which the retreating army toiled on, it is said "the suffering of the men from the pangs of hunger has not been approached in the military annals of the last fifty years." Despondency, like a black poisonous mist, weighed down its endeavours, and infected the stoutest hearts. The men fell out of the ranks by hundreds, overcome by want of food and sleep, and worn out by exhaustion; or what was equally bad, they dropped their heavy guns and cartridge-boxes, and straggled along, a useless and cumbrous mob. Many laid down to die; many welcomed death as God's blessing in disguise, and with gaunt famine glaring hopelessly from their sunken eyes, sought places to throw down their exhausted bodies, and demand from nature the end of their sufferings.

The fashion of retreat was, that at every hill divisions would alternately halt and form lines of battle to check their pursuers. It was on one of these halts, just south of Sailor's Creek, a tributary of the Appomattox, that a considerable fight ensued on the 6th of April, in which Sheridan struck in upon the line of retreat, and took a number of prisoners, but not without learning to his cost, that in the fugitive, famishing crowd there was yet something of the old fire of the Army of Northern Virginia capable of an episode of desperate and devoted courage, in what were evidently the final scenes of its existence. The attack was made with great suddenness; the enemy running over a portion of Ewell's command, appeared determined to bring matters to a crisis, when suddenly he found in his front a line of battle that had been developed with a swiftness that showed that Lee had yet under his quick and facile hand troops, devoted, desperate, even in the last extremity responsive to their commander. At the first perception of the shock of attack, Gen. Lee formed a line of battle to

repulse the enemy, if he advanced upon what remained of the Confederate trains moving towards High Bridge. A brigade of infantry was pushed across at double-quick, and between Ewell's men and the hitherto victorious troopers of Sheridan, arose a wall of bayonets flanked by cannon. In view of this formidable apparition, the enemy went back. At one time, however, a fierce battle was expected, and in the gloom of twilight a lurid glare of signals along the Federal lines made a luminous track through the forest, and seemed to be the prelude to another attack. Gen. Lee himself watched anxiously the remarkable and picturesque scene. On a plateau, raised from the forest whence they had emerged, were the broken troops; there were. exclamations of rage and defiance among them, the evident smart of mortification; in front was the line of battle still and calm, awaiting another attack. But no attack was made; Sheridan was content with his adventure. As Gen. Lee rode back in the gathering gloom of night, through the disordered groups on the plateau, there were cries: "It's Gen. Lee! Uncle Robert! Where's the man who won't follow Uncle Robert?" He had not yet despaired of saving the men who testified to him such love and confidence in the extremities of fate.

In the night of the 8th April, the reduced, worn, suffering army reached Appomattox Court-House. It was now within twenty-four miles of Lynchburg, on a strip of land between the James and Appomattox Rivers. What had been the Army of Northern Virginia was now counted by a few thousands. Gordon marched in front with scarcely more than two thousand men; the wreck of Longstreet's command made up the rear; and between Gordon and Longstreet were the remaining wagons, and clinging to them thousands of unarmed and famished stragglers, too weak to carry their muskets. To such condition was reduced the grand, memorable army that had traversed so many distances, and accomplished so many campaigns; that had twice trod the enemy's soil, and displayed itself on the foreground of Washington; that had never known rout or panic; that had made the greatest name in the world's history; and that was now to die only in the annihilation of all its parts, without ever having given to its enemy aught of triumph or taken upon itself a shadow of shame.

In the early light of the 9th April, Gordon discovered the enemy in his front in heavy force, closing the outlet towards