Sheridan’s Personal Memoirs and the Appomattox Campaign

While Sheridan’s memoirs have not enjoyed the popularity of those written by Grant and William T. Sherman, Cushman argues that they revealed considerable literary merit offering readers “richly textured glimpses of moments and subjects that have no counterparts in Grant’s and Sherman’s accounts.” Equally important, Cushman considers Sheridan’s stylistic choices and highlights the striking ways the general’s leadership style shone through his prose. A close examination of the memoirs exposes Sheridan’s frank self-justification, critiques of his fellow officers, self-censorship, and firm but constant vigilance for the welfare of his men. Indeed, this window into Sheridan’s personality helps explain his choices during the Appomattox Campaign.

Many Valuable Records and Documents Were Lost to History

During the last year of the war, Confederate record keeping had become haphazard and incomplete at best with company and regimental record books in a disorderly state. But such disarray did not begin to compare to the destruction of both Confederate governmental and army records during the first week of April 1865. In this essay Bohannon surveys the destruction and search for Confederate records at the end of the war, and he reminds us that the paucity of official military correspondence and reports make it extremely difficult to fully recover the story of those final days of Lee’s command.

Lee, Breckinridge, and Campbell

In the late winter of 1865, the newly appointed Confederate Secretary of War John C. Breckinridge believed that the war was lost, reunion all but inevitable, and with Lee’s endorsement the Confederate Congress might press Jefferson Davis to sue for peace. For months prior to Appomattox, Lee, Breckinridge, and Assistant Secretary of War John A. Campbell strategized on how the Confederacy might avoid an absolute military subjugation. As late as April 2, Breckinridge and Campbell were devising a new peace strategy, and on April 7 Lee and the secretary of war discussed how they might yet avoid outright surrender. Highlighting the interplay between the military and political goals of the war, Davis’s essay places Lee’s exchanges with Grant between April 7 and 9 into context: if Lee could stall as long as possible and perhaps convince the Union general to agree to an armistice, perhaps the Confederacy might yet survive intact or at the very least the Union would be forced to make significant concessions.

Lucky Inspiration

This essay explores how Philip Sheridan's operations during the Appomattox campaign represented the culmination of an evolutionary process of the Union cavalry arm in the East from 1861 though the spring of 1865. Sheridan's aggressive style of command and gradual maturation proved central to its success. There were other senior cavalry officers in the Army of the Potomac who might have commanded the Cavalry Corps in 1864 including Alfred Pleasonton or David McMurtie Gregg. But Sheridan’s ascendancy and his leadership style ultimately restored a measure of fluidity to military operations in Virginia that had evaporated in the Overland Campaign. With an independent command in the Shenandoah Valley during the fall of 1864, Sheridan had deployed infantry in conjunction with the cavalry units, many of which carried Spencer repeating carbines – a tactic that would prove key as Federal forces pursued Lee’s army the following spring.

Grant Finally Takes Command

William Bergen argues that such a turn-around occurred only once Grant was able to institute his own aggressive brand of warfare with the armies of the James and Potomac – once he finally, and completely, took command. But such was not an easy task. Unlike Lee who had command of a single army – and had led that army for two years by the time of the Overland Campaign – as general in chief, Grant commanded all the Union forces while accompanying an unfamiliar army in an unfamiliar region. He would first need to get to know his various armies and commanders, and equally important, break the culture of caution that had developed in the Union’s largest and most visible army, the Army of the Potomac. Finally freed from political constraints after the presidential election in November 1864, Grant appointed army and corps commanders who matched his style and temperament thus enabling him to shape the Union forces that would succeed in one final campaign.

A Whole Lot of Blame to Go Around

Placing the battle of Five Forks in the larger context of Robert E. Lee’s plans for a spring campaign, Carmichael concludes that while Pickett and Fitz Lee deserve much of the blame for the calamity at Five Forks, the Confederate loss was not entirely their fault. Robert E. Lee’s loss of operational control of the right flank coupled with his poorly worded orders to hold the Forks “at all hazards” – a boggy terrain, which rendered it nearly impossible to move man or horse – likewise contributed to the defeat. “Operational oversight from Lee’s headquarters could have brought attention to this issue and likely averted disaster, though not defeat,” Carmichael explains. Yet by the early twentieth century, the Lost Cause had worked to absolve Robert E. Lee of blame for any shortcomings – including Five Forks. Responsibility for the routing would fall squarely on the shoulders of his subordinates.

We Can Keep All the Yankees Back That They Can Send

In the spring of 1864, Hood’s Texas Brigade was recovering from a difficult winter of desertions under the guidance of a junior officer corps who restored discipline in the ranks, furnished new uniforms and food, and oversaw the return of wounded, captured, or otherwise absent men. Morale in the ranks soared – as did the unit’s pride. But just as the brigade regained its strength, it embarked on one of the bloodiest periods of the war. The Overland Campaign’s devastating causalities left many to wonder if there were enough men to sustain the Texas Brigade. Through detailed portraits of individual soldiers and explorations of the Texas home front, Ural explains why the soldiers of this unit remained fiercely committed to Lee, the Army of Northern Virginia, and each other even as the Confederacy crumbled around them in the winter and spring of 1865.

The Last Hour of the Slaveholders’ Rebellion

The essay elucidates how that belief took shape in the moment of Union victory, and the myriad ways it found expression in the postwar era. Varon demonstrates that the enshrinement of Appomattox as a “freedom day” rested on three interconnected claims: that the Union army’s victory over Lee dramatized the manly heroism and agency of African American soldiers; that the surrender brought many slaves their first consciousness and experience of liberation; and that the magnanimous terms of surrender which Grant offered Lee symbolized the promise of racial reconciliation between whites and blacks. Lee’s surrender figured as a prominent symbol in the bitter and protracted debates over race, reconstruction and reunion.

We Were Not Paroled

Perhaps as much as one-third of the Army of Northern Virginia did not surrender at Appomattox. Some of the approximately 20,000 men absent from the surrender had dropped out of the ranks during the arduous push west, a significant portion of the cavalry and many artillerists had escaped the Union cordon on April 9, and still others had refused to await formal paroles after it was clear that the army had been defeated. While nearly 30,000 of Lee’s soldiers stacked their arms and awaited paroles at Appomattox, this essay tells the story of those who were not there – of those who insisted that the rebellion was not yet dead and hoped to continue the fight, of others who attempted to make their way home while avoiding Union lines, and of the thousands who ultimately decided it was in their best interest to turn themselves in to Union provost marshals throughout the region in order to receive paroles.

Introduction

This chapter offers an overview of the end of the Petersburg siege and the subsequent Appomattox Campaign in the winter and spring of 1865.