Data Bases • Custom Term Papers • Free Term Papers • Free Research Papers • Free Essays • Free Book Reports • Plagiarism? Links • Top 100 Term Paper Sites • Top 25 Essay Sites • Top 50 Essay Sites • Search 97,000 Papers @ DirectEssays.com • Search 101,000 Papers @ ExampleEssays.com • Search 90,000 Papers @ MegaEssays.com Free Essays • Term Paper Sites • Chuck III's Free Essays • Free College Essays • TermPaperSites.com • Free Essays • My Term Papers • Essay World • Planet Papers	Search Lots of Essays Back to Subjects - Book Reports A Stillness at Appomattox A Stillness at Appomattox “All up and down the lines the men blinked at one another, unable to realize that the hour they had waited for so long was actually at hand. There was a truce…” Bruce Catton’s Pulitzer prize winning book A Stillness at Appomattox chronicles the final year of the American Civil War. This book taught me a lot more about the Civil War than I ever learned through the public school system. Bruce Catton brought to life the real day to day life of the soldiers and the generals who led them into battle. The day to day life for the regular soldier was not glorious. Many times the regiments were low on supplies such as food and clothing. They lived in the elements. Medical conditions were grotesque because of the lack of advanced equipment and anesthesia. “Discipline was enforced with brutality” as if all the other conditions were not bad enough. The author is graphic in his detail of the people and the places of importance during this time in history. The book is written more from a Northern point of view and so I didn’t get quite the same perspective of the Southern side but still learned more than I knew before. A few chapters into the book the war year of 1864 begins with a changing of the guard again with President Lincoln appointing Ulysses Grant to lead the Army of the Potomac. Grant has an illustrious past. People talked about his being a drunkard but Catton says “He was simply a man infinitely more complex then most people could realize.” Grant, even though he was a West Point graduate, never wanted to be a soldier or to have a life in the military. He wanted to be a teacher. What Grant did bring to the Army of the Potomac was his ability to relate to the soldiers and made them his army. He completely retrained and re-organized the armies, and re-enlisted troops that were going to go home. They all realized that under Grant the Army of the Potomac changed which meant now that the entire war would change. The Battle of the Wilderness was a very unusual battle because it was fought in the woods. The terrain and the trees wouldn’t allow for the smoke to clear and it was dark anyway because of the trees. The men described it as eerie. Both sides fired blindly because of the smoke. Artillery was abandoned because they could not transport it through the woods. So those soldiers became infantry as well. Which meant that the sound of the battle was different. One man described it as “the most terrific musketry firing ever heard on the American continent.” As the wounded fell instead of being quiet and lying still they were crawling all over the ground to get away from the fires that started because of the forest floor. During the battle a number of officers approached Grant at different times, fearful of Lee and his battle prowess. Grant was angered by there cowardice and sent them back to their units to figure out how they were going to beat Lee instead of spending time thinking about what Lee was going to do. By the third day the troops could see that this army was not going to run in defeat. Grant was here to stay and to win. Grant focused not on capturing Richmond, but in destroying Lee’s army. Grant found that Lee’s greatest weakness was his supply line from the Deep South. If Grant could stop the trains from delivering supplies to Lee, then Lee would be forced to concede. The campaign of 1864 was also plagued with some of the mis-management of the past. General Butler could have take Petersburg without opposition and instead wandered around and was locked up by a much smaller Confederate army at Bermuda Hundred. The Confederate works were strong by contained few soldiers. The Confederate commander was General Beauregard. General Smith for the Union wanted to attack but didn’t and Generals Meade and Hancock was never informed that a battle was to be fought. Hancock also didn’t have rations and the map that he was given was in total error. Eventually the Union troops filtered in and fought. The Confederates retreated and in doing so thinned out, and the line finally broke. Grant utilized a facet of the army not much used before. This was the colored troops; the colored men made excellent soldiers. They picked up drills quicker than whites. Ordinary problems were non-existent. They didn’t drink and they didn’t desert. They didn’t like to take orders from non-coms of their own color, and they didn’t hate their former masters. They fought with valor under extreme odds in situations where white troops wouldn’t be risked. By the summer of 1864 the Union army was discouraged again because Grant had not been able to take Richmond and there was still no end in sight, but Grant had not given up. He sent troops to battle day after day, week after week, slowly wearing down Lee and the Confederacy. The South continued to use guerilla warfare, which put Yankee soldiers in a mood to be vengeful. They began to burn and kill everything in their path leaving desolation behind them wherever they marched. By the end of 1864 the Confederacy was visibly failing in manpower, rations, and equipment. When Confederates were taken as prisoners even they said that freedom was worth more than the CSA. Lee was starting the have problems with desertions. Grant knew that the heart of Lee’s soldiers would continue to fight as hard as ever until the day they left. On the final day the Union soldiers were told that “if they hurried this was the day they could finish everything” although that inspired them, they were also promised that once they reached Appomattox Station rations would be handed out. Many of the men later admitted they did so “because they figured it was the quickest way to get breakfast.” After a small skirmish near Appomattox Station Lee decided to surrender his army right before the Union carried out their attack. The Union generals knew the numerical and technical superiority of the North was simply too great to resist forever, that eventually the Southern defenses had to fail somewhere, and when they eventually did it would be all over. When Grant's attempt to advance on Richmond in the summer of 1864 stalled, unlike all previous commanders in the north, he simply moved and tried again. For the next nine months, Union forces sidestepped to their left trying to outflank the Confederates. Eventually the trenches formed a complete semicircle going well south of Richmond. Both sides suddenly saw that the city of Petersburg, about 50 miles south of Richmond, was the key to continuing or ending the war, because it was the only rail junction connecting Richmond to the rest of the Confederacy. Faced with the need to defend a line running continuously from north of Richmond to Petersburg, the Confederates were stretched thinner and thinner. Eventually their line broke. Within a little over a week it was over. The final year of the Civil War was something new in the history of warfare - never before had two large armies remained locked in continuous combat for such a long period of time. In the past the armies would fight, retreat, regroup, and usually meet at some later date and place but in 1864-65 even though they moved around some it was almost one continuous fight to the end. On the final day the Union soldiers were told that “if they hurried this was the day they could finish everything” although that inspired them, they were also promised that once they reached Appomattox Station rations would be handed out. Many of the men later admitted they did so “because they figured it was the quickest way to get breakfast.” After a small skirmish near Appomattox Station Lee decided to surrender his army right before the Union carried out their attack. Bibliography: A Stillness at Appomattox By: Bruce Catton Word Count: 1383
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