University of Virginia Library

10. X.
BY THE LEFT FLANK—FROM THE “HORSE-SHOE” TO THE
CRATER.

Through the flame, the smoke, and the uproar of the
Wilderness thicket, we have seen the two great antagonists,
Lee and Grant, reeling to and fro in that fierce
struggle of the 6th of May.

It was a veritable battle that was fought there—
sudden, unexpected, desperate—and it was the last
pitched battle of the war.

From that moment, all things changed. The revolution
entered upon a new phase. Plainly, Grant could
only wear his opponent out by a policy of “attrition,”
and Lee accepted the challenge, and prepared for the
ordeal.

To meet the blows of mace or battle-axe in the days
of chivalry, men put on armor. To sustain the impact
of Grant's sledge-hammer, in May, 1864, Lee cased his
lines in earthworks. The “attrition” of logs and dirt
was better than the attrition of flesh, blood, and muscle.
So after the 6th of May, Lee drew a line of
bayonets across Grant's path, and, in front of this steel
hedge, threw up breastworks.

The result vindicated the good judgment of the first
captain of modern times.

Between the Rapidan and the Appomattox, about
two hundred thousand men threw themselves against
about sixty thousand, behind these works, and failed
utterly in breaking through.

What this obstinate hammering of the Federal Thor
cost him, the official reports will show. The exhibit is
frightful. The “pegging away” programme had resulted,
on the 5th of June, that is to say, in one month
after the crossing of the Rapidan, in a Federal loss of
sixty thousand men—about the number of Lee's army.

To follow now in outline, but step by step, the great
wave of invasion. Every day saw an engagement more
or less bloody. Two or three times a month, however,
the Federal commander rushed madly against his antagonist
behind these fatal works—a tremendous conflict
followed,—and the blood and death of these red
days was frightful enough to distinguish them from
the rest, projecting them, in bold relief, dark, terrible
and tragic, from the rest of the great war canvas.

These fights were called the battles of the Horse-Shoe,
of Cold Harbour, and the Crater. Therein horror
culminated; blood did not flow, it gushed.

On the night of the 6th of May, in the Wilderness,
Gen. Grant awoke to the consciousness that he could
make no headway against Lee there; and, as we have
seen, he moved rapidly by his left flank toward Spottsylvania
Court House—that is to say, on the straight
road to Richmond.

Lee had foreseen this movement, and had prepared
for it. From the MS. statement of a confidential
officer of his staff, we take the following lines:

The writer of these lines attributes thus the movement
of Lee to the intuition of genius. It was, however,
the result of military calculation. Grant was
defeated every where in the Wilderness; thus he was
certain to advance or retire. He was not retiring;
then he was advancing. The crack of cavalry carbines,
on the morning of the 7th, from the direction of Todd's
tavern, showed the truth of this surmise. In fact,
Grant's entire force was moving; it hastened to Spottsylvania
Court House as rapidly as Stuart's cavalry
would permit it; and when it reached that point, there
again was the gray lion, Lee, in the path. Fitz Lee,
with his horsemen, had stubbornly held their ground
there—the gray infantry had now arrived.

Warren, hastening on to seize the key position,
struck up against the head of Longstreet's column on
the 8th, attacked with vigor, was repulsed with loss,
could, therefore, make no headway, and waited for the
rest. On the morning of May 9th, the two armies
found themselves in face of each other—the Federal
forces formed along the north bank of the Po river,
the Southern lines holding the south bank, and thus
barring the way to Richmond.

Thus Lee—that stubborn obstacle—was still there
—worse than all he was entrenched. From right to
left extended, in front of Gen. Grant, a line of earthworks
which he must turn, or charge.

He tried the latter first, on the famous “12th of
May.”

On the 10th, he had already assaulted Laurel Hill,
on the Confederate left, where there were no breastworks,
and had recoiled from it with a loss of five or
six thousand men. It was a hardy decision which the
Federal commander now adopted—to storm Lee's front.

The point selected for assault was the famous “Horse-Shoe”—of
bloody memory to the Southerners.

Did the reader of these lines fight there—either
clad in blue and attacking, or in gray, and receiving
that attack? If so, no reference to the ground is necessary.
But for other readers, a few words are indispensable.

However great Lee was as an engineer, and however
careful in selecting his ground, and in forming his
order of battle, that ground was often selected, that
order of battle formed by his subordinates—nay, by
the very rank and file.

A brigade marched, halted, found the enemy in
front, and straightway the men began to throw up a
dirt breastwork. This was done without orders, without
spades—at hap-hazard, and with the bayonet.
Thus it often happened that when Gen. Lee came to
the front, he found his line of battle formed—sometimes
according to rule, sometimes utterly opposed to
all rules.

From this originated the Horse-Shoe. It was a salient

projected from the main line—a species of triangle,
nearly north of the Court House,—and presented
a temptation to the enemy which no well-regulated
military mind was capable of resisting. As soon as
Gen. Grant saw it, he determined to attack it.

Now, why, it may be asked, if the position was so
dangerous, did not Gen. Lee change his line, shortening
and strengthening it? The reply is, that to retire
a line of battle in face of the enemy is easier to speak
of than to do. So the Horse-Shoe was left there.

On the morning of May 12th, Gen. Grant delivered
his great blow at this weak point in his adversary's
cuirass.

All night his forces were concentrating in front of
it. His design was to make a wedge of his best-tempered
troops, drive it into the Horse-Shoe, split that
stubborn obstacle, his opponent's line, and then, throwing
his whole army into the opening, separate Lee's
wings, and destroy him.

The plan was excellent. Humanly speaking, with
Lee's line once broken, his army was effectually disrupted.
Grant saw victory hovering for him in the
dim dawn of that May morning.

As the first beams of day began to struggle through
the mist, the great war-engine began to move. The
crack corps selected for the Federal wedge advanced
without noise, came on the Confederate skirmishers
some hundreds of yards in front, walked over them
without firing a shot, for fear of giving the alarm, and
then, as day began to dawn, the column of assault
dashed with wild cheers up to the Horse-Shoe.

The result was terrible—the blow almost mortal.

The attack was wholly unexpected, and, as the artillery
defending that portion of the line had been retired
on the evening before, its warning voice, calling to
arms, was not heard.

The Confederate infantry manning the works, woke
from sleep to feel the bayonet thrust into their breasts.
The Federal infantry mounted the works almost unopposed,
swarmed in the trenches, fusilladed the half-awake
Southerners, bayoneted some, stabbed, thrust,
cut at others, drove the whole force from the Horse-Shoe,
in spite of heroic resistance, and a rolling thunder
of cheers rose from the woods, electric with victory.

We have said “in spite of heroic resistance,” and the
resistance of those half-awake, almost unarmed men,
was heroic. It is nothing to trained soldiers to fight in
open field, in broad day, with lines formed, artillery in
position, the enemy there in front, man against man,
bayonet against bayonet, with the banner floating in
the sun, and the army leaders in front, directing all.
Then, even the timid gather heart, and do their duty
in action; shoulder to shoulder the men advance to the
assault.

But to be surprised in the dark hour just preceding
day—to be attacked in sleep—to be waked from a
dream of home, and wife, and children, by a bayonet-thrust—to
start up and utter a cry, with which blood
mingles—to shout “to arms!” and then to fall back
in a pool of gore—to see your enemy swarming everywhere,
and shooting down all who resist—to hear diabolical
cries, hoarse exclamations, curses, menaces, yells,
and to feel that all is over before the fight has begun—

that is enough to try stout nerves, and test soldiership.
The men who fight then are brave; heroic resistance
to an attack like that shows race and blood. The resistance
of the Southern infantry in the Horse-Shoe
that morning was the resistance of true soldiers. Starting
from slumber, their first thought was the musket,
and the clutch on the weapon followed. Then commenced
a fight in the trenches which had in it something
diabolical and fearful. Men fell and died in the
darkness; breasts were pierced by unseen bayonets;
invisible clubbed muskets dealt blows in the dark; a
wild and terrible wrestle, as of nightmares incarnate,
took place in the trenches.

Quick reports, then the sudden crack of a fusillade,
then the roar of a few cannon—that was all. The
Federal troops dashed on the guns, and tore the lanyards
from the hands of the cannoneers. Capt. William
Page Carter bravely rushed to his single gun,
with his own hands fired it until the enemy caught his
arm, and made him prisoner; then, that last gun silenced,
the drama ended.

The Horse-Shoe was taken, and two or three thousand
men of Johnson's division, with eighteen pieces
of artillery, just hurried forward, captured. Federal
cheers vibrated in the morning air above the woods and
orchards—the Confederates had ceased to fight—
were dead, dying, or retreating.

Then came the moment when great generals crush
their opponents. If the Northern army had poured
into that fatal gap, and rushed straight upon Lee, it is
not too much to say that he would have been driven
from his position. But its movements were delayed.

Time passed. When Gen. Grant had made his preparations
and advanced, he found his opponent in a new
position—with a line straighter, shorter, stronger—
and every gray soldier ready to receive the great assault.

It was made, and it raged from dawn to evening,
but accomplished nothing. The Southern lines, fighting
in the open field, did not budge an inch. When
night descended, the great success of the Horse-Shoe
had brought no result to the Federal commander, except
the mere capture of some prisoners and artillery.
Then with night came rest; new breastworks rose,
crowned with artillery; the Confederates were laughing
and saying, “Come on, we are ready!”

In front of this line Gen. Grant remained more
than a week, moving to and fro, reconnoitering, demonstrating,
feeling everywhere for an opening in his
adversary's breastplate. There was none, and yet that
opening was indispensable for successful assault. The
hammer had been clanging for weeks now, and no
joint was loosened. It was evident that the anvil
would not break. Somewhere the sword's point must
glide in, but that somewhere eluded the most vigilant
search.

Demonstrations, movements, “manœuvring”—the
much despised manœuvring—amounted to nothing.
Grant's crescent-shaped line revolved around his opponent's
right; but there, when it arrived, was the Leecrescent
awaiting it. Another revolution—there still
was Lee.

Then, one morning, when the Confederate commander
was about to extend his right still farther, to

meet a new movement of his adversary, a swift-riding
courier brought him a dispatch, which he read with
calm attention. Grant was moving his left flank
toward Hanover Junction; he had given up all further
attacks upon Lee in Spottsylvania. Grant hastened
foward through the woods and fields; headed straight
for Hanover Junction; arrived; threw a column over
the North Anna—and saw Lee awaiting him.

He reached the river on the 23rd of May; on the
26th he had given up in despair the attempt to defeat
Lee there. Some hard fighting is summed up and
passed over in that brief statement. Were we to
describe all the hard fighting of this bloody campaign,
the present sketch would be swollen into a volume.

One feature of this occasion, however, is worthy of
note—Lee's peculiar order of battle. Between the
two commanders lay the river. Grant's object was to
force its passage. To accomplish this, with the least
possible loss, he threw a column over on Lee's left, and
one on his right, thinking, doubtless, that this movement
would induce his adversary to retire his line.

The line was not retired. Lee seemed determined
here to act upon the maxim of Napoleon never to do
what your enemy wishes you to do—if for no other
reason, simply because he wishes you to do it. So,
instead of retiring, Lee threw back his right and left
wings, clinging with his centre to the river—his army
taking thus the form of two sides of an equilateral
triangle. One might have fancied a grim humour in
this movement. It forced Gen. Grant to make two
river crossings if he wished to reinforce either wing by
moving troops from the other. The “situation” evidently

displeased the Federal commander. He recrossed
his columns, and on the night of the 26th
withdrew quietly, and with secrecy, toward the lower
Pamunkey, intending to cross at Hanovertown, and
hurry foward upon Richmond.

On the 27th he was over at Hanovertown; hastened
on; reached the Tottapotamoi, a sluggish stream of
the Hanover slashes, and there, on the southern bank
of the water course, was Lee.

Then the thunder recommenced. The great hammering
operation went on night and day—infantry
wrestled, cavalry clashed, artillery roared. The days
were waked and put to sleep with thunder.

In Grant's path still lay the old lion, shaking from
his mane every javelin launched against him, and
watching his opportunity to spring, or ready to meet
the spring of his huge adversary. It was at Cold Harbour,
on the 3rd of June, that they clutched.

Reaching that point by his incessant flank movement,
on the 1st of June, Gen. Grant, on the 3rd,
made another assault like his attack on the Horse-Shoe.

This was the battle of Cold Harbour, Number Two.

Strange freak of chance,—the unskilled reader may
exclaim,—which rolled the wave of battle to the New
Kent fields a second time, pouring out more blood
there, now, in June, 1864, than there was poured out
in June, 1862. No—in war there is no chance;
there is law. There is a goddess more powerful than
the Greek Necessity, with her iron wedge—it is the
Terrain. In all coming ages, as in June, 1862 and
1864, an enemy attempting to force the Chickahominy

and assail Richmond, must fight near Cold Harbour.

Grant was compelled to fight there, or to continue
his Wandering-Jew march—and he fought.

As in Spottsylvania, he selected early dawn for his
time of attack, and at dawn, on June 3, he assailed
Lee's whole front—not manœuvring at all, but attacking
as the bull attacks—head down, and determined
to sweep away every obstacle, or crack the os frontis.

Thus, that fight was not a battle so much as a butchery.
No other word so well describes it. The mad
combat was over in thirty minutes, and it cost Gen.
Grant thirteen thousand men. Lee's loss was about as
many score.

How to describe such a conflict? There is nothing
to describe. There was no brainwork of the commander
about it; it was simply and purely a brute
rush upon breastworks, and a carnival of death.

It may not be just to Gen. Grant to say that, with
the information before him, he ought not to have
made that attack, for all the authorities go to show that
in the Federal army at that time, there was an almost
universal conviction that the Army of Northern Virginia
was nearly disorganized aud thoroughly demoralized
by the tremendous battles of the Wilderness and
Spottsylvania. Grant, doubtless, believed that he had
no other alternative than to force the Chickahominy;
that a short, sharp, and decisive blow might be bloody,
but would attain that object; that the attempt was
thus worth making, in view of the mighty results
attending success.

Let military critics decide the question. We narrate.

At half-past four in the morning, Grant made a
resolute attack on Lee's entire front. The men moved
forward bravely got nearly; up to the breastworks in
many places; did all they could; but every where, in
thirty minutes—that is, by five o'clock—were hurled
back by the merciless Confederate fire—or they were
dead and dying in front of the works.

Gen. Lee sent to A. P. Hill to ask the result of the
attack on him. Hill took the officer with him, in
front of his line of works, and showed him the Federal
dead piled up and lying on each other.

“Tell Gen. Lee it is the same all along my front,”
he said.

And it was the same, or nearly, along the front of
the whole army.

The Federal troops had done all that men could do.
The impossible was beyond their strength. They felt
the hopeless character of the undertaking after that
first charge, and doggedly refused to make another
attempt. The order from Gen. Grant was transmitted
to the corps commanders, thence to the commanders of
divisions, thence to the brigadiers, thence to the colonels,
thence to the captains, and the captains drew
their swords, placed themselves in front of their men,
and ordered, “Forward!”

No response came. The men did not move. The
old soldiers of the Army of the Potomac knew what
they could do, and what they could not do. They
could not carry the Confederate works, and they did
not intend to go and get killed in front of them. This

is the Federal account of what took place in that army
on the morning of June 3, 1864.

About one o'clock in the day, a profound silence
settled down upon the two armies. Not even a skirmisher's
musket cracked. Gen. Grant had lost, as we
have said, thirteen thousand men. His whole loss,
from the Rapidan to this time, amounted to about
sixty thousand. Lee's was about eighteen thousand.
That was the result of attacking breastworks and of
fighting behind them. Taking the casualties as a test,
those breastworks had tripled Lee's strength.

The bloody work of June 3, settled the question
whether Gen. Grant could force the Chickahominy.
He found that movement beyond his strength, and, on
the 12th, recommenced his left flank advance—this
time across the Chickahominy, and across the James,
on Petersburg. There he would commence the siege
of Richmond.

From the first, that had been the true card to play.
There were only two men who seemed to know it—
Lee and McClellan.

Lee had said, as far back as 1861, that this was the
weak side of Richmond, for an attack there threatened
the Confederate communications with the South. And
McClellan, after his defeat at Cold Harbour, had
urged, as Gen. Halleck's letters show, the adoption of
the very scheme which Gen. Grant now carried into
effect.

What was declared absurd in 1862, was now, in 1864,
seen to be dictated by the soundest military science.
Defeated at Cold Harbour, Grant made for Petersburg,
and nearly surprised and seized the town; but Lee arrived,

and a powerful line of works was drawn around
the place. By the last of July, Gen. Grant had sat
down before Petersburg, determined, apparently, on
not only “fighting it out on this line, if it took all the
summer,” but many summers.

Honour to obstinate resolve, and the heart that does
not despair! Grant had them.

We have placed at the head of this sketch the titles
of the three great struggles, par excellence, which
marked the immense campaign, extending from the
crossing of the Rapidan, in May, 1864, to the capture
of Petersburg, in April, 1865. In the fighting of that
bloody year—fighting incessant, stubborn, never-relaxing,
full of trained fury and mathematical impetus
—in this terrible carnival of death, three days are
bloodiest, shining with a light more baleful than the
rest. These were the days of the Horse-Shoe, of Cold
Harbour, and what we call the “Crater”—that is to
say, the assault following the explosion of the mine
near Petersburg, on the 30th of July. To this latter
we now proceed.

The mine was devised by one of the Federal colonels,
and was long looked upon very coldly by both
Generals Meade and Burnside. Gen. Grant seemed
not to be aware of the project.

The originator of the idea, nevertheless, worked at
it with all the patience of an inventor, who feels that,
however much he may be disregarded now, he will,
some day, astonish the world.

The point selected was near Petersburg, on the
south bank of the river, and as the opposing lines here
approached very near each other, it seemed feasible to

run a subterranean passage beneath the Confederate
works, and blow them up.

Once undertaken, the work was prosecuted with
ardor. The workmen successfully eluded the attention
of the Confederates. The dirt was carried off in
cracker-boxes; the long hole grew longer; the mine
was becoming a great success—and then Gen. Burnside
began to see in it a very brilliant project.

Toward the end of July it was done. It was about
five hundred feet long; had lateral galleries; in these
galleries were placed kegs of powder, sufficient, it was
supposed, to blow up a mountain; all was ready.

Then came the question how to utilize the grand explosion.
It was not worth the while of Gen. Grant to
go to all this trouble only to destroy a company or a
regiment, at the point in question. Obviously, the
project admitted of greater results. Lee's lines would
be broken; his defences overthrown; if, amid the
noise and confusion, the smoke and the uproar, a crack
division were to charge over the debris, push on, seize
a high crest behind the “Crater,” and root themselves
firmly there, would not Lee's line be disrupted, his
position right and left be rendered untenable, and the
most important results, if not the destruction of the
Confederates, be attainable?

The prospect was exciting, and all at once a vivid
interest in the famous mine was betrayed by the higher
officers, who, up to that time, had looked sidewise at
the cracker-box operation as the dream of a visionary.

The movement to seize the crest in rear was speedily
determined upon, and elaborate preparations were
made to deliver the great blow, and follow it up.

All at once, however, a singular obstacle presented
itself—an embarrassing question. What division
should make the great charge? Should a white division
or a black division be selected?

A division of the white troops was selected—by
“pulling straws,” Gen. Grant afterwards said, in his
quiet, sarcastic way. The negro troops were not to
have the honour—they were to follow.

“The first and great cause of disaster,” said the Congressional
Committee, which afterwards investigated
the facts, “was the employment of white troops instead
of black troops to make the charge!”

What a statement! Why that “unkindest cut of
all” to the brave Army of the Potomac? Did they
deserve it?—that army of veterans, who had poured out
their blood upon half a hundred battle-fields, who had
borne aloft the United States flag amid the thunder of
such conflicts as the world has rarely seen, who had
met the whole power of the Confederacy for three
mortal years; standing erect where the ground was
slippery with blood; fighting still, on fields where hope
had deserted them; maintaining, in the dark day as in
the bright, in the tempest as in the sunshine, that heart
of hope which springs from courage and devotion!
Unkindest of all, truly, was that cut of the Congressional
Committee's poinard—“The first and great
cause of disaster was the employment of white instead
of black troops to make the charge!”

At half-past four, on the morning of July 30th, a
great roar, heard for thirty miles, came from the point
selected, and under the feet of Lee's soldiers manning
the breastworks opened the crater of a volcano.

Men were hurled into the air, mere mangled corpses,
or torn to pieces where they stood. Cannon were
lifted as by the hand of a giant and thrown hundreds
of feet. Where a moment before had stretched a line
of breastworks, defended by infantry and artillery, was
now seen a hideous pit one hundred and fifty feet
long, sixty feet wide, and thirty feet deep.

From this had issued a great column of flame and
smoke, as of Etna in travail; and now, this terrible
crater was a mass of mangled bodies, broken gun-carriages,
barrels of cannon; a heterogeneous, hideous,
smoking debris of burnt flesh, burnt equipments, and
men gasping in the death agony, with flame licking
and smoke suffocating them.

Then came the charge. A white division rushed
forward, followed by negro troops, and before any
resistance could be made by the Confederates, they had
passed over the narrow space between the lines,
mounted the acclivity, reached the Crater—they were
within the Confederate lines.

So far, all had gone well, and there seemed every
probability that Gen. Lee would be forced to fight a
desperate battle for the possession of the commanding
crest in rear of the point at which the mine had been
exploded. That crest was not a mere point of military
advantage, but a key position. Holding it, as we have
said, the enemy would be firmly planted in the very
centre of his line of battle; they would command the
works to the right and left of it, rendering them untenable;
at one blow Lee would be driven to take up an
interior line, and that is an operation of the utmost
delicacy when pushed by a victorious enemy.

The importance of a rapid and vigorous advance to
the crest referred to has never been called in question.
That it was not done, profoundly enraged the North,
and especially the Congressional Committee; but the
origin of the complete failure of the affair appears to
us attributable to other causes than the “employment
of white instead of black troops to charge.”

Instead of commenting, we narrate. Let the reader
judge.

The “white division” charged, reached the Crater,
stumbled over the debris, were suddenly met by a merciless
fire of artillery, enfilading them right and left—
of infantry fusillading them in front; faltered, hesitated,
were badly led, lost heart, gave up the plan of
seizing the crest, huddled into the Crater, man on top
of man, company mingling with company; and then,
upon this disordered, unstrung, quivering mass of human
beings, white and black—for the black troops
had followed—was poured a hurricane of shot, shell,
canister, musketry, which made the hideous Crater a
slaughter-pen, horrible and frightful beyond the power
of words.

All order was lost; all idea of charging the crest
abandoned. Lee's infantry was seen concentrating for
the carnival of death; his artillery was massing to
destroy the remnant of the charging division; those who
deserted the Crater to scramble over the debris and run
back, were shot down; then, all that was left to that
struggling, huddling, shuddering mass of blacks and
whites in the pit, was to shrink lower, evade the horrible
mitraille, and wait for a counter-charge of their
friends, to rescue them, or surrender.

Such had been the result of the great explosion and
charge to cut Lee's line—a mass of disorganized
troops, torn to pieces by a fire which they scarcely
attempted to return. They were swallowed up in that
pit which their own hands had dug; they were being
butchered. Gen. Mahone, turning away from the
spectacle, muttered:

“Stop the fire! It makes me sick!”

Of the force that charged there, a few only went
back—the rest were dead, wounded, or prisoners.

The Federal loss was four thousand men.

So ended the affair of the “Crater,” as the Confederates
called it—the “Mine,” as the Federals entitled
it.

It was the singular termination of a singular campaign;
for in all the annals of the war, there is no
stranger chapter than that over-land campaign of Gen.
Grant. Beginning with a blind, invisible combat in
the depths of a tangled thicket on the Rapidan, it
ended for the moment here, on the shores of the Appomattox,
in a hideous Crater, where the dead and dying,
like the rest, were torn to pieces, amid smoke and
flame, with every circumstance of horror. The war
had thus grown brutal, terrific, instinct with a species
of barbarous fury. Men no longer fought pitched battles
in open fields; they grappled in thickets, or in
dark mornings before they would see each other, or
they were hurled into the air by subterranean explosions.
To kill—no matter how—seemed the great
aim and object of the combatants. The wild beast was
aroused, and in the very clergyman in the pulpit that

spirit of the wild animal is dormant. Judge if it is
wanting in the rank and file of an army.

It was this spirit of the tiger that we have seen at
its revels, on the days of the Horse-shoe, Cold Harbour,
and the Crater.

But nothing decisive was accomplished.

It is true that Lee's rapier was wearing. The
sledge-hammer could not break it, but “attrition”
could wear away the blade. Slowly, it grew thinner.
The edge cut still; how it cut the world knows—at
Hatcher's Run, Hare's Hill, The White Oak Road—in
a hundred places—but the time was approaching when
it must give way.

In the last of these sketches, we shall show the
reader that keen and trenchant weapon flashing its old
lightnings in the grasp of Lee.

It snapped at Appomattox in that stalwart hand:
but, when Lee returned the stump to its scabbard.
there was not a single stain upon the blade.

It was the mirror, like its master, of antique faith
and honour.