Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination That Changed America Forever

Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination That Changed America Forever by Bill O'Reilly, Martin Dugard Read Free Book Online

Book: Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination That Changed America Forever by Bill O'Reilly, Martin Dugard Read Free Book Online
Authors: Bill O'Reilly, Martin Dugard
Tags: United States, History, Civil War Period (1850-1877)
into the woods to hunt for dinner, they simply walk away from the war. And they keep on walking until they reach their homes weeks and months later—or lie down to die as they desert, too weak to take another step.
    Lee’s optimism has been replaced by the heavy pall of defeat. “His face was still calm, as it always was,” wrote one enlisted man. “But his carriage was no longer erect, as his soldiers had been used to seeing it. The troubles of these last days had already plowed great furrows in his forehead. His eyes were red as if with weeping, his cheeks sunken and haggard, his face colorless. No one who looked upon him then, as he stood there in full view of the disastrous end, can ever forget the intense agony written on his features.”
    His hope rests on forage wagons now out scouring the countryside
in search of food. He anxiously awaits their return, praying they will be overflowing with grains and smoked meats and leading calves and pigs to be slaughtered.
    The wagons come back empty.
    The countryside is bare. There are no rations for Lee and his men. The soldiers become frantic, eating anything they can find: cow hooves, tree bark, rancid raw bacon, and hog and cattle feed. Some have taken to secreting packhorses or mules away from the main group, then quietly slaughtering and eating them. Making matters worse, word now reaches Lee that Union cavalry intercepted a column of supply wagons that raced out of Richmond just before the fall. The wagons were burned and the teamsters taken prisoner.
    Lee and his army are in the great noose of Grant’s making, which is squeezing tighter and tighter with every passing hour.
     
     
    Lee must move before Grant finds him. His fallback plan is yet another forced march, this one to the city of Danville, where more than a million rations allegedly await. Danville, however, is a hundred miles south. As impossible as it is to think of marching an army that far on empty stomachs, it is Lee’s only hope.
    Lee could surrender right then and there. But it isn’t in his character. He is willing to demand incredible sacrifice to avoid the disgrace of defeat.
    A cold rain falls on the morning of April 5. Lee gives the order to move out. It is, in the minds of one Confederate, “the cruelest marching order the commanders had ever given the men in four years of fighting.” Units of infantry, cavalry, and artillery begin slogging down the road. Danville is a four-day march—if they have the energy to make it. “It is now,” one soldier writes in his diary, “a race of life or death.”
    They get only seven miles before coming to a dead halt at a Union roadblock outside Jetersville. At first it appears to be no more than a small cavalry force. But a quick look through Lee’s field glasses tells him differently. Soldiers are digging trenches and fortifications along the road, building the berms and breastworks that will protect them from rebel bullets, and then fortifying them with fallen trees and fence rails.

    Lee gallops Traveller to the front and assesses the situation. Part of him wants to make a bold statement by charging into the Union works in a last grand suicidal hurrah, but Lee’s army has followed him so loyally because of not only his brilliance but also his discretion. Sometimes knowing when not to fight is just as important to a general’s success as knowing how to fight.
    And this is not a time to engage.
    Lee quickly swings his army west in a grand loop toward the town of Paineville. The men don’t travel down one single road but follow a series of parallel arteries connecting the hamlets and burgs of rural Virginia. The countryside is rolling and open in some places, in some forested and in others swampy. Creeks and rivers overflowing their banks from the recent rains drench the troops at every crossing. On any other day, the Army of Northern Virginia might not have minded. But with so many miles to march, soaking shoes and socks will eventually mean the

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