A Stillness At Appomatox

12/12/13
P.1
A Stillness at Appomattox
A Stillness at Appomattox gives and inside view of what happened during the civil war. This novel covers the final years of the war through the surrender of Lee and his rebel army. It was not simply about the issue of slavery, but about the inability of people to compromise and look outside of their ingrained and traditional beliefs. A Stillness at Appomattox does not go into the reasons for the fighting, only that drawn-out descent into surrender by an out-manned rebel army, and the deterioration of the supplies and even the will to go on by so many individuals on both sides. While one of the final gripping scenes describes that meeting of a victorious Grant and a defeated Lee, this is a book about ordinary men caught up in extraordinary events.
The first important battle described in the book is known as the Wilderness campaign, near Fredericksburg. But, as one can easily perceive, war was beginning to wear thin on everyone, and the glory days and enthusiastic battle cries were indeed gone. As Catton quotes Emory Upton: “I have never heard our generals utter a word of encouragement, either before or after entering a battle….Neither have I ever seen a general thank his troops after the action for the gallantry they have displayed” (Catton 111). Generals, as well as the ordinary soldiers, were tiring of the struggles. The fact is that "no man had been prepared for the extraordinary changes the war had brought" (Catton 174). One of these changes turned into what Catton describes as a sort of "gentleness" with the enemies.
At the same time, an undercurrent of eventual conciliation runs through this book, as Catton cites Lincoln who "had tried to warn North and South that they could never travel on separate roads. Win or lose, someday they would have to get along with each other again…" (Catton 175). This sentiment, even though it may not be expressed in the hearts of those who faced enemy fire, and watched friends and foe alike be killed, is really the core of this book.
In reading about these final days, and looking back on what brought the armies - North as well as South to Appomattox, "victory" is too shallow a word, because there could be no winner, only a defeated and its conquerors. Grant, as the author points out, that evening wrote a note to Robert E. Lee suggesting a surrender. "Out from the Rebel lines came a lone rider, a young officer in a gray uniform, galloping madly, a staff in his hand with a white flag fluttering from the end of it….the firing stopped and the watching Federals saw the Southerners wheeling their guns back and stacking their muskets as if they expected to fight no more" (Catton 379).
Few really had a heart into the idea of having to fight and kill fellow Americans, mostly for reasons they never understood clearly, other than they were given orders to carry out. Catton has personalized the last year of the Civil War, but he has not made it any easier for us to accept.