House Reunited

It was a most precarious moment: Atlanta had been overwhelmed. Columbia surrendered-and burned. Charleston abandoned. The peace conference at Hampton Roads had been fruitless. And the British and French had refused to intervene. The army of Northern Virginia, having struck its own harsh blows against the Union in the six bloodiest weeks of the war, during the see-sawing battles of the Wilderness in Central Virginia in 1864, had wriggled free of the enemy's clutches and fallen back, assuming a defensive position around the cities of Petersburg and Richmond.And across the slim divide of trenches and water lay U.S. Grant's swelling and mighty Army of the Potomac.It was the Confederacy's direst crisis since the start of the war, vaster than the fall of Vicksburg, more terrible than the failure of Gettysburg. But now, a strange emotion prevailed throughout much of the Confederacy. It, as southerners knew, was not the first time in history that defenders had been cut to pieces, starved, demoralized, enervated, and yet had somehow found the will to prevail. They still had four armies in the field, and man for man, some of the finest fighting men in all of history. Their guerrilla fighters-and cavalry-were second to none. And their lineage was impeccable, stretching back to Jamestown colonialists of 1607 to the founding fathers, including George Washington himself. This rekindled and rekindled their resolve. And so did their prayers-and their spirit.And now, confronted by the prospect of losing all, they hoped to find another leader, another George Washington, a figure who could rescue the south. After all the suffering and death, the multitude of exhaustion and despair, such a man-such men-would be the Confederacy's last chance.And in the trenches they believed there was such a man, and across the Confederacy, there were such men. A weary Abraham Lincoln shared this thought-but to him it was a fear. Even now, in this long, bloody conflict, Robert E. Lee and the generals who looked to him for guidance, and many of his men, were as aggressive as ever: not ready to give up, to give in, or to relinquish their Confederate identity. The war was not over, not by a long shot. And the implications for the peace to follow were profound.