Status Updates From The Last Full Measure (The ...

Lee could see the piles of boxes, the neat stacks of cloth bags, wooden crates. He took a step forward, saw the car was packed with powder, munitions, shot and shell for the big guns. He looked at the man, said, "This is just one car. The others, there must be ..."

"No, sir. All like this one."

Lee stared ahead, “How are we - we cannot feed the men. They knew that and they sent me gunpowder."

On the front lines the joy of the soldiers was swept away now by shock. There would be no peace, the deadly spaces between the lines would remain. The men stared across the open ground, one long look at those men, over there, the men so much like them. Now they began to crawl back into their dark holes and huddle below the frozen earthworks in stunned silence.

That these men would fight, and fight so well, was a surprise to many. But Grant saw it in Lincoln’s face, there was no surprise at all, Lincoln had believed from the beginning that war was color-blind. Grant let the troops move past him, a wave of blue uniforms, the sea of black faces pushing forward, the cries and the joy and the tears filling the air, flowing up and around the smiling face of the President.