A Stillness at Appomattox by Bruce Catton Page A

regiment could muster only 207 enlisted men for duty—and the veterans would make heavy-handed remarks on the fact; when a new regiment came in they would ask what division this was. 20
    Certain cavalry commands met a similar fate, and got just as much sympathy. Some of these had been in camp at Washington for a refit, waiting with perfect resignation for the slow processes of government to provide them with remounts. These abruptly found themselves deprived of sabers, of carbines, and of all hope of new horses, given infantry muskets instead, and sent down to the Rapidan on foot. A Connecticut heavy artillery regiment, meeting such a command of dismounted Maryland cavalry, asked incautiously: "Where are your horses?" A Marylander replied sourly: "Gone to fetch your heavy guns." The Official Records contain a plaintive and quite useless protest by an outraged colonel, who recited that he led a spanking new regiment of Pennsylvania cavalry into Washington that spring—1,200 men, well mounted, disciplined, drilled, and equipped—only to be ordered to turn in his horses and weapons, draw muskets, and consider his command infantry thenceforward. 21
    All of this pleased the infantry greatly, cavalry in general not being too popular with foot soldiers, and there was admiration for the general who had brought it all to pass. With this admiration came a dawning respect for his power. Pulling the heavy artillery and the dismounted cavalry down to the Rapidan meant that Washington was being left almost defenseless. In earlier times, White House and War Department had insisted on keeping 40,000 men or more within the Washington lines, even though no enemies ever came within miles of them. If this new general could override that insistence he must have prodigious strength. Apparently he could have things just about the way he wanted them, and the army would move with greater power. At the very least, it seemed that the country's strength was going to be used. When he rode the lines, a soldier wrote that the men would 'look with awe at Grant's silent figure." 22
    Not all of the changes were popular. One which was bitterly resented by thousands of the best soldiers in the army was a shake-up which consolidated the five infantry corps into three. Actually, this was none of Grant's doing, Meade having put at in the works before Grant took over, but it was announced while all the other changes were taking place and it was generally accepted as part of Grant's program. Meade seems to have made the move partly because he felt that the army would work better with fewer and larger units, and partly because there were not as many as five qualified corps commanders in the army anyway. The consolidation enabled him to shelve several generals who had been withering on the vine—the best of them, probably, crusty and slow-moving George Sykes, famous because of the work his Regulars had done in the early days.
    What made this shake-up unpopular with so many men was the fact that the I Corps and the III Corps ceased to exist, their brigades being distributed among the three corps which survived. These two corps had been famous and their men had been cocky, wearing their corps badges with vast pride, and they were brought almost to the verge of mutiny by the change. (One army historian, writing more than twenty years later, asserted that "the wound has never yet wholly healed in the heart of many a brave and patriotic soldier.") 23 The two organizations had been wrecked at Gettysburg and it had never been possible, somehow, to repair the damage and bring them up to proper strength. Yet the consolidation was unfortunate. Heretofore, each corps had had its own individuality and its own tradition, and these had done much for morale. Just as the three which remained were striving to digest the miscellaneous lot of new recruits which were coming in, they were given the unhappy brigades and divisions from the two corps which had been abolished. The result