THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 8, 1995 TAG: 9510060064
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY EARL SWIFT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 190 lines
FROM ATOP a Southside bluff the Army of Northern Virginia seemed a confused river. Gray-shirted troops sprinted rifleless across the shallow valley below. Horses loosed from their teams scattered for their lives. Abandoned wagons littered the landscape.
What had hung together as a dwindling but resolute fighting force was now, on this afternoon of April 6, 1865, in terrified shambles. Gen. Robert E. Lee, climbing to the bluff, was shocked at the sight. ``My God,'' he gasped. ``Has the army been dissolved?''
His question, as it turned out, was three days premature. But it was here, in the valley carved by a rivulet named Sayler's Creek, that an all-but-forgotten firefight sealed the fate of the Confederate army.
Today the valley is the centerpiece of a unique historical tour on which Civil War buffs can relive the last, desperate week of Lee's 58,000-man command as it fled from Petersburg to surrender at Appomattox.
At 18 waysides along the route, recordings detail the skirmishes and all-out battles that accompanied the flight. Between these pull-offs lies beautiful, rolling countryside - and tobacco fields, bullet-holed homesteads and narrow, winding farm roads changed little in 130 years.
Lee's Retreat'' wends through the Southside on roads that follow the cartpaths of the 19th century, enabling modern tourists to travel the same ground as their military forebears.
That ground was blood-soaked in 1865. Forced out of Petersburg when railroads supplying the city were captured by the Union, Lee - who died 125 years ago this week - headed west along the Appomattox River, his goal a shipment of much-needed food in Amelia Court House.
From there he planned to turn south to North Carolina, where his troops would join other Confederate forces and improve the odds they faced against a larger federal army.
But a mix-up occurred. No food awaited in Amelia Court House. The hungry Southerners pushed farther west, toward another shipment in Farmville, the bluecoats gaining on them all the way.
They caught up with the rebels at Sayler's Creek.
In three battles fought there on the afternoon and evening of April 6, Lee lost a quarter of his remaining army and much of his wagon train. Hundreds of federal and Confederate troops were killed and maimed by cannon fire, in suicidal charges across open fields, in hand-to-hand fighting on the creekbed and around isolated farmhouses.
As dusk fell, the war's last major fight degenerated into sickening butchery: Witnesses saw ``men kill each other with bayonets and the butts of muskets, and even bite each other's throats and ears and noses, rolling on the ground like wild beasts.''
Broken, beaten, surviving Southerners limped on, but both sides knew that Sayler's Creek had brought near the end. ``If the thing is pressed,'' Union cavalry Gen. Phil Sheridan reported after the battle, ``I think that Lee will surrender.''
Responded President Abraham Lincoln: ``Let the thing be pressed.''
Never heard of Sayler's Creek? Then get in your car and head for the Petersburg National Battlefield, where you'll learn of the months-long siege that preceded Lee's abandonment of the city.
Even if you have no interest in the Civil War, the battlefield's a lovely way to pass time, particularly if you take the time to get out and walk some of its trails. Wildlife abounds, and the grounds are beautifully maintained.
In the visitors center you'll find maps and booklets explaining the retreat tour. A particularly handy choice is ``From Petersburg to Appomattox'' by Christopher M. Calkins, available for $2.25 and packed with interesting photos and historical tidbits.
You'll also find cassettes describing the sights awaiting you. Skip buying one, for at each of the tour's stops, solar-powered radio stations broadcast the same recordings. You need only tune your car's radio to 1610-AM to hear them.
The first stop is Sutherland Station, just off U.S. 460, a half-hour's drive from the Petersburg battlefield. The wayside here sets the pattern for those to come: A large sign depicts the entire retreat route, marks your present whereabouts, and offers a one-paragraph description of the action.
Tune your radio, and you learn that here the federals captured the railroad supplying Petersburg, prompting the Confederate retreat. A few yards away stands the Fork Inn, a former roadhouse used as a hospital after the fighting.
As with the Petersburg battlefield - and, for that matter, the rest of the tour - Sutherland Station offers attractions that have little to do with the war. Across the road is Olgers Store, opened in 1908, closed 80 years later and now a museum ``to yester years gone by.''
It may be open; on weekdays, it's just as likely not. Bunnies can be found hopping around the yard, near an outbuilding ominously labeled the ``Olgers Fur Co.''
From here the retreat takes you west on State Route 708, a two-laner that wriggles through tobacco fields and stands of pine to the Namozine Church, a simple structure built in 1847 and the scene of a skirmish between rebels and Gen. George Armstrong Custer's Union cavalry.
Farther down the road, past a large clear-cut and an ancient, clapboard school-turned-hunting club, lies Amelia Court House, a postcard-worthy village built around an impressive courthouse square where Lee and his men camped and asked for handouts from the locals. One highlight is a huge stone tobacco warehouse on the way into downtown, built in the 19th century and now a tire dealership.
To the southwest on Route 671 is Jetersville, still not much more than the ``scarcely a dozen residences'' that greeted Union troops when they rode in ahead of Lee on April 5. There's a swinging bench hanging from a tree near the wayside, though, and it's a fine, quiet place to linger.
In 1865 Lee caught wind of the federal presence in Jetersville and bypassed the settlement, heading west under cover of darkness past the Amelia Springs Resort. This sulfur springs playground once stretched across 1,320 acres, but you'd never know it today: There's no sign of past glory visible from the tour's fifth wayside, just an ocean of crops on a quiet back lane.
The tour's pulse quickens after visits to Deatonsville and remote Holt's Corner. Route 617 meanders into a state park that encloses much of the Sayler's Creek battlefield, including a two-story white farmhouse that sits atop a ridge overlooking the small stream.
This is the Hillsman House, the scene of one of three terrible fights that together are labeled the Battle of Sayler's Creek. The house is open for tours only sporadically, but if you're lucky enough to get inside you'll find its plank floors still stained from its stint as a hospital for the wounded, and learn that corpses were stacked on its second floor.
Just as interesting are the house's construction details. Unchanged for a century, it features hand-hammered hinges on its doors and period touches like the bread-warming nook built into a wall above its fireplace.
A painting on display on the lawn behind the house depicts the battle as seen from just that spot. It presents an almost surreal contrast with the peaceful valley of today.
A few miles away, on a promontory above the creek, the Lockett House's weatherboarding is still pocked with holes left by bullets fired during another engagement in the battle. The old Jamestown Road, named for a now-defunct town to the west, curves past the house and descends to the stream. From the modern bridge spanning it, you can look to your left and see ruins of the ``double bridges'' that crossed the creek during the war.
During the retreat, these bridges were the scene of another furious fight, as Confederate wagon trains clogged the crossing and were attacked by pursuing Yankees. By the time the shooting stopped, about 1,700 rebels had surrendered here.
After Sayler's Creek, the tour boasts two highlights that make the remaining mileage to Appomattox worth the drive. One is High Bridge, named for a massive railroad bridge - said to be among the world's largest in 1865, in its combination of length and height - that spanned the Appomattox River northeast of Farmville.
Some of the bridge's brick piers remain, monuments to two skirmishes that centered on the span. In the first, on April 6, Confederates hammered federal troops bent on burning the bridge to block Lee's escape. In the second, Union soldiers prevented the Southerners from destroying the crossing to block the federal pursuit.
The tour also stops at Cumberland Church north of Farmville, where outnumbered but dug-in Confederates repulsed two assaults by battle-hardened Union veterans.
The church is famed, too, as the place where Lee received a note from bluecoat Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, inquiring about surrender. Lee, the story goes, handed the note to Gen. James Longstreet, who scanned it and handed it back.
``Not yet,'' Longstreet murmured.
But two days later, in a farmhouse that is now a national historical site just beyond the tour's 18th stop, Lee capitulated to Grant and the war was effectively lost for the South.
Lee's Retreat actually features another two waysides, but they're far from the others, way down south in Nottoway County. Truth be told, they're worth a look only if you're headed that direction anyway.
You can't lose, however, by making the drive from Petersburg to Appomattox. It's a delightful escape from the city on scenic, lightly traveled country roads, a journey far more interesting and restful than numbing interstates or sometimes-crowded U.S. 460.
If you're headed to Roanoke, consider this alternate route.
Head for Sutherland Station. Tune your radio.
And step back in time. ILLUSTRATION: Map
ROBERT D. VOROS/Staff
Color photos
HUY NGUYEN/Staff
A cannon points toward Sayler's Creek, where fierce fighting took
place.
HUY NGUYEN/Staff photos
The Lockett House on Virginia Route 618 still bears the scars of the
Battle of Sayler's Creek. A family now lives in the farmhouse.
Travelers pass through rolling countryside along the route of Lee's
Retreat. Radio broadcasts at wayside stops augment the tour.
Graphic
TOUR STOPS ALONG THE ROUTE OF LEE'S RETREAT
[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]
by CNB