The papers and periodicals seemed to taunt George for his sense of foreboding. The New York Times, the Tribune, the Washington Star, the most recent issue of the Army and Navy Journal all sounded the same triumphant note. As he created the neat pile on a side table, the phrases leaped up:
Though our gigantic war is but a few days over, we have already begun the disbandment of the great Army of the Union ...
They crushed the Rebellion, saved the Union, and won for themselves, and for us, a country ...
The War Department has ordered to be printed six hundred thousand blank discharges on parchment paper ...
Our self-reliant republic disbands its armies, sends home its faithful soldiers, closes its recruiting tents, stops its contracts for material, and prepares to abandon the gloomy path of war for the broad and shining highway of peace ...
Today and tomorrow were to be celebrations of that: a Grand Review of Grant's Army of the Potomac and Uncle Billy Sherman's roughneck Army of the West. Grant's men would march today; Sherman's coarser, tougher troops, tomorrow. Sherman's Westerners sneered at Grant's Easterners as "paper collars." Perhaps the Westerners would parade the cows and goats, mules and fighting cocks they'd brought to their camps along the Potomac.
Not all of the men who went to war would march. Some would lie forever hidden from loved ones, like George's dearest friend, Orry. George and Orry had met as plebes at West Point in 1842. They had soldiered together in Mexico, and had preserved their friendship even after Fort Sumter surrendered and their separate loyalties took them to different sides in the conflict. But then, in the closing days, Orry met death at Petersburg. Not in battle; he fell victim to the stupid, needless, vengeful bullet of a wounded Union soldier he was trying to help.