The end was now very near. On March 30th, 1865, we dined at Mrs.
Cameron’s, in Petersburg, and rode out late in the evening to
overtake the command, which had gone towards Five Forks. The
greater part of the night we were in the saddle, and what rest I
had was on a couple of fence rails in a corn field. It was raining
heavily. Early in the morning of March 31, our line was formed
at Five Forks, as it is called, a place where five roads meet.
A blacksmith’s shop that was there furnished, when pulled down,
excellent material for a breast-work. One of our servants came
up and made some coffee for us, and those who know how hot poor
coffee, in a tin cup, can be, will understand what our feelings
were when the cavalry of the enemy drove in our pickets just as
we were about to enjoy the refreshing draught. We did not wait
for the cavalry, and we took our coffee with us. Later in the
morning the enemy, supported by infantry, attacked us in force.
Our men were fighting dismounted, and at first were driven back
in some confusion. General Payne was severely wounded, and I had
just time to shake hands with him as he was taken to the rear.
I did not see him again until the next year, when he was living
quietly at his own home, at Warrenton. It was very difficult to
rally the men. For the moment they were completely demoralized.
One fellow whom I halted as he was running to the rear, and whom
I threatened to shoot if he did not stop, looked up in my face in
the most astonished manner, and, raising his carbine at an angle
of forty-five degrees, fired it in the air, or at the tops of the
pines, and resumed his flight. It made me laugh, angry as I was.
There was only one thing to do, and that was to order a charge all
along the line. The bugles sounded, and the very men whom it had
been impossible to stop a few minutes before turned and attacked
the enemy with an impetuosity that bore everything before it. The
difficulty was, indeed, to keep the men from going too far. Their
blood was up; they were mortified that they should have been thrown
into confusion; and there was much trouble in preventing them from
running right in upon the main body of the enemy.
There was a pause now in the operations, and General Pickett had
joined us with his division of infantry. My dear old friend, Willie
Pegram, who was by this time Colonel of artillery, was there with a
part of his battalion. It was a great happiness to me to clasp his
true hand again. The next day he was slain--dying, as he had hoped
and prayed that he might, when the last hope of the Confederacy
was gone. This pure, sweet, brave man, a type of the unaffected
Christian soldier, remained on his horse when the Federal infantry
poured in over our works, and fell to the ground mortally wounded,
at the very end of the fight. To Gordon McCabe, his Adjutant, who
was with him then, he spoke his last words: “I have done what I
could for my country, and now I turn to my God.”
Towards evening a desperate charge was made by W. H. F. Lee’s
Division, in which we lost heavily. The movement was taken up
by the divisions in the centre and on the left, and we broke
the enemy’s infantry and scattered them like chaff before us. I
flattered myself that my usual good luck would attend me, for, as
I rode abreast of the line and bowed my head in passing under a
tree, the bough which I had stooped to escape was struck sharply by
a rifle ball. But only two or three minutes afterward I was shot
squarely in the arm, near the shoulder, and put _hors de combat_.
Archie Randolph was by me in a minute, and poured an indefinite
quantity of apple brandy down my throat. This revived me, and, with
my arm in a sling, I rode back to where General Fitz Lee was, only
to be ordered peremptorily, for my pains, to return instantly to
head-quarters. Keith Armistead, the son of General Armistead who
was killed at Gettysburg, was one of our couriers, and he went back
with me. That night an ineffectual effort was made by our surgeons
to find the ball, which was supposed to be near the shoulder.
General Lee insisted that I should go back to Petersburg or
Richmond, as I preferred. Soon after daybreak I was told that the
enemy had broken our lines at Petersburg, and I could not return to
that place; so I went to Richmond, where I arrived on Sunday night,
April 2.
Major Warwick had begged that I would go to the house of his
father, Major Abram Warwick, and I had the satisfaction of
letting him know that his son was safe. Under the influence of
morphine I went to sleep, notwithstanding the pain of my wound;
and when I awoke in the morning Richmond had been evacuated by
the Confederates, and the enemy were in possession of the city.
The Warwicks had known when I arrived that our troops were about
to leave Richmond, but had refrained from telling me, as they
deemed it unsafe to have me moved in the condition in which I was.
It was a sad, sad time. Mrs. W. B. Warwick walked up and down
the long halls almost demented with grief; and there were other
troubles besides those that grew out of the hazardous condition
of the soldiers who had retreated with Lee. Two days before, Mr.
Abram Warwick was one of the wealthiest men in Richmond, and had
almost unlimited means at his command. This Monday morning the
great Gallego Mills, of which he was the principal owner, lay in
ashes, and he himself was without a dollar of money that would pass
current in the city. So it was on every side. Hundreds of families
were reduced to absolute beggary by the fire which swept over
Richmond. I cannot bear to dwell upon the harrowing scenes of those
days. The surgeons made another effort to extract the ball from my
shoulder, and came to the wise conclusion that less harm probably
would be done by letting it alone than by cutting and carving me in
the effort to get it out. So they let me alone, and that ball has
never troubled me since.
A week after I reached Richmond I felt strong enough to join the
army again, although, of course, I could not use my arm; and Miss
Agnes Lee, one of General R. E. Lee’s daughters, had arranged that
I should be smuggled out of the city, under a bale of hay, in one
of the market carts that came into the city with vegetables every
morning. Then came the harrowing tidings that General Lee had
surrendered. It seemed to us impossible that the Army of Northern
Virginia should be no more, and we scouted the first reports
that reached us. All too soon, however, General Lee came back
to Richmond, and there was no longer room for doubt. The first
returning officer whom I knew well was Colonel Manning, who, with
the big tears rolling down his checks, as he sat gaunt and weary on
his horse in Franklin Street, told me the pitiful story of the last
days of the army and the circumstances of the surrender. The only
consolation to me was that General Fitz Lee and my dear comrades
had escaped unhurt, except Minnigerode, who was wounded and in the
hands of the enemy, as mentioned previously.
There was nothing in the behaviour of the Federal troops to
mitigate the unpleasantness of our situation. They did not rob, and
they did not kill; but they sought opportunities to humiliate and
annoy the defeated Confederates. One of their first orders was that
no person should wear clothing with military buttons; and those who
had no other buttons but military buttons must cover them so as to
conceal their character. After this, the buttons on most of our
uniforms, which were the only clothing we had, were covered with
crape.
I had lost my desk containing my commissions and papers, which I
had left in our head-quarters wagon; but Armistead had put my trunk
in the ambulance, and I saved that. Armistead went back to the
command as soon as he had placed me in Mr. Warwick’s care; and, as
he was but poorly armed, I gave him my revolver, which thus was
saved from falling into the hands of the enemy. My sabre, which was
taken from me on the night that I was wounded, was unfortunately
left at head-quarters, and was lost.
The war being virtually at an end, and there being no other way
to get out of Richmond, I presented myself to the Provost Marshal
and was duly paroled. Then I went over to Petersburg, my whole
worldly possessions being a postage stamp and what was left of a
five dollar greenback that a friend in Baltimore had sent me. The
first thing I did with this greenback, by the way, was to get small
change for it so as to make it look big; and the first luxuries
that I bought were cigars and oranges.