Diary of Orrin Brown, Goldsboro, North Carolina
Saturday–Apr. 8th
It has been very warm today. The regt. did not drill any today but they had dress parade at 5 PM. We drew 3 days rations of Hardtack 5 of Coffee and Sugar 2 of Salt Poark and some Tomato Pickles. I have had another bad spell today. There is a rhumor in camp that 600 rebs came in yesterday and 600 today and gave themselves up as prisoners. I read 4 Chapts. today.
The Army of Northern Virginia continued to retreat west, with the U.S. Army of the Potomac and the Army of the James close behind. The afternoon of 7 April 1865, the advance of the Gen. Humphrey’s II Corps engaged entrenched Confederate forces at the Battle of Cumberland Church. Brig. Gen. Thomas A. Smyth (pictured here) was shot by a sniper during the fight, earning the dubious distinction as the last Union general killed in the Civil War. The Rebel defenders held off the Federal attackers, in what is often characterized as Gen. Lee’s final victory.
On the 8th, Gen. Custer’s cavalry moved on the Confederate supply train waiting for Gen. Lee at Appomattox Station. A single squad of Rebel cavalry guarded the train and quickly surrendered to Custer’s division. Just then, however, Confederate Brig. Gen. Rueben Walker’s Reserve Artillery reached the station with 100 cannons in advance of the Army of Northern Virginia and opened fire on the Union cavalry without little support. Some Confederate batteries escaped to the west or north during the four hour engagement that only ended under the cover of darkness, when Custer’s troops were able to silence the 25-30 guns still on the field of battle. More importantly, the cavalry now stood between Lee and his line of retreat to Lynchburg.
That evening, Gen. Lee called a council of war among the remaining Southern commanders. Would they fight? or surrender? The next morning would tell.
Read More:
- “No One Wants to be the Last to Die”: The Battles of Appomattox, April 8-9, 1865 by Calkins, Dunkerly, Schroeder, & Bage (Savas Beatie, 2023)
- Appomattox: Victory, Defeat, and Freedom at the End of the Civil War by Elizabeth R. Varon (Oxford University Press, 2013)
- The Appomattox Campaign by Chris Calkins (Schoreder Publications, 2008)
- Lee’s Last Retreat: The Flight to Appomattox by William Marvel (Univ. North Carolina Press, 2002)
- Guide to the Richmond-Petersburg Campaign (U.S. Army War College Guides to Civil War Battles) edited by Charles R. Bowery, Jr, and Ethan S. Rafuse (University Press of Kansas, 2014)
- The Richmond-Petersburg Campaign, 1864–65 (Battles and Leaders of the American Civil War) by Charles R. Bowery Jr (Praeger, 2014)
- Crucible of Command: Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee–The War They Fought, the Peace They Forged by William C. Davis (Da Capo Press, 2015)
- Grant and Lee: Victorious American and Vanquished Virginian by Edward H. Bonekemper III (Prager, 2007)
- Grant and Lee. The Virginia campaigns 1864-1865 by William A. Frassanito (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1983)
- Sherman’s March Through the Carolinas by John Gilchrist Barrett (Univ North Carolina Press, 1956)
- Fierce Patriot: The Tangled Lives of William Tecumseh Sherman by Robert L. O’Connell (Random House, 2014)
- The March to the Sea and Beyond: Sherman’s Troops in the Savannah and Carolinas Campaigns by Joseph T. Glatthaar (New York University Press, 1985)
- The Memoirs Of General William T. Sherman by W.T. Sherman (Library of America, 1990)
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