Diary of Orrin Brown, Goldsboro, North Carolina
Thursday–Apr. 6th
I wrote another letter home this morning, I do not feel as well today as I did yesterday. We reced. the news of the fall of Ricmond Va. today with 25,000 prisoners and 500 pieces of Artilery in the form of an order signed by Gen. Grant and it has been a happy day with the soldiers. The day has been very pleasant. I read 5 Chapt. We drew one days rations of soft bread and some Irish Potatoes today.
Gen. Lee’s hungry Confederate Army of Northern Virginia marched out of Amelia Court House overnight, 5-6 April 1865, toward rations promised to be shipped to Farmville, VA, 25 miles to the west. Unfortunately for them, the Federal armies cut them off. At Sailor’s Creek (aka Sayler’s Creek), Sheridan’s cavalry, with the II Corps and VI Corps, intercepted nearly one quarter of the retreating Rebel army. At the cost of 1,148 Union casualties, the Confederates suffered 7,700 killed, wounded and captured, including most of the Southern officers: Ewell, Kershaw, Custis Lee, Barton, Simms, DuBose, Hunton, Corse, and Meriwether Lewis Clark.
There was no dinner for the Rebel troops who got away across the Appomattox River, either, who burned the bridges as they went. The Union II Corps saved two bridges near Farmville, and kept Lee’s troops from their supplies. Their next cache of victuals lay at Appomattox Station. The evening of the 7th, Lee received a letter from Lt. Gen. Grant proposing it was time for the Army of Northern Virginia to surrender. Lee sent back a noncommittal letter asking about terms of surrender, while holding out hope of reaching Appomattox.
Read More:
- 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)
- The Appomattox Campaign: March 29-April 9, 1865 (Great Campaigns Series) by Chris M. Calkins (Da Capo Press, 1997)
- 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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