On April 8, 1865, Confederate surgeon John H. Claiborne witnessed the final collapse of General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Just days after federal forces occupied Petersburg and Richmond, Claiborne had joined the remnants of Lee’s army, only to find a force on the verge of extinction.
Years later, in his 1904 memoir “Seventy-Five Years in Old Virginia,” Claiborne recalled that morning as the day before Lee’s surrender to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox. “There were signs of waning morale and disintegration of our forces everywhere,” he wrote. Soldiers who had faced death in a hundred battles without fear now wandered without purpose.
Officers of high rank had no commands and no authority. Discarded rifles lay along the road or stood planted in the ground, bayonets downward. The veterans still knew how to fight. When ordered to stop and repel the federals, as Lee always called them, they gathered with the old gleam of battle in their eyes, delivered their devastating fire, and then marched on in sorrow.
But each stand cost them. They always left a faithful comrade dead on the field of honor, and their numbers dwindled until the end or annihilation became obvious to everyone. Even then, Claiborne wrote, the thought of surrender never occurred to him. To him, and to every southerner, the army was the embodiment of courage and endurance.
He could not believe that God would allow those brave battalions to be defeated by force, or that the battle flags blessed by southern women and baptized in the blood of the best men on earth could be dragged through the dust. At noon on the 8th, Claiborne’s small group had orders to advance on the Lynchburg road. They came upon Colonel Peyton, one of Lee’s inspector generals, positioning a small body of infantry on a hill overlooking the countryside. There appeared to be no more than two hundred men in all.
Claiborne rode up to his friend and asked about the unit. Peyton answered slowly and sadly: “This is all that remains of the First Virginia Regiment, the only guard for the left wing of the Army of Northern Virginia. ”
Beyond range, federal cavalry hovered like birds of prey, waiting for an opportunity. In plain sight, many rifles stood planted in the earth, left by their owners, heartbroken and exhausted with hunger and fatigue, who had wandered off.
No one knew where. The men had proven their mettle through four years of danger and hardship, but hunger had finally overcome them. Claiborne asked Peyton if Lee knew how few men remained or how wretched they had become. Peyton answered, “I do not think he knows.
” When Claiborne asked who would tell him, if not his senior inspectors, Peyton replied, “I cannot tell him. I—I cannot. ”
For the first time, Claiborne’s strength failed him. With a voice choked with tears, he told his small group to move on, hoping they might reach General Johnston’s army in North Carolina, or find refuge beyond the Mississippi.
Until that moment, his faith in the ultimate success of the Confederate cause had been strong. But as the sun set behind the hills of Appomattox, he looked at life as a trivial game. The only fortunate ones, he thought, were those brave men sleeping in soldiers’ graves, who never tasted defeat or the humiliation of marching under the victor’s yoke. There was no time for sentiment.
They hurried on and reached Appomattox Court House just before sunset, passing through the small village and camping about a mile behind it. Claiborne loosened his horse’s bridle and lay down with his head on his saddle, assuming they had outrun the column of northern soldiers known to be pursuing them on a parallel route. He had barely fallen asleep when his faithful servant “Bokart” woke him, shouting: “The Yankees are upon you, Doctor. ” He had only enough time to escape with two companions, Drs.
Smith and Field, into a dense thicket of blackjack oaks, which cavalry could not penetrate. The enemy charged with shouts and the clatter of sabers toward the artillery a few hundred yards behind them. Heavy rifle and cannon fire immediately erupted, rebel yells rose, and the cavalry retreated in haste. Another attack followed, with irregular fire from field guns and a general dispersal as far as they could see.
Claiborne and his companions moved away from the battlefield through the woods, climbed a high fence, and put it and the blackjack thicket between themselves and the enemy cavalry. With darkness falling and no knowledge of the terrain or the positions of the opposing forces, they decided it was best to stay quiet and lie low until daylight. The next day, April 9, the day of the surrender, Claiborne and his group fell into enemy hands. They eventually received parole papers.
The war in the east was over.