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.