The last Camp-fires.
On we went to Appomattox, and I never again saw General Lee, but his image abides in my memory and heart. After dark we saw Longstreet's camp-fires twinkling on the hills on either side of the road as we passed, and these were the last camp-fires of the Army of Northern Virginia. The old boys of R. E. Lee Camp, of Richmond, occasionally hold one to keep us in mind of those real ones till all cross over the river and ‘on fame's eternal camping-ground their silent tents are spread.’Just as the dawn was breaking the next morning we moved through Appomattox Court House, greeted by shot and shell from the enemy's batteries as our column slowly advanced through the early morning mists. Finding the enemy in great force in our front, we moved off after sunrise to the right and passed around their flank, fighting as we went. I think I see General Munford now riding along that ridge, crested with the smoke of the skirmish line, as our main body passed. Soon we reached the rear of the enemy, between him and Lynchburg, and there we fired the last guns of Appomattox, and the last man that died on the field was a cavalryman. They carried him to the rear on a blanket just as the news of the flag of truce and the impending surrender reached us. Then sadly and slowly we moved on to Lynchburg, intending, no doubt, to join Johnston in the Carolinas. We heard the salutes by the enemy [312] in honor of the surrender as we marched, and it proved to be the death-knell of the Confederacy. The Army of Northern Virginia had been the soul of the Confederacy, and that having taken its flight, the Confederacy could not live.
Reaching Lynchburg that night, we found everything in dire confusion, and there, all hope having fled, the cavalry, the last organized body of our army, disbanded. When I left my old home in Amelia, I took with me my young cousin, Eugene Jefferson, a boy, who fought by my side at ‘High Bridge,’ Farmville, and Appomattox. When we disbanded that night at Lynchburg, I took him to the Norvell House, and we got supper. I paid forty dollars for our supper, the last use made of Confederate money till I reached the Appomattox river at Stony Point, where I paid the ferryman ten dollars to ferry us over. I would as soon have given him a bale of it if I had it. This boy and I passed to the Amherst side of the river after supper and slept on the hill. Next morning we passed down the river on that side 'till we reached Howardsville. Singularly enough, it was at that place, just four years previously, I had entered the army, and there my career as a soldier ended. There Sheridan's men burned my law books and my trunk with my law license in it, where this document had lain securely and almost forgotten for four years. I am practicing law now without a license, so far as that goes, and recently in a West Virginia court, when asked for my license before qualifying, I had to plead the vandalism of Phil. Sheridan, as my excuse for not producing the license.
