Caroline E. Janney - Ends of War: The Unfinished Fight of Lees Army after Appomattox

At dawn on April 9, 1865, Lt. Col. David G. McIntosh pulled his battery of the South Carolina Pee Dee Light Artillery up the hill overlooking the village of Appomattox Court House and awaited orders. To the front, the firing was growing hotter as the Confederates pushed back Maj. Gen. Philip H. Sheridans troopers. The road to Lynchburg might soon be opened. But the sudden appearance of a Union column emerging from the woods on an elevated chain of hills surrounding the Army of Northern Virginia foretold a different outcome.

Observing a flag of truce passing along the lines, McIntosh considered his options. Should he stay with his command and accept whatever a surrender might bring? Or could he refuse to lay down his arms, to remain true to his country? It took only a moment to decide. He could not bear the thought of witnessing the spectacle of surrender. With no time to tell his men goodbye, McIntosh and seven of his comrades headed for a wooded ravine behind them, slipped away, and made their escape from the field.

Upon reaching the open country, they spurred their mounts on, galloping as fast as the weak animals could carry them. Yanking off their badges of rank and disguising their uniforms as much as possible, they passed through a swamp and up the steep slopes along the Appomattox River before leading their horses on foot for several miles to the southeast. Throughout the afternoon they trudged on, forcing a Black man they picked up to accompany them for safety. Finding a secluded spot, they decided to halt and wait for nightfall to cover their further progress. Then in the distance, they heard a salute of guns. Gen. Robert E. Lee had capitulated. The Army of Northern Virginia would be surrendered, but McIntosh and his comrades were not ready to quit.

At dusk they mounted their horses and rode in an easterly direction trying to avoid the Union campfires dotting the landscape. Exhausted and soaked, they approached a home in the early morning hours and began beating on the door. When an older African American woman answered, they demanded directions to Pamplins Station. She pointed back toward the road from which they had just ridden. Frustrated, they asked who lived on the premises. Colonel Cheatham, she replied. Assuming that they were in Confederate territory, they ordered her to wake him. But when the colonel came to the door wearing a blue uniform blouse, the fugitive Confederates realized the woman had betrayed them. Thinking fast, McIntosh and his comrades introduced themselves as Union general Philip Sheridans scouts in search of their camp. The weary colonel gestured toward the campfires in the distance, then bid them goodnight and headed back to bed.

With daylight approaching, and still passing themselves off as Sheridans scouts, McIntosh and his comrades pushed on through the rain, bribing another Black man to pilot them past the lines of the Union Fifth Corps before arriving safely along the banks of the Staunton River on the afternoon of April 10. If this pace continued, they would reach Gen. Joseph E. Johnstons army in North Carolina in short time and pick up their arms once more. As it was for so many others in Lees Army of Northern Virginia, their war had not ended at Appomattox.

Conventional wisdom has long held that the surrender at Appomattox served as the final act of the Civil War, as the moment that helped forge a smooth transition from war to peace. If Appomattox was not the closing scene of the war, then it has fit into a series of final acts, including the assassination of Lincoln on April 14 and the Grand Review of the Union armies in late May. Each event seemed to flow inevitably into the next, each reflecting a certainty that the massive bloodletting of war would soon be coming to an end.