The Battle of Appomattox Court House

Following the Battle of Appomattox Station on the evening of April 8, 1865, General Robert E. Lee held a council of war to discuss the situation. The Army of Northern Virginia, having been locked in a running fight for survival for the last week, was now nearly surrounded. Federal cavalry under Major General Philip Sheridan blocked the way west, while the bulk of the Army of the Potomac followed the Confederates from the east. Meanwhile, additional Federal troops raced westward along roads to the south and the James River blocked Lee’s path to the north. Confederate Generals Lee, James Longstreet, John B. Gordon and Fitzhugh Lee, commanding the cavalry, decided to attack to the west on the morning of April 9 in order to open the road for the army’s escape.

The armies confronted each other on the gently rolling terrain in and around Appomattox Court House at dawn on April 9th. On this foggy morning, General Gordon’s Second Corps of infantry and Fitzhugh Lee’s cavalry along with artillery support, approximately 9,000 men, deployed in the fields west of the village before dawn and waited. The attack, launched before 8:00 a.m. and led by General Bryan Grimes of North Carolina, was initially successful. The Confederates made a left wheel from near the Tibbs House, all the way across the Richmond-Lynchburg Stage Road, until the Confederate line faced south with one brigade of North Carolinians facing west. The outnumbered Federal cavalry fell back, temporarily opening the road for Lee’s troops to escape.

But it was not to be. Nearly 25,000 Federal infantry, from Major General Charles Griffin’s Fifth Corps of the Army of the Potomac and Major General Edward Ord's Army of the James arrived after a forced march of over 30 miles. These men, including some 5,000 United States Colored Troops, blocked Lee’s army from accessing roads to the west and south, completing Lee’s encirclement. Meanwhile, Confederates of the 1st and 3rd Corps, under the command of General James Longstreet, could not provide support for Gordon because the Federal Second Corps of General Andrew A. Humphreys advanced against this rearguard from the east.

Lee ordered his troops to retreat through the village and back across the Appomattox River. Small pockets of resistance continued until the white flags of truce were sent out from the Confederate lines between 10:00-11:00 a.m. Rather than destroy his army and sacrifice the lives of his roughly 33,000 remaining soldiers to no purpose, Lee decided to surrender the Army of Northern Virginia. While of short duration and producing fewer than 1,000 casualties, the Battle of Appomattox Court House had proven decisive.