“Who wants to be the last to die?” The Battle of Appomattox Station
Last week (April 22), we were treated to a fascinating talk by a Civil War expert, Mr. Patrick Schroeder, the Chief Historian of the National Park Service at Appomattox. “These were desperate times,” Lee’s troops needed food and the horses needed fodder. The troops went scrounging the territory looking for horse feed. The Confederate general Walker was heavily outnumbered by the Union forces, with 500 men on the Rebel side versus around 2,500 men with General Custer’s cavalry. For the Appomattox campaign, Sheridan’s cavalrymen were tightening the noose around Lee’s forces. Confusion reigned as some Union troops were disguised in Confederate uniforms (in an incident similar to the Battle of the Bulge incident of German troops disguised as American soldiers). Two Union soldiers were captured, but Lee stayed their execution. Reports came to the rebels that there were ample food supplies at Appomattox Station. To head them off, Sheridan sent Custer there . By the night of April 8-9, Union forces significantly outnumbered Lee’s troops (maybe 9,000 soldiers for the North versus around 1-2 thousand troops for the South). By the morning of April 9th, Custer’s soldiers were capturing rebel cannons and infantry, the Union now controlled all the roads leading away from the Station.
“Tout perdu”, was the French creole comment by a soldier from Louisiana. Another rebel soldier later commented, “It is hard to die knowing that the war is over”. Mr. Schroeder described the clemency of Grant’s gesture to Lee granting parole to the surviving troops from the South. Parole passes numbered 28,000, and an estimated 15,000 rebel soldiers had already deserted, returning home to tend to their farms. We heard the story of a surgeon from the Union who saved the life of a rebel soldier, removing a bullet from his wound. Afterwards, that soldier carried the bullet in his coat pocket and then later (in 1882) had the occasion to travel to the North where he met the surgeon in New York City: they made up and went to the theatre that evening. One Confederate general was too weak to make the long journey on his own and grabbed his horse by the tail to help him along.
Given the extensive knowledge of the battle stories from a variety of sources, Mr. Schroeder made the story interesting recounting individual acts of heroism and devastation from the war. At the end of the talk, Forum President Jay Termine presented a framed honorary commemoration
