Adam Badeau, Military history of Ulysses S. Grant from April 1861 to April 1865. Volume 3

Nearly all this night the Sixth corps was passing through Farmville, and the little town was crowded with an unfamiliar company, cavalry, artillery, and infantry; rebel prisoners, wagon trains, ambulances filled with wounded, officers and men looking for quarters—all the impedimenta of an army. Camp fires were burning in the streets and over all the country outside, and the frightened inhabitants peered from their windows at the regulated turmoil of war.

Grant had taken possession of the Farmville hotel, a homely country inn, where Lee had slept the night before, and there received reports from Sheridan and Ord and Meade, and issued orders not only to his principal commanders, but to their subordinates; for in the complicated dispositions of this day he was at the focus, while the army chiefs were far away: Sheridan at Prospect station, Ord at Prince Edward, and Meade at Rice's station. He approved of Sheridan's advance and forwarded him support, he encouraged Humphreys, and stimulated Crook; he sent information to Meade, and directions to Wright and Griffin and Ord.

During the evening he came out in the porch and watched the Sixth corps column marching by. The night was dark, but the camp fires threw their gleams across his face, and the soldiers recognized the chief whom a week before they had cheered inside the rebel lines at Petersburg. Their shouts rang out again, for every man felt that he had led