previous next
[338] Weldon Railroad. On that march it not only rained, but it snowed, and there was a high, bitter cold wind, and the men suffered intensely. The troops reached Jarratt's Station to find that the enemy had retired.

This regiment lay all night in the streets of Petersburg, as a part of the intended support for General Gordon, in his attack on Fort Stedman. After Gordon had retired, the enemy swept the whole Confederate picket line from Hatcher's Run, to Lieutenant Run, and it performed its part in helping to keep him out of the main line of works in front of its winter quarters. He got possession, however, of a commanding hill to the left of the Jones House from which he could fire into the huts. Next day, General Lee ordered General Lane to dislodge him. General Lane, who was in command of the division at the time, did so at daylight the following morning, with all of the sharpshooters of the division under Major Wooten, of the Eighteenth North Carolina Regiment, supported by his own brigade, and the Twenty-eighth again had its part to perform.

On the night of the 1st of April, when Grant made his final attack at Petersburg, Lane's Brigade was cut in two by an overwhelming force. The 28th was forced to fall back fighting to the plank road and then to the Cox road; and it finally succeeded in rejoining the rest of the brigade in the inner line of works, where it fought until night, when Petersburg was evacuated. On the afternoon of the 3d it crossed the Appomattox at Goode's Bridge, bivouacked at Amelia Courthouse on the 4th, and formed line of battle between the Courthouse and Jetersville on the 5th, and skirmished with the enemy. Next day while resting in Farmville, it, with the rest of the brigade, was ordered back to a hill to support the hard-pressed cavalry; but before reaching the hill the order was countermanded. It moved back through Farmville and sustained some loss from the enemy's artillery while crossing the river near that place. That afternoon it formed line of battle, faced to the rear, between one and two miles from Farmville, where there was more fighting, and the remnant of General Lee's army seemed to be surrounded. During the night it resumed its march, and on the morning of the 9th of April, while moving to its position on the left of the road near Appomattox Courthouse, it was ordered back into a woods and directed to stack arms, as the army of Northern Virginia had surrendered.

The tattered and starving remnants of this glorious North Carolina Regiment surrendered at Appomattox, consisted of seventeen

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)
hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
James H. Lane (3)
Fitzhugh Lee (2)
James Gordon (2)
Samuel Wooten (1)
Run (1)
U. S. Grant (1)
hide Dates (automatically extracted)
Sort dates alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a date to search for it in this document.
April 9th (1)
April 1st (1)
5th (1)
4th (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: