command--'Unsling knapsacks!'--was
given, and then we knew we were stripping for a fight.
Skirmishers were deployed on our front, and as we advanced
the Confederate skirmishers retired before us. After
advancing some eight hundred yards the brigade was ordered
to halt and form in line of battle. It formed into column of
companies. Some eight hundred yards away was the Army of
Northern Virginia, with its three lines of battle awaiting
us.

"We had not been at a halt more than twenty minutes when the
news of Lee's surrender reached us. Our brigade celebrated
the event by firing volleys of musketry in the air. Officers
hugged each other with joy. About four hundred yards to the
rear was a portion of the Twenty-fourth Corps, which had
been marching to our support. The men in that long line
threw their caps upwards until they looked like a flock of
crows. From wood and dale came the sound of cheers from
thousands of throats. Appomattox will never hear the like
again. The brigade moved forward a short distance and went
into camp some three hundred yards from the Confederate
camp. In the afternoon I strolled over the ground we had
traversed in the morning. I came across the body of a dead
Confederate soldier, covered with a blanket. Some one had
taken the shoes from his feet. Uncovering him I found that a
shot had pierced his right breast. His white cotton shirt
was matted with blood. A small bag was attached to the
button-hole of his jacket. Undoing the bag I found it
contained sixty ounces of corn meal. He was not over
twenty-six years of age, and was of fair complexion. Who
knows but he was the last soldier who fell belonging to the
Army of Northern Virginia?"

It was Palm Sunday, celebrated by many of the followers of Christ as the
day of his triumphal entrance into Jerusalem, a day of great rejoicing
among Christians, known in our annual calendar as the 9th day of April,
1865. The morning broke clear and bright in the neighborhood of
Appomattox Court House, and there was every evidence of spring. The
birds chirped in the trees half clad with the early foliage, which
trembled in the soft breeze. Along the roadside yet untrod by the
hostile feet of man or steed, the tiny floweret buds had begun to open
to the warmth of genial nature, and the larger roses, red and white,