Amelia Court House

Amelia Court House. Fatal Delay. , Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee ordered all of the Army of Northern Virginia's columns retreating west from Richmond and Petersburg to rendezvous at this courthouse village on April 4-5, 1865. Lee hoped that Richmond and Danville Railroad trains carrying rations would be waiting here so that he could continue the march into North Carolina to join his army with Gen. Joseph E. Johnston's Army of Tennessee., Lee was disappointed when he arrived here on the morning of April 4 to find boxcars full of munitions but not foodstuffs. He quickly issued a proclamation asking that local residents donate "meat, beef, cattle, sheep, hogs, flour, meal, corn, and provender in any quantity that can be spared." By the next morning, however, the forage wagons returned with little sustenance, the farmers had nothing to give. Lee, lamenting that the wasted day was "fatal and could not be retrieved," set the army in motion early in the afternoon, marching down the railroad toward Danville. Behind Lee and his men, the Army of the Potomac's infantry was closing the distance from Richmond and Petersburg, while Federal cavalry had begun cutting off the escape route southwest to Danville and North Carolina. Soon, Lee would be forced to head west toward Farmville instead.