First Company of Richmond Howitzers. 327
chests of the guns for the contingency of a fight in immediate pros- pect a supply that would be soon used up in any brisk battle.
There was, however, no alternative, as the teams were so ex- hausted that further hauling of the caissons was impossible, and the horses must be used to relieve the gun teams. General Pendleton, Chief of Artillery, reports that ninety-five caissons, mostly loaded, were here abandoned and destroyed (p. 1281). There was proba- bly any amount of private thinking and unpleasant reflection here going on in the minds of officers and men, but -this company had long ago learned the lesson that their only duty was obedience to orders, and it is safe to say that so long as Lee ordered, their confi- dence was unimpaired in the belief that the movement was right and the best and the proper thing to do.
At Amelia Courthouse the batteries of Cabell's battalion were put into the advance column of artillery and trains under General Lind- say Walker, and moved to the right and west of the main body of the army. From the information now attainable there were proba- bly a hundred pieces of artillery in this column which was pushed on in advance of the army. Befng thus screened in rear, the column did not participate in the daily fighting in which the main body was engaged. Not until the evening of the 8th was it struck by the Federal cavalry, who had pushed to the front and across the head of the army.
About 3 o'clock that evening the command had reached a point opposite Appomattox Station, some two or three miles beyond the courthouse, and had turned off from the road for rest and such food as was available for man or beast. Halting in the field, as each piece drove up, the teams were unhitched and given their scant food, or allowed to graze while the men were busied making their corn coffee and cooking probably the remnants of an old cow, from which rations had been dealt and eaten that morning within an hour after her slaughter. In this irregular bivouac so little was the nearness or ap- proach of an enemy suspected that no sort of a guard had been set, and when the report of arms and the sight of Federal cavalry in the wood skirting the field, startled officers and men from their little mess fires or slumbers, the surprise was complete and astounding. So sud- den and unexpected was the attack, and so near were the enemy when first discovered, that a brisk determined charge would have brougnt them within the battery before a piece could be unlimbered and loaded. For there is nothing more helpless than artillery when surprised, if once the line of battery can be carried by a quick rush. It is then
