Do Not Let Him Escape — What Grant Told His Cavalry Before the Final Hunt for Lee
By early April 1865, General Robert E. Lee’s greatest fear was no longer defeat in battle. It was the impossibility of escape.
For 10 months, Lee had held Richmond and Petersburg under one of the most grueling sieges of the Civil War. His army was starving. Supplies had dwindled to almost nothing. Desertions increased daily as hungry, exhausted men slipped away under cover of darkness to return home. Lee understood the arithmetic. If General Ulysses S. Grant could pin him in place—surround him, sever his line of retreat westward toward North Carolina and General Joseph E. Johnston’s army—the Army of Northern Virginia would be finished. And with it, the Confederacy’s last viable hope.
On April 2, 1865, Grant broke through the Petersburg defenses. Lee had no choice. During the night of April 2–3, he evacuated Richmond and Petersburg and began a desperate retreat westward. His objective was Amelia Court House, where he expected to find rations delivered by rail. From there, he intended to move south to join Johnston.
Grant immediately grasped what this moment required. To his cavalry commander, Major General Philip Sheridan, he issued directives that were unmistakable in intent: get ahead of him. Do not let him escape. Cut off his retreat. Keep pressing. Make escape impossible.
Those instructions would shape the final week of the war.
Grant had already made a costly decision. He would not allow Lee to slip away and prolong the conflict by regrouping. He would pursue relentlessly, even at political risk, even at the cost of exhausting his own army. Between April 3 and April 9, a war that had stretched across thousands of miles would collapse into a 100-mile chase through central Virginia. A proud army would dissolve under pressure. A surrender would follow. And a divided nation would glimpse the possibility of healing.
On April 2, Lee’s situation was hopeless in numerical terms. Grant commanded approximately 125,000 men. Lee had perhaps 60,000 effectives remaining, and that number shrank daily. Yet hopelessness was not the same as impossibility. Lee remained the Confederacy’s most formidable commander—a general who had repeatedly defied odds through maneuver and tactical brilliance.
Grant had learned this lesson throughout 1864 in the Overland Campaign. At the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor, Lee had fought him to a draw or worse despite inferior numbers. Lee’s strength lay not in numbers but in his ability to maneuver and choose the ground of battle.
The fear in Washington was not that Lee would win a decisive engagement. It was that he might escape, join Johnston in North Carolina, and transform one defeated army into two consolidated forces. Instead of a final surrender, the Union would face months of renewed campaigning.
President Abraham Lincoln had given Grant broad authority: end the war.
Grant’s answer was simple. Do not let Lee escape.
The siege of Petersburg had been a study in attritional pressure. Grant extended his lines steadily westward, forcing Lee to thin his defenses further and further. By late March 1865, Confederate lines were stretched to breaking.
On March 25, Lee made a final gamble, attacking Fort Stedman in an attempt to break through and open a path south. The initial assault achieved surprise, but Union reserves counterattacked swiftly. By midday, the Confederate offensive collapsed. Lee had expended precious strength in vain.
Grant saw opportunity. On April 1, he ordered Sheridan to strike at the vital Southside Railroad. At the Battle of Five Forks, Sheridan’s cavalry, working alongside V Corps under Major General Charles Griffin, turned Lee’s right flank and shattered his western defenses. The Confederate line cracked.
Lee recognized that Petersburg and Richmond could no longer be held. On the night of April 2–3, his army withdrew. Richmond was abandoned and set ablaze as Confederates sought to deny resources to advancing Union forces. The Confederate capital fell, but Lee was already marching west.
At Amelia Court House on April 4, Lee encountered catastrophe. Instead of rations, he found only ammunition. The supply trains had been misdirected. The army lost an entire day foraging for food in the surrounding countryside. Starving soldiers subsisted on parched corn and whatever scraps they could find.
That 24-hour delay proved decisive.
Sheridan’s cavalry—approximately 13,000 strong—closed the gap. Behind them marched the Army of the Potomac under Major General George G. Meade and the Army of the James under Major General Edward O. C. Ord. Nearly 150,000 Union troops converged on Lee’s line of retreat.
Cavalry was essential. Infantry could seize and hold ground, but cavalry could move swiftly across terrain, cut roads, and position itself ahead of a retreating army. Grant needed Sheridan to get in front of Lee.
By April 5, Sheridan’s troopers were harassing the Confederate rear, capturing stragglers and supply wagons. On April 6, at Sailor’s Creek, Sheridan struck decisively. Confederate forces, exhausted and disorganized, were attacked by cavalry and infantry. Approximately 7,700 Confederates were captured, including Lieutenant General Richard S. Ewell and 6 other generals.
Upon hearing the scale of the disaster, Lee reportedly exclaimed, “My God, has the army dissolved?”
Yet he did not surrender. Not yet.
He ordered a forced night march toward Appomattox Station, where 4 supply trains carrying 300,000 rations awaited. If he could reach them, feed his men, and continue west toward Lynchburg, perhaps he might still join Johnston.
Through darkness and rain, Confederate troops marched nearly 30 miles between April 6 and 7. They crossed the Appomattox River at High Bridge and attempted to burn the crossing behind them. Union engineers, however, preserved enough of the bridge to allow continued pursuit.
On April 7, Grant sent Lee a letter:
“The result of the last week must convince you of the hopelessness of further resistance… I feel it is so, and regard it as my duty to shift from myself the responsibility of any further effusion of blood…”
It was not a threat but a statement of fact. Lee replied cautiously, asking what terms might be offered, while suggesting surrender was not yet necessary.
Meanwhile, Sheridan was moving faster still. On the evening of April 8, cavalry under Major General George A. Custer reached Appomattox Station ahead of Lee. They captured and burned the supply trains and seized high ground west of the village.
Lee’s last hope for resupply vanished.
On the morning of April 9, Lee made one final attempt. He ordered Lieutenant General John B. Gordon to attack Sheridan’s cavalry at dawn. If the cavalry line could be broken, perhaps an escape westward remained possible.
Initially, Union cavalry fell back. For a moment, the impossible seemed conceivable. Then Gordon saw Union infantry appearing over the ridge—V Corps under Griffin and XXIV Corps under Major General John Gibbon, having marched through the night to block Lee’s path. Gibbon’s corps alone had covered 30 miles in 21 hours.
Gordon reported to Lee, “My command has been fought to a frazzle. I cannot long go forward.”
Lee responded quietly, “There is nothing left for me to do but go and see General Grant.”
At that moment, the pursuit ended.
Lee requested a meeting to discuss surrender. Grant, suffering from stress-induced headaches throughout the chase, reportedly felt immediate relief upon receiving Lee’s note.
They met at 1:30 p.m. on April 9, 1865, in the parlor of Wilmer McLean’s home in Appomattox Court House. McLean had previously lived near Manassas; war had reached him once before. Now it concluded in his house.
Lee arrived impeccably dressed in full uniform with a jeweled sword. Grant, dusty from the field, wore a mud-stained uniform with minimal insignia. They spoke briefly of their shared service in the Mexican-American War.
Grant drafted terms that were generous. Confederate soldiers would be paroled and allowed to return home. Officers could retain their sidearms. Cavalrymen and artillerymen could keep their horses—vital for spring planting. Grant even ordered rations issued to Lee’s starving troops.
Lee read the terms and expressed relief. “This will have the best possible effect upon the men,” he said.
When Union soldiers began cheering, Grant ordered them to stop. “The Confederates were now our prisoners,” he later wrote, “and we did not want to exult over their downfall.”
On April 12, Confederate troops formally stacked arms and furled their battle flags. The Army of Northern Virginia, defeated but not humiliated, marched home.
Lee’s surrender did not instantly end the war—other Confederate armies remained in the field—but it signaled its effective conclusion. Within weeks, additional surrenders followed.
Five days later, on April 14, President Lincoln was assassinated. He would not live to see Reconstruction unfold. Grant would later defend the principle that mercy was not weakness but strength.
The order that set these events in motion—do not let him escape—was more than a tactical directive. Grant understood that Lee’s greatest strength was maneuver. To defeat him, that strength had to be removed. Relentless pressure denied Lee the opportunity to choose the ground, to regroup, to prolong the war.
Grant pursued without pause. He exhausted his own army because he believed that 1 more week of unyielding effort could spare months of further bloodshed.
When pursuit was complete, he showed restraint.
Relentless in war. Measured in victory.
At Appomattox, one general accepted the end. The other ensured it came swiftly and without humiliation. For a brief moment in a Virginia village, strength and mercy stood together—and a nation took its first step toward healing.
