Firefights raged all day on April 3. Union forces doggedly forced Anderson into a series of bloody delaying actions. From the west bank of Namozine Creek, on through the yard of Namozine Church, the running battles finally ended at nightfall near Sweathouse Creek, where three of Anderson’s infantry brigades fought a Union cavalry division to a standstill. Finding the approaches to Bevil’s Bridge flooded and impassable, Anderson marched in darkness directly for Amelia Court House. Pickett joined him along the way.

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Encumbered by wagon trains, and “worn almost to a frazzle,” Anderson’s somber gray columns moved slowly over muddy trails on April 4. Discarded equipment littered their course. “Now and then,” recalled a Virginian, “we would pass a poor fellow who could hold out no longer and had dropped by the roadside, to be picked up by the Yankee cavalry.”

Near Tabernacle Church and Beaverpond Creek, blue-clad riders poked repeatedly at Anderson’s ranks. Just four miles from Amelia Court House, Anderson was forced to unlimber artillery and form a line of battle near Scott’s Fork to beat back more enemy thrusts. The fighting there lasted until after sundown but allowed the rest of Lee’s army to enter Amelia Court House unmolested. When Lee left the village on April 5, Anderson’s Corps marched with him.

Leading the way was Longstreet, who—because of A.P. Hill’s death on April 2—was now also in command of the Third Corps. Anderson’s Corps and the Reserve Corps under Lt. Gen. Richard Ewell came next, followed by Maj. Gen. John B. Gordon’s Second Corps as the rear guard. Gordon was shepherding the army’s main wagon train and artillery, including Hilary Jones, who had dragged all but 10 of his guns away from Petersburg. Because Union forces had cut the Richmond & Danville rails at Jetersville while Lee’s men foraged near Amelia Court House, the army commander shuffled his slim battalions toward Farmville, Va., 23 miles to the west, where he expected to find another cache of food.

Toiling on mired roads, Lee’s army was unable to outpace enemy forays against its flanks and rear. Anderson recalled that they “skirmished continually,” adding that the march was “greatly impeded by wagon trains which still blocked up the road.”

On the morning of April 6, in a region of hills and steep ravines carved by Sailor’s Creek and its tributaries about five miles east of Farmville, a wide gap opened between the rear of Longstreet’s command and the head of Anderson’s Corps. Union cavalry swept into the void, blocking the road in front of Anderson while two Federal infantry corps closed upon Ewell and Gordon from the rear. Only Gordon, who diverted his march away from the vortex of action, emerged from the battle with any sizable force.

The Battle of Sailor’s Creek claimed nearly 8,000 Confederates—mostly prisoners. The losses included Ewell, most of his corps, and six other Rebel generals. Anderson, Pickett and Bush­rod Johnson eluded capture.

Joining the grim procession after Lee admonished him to “take the stragglers to the rear,” Anderson could barely account for 200 survivors from his command. On April 7, Lee merged those fragments into Longstreet’s and Gordon’s corps. Just like that, Anderson’s Corps ceased to exist.

Now without a command, Anderson traveled with the army until the afternoon of April 8. Near New Store, a settlement 15 miles west of Appomattox Court House, Lee relieved him from duty, along with Pickett and Bushrod Johnson. “ I…was directed to repair to my home or any other place I might select, and report there to the Secretary of War,” Anderson wrote later.

Fighting Dick Anderson struggled to make a living in postwar South Carolina until his death at Beaufort in June 1879. Nearly 10 years would elapse before his grave was marked with a simple monument.

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