Five Forks was the beginning of the final end everywhere.

At midnight, Captain Daniel Dean, bearer of dispatches to the great
Confederate General in Virginia, rode out of abandoned Richmond with
the cavalry of young Fitzhugh Lee. They had threaded their way amid
troops, trains, and artillery across the bridge. The city was on fire.
By its light, the stream of humanity was pouring out of town--Davis and
his cabinet, citizens, soldiers, down to the mechanics in the armories
and workshops. The chief concern with all was the same, a little to eat
for a few days; for, with the morning, the enemy would come and
Confederate money would be as mist. Afar off the little fleet of
Confederate gunboats blazed and the thundering explosions of their
magazines split the clear air. Freight depots with supplies were
burning. Plunderers were spreading the fires and slipping like ghouls
through red light and black shadows. At daybreak the last retreating
gun rumbled past and, at sunrise, Dan looked back from the hills on the
smoking and deserted city and Grant's blue lines sweeping into it.

Once only he saw his great chief--the next morning before day, when he
rode through the chill mist and darkness to find the head-quarters of
the commanding General--two little fires of rubbish and two
ambulances--with Lee lying on a blanket under the open sky. He rose, as
Dan drew near, and the firelight fell full on his bronzed and mournful
face. He looked so sad and so noble that the boy's heart was wrenched,
and as Dan turned away, he said, brokenly:

"General, I am General Dean's son, and I want to thank you--" He could
get no farther. Lee laid one hand on his shoulder.

"Be as good a man as your father was, my boy," he said, and Dan rode
back the pitiable way through the rear of that noble army of
Virginia--through ranks of tattered, worn, hungry soldiers, among the
broken debris of wagons and abandoned guns, past skeleton horses and
skeleton men.

All hope was gone, but Fitz Lee led his cavalry through the Yankee
lines and escaped. In that flight Daniel Dean got his only wound in the
war--a bullet through the shoulder. When the surrender came, Fitz Lee
gave up, too, and led back his command to get Grant's generous terms.
But all his men did not go with him, and among the cavalrymen who went
on toward southwestern Virginia was Dan--making his way back to Richard
Hunt--for now that gallant Morgan was dead, Hunt was general of the old
command