The Cavalry Battle at High Bridge – Union Opportunity Lost wayside marker is halfway between Rice and Farmville, Virginia along US 460. It is next to the High Bridge F73 Virginia historical marker and the Cavalry Battle at High Bridge – Lee’s Retreat marker.
The wayside marker stands in front of a Lee’s Retreat marker at a pull off on US highway 460.
From the marker:
Cavalry Battle at High Bridge
Union Opportunity Lost
Lee’s Retreat
Just northeast of here, on the afternoon of April 6, 1865, a Union detachment tried and failed to burn High Bridge – where the South Side Railroad crossed the Appomattox River – and restrict the Confederate retreat to the south side of the river. Gen. Theodore Read, leading the mixed infantry and cavalry group, sent his troopers under Col. Francis Washburn on a scout to the bridge. There they drove off a small Confederate guard but turned back when they heard firing behind them.
Gens. Thomas L. Rosser’s and Thomas T. Munford’s cavalry had attacked the Federal infantry. Washburn’s command charged into the fray, and in the vicious hand-to-hand fighting Washburn fell mortally wounded while Read was killed outright. Some of the Union infantrymen escaped to High Bridge but surrendered when the Confederate cavalry overwhelmed them.
From the caption to the photo at lower left:
High Bridge over the Appomattox River, 1865
From the caption to the painting at upper center:
Charge of the 6th Mass. Cavalry at High Bridge
From the caption to the two photo portraits at upper right:
Gen. Theodore Read
Col. Francis Washburn
From the caption to the two photo portraits at lower right:
Gen. James Dearing, mortally wounded here, was the last Confederate general to die in the war.
Gen. Thomas Munford
Location
The marker is at a pull-off on the north side of US 460 about 1.7 miles west of Rice, Virginia and about 1.7 miles east of the exit to Farmville, Virginia. (37°16’31.1″N 78°19’24.2″W)