Early in May 1865, Colonel William C. Bartlett’s 2nd N.C. Mounted Infantry (U.S.) occupied Waynesville and Federal troops raided the surrounding countryside, taking civilians’ horses and provisions. On May 6, a company from Confederate Colonel William H. Thomas’s Legion under Lieutenant Robert T. Conley defeated a company of Bartlett’s mounted infantry at White Sulphur Springs. Leading his men up the west side of Richland Creek, Conley and his outnumbered Confederates, facing odds of four to one, surprised and routed about 200 of Bartlett’s men near here. The Confederates formed a battle line, fired a volley, and followed it with a vigorous bayonet charge that scattered the Union soldiers. During the fighting, a Federal soldier identified variously as David or James Arwood, or Arrowood, was killed, one of the last men killed in battle east of the Mississippi River during the war. Conley picked up Arwood’s weapon and later said, “I still have James Arwood’s gun as a relic.” The remaining Federals withdrew to Waynesville. After a night surrounded by Confederate forces, Bartlett met their commander, General James Martin, on May 7 at the Battle House to negotiate the surrender of the Union forces. In that meeting Martin learned that the Civil War was over, that the two largest Confederate armies under Generals Robert E. Lee and Joseph E. Johnston had already capitulated, and he surrendered his own command, including Thomas’s Legion, to Bartlett instead.