On April 5, 1865, Union cavalry under Gen. Henry E. Davies, Jr., detached from Gen. Philip H. Sheridan’s column near Jetersville on a reconnaissance against the Army of Northern Virginia, swept past this area, rode through Paineville, and four miles farther on struck and destroyed Gen. G.W. Custis Lee’s wagon train. Gen. Fitzhugh Lee’s cavalry then attacked part of Davies’ command at Paineville and chased it back past this place through Amelia Springs. The next day, as Confederates moved from Amelia Court House toward Farmville, Federal infantry caught up with them here, where Gen. John B. Gordon’s corps, acting as the rear guard, delayed Union attacks long enough for most of the army and its baggage train to escape west before disaster at Sailor’s Creek. During Davies’s attack on Custis Lee’s train near Paineville, gray-uniformed African-American troops defended the wagons before surrendering; recruited in Richmond after February 1865 and promised freedom, they were described by a Southern officer as the only company of colored troops in Confederate service, and the clash was one of the few documented Virginia engagements involving organized black Confederate troops, reflecting the Confederacy’s desperate condition after officially opposing the arming of blacks.