Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee ordered all of the Army of Northern Virginia's columns retreating west from Richmond and Petersburg to rendezvous at Amelia Court House on April 4-5, 1865, hoping Richmond & Danville Railroad trains carrying rations would be waiting there so he could continue into North Carolina and join Gen. Joseph E. Johnston's Army of Tennessee. When Lee arrived on the morning of April 4, he found boxcars full of munitions but no food. He quickly issued a proclamation asking local residents to donate meat, beef, cattle, sheep, hogs, flour, meal, corn, and provender in any quantity that could be spared, but by the next morning the forage wagons returned with little sustenance because the farmers had nothing to give. Calling the wasted day fatal and beyond retrieval, Lee set the army in motion early that afternoon, marching down the railroad toward Danville. Meanwhile, the Army of the Potomac's infantry was closing the distance from Richmond and Petersburg, and Federal cavalry had begun cutting off the escape route southwest to Danville and North Carolina, soon forcing Lee to turn west toward Farmville instead.