During the Appomattox Campaign, he helped block the Confederate escape route at the Battle of Appomattox Courthouse, resulting in Gen. Lee's surrender. He was one of three commissioners for the Confederate surrender. Indian Wars Gibbon stayed in the army after the war. He reverted to the regular army rank of colonel and was in command of the 7th Infantry of the Montana Column consisting of the F, G, H, L of the 2nd Cavalry under Jams S. Brisbane from Fort Ellis and of his own regiment of 7th Infantry stationed at Shaw, Baker and Ellis in the Montana Territory, during the campaign against the Sioux in 1876. Gibbon, General George Crook, and General Alfred Terry were to make a coordinated campaign against the Sioux and Cheyenne, but Crook was driven back at the Battle of the Rosebud, and Gibbon was not close by when Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer attacked a very large village on the banks of the Little Bighorn River. The Battle of the Little Bighorn resulted in the deaths of Custer and some 261 of his men. Gibbon's approach on June 26 probably saved the lives of the several hundred men under the command of Major Marcus Reno who were still under siege. Gibbon arrived the next day and helped to bury the dead and evacuate the wounded. Gibbon was still in command in Montana the following year when he received a telegraph from General Oliver Otis Howard to cut off the Nez Percé who had left Idaho, pursued by Howard. (See Nez Perce War) Gibbon found the Nez Perce near the Big Hole River in western Montana. At the Battle of the Big Hole Gibbon's forces inflicted and suffered heavy casualties, and Gibbon became pinned down by Indian sniper fire. The Nez Perce withdrew in good order after the second day of the battle. In response to Gibbon's urgent call for help, General Howard and an advance party arrived the next day at the battlefield. Gibbon, because of his casualties and a wound he suffered, was unable to continue his pursuit of the Nez Perce. Gibbon was a Life Member of the Military Service Institution of the United States and won the institution's first gold medal prize for his essay on "Our Indian question", which is published in Volume 2 of the Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States. Later career and retirement