sufficient cause." Richmond newspapers viciously reported on this incident for the remainder of the war, and unflattering rumors and jokes were spread by his own soldiers and throughout the army. At least one military court of inquiry was held to investigate Pendleton's actions at Shepherdstown. Pendleton was not particularly well-liked by the enlisted men, and it was said that "while the soldiers would gladly cheer most higher officers, they remained silent when Pendleton rode past them." Pendleton served with the Army of Northern Virginia for the rest of the conflict, taking part in the 1863 and 1864 major campaigns of the Eastern Theater. When fellow "fighting bishop" Leonidas Polk was killed during the Atlanta Campaign, Jefferson Davis proposed assigning Pendleton to command of his corps in the Army of Tennessee, but Robert E. Lee convinced Davis that he was unsuited for the job. During the final two years of the war, Pendleton's role was mostly administrative, and his active command was only of the reserve ordnance. Throughout the war, he continued in his religious practices, always preaching to his men. Pendleton surrendered with Lee's army at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865, and was paroled from there and returned home. Postbellum career and death After the war, Pendleton returned to Lexington, Virginia, and his rectorship of Grace Church, which he would hold for the rest of his life. There in Lexington he retained a strong friendship with Matthew Fontaine Maury, Francis Henney Smith, and Robert E. Lee, and played a significant role in persuading his former commander to move to Lexington himself to take up the presidency of the institution that was to become Washington and Lee University. Lee, in turn, became one of Pendleton's parishioners, and Lee's last public transaction in 1870 was at a Grace Church vestry meeting in which Lee led a group of church leaders in a mutual pledge to increase Pendleton's salary. Rev. Pendleton conducted Lee's funeral in October 1870. It was in Lexington on January 17, 1873, during a memorial to the departed Robert E. Lee, that Pendleton first blamed James Longstreet for Lee's defeat at the Battle of Gettysburg. Departing entirely from his own previous statements, including his Official Report written just days after the battle, he claimed that General Lee had ordered Longstreet to attack the Union right at "sunrise" on July 2, 1863. The attack was not begun until about