assault. Guests at this small affair included George Pickett and Fitzhugh Lee. Shelby Foote states that "Pickett only made it back to his division after over half his troops had been shot or captured..". It is said that Lee never forgave Pickett for his absence from his post when the Federals broke the Confederate lines and carried the day at Five Forks. Rosser was conspicuous during the Appomattox Campaign, capturing a Union general, John Irvin Gregg, and rescuing a wagon train near Farmville. He led a daring early morning charge at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865, and escaped with his command as Lee surrendered the bulk of the Army of Northern Virginia. Under orders from the secretary of war, he began reorganizing the scattered remnants of Lee's army in a vain attempt to join Joseph E. Johnston's army in North Carolina. However, he surrendered at Staunton, Virginia, on May 4 and was paroled shortly afterwards. Postbellum activities Rosser was superintendent of the National Express Company, working for fellow ex-Confederate general Joe Johnston. He resigned to become assistant engineer during the construction of the Pittsburgh & Connellsville Railroad. He became chief engineer of the eastern division of the Northern Pacific Railroad. Later he was chief engineer of the Canadian Pacific. He worked for the C.P.R. for less than a year before being fired for corruption. Using his position in the C.P.R., Rosser had amassed on the side a fortune of more than $130,000 through speculation and other questionable means. Rosser was believed to have altered the preliminary survey of the line in Saskatchewan to bring it through Regina where he had money invested. Rosser engaged in efforts to honor the Confederacy after the war. He worked to have Confederate monuments constructed despite having been explicitly discouraged from doing so in a now famous 1866 personal letter from Robert E. Lee. When Custer was defeated at the Battle of Little Bighorn, Rosser wrote an article in the Chicago Tribune placing the blame on Custer's subordinates. Rosser later retracted his claims when Major Reno threatened a lawsuit. In 1886, he bought a plantation near Charlottesville, Virginia, and became a gentleman farmer. On June 10, 1898, President William McKinley appointed Rosser a brigadier general of United States volunteers during the Spanish–American War. His first task was training young cavalry recruits in a camp near the old Civil War battlefield of Chickamauga in