North Carolina's "Last Shot" in the Civil War: Surrender of General James Green Martin at Waynesville

By Kelly Agan, N.C. Government & Heritage Library, 2015

See also: Last Shot Confederate Memorial, Commemorative Landscapes of North Carolina

On May 7, 1865, Confederate General James Green Martin surrendered the Army of Western North Carolina at Waynesville, nearly a month after Appomattox. The surrender followed a skirmish at White Sulphur Springs between Confederate troops under William Holland Thomas (Thomas’s Legion) and Union troops under Lieutenant Colonel William C. Bartlett. Thomas’s Legion surprised the Union troops who retreated to Waynesville, with Martin advancing (likely unaware of Johnston’s surrender at Durham on April 26). When a truce was called the next day, Martin surrendered the North Carolina troops under his command.

The date of surrender is currently marked as May 7; however there is some uncertainty in pinpointing the exact date. Union Brigadier General Davis Tillson listed the date at May 3 in his official report, and Robert T. Conley, in Thomas’s Legion and present at the skirmish and surrender, placed the skirmish on May 6. Some secondary sources have given May 10 as the surrender date.

Waynesville was not the last battle of the Civil War, although popular belief maintained the fiction and memorialized it in 1923 in a monument dedicated to the spot in Waynesville believed to be near the location of the “last shot” of the Civil War.