July 2 — This morning a lady in Gordonsville sent us a bucket of buttermilk, and some six or eight of us had a few crackers left, which we put in the bucket in a sort of joint stock soup company style. After the crackers soaked a while we gathered around the bucket and squatted on the floor and cleaned up the soup in the twinkling of an eye. That was our last soldier meal together.
Soon after breakfast we said farewell, and disbanded, perhaps the last squad of the Army of Northern Virginia. We struck out in various directions, some with their faces turned to southwest Virginia, others to the upper Shenandoah. One man has a good long march to make, as his home is in Braxton County, West Virginia. Two Rockingham men went out on the Standardsville road; I am the only one on the New Market pike. I walked steadily all day, browsed once or twice in a blackberry patch, and about an hour before sunset I passed through Madison Court House, and to-night I am sweetly reclining on my blanket bed in a quiet balmy pine thicket about three miles northwest of Madison Court House.
