The 9th Alabama Cavalry was part of the force with Wheeler. After following Sheman to Savannah, they had attempted to join Lee at Petersburg, Virginia. They became engaged, however, with the advancing units from Sherman's army at Bentonville and then withdrew to Raleigh and Chapel Hill on April 14, 1865. Upon hearing of Lee's surrender, they attempted to join forces with Joseph Johnston.

According to Capt. Robert McClellan (9th Alabama Cavalry), "We remain in camped the fifteenth [April] troops generally in unusually good spirits. Moved through Chapel Hill on [the] sixteenth, camp three miles from the town. The seventeenth- a day ever to be remembered- the wearied soldiers received the first appalling intelligence of a surrender of the army. This news was incorrect but an armistice with a view. News of capitulation was concluded. The eighteenth we moved across Haw river. There we remained on the nineteenth. Genl. Wheeler addressed the Brigade to allay the men who were on the point of leaving in a body. The twentieth we marched up in the vicinity of Johns[t]ons Army. On the twenty-first we moved on to ---river from which on the twenty-second we went to Hillsboro Station on the Yadkin River. Twenty-fifth we turned our course to Clemensville up the Yadkin 25 miles."

After Joseph Johnston surrendered, Wheeler met with President Davis who asked for volunteers to protect him in his flight south from Union forces. Wheeler and Gen. Wade Hampton agreed to his request and returned to their commands to ask for volunteers. Some six hundred men agreed to follow Wheeler to a rendezvous with President Davis in Cokesboro, South Carolina. Wheeler and his men made their way to Yorkville, South Carolina, President Davis, however, would be captured at Irwinsville, Georgia on May 10.

Robert McClellan on May 6: "…Most of the party went with Genl. Walker- but hearing at Goshen [?] that Gen. Breckenridge was at Washington [GA] we took the road leading to that place. The weather being clear, and the roads are good, but dark vast clouds which envelope us as we move. But when within ten miles of Washington information was received that the enemy had occupied it when we turned towards Athens. That night we camped near Malloryville."

The 9th Alabama Cavalry (and probably members of the other units) had been released by Wheeler to make their way home individually. Upon arrival in Athens, Alabama, Robert McClellan turned himself in to be a paroled.