October 3, 1864, was a rainy day. Meigs and two assistants spent the day mapping the area around Harrisonburg, Virginia, plotting routes for the movement of Sheridan's troops. As Meigs and his assistants rode at dusk along the old Swift Run Gap Road, which intersected Warm Springs Turnpike between Harrisonburg and Dayton, Virginia, (where Sheridan's headquarters were), they encountered three men in blue. Believing the men to be Union troops, Meigs rode into their midst. The men turned out to be Confederate scouts attached to a cavalry brigade commanded by Brigadier General Williams Carter Wickham. Although it is unclear who recognized who first, or who fired first, within moments Meigs lay dead, one assistant had been captured, and the other escaped. Meigs' assistant raced back to Sheridan's headquarters, where he told the general that Meigs had been killed—shot in the back—while crying "Don't shoot me!"