In April 1865, on a road beside a dilapidated Southern mansion, a Confederate sergeant makes his way down the dusty path, seemingly in a daze. He is stopped by a woman sitting on the mansion's porch who introduces herself as Lavinia, a widow who lost her husband Jud in the war, fueling a bitterness for the Union. He asks to drink some water from her well and rest awhile, which she gladly accepts. He sits down under a tree and plays an old folk song on his guitar, which Lavinia identifies as a tune that Jud used to sing to her. She reveals that she has recently recovered from a bout of yellow fever and is lonely, begging the sergeant to stay, which he accepts.
The two then watch an endless parade of soldiers, Union and Confederate, pass by the mansion for the next few days. All of them seem to be in a trance, having almost nothing on their minds but continuing down the road. Lavinia, consumed by her hatred of the Union, tells the sergeant that she plans to shoot the next Union soldier that comes by. Though the sergeant tries to stop her, she fires upon a Union soldier. The soldier is not injured in any way and barely registers that he was shot. Putting his lantern up to his face, the sergeant is horrified to see that half of the soldier's face is burnt away.
Eventually, Lavinia hears Jud's voice coming down the road. Running to him, he reveals to her (and the sergeant) that everyone they encountered on the road is dead, and that the road itself leads to the afterlife. Despite her pleas to stay, Jud continues down the road, followed by the sergeant. As she collapses in the road and weeps, Abraham Lincoln comes by and tells her that she needs to accept the fact that she too is dead, just as he wasn't troubled by his own death, calling himself "the last casualty of the Civil War". Lavinia runs down the foggy road after Jud, calling his name, as Lincoln follows after her.
The Troperby:
- An Aesop: Part of the episode's theme is to move on from something, whether it's a grudge, a place that holds no future, or simply from the past.
- An Arm and a Leg: The sergeant lost half of his foot in the war, not long before he was killed.
- Big Fancy House: Subverted. Lavinia's mansion was once grand, but it's since fallen into disrepair after being hit by the war.
- Dead All Along: Every character in the episode is dead, casualties of the war. Lavinia is only special in that she fell to yellow fever rather than an act of aggression.
- Deep South: The setting is hinted to be Lavinia's large house in the Deep South. In actuality, it's beside the road to Purgatory.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The sergeant has no given name; everyone just calls him "Sergeant".
- Gorn: The Union soldier with half his face melted away by shrapnel was quite graphic for 1961.
- Immune to Bullets: The Union soldier who Lavinia shoots suffers no effects from the bullet, since he was already dead.
- Mortal Wound Reveal: The Union soldier who stops by the mansion was blinded by shrapnel, and the audience is treated to a surprisingly graphic shot of his eyes after being kept in shadow for some minutes.
- No Name Given: The sergeant, who is only ever referred to as his rank.
- Purgatory and Limbo: It turns out that the dirt road outside Lavinia’s house is Purgatory. She and Abraham Lincoln, the final casualties of the Civil War, are the last people to walk down the road and into the afterlife.
- Referenced By: William Shakespeare: In the final scene, Abraham Lincoln quotes the following line from Julius Caesar, Act II, Scene II: "Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, it seems to me most strange that men should fear, seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come."
- Revenant: What the entire cast are — Lavinia, the soldiers, and Abraham Lincoln himself.
- Southern Gothic: The crumbling mansion, the dusty shadowy road, and the bleak visuals all make this episode a good example of this trope.
- Trigger-Happy: While Lavinia certainly has reason to hate the Union for killing her husband, her plan to shoot the next Union soldier that comes by her mansion, regardless of whether they actually had anything to do with his death, is pretty insane.
- War Is Hell: When Lavinia tells the sergeant that she plans to shoot the next Union soldier that she sees out of revenge for Jud's death, he says that he doesn't want to hear any more talk of bloodshed, due to the thousands of men and boys already killed in the war.
- Wham Line: Although Lavinia had more or less figured it out by then, she didn't accept her predicament, until a man with a beard and a stovepipe hat crosses her path.Abraham Lincoln: You see my dear, I'm dead too. I guess you might say, I'm the last casualty of the Civil War.
