There is some debate whether Pickett was ever actually relieved. From Wikipedia
There has been a historical controversy about whether, after the
Battle of Sayler's Creek on April 6, 1865, Pickett was relieved of command.
[23] Lt. Col.
Walter H. Taylor, Lee's chief of staff, wrote after the war that he issued orders for Lee relieving Pickett, along with Maj. Gens.
Richard H. Anderson and
Bushrod R. Johnson. No copies of these orders remain. Lee's biographer,
Douglas Southall Freeman, wrote:
At the same time that Lee relieved Anderson of command, he took the same action regarding Pickett and Bushrod Johnson, but the order regarding Pickett apparently never reached him. As late as April 11 he signed himself, "Maj. Genl. Comdg." Lee thought the order had been given Pickett, and when he saw him later he is said to have remarked, "I thought that man was no longer with the army."
[24]
In his 1870 book
Pickett's Men, Walter Harrison reprinted an order from Lt. Col. Taylor to Pickett dated April 10, 1865, in which he addresses Pickett as "Maj Gen G E Picket [sic], General Commanding." The order was a request for an account of the movements and actions of Pickett's Division from the time of the Battle of Five Forks to Appomattox. Pickett's official report to Taylor later that same day was signed "G.E. Pickett, Major-Gen., Commd'g."
[25] Taylor later explained to
Fitzhugh Lee that it was addressed in this way because Pickett was relieved of his division command, not dismissed from the Army, and the report covered a time in which he was in command.
[26]
Historian William Marvel suggests that since both Anderson and Johnson acknowledged their own reliefs, "There is therefore no reason to suspect an order would not have been issued relieving Pickett, both because his division had been shattered beyond repair and because of his allegedly poor performance at Five Forks. ... That leaves only the question of whether Pickett received the order." Marvel does not answer this question conclusively, although he considers it to be a "charitable interpretation" of Pickett's report that he did not receive it.
[27]
Pickett continued to command his division (a division that had been reduced in strength to below that of a brigade), reporting to Longstreet, but Longstreet makes no mention of Pickett's division in his final report.
[28]