BGuthrie Photos: VA -- Appomattox Court House NHP

VA -- Appomattox Court House NHP:

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[1] APPOM_060305_03.JPG	[2] APPOM_060305_12.JPG	[3] APPOM_060305_17.JPG
[4] APPOM_060305_21.JPG	[5] APPOM_060305_40.JPG	[6] APPOM_060305_47.JPG
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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. APPOM_060305_12.JPG: Confederate Cemetery
2. APPOM_060305_17.JPG: Dedicated to the memory of those who served in the defense of the Confederate States of America.
3. APPOM_060305_21.JPG: Wartime Landscape The road trace in front of you is the remnant of the Richmond-Lynchburg Stage Road – on April 9, 1865, the most important road in Virginia to Robert E. Lee. Along this road he planned to escape west, hoping eventually to turn south and join Joe Johnston's army in North Carolina. When the Federals blocked this route, Lee had no choice but to surrender. To your right is the village of Appomattox Court House, looking much as it did when Grant arrived here the afternoon of April 9. He met her briefly with Generals Sheridan and Ord. "Is General Lee up there?" Grant asked Sheridan. "He himself is over in that house," Sheridan replied. "Come, let us go over." With that simple declaration, Grant started along this road to one of the most important meetings in American history. Three hours later he would return along this route bearing news of Lee's surrender.
4. APPOM_060305_40.JPG: Remnants of the Richmond-Lynchburg Stage Road
5. APPOM_060305_51.JPG: A Strategic Delay: As Lee's Confederate Army retreated west, Federal forces blocked their way. Near the location of the Confederate cemetery, Union artillery pieces by Lieutenant James H. Lord and a cavalry brigade led by Brevet Brigadier General Charles Smith proved a strategic delay to the Confederate retreat -- allowing time for other Federal units to move into position and ensure General Robert E. Lee's surrender on April 9, 1865. During the early hours of April 9, 1865, Confederate forces moved into position on the west side of Appomattox Court House and prepared to launch a dawn assault to open the road. Before daylight, Lord's two 3-inch Ordnance Rifles began firing shells into the Confederate position. Skirmishers of the 1st Main Cavalry moved forward to support Lord's battery. When Southern troops advanced, the Federal skirmishers withdrew and Lord's cannoneers fled. Brigadier General William P. Roberts' North Carolina cavalry brigade captured two Union cannons and some remaining artillerymen, but the delay helped secure the Confederate surrender.
6. APPOM_060319_044.JPG: McLean House: At midday on April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee rode into this yard, dismounted, and disappeared into the McLean House. Grant, surrounded by generals and staff officers, soon followed. Dozens of officers, horses, and onlookers waited outside. After 90 minutes, Lee and Grant emerged. To the silent salutes of Union officers, Lee rode back through the village -- to his defeated army. The home that hosted the surrender meeting was one of the best in Appomattox. Built in 1842, it had since 1862 been owned by businessman Wilmer McLean. The house became a sensation after the surrender. Union officers took some mementos; and in 1893 it was dismantled for display in Washington, D.C. But that display never happened, and the National Park Service reconstructed the building on its original site in the 1940s.
7. APPOM_060319_214.JPG: Clover Hill Tavern
8. APPOM_060319_221.JPG: Clover Hill Tavern: Built in 1819, this was the first building in what would become the village of Appomattox Court House. The Clover Hill Tavern served travelers along the Richmond-Lynchburg Stage Road. For several decades, it offered the village's only restaurant, only overnight lodging, and only bar. Its presence helped prompt the Virginia legislature to locate the Appomattox County seat here. In 1846, the courthouse was built across the street. By 1865, the tavern had come on hard times -- a "bare and cheerless place," according to one Union general. It was one of only two buildings in town used by the Federal army during the surrender process. Here, on the evening of April 10, 1865, Union soldiers set up printing presses and started producing paroles for the surrendered Confederates. The Federals printed more than 30,000 parole documents here.
9. APPOM_060319_237.JPG: County jail
10. APPOM_060319_250.JPG: Confederate Cemetery
11. APPOM_060319_260.JPG: Confederate Cemetery: Buried here are nineteen men (out of perhaps 100) killed during the last two days of the war in Virginia. These men were at first buried where they died -- at hospitals or in farm fields and woodlots around Appomattox Court House. But in 1866, the Ladies Memorial Association of Appomattox recruited volunteers to collect the eighteen Confederate bodies for reburial. The long Union soldier was later found nearby and reburied here. The identified of just seven of the dead are known. Of these,all had been in the Confederate army for at least three years. One Alabamian Jesse H. Hutchins (grave #4), enlisted just three days after the firing on Fort Sumter. He had survived 1,454 days of service, only to die in the war's last 24 hours. He was killed battling Union cavalry just a few yards from the courthouse on the evening of April 8, 1865.
12. APPOM_060319_270.JPG: Raine Cemetery and Monument
13. APPOM_060319_293.JPG: Raine Cemetery and Monument: The 30-foot obelisk marks the Raine family cemetery. Erected in 1912 by C. Hunter Raine, the monument honors past family members, including C. Hunter's father, Charles James Raine, who served as a captain in the Lee Battery of Virginia Artillery. Captain Raine was killed in action on November 30, 1863, near Mine Run -- east of Culpeper, Virginia. A total of nine known graves are associated with the Raine Cemetery. The Raine family's only connection to the surrender is the McLean House -- where the surrender meeting between Generals Lee and Grant occurred. John Raine built the brick house in 1848 and for a time ran it as a tavern. Wilmer McLean purchased the house in the fall of 1862.
14. APPOM_060319_300.JPG: Education in 1800's Rural Virginia Civil Rights in Education Heritage Trail -- Appomattox, Virginia - Appomattox County -- Before and during the Civil War, educational opportunities in Rural Virginia were often limited. The wealthier families employed a tutor or sent their children to boarding academies such as the nearby Union Academy. In such schools students learned a variety of subjects including history, mathematics, chemistry, and foreign languages. For less fortunate white children prior to the 1860's, there were 19 small, mostly one-room schoolhouses scattered throughout the county. African-American children had even fewer educational prospects. Here on April 9, 1865, two brigades of United States Colored Troops advanced east along the Richmond-Lynchburg Stage Road, ensuring the surrender of Gen. Robert E. Lee's Confederate army and the end of the Civil War. This brought about the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment on December 6, 1865. Before that time it was illegal to teach a slave to read. The first educational opportunities for blacks in Appomattox County came about through the Freedman's Bureau, created by Congress to assist former slaves. From 1866 to 1869. Plymouth Rock, a school for freedmen, operated near the Courthouse. However, funding was erratic for African-American schools, causing educational prospects for blacks to remain scarce in the years following the Civil War. It was not until 1870-1871 that Virginia made funds available for public education for persons of all races, resulting in a dramatic increase in the number of both white and black children who attended school. It would be nearly another hundred years though, until the gap between educational opportunities for the two races would finally be closed.
15. APPOM_060319_301.JPG: Lee's Last Attack: Here on the morning of April 9, 1865, the Army of Northern Virginia made its final attack and fired its last organized volley. Shortly after daylight, Confederate infantry moved out of the village and drove Union cavalry from this ridge, opening the Richmond-Lynchburg Stage Road for the passage of Lee's army. The victory was short-lived. Union infantry soon appeared in the fields before you, blocking the route west again. North Carolinians along this lane engaged the Federals -- and continued to do so until flags of truce went out. Then, with the rest of the Confederates west of Appomattox Court House, the Carolinians fell back into the village. The shooting died away, never to resume.
16. APPOM_060319_306.JPG: Lee's Last Attack and North Carolina Monument
17. APPOM_060319_310.JPG: (North Carolina Monument) Last at Appomattox: At this place, the North Carolina Brigade of Brigadier General W. R. Cox of Grimes Division fired The Last Volley 9 April 1865. Major-General Bryan Grimes of North Carolina planned the last battle fought by the Army of Northern Virginia and commanded the infantry engaged therein the greater part of whom were North Carolinians. This stone is erected by the authority of The General Assembly of North Carolina, in grateful and perpetual memory of the valor endurance and patriotism of her sons who followed with unshaken fidelity the fortunes of the Confederacy to this closing scene. Faithful to the end Erected 9 April 1905. North Carolina Appomattox Commission: H.A. London, Chairman, E.J. Holt, W.T. Jenkins, Cyrus B. Watson, A.D. McGill.
18. APPOM_060319_316.JPG: "North Carolina Troops Paroled at Appomattox. ... Total 5,072"
19. APPOM_060319_320.JPG: Esse Quam Vider. First at Bethel. Farthest to the front at Gettysburg and Chickamauga. Last at Appomattox.
20. APPOM_060319_325.JPG: North Carolina 1860 white population 629,942; military population 115,365. 1861-5 Troops furnished 127,000. Killed in battle 4,522. Died from injuries, 5,154. Died from disease 20,502.
21. APPOM_060319_353.JPG: "North Carolina. The last Federal battery taken by the Confederates was captured by the North Carolina cavalry brigade of Brig-Gen W.P. Roberts at this place."
22. APPOM_060319_366.JPG: North Carolina The last Federal battery taken by the Confederates was captured by the North Carolina cavalry brigade of Brig. Gen. W.P. Roberts at this place.
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Wikipedia Description: Appomattox Court House
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Appomattox Court House is a historic village located three miles (5 km) east of Appomattox, Virginia, USA (25 miles east of Lynchburg, Virginia, in the southern part of the state), famous as the site of the Battle of Appomattox Courthouse and containing the house of Wilmer McLean, where the surrender of the Confederate Army under Robert E. Lee to Union commander Ulysses S. Grant took place on April 9, 1865, effectively ending the American Civil War. The site is now commemorated as Appomattox Court House National Historical Park, a National Historical Park.

History:

Many rural counties in the Southern States had county seats whose names were formed by adding court house to the name of the county. The court house town contains the courthouse building as well as a number of other buildings. In this case, one of those other buildings is the McLean house, a former tavern.

Even before the Civil War, the railroad bypassed Appomattox Court House (the South Side Railroad, today a part of the Norfolk Southern, was built to the south of town in 1850), and commercial life tended to congregate at the nearby Appomattox station. As a result, the population of Appomattox Court House never grew much over 150, while Appomattox town grew to the thousands. When the courthouse burned in 1892, it was not rebuilt and a new courthouse was built in Appomattox, sealing the fate of Appomattox Court House as a town. The county seat was formally moved in 1894.

Because the first Battle of Bull Run, fought on July 21, 1861, took place on the McLean farm farther north in Virginia, it can be said that the Civil War started in McLean's backyard in 1861 and ended in his parlor in 1865 (neither event, however, marked the true beginning or ending of hostilities).

McLean was a retired major in the Virginia militia. He was too old to enlist at the outbreak of the Civil War and decided to move to Appomattox Court House in order to get away from the Civil War (after the war, he liked to portray himself as having moved because he was a peace-loving man, but the reality is that during the war, he made a small fortune running sugar through the Union blockade; he simply wanted to carry on this lucrative business without the interference that nearby hostilities would cause). Nonetheless, on April 9, 1865, the war came back to McLean when General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant at his house. His house was also used on April 10 for the Surrender Commissioners' meeting, and over the next few days as the headquarters of Major General John Gibbon of the U.S. Army.

The terms of surrender were: "The officers to give their individual paroles not to take up arms against the government of the United States until properly exchanged, and each company or regimental commander to sign a like parole for the men of their commands," ... neither "side arms of the officers nor their private horses or baggage" to be surrendered; and, as many privates in the Confederate Army owned horses and mules, all horses and mules claimed by men in the Confederate Army to be left in their possession.

Although he had made a considerable fortune smuggling sugar, McLean's money was in Confederate currency, which became worthless with the collapse of the Confederacy and he was nearly ruined by the end of the war. The McLeans left Appomattox Court House and returned to Mrs. McLean's Prince William County, Virginia estate in the fall of 1867. When Wilmer McLean defaulted on repayment of loans, the banking house of "Harrison, Goddin, and Apperson" of Richmond, Virginia brought a judgment against him, and the "Surrender House" was sold at public auction on November 29, 1869. The house was purchased by John L. Pascoe and apparently rented to the Ragland family formerly of Richmond. In 1872 Nathaniel H. Ragland purchased the property for $1250.00.

On January 1, 1891, the property was sold by the Widow Ragland for the sum of $10,000 to Captain Myron Dunlap of Niagara Falls, New York. Myron Dunlap and fellow speculators went through two or three plans intending to capitalize on the notoriety of the property, one idea was to dismantle the home and move it to Chicago, Illinois as an exhibit at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. Measured drawings including elevations and materials specifications lists were produced, the house was dismantled and packed for shipping, but the Panic of 1893 occurred; cash flow and legal problems caused the plan to halt. The home sat dismantled in piles, prey to vandals, collectors, and the environment for fifty years.

On April 10, 1940, Appomattox Court House National Historical Monument was created by the U.S. Congress to include approximately 970 acres (3.9 km�). In February 1941, archeological work was begun at the site, then overgrown with brush and honeysuckle. Historical data was collected, and architectural working plans were drawn up to begin the meticulous reconstruction process. The whole project was brought to a swift stop on December 7, 1941, with the bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japanese forces, causing the United States' entry into World War II.

After the war, the project soon became a high priority again. On November 25, 1947, bids for the reconstruction of the McLean House were opened. The reconstruction proceeded, using the 5,500 remaining original bricks, which were scattered through the walls of the new house, and on April 9, 1949, 84 years after the historic meeting reuniting the country, the McLean House was opened by the National Park Service for the first time to the public. Robert E. Lee IV and Major General U.S. Grant III cut the ribbon at the dedication ceremony on April 16, 1950, after a speech by Pulitzer Prize winning historian Douglas Southall Freeman in front of a crowd of approximately 20,000.
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