Bill and I promised each
other we would go for a drive the day after Thanksgiving. We have had
SUCH a year, and I haven’t posted in this blog since his stroke. But we
are very much recovered from all that and things are looking way up—we feel
like ourselves again, and so it was time to get back on the road. We love
day trips – no worries about animal care, no huge expenses, nothing but a
chance to explore the area and really get to know our community.
We hadn’t yet picked a
destination when we awoke on Friday so I opened Google maps (I love this
century!!) as we discussed the general direction—north! I saw several
Virginia towns in a reasonable radius, and then noticed Appomattox. I
remembered it had historical significance, but couldn’t remember what.
But lo, this is the internet age, and in seconds I had my answer—Appomattox was
the site where the Civil War ended. The perfect destination for a
beautiful weekend!
We left unceremoniously,
heading north at first, and then a seemingly endless series of lefts. So
many lefts! The roads were two lanes, sometimes with large expanses past
the shoulders and other times where the trees encroached nearby. I began to
wonder where Siri was leading us. I remembered days of paper maps and
thought how the idea of Siri would have seemed unbelievable, just a short time
ago.
True to our road trip
traditions, we were wending our way through the landscape, passing quaint
churches, dilapidated barns, small cemeteries, and scores of lovely
houses. Virginia has rolling fields of bright green grass and our route
took us past a few farms with cattle, horses, and the occasional goat.
Our adventure playlist on the radio, we passed through small towns with twisty
roads, shops with their doors opening on small sidewalks, and beautiful,
colonial-style homes. Very occasionally we saw a car with a Christmas
tree on top, and people were smiling and cheerful at our stops.
My brief internet search
had told me that the Appomattox Court House was a national park at the site of
the surrender and that we should start at the Visitor Center down town.
Once in Appomattox we found the old train depot/visitor center where a stately
older woman with a thick, classically southern accent answered our
questions. She showed me the map to the national park and provided us the
context of the train depot, where northern troops had captured a south-bound
train, seizing troops, artillery, food and supplies for the citizens of the
southern states. Near the end of the war, this defeat had a devastating
impact. Southerners were literally starving, with stories of people
eating the paste from their wallpaper in desperation. The battle at the
train depot was a crushing blow.
The courthouse national
park was about ten miles away, through a rather crappy looking area.
Appomattox as a modern town is not my favorite sampling of Americana and
apparently grew in a time when we didn’t care too much how things looked.
We saw rather boring and fairly run down strip malls, torn up asphalt patches,
and architecture that was far more functional than interesting to look
at. I found the atmosphere rather depressing, especially for an area of
Virginia that is usually so beautiful.
But soon enough we
spotted the classic Civil War fencing – also known as Shenandoah stack rail –
that lines the national parks. Green grass shone through the fencing, and
eventually we saw the brown signs leading us to the courthouse. We parked
in the lower lot and saw the tall, square, brick buildings I associate with the
1860s. Hilly grass fields surrounded the whole area, and with the
buildings spaced far apart, the gentle, natural beauty of the scene was
irrepressible.
I had a sudden
impression of my father, who loved these Civil War parks. Like me, my father
would drive for a mood-lift, and we often took day trips to destinations like
this. He loved the Civil War parks and taught me the love of history and
the life energy held in the stones and trees and buildings.
In our tour of the area,
we learned quite a bit. Southern troops had been pushed back and were
trying to regain ground, but the northern troops kept a constant
pressure. As Lee’s men tried to move north past Richmond, they were
pushed further and further west until finally being surrounded – as some of
Grant’s troops slid south behind the Rebels – at Appomattox. Ultimately,
Lee surrendered on Palm Sunday, when the courthouse was closed; the meeting of
the two generals took place in a home owned by the McLean family, about 150
yards away.
McLean, who owned
several properties in Virginia, happened to also own property in Manassas at
the site of the first Civil War battle. In a strange coincidence, he is
quoted as saying, “The war started in my front yard and ended in my living
room.” He had moved to Appomattox to settle his family away from the
war. A man of considerable means after marrying a rich widow, he and his
family were financially ruined by the war since their capital was entirely
Confederate money and property.
Early in our tour, we
learned that Lincoln had met months prior to the surrender with Grant and other
Union big wigs, and they planned for the end of the war. Lincoln was
adamant that the end of the war must begin the healing of the country, and even
though the Rebel troops were considered criminals, they would be pardoned and
allowed to return home.
We heard often of the
dignity and class shared by Grant and Lee. Lee had a new uniform and was
decked out in finery, even as he surrendered. Grant, on the other hand,
was fresh from the battlefield, with muddy boots and uniform. But both
treated the occasion with dignity and respect. They chatted amiably
before getting to the business of the surrender, and history (written by the
victors) says that Grant provided generous terms of surrender, which Lee
accepted. The southern soldiers were paroled there at the Courthouse
site, and within two days Grant’s men had printed 20,000 passes for them.
The southern soldiers would be able to keep their horses, were given free
passage on federal transportation, and would be fed at Union camps on their way
home.
What I did not
appreciate is that Lincoln was killed a mere five days later. I had not
remembered that his assassination fell so shortly after the surrender.
Thinking now of how information would have travelled, I marvel that the war did
not re-ignite. The materials at the site mentioned the frailty of the
peace and that the unrest following his murder was significant.
The trip got me thinking
about the reconstruction after such a dramatic division. Here we were,
literally at war, and somehow the men Lincoln met with that day had a vision
that the country would heal, the citizenship would knit together and be able to
see themselves as a whole, single country again. I was struck by the
reports of Confederate soldiers crying on the battlefields, defeated in spite
of their utter exhaustion and starvation – they had lost so much and would now
head home without the spoils of war.
We
managed to reunite the country, for the most part, after a terrible and bloody
war. Are we a people who could do that
now? Do we have that kind of strength and
determination? I hope so. We certainly have work to do, don’t we?
