After the disaster at Sailor’s Creek, General Ulysses S Grant knew that the Confederate Army of Virginia was beaten, and sent a message to General Robert E Lee asking if perhaps it was not time to begin discussing a surrender. Lee, however, was not ready to give up yet, though he realized that his only remaining chance was to reach the railroad station at Appomattox Courthouse, where loaded supply trains were waiting for him. Gathering what was left of the Army of Virginia (now reduced to around 28,000 men), he set off for the train station, hoping to resupply his troops, move south, and join up with General Joseph Johnston’s army.
For those who don't know, I live in a converted campervan and am traveling around the country, posting photo diaries of places that I have visited. :)
Just after dawn on the morning of April 8, 1865, the Confederate advance force of cavalry, under General John Gordon, reached Appomattox Courthouse—and discovered that the Federals had marched all night to beat him there. A unit of Federal cavalry under General George Custer had already burned the three trains carrying the Confederate supplies, and more Union cavalry had formed up in a defensive line along a ridge nearby. Gordon charged the Federals and managed to seize part of the ridge—but from this vantage point he was able to see the entire Union Army of the Potomac stretched out before him. He sent back a message to General Lee: “I have fought my corps to a frazzle, and I fear I can do nothing unless I am heavily supported by Longstreet's corps.” Gordon knew there could be no reinforcement.
Robert E Lee knew it too. When he saw Gordon’s message, he realized that it was the end of his army—they were surrounded on all sides and cut off from any possible source of food or supplies. “There is nothing left for me to do,” he told his aides, “but to go and see General Grant. And I would rather die a thousand deaths.”
By messenger, Lee sent a note to Grant asking for a meeting. In response, Grant requested him to find a suitable place where they could convene and to send word to him. After sending aides to scour the village of Appomattox Courthouse, Lee and his staff chose the little cottage where Wilmer McLean, a sugar speculator, lived.
After further exchanges, a ceasefire went into effect and the meeting was arranged for the next afternoon. Lee was the first to arrive, clothed immaculately in full dress uniform and sash. Grant was late, and when he finally arrived he was, characteristically, clad in an old service uniform, wet with mud, with his pant legs tucked into his boot-tops. Only the dirt-splattered star insignia on his shoulders gave any clue to his rank as commander in chief.
The two had met before, twenty years ago as young officers in the Mexican-American War, and for a few minutes they chatted about old times. It was Lee who brought them back to the business at hand.
Grant then handed a written summary of the surrender terms: “I propose to receive the surrender of the Army of N. Va. on the following terms, to wit: Rolls of all the officers and men to be made in duplicate. One copy to be given to an officer designated by me, the other to be retained by such officer or officers as you may designate. 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 sign a like parole for the men of their commands. The arms, artillery and public property to be parked and stacked, and turned over to the officer appointed by me to receive them. This will not embrace the side-arms of the officers, nor their private horses or baggage. This done, each officer and man will be allowed to return to their homes, not to be disturbed by United States authority so long as they observe their paroles and the laws in force where they may reside.”
In addition, Grant added, he would provide the starving Confederate troops with rations from his own commissary. Lee thanked him for the gesture, saying that it would go far towards reconciling the country.
The terms were then formally written down by one of Grant’s aides, Ely S Parker. When Lee learned that Parker was a member of the Seneca Native American nation, he remarked, “It is good to have one real American here.”“Sir,” Parker replied, “we are all Americans.”
After the surrender document was signed, Lee stepped outside and was met by a crowd of Union soldiers cheering their victory over the Confederacy. Hearing this, Grant immediately sent an aide outside to silence them, declaring, “The war is over; these are our countrymen now.”
With Lee’s surrender, however, there were still well over 100,000 armed Confederate troops in the field. But as word of the Army of Virginia’s capitulation spread across the South, everyone realized that further resistance was pointless. On April 26, General Joseph Johnstone and his men in North Carolina submitted to General William T Sherman. On May 9, General Nathan Bedford Forrest disbanded his cavalry force in Alabama. General Edmund Kirby Smith, though hearing about the surrender, stubbornly refused at first to give up, and did not surrender his forces in Louisiana until May 26. The last Confederate land force, led by the Cherokee General Stand Watie in what is now Oklahoma, did not capitulate until June 23, and the last surrender to take place, of the sea raider CSS Shenandoah, happened at Liverpool in Great Britain on November 6. But after Lee’s surrender the fighting was not yet quite over….
Wilmer McLean and his family occupied the McLean House until 1869. It passed through several buyers and then stood vacant and neglected, until it was purchased by a group of investors who disassembled it brick by brick, planning to relocate it in Washington DC as a museum. That plan was halted by the Great Depression, and instead the the National Park Service bought the property in 1949, reassembled the house, and incorporated into the Appomattox Court House National Historical Park, which had been established in 1935.
Today the house has been restored and reconstructed to the condition it was in at the time of the surrender. The rest of the 1800 acre park contains historical buildings from the town of Appomattox, including a jail, a tavern, and the old courthouse. There are also interpretive signs and monuments at the ridge area where Gordon’s last attack took place.
Some photos from a visit.
