My Trip to Appomattox Court House

As part of my vacation last week, which was in a nearby state park, I took the opportunity to visit the historic American Civil War location of Appomattox Court House. The place where Grant forced Lee to surrender. The place where the Confederacy pretty much lost their fight to keep slavery.

As much as my visit to Gettysburg, this was something as a student of American History I wanted to do. So, with camera in hand, I took a quick break from my group's park activities to enjoy myself for a few hours.

First off, I visited the nearby American Civil War Museum. Not officially a part of the Appomattox Court House National Park (I think), they had a few galleries on display: One about the Civil War and the lead-up to what happened at Appomattox, and one about Black Emancipation.

After the visit, I drove down the road to the National Park

And into the Court House neighborhood that had been refurbished back to how it looked in 1865:

Appomattox Court House was a relatively small community on a major road between
Richmond and Lynchburg.

The McLean House from a distance

The Courthouse that gave the small community its name

This is it. Where the surrender terms were signed on April 9, 1865

Had to switch to my smartphone for the selfie...

The Room Where It Happened!

If you read up the history, most of the furniture in this room were either purchased or pilfered
by the Union officers who attended the signing, knowing full well how impactful
this moment was. What we see here are replicas based on what ended up at
the Smithsonian or private collections.

When I entered the McLean house as part of the tour, the guide warned me to duck my head a lot. Damn, people must have been short back in the 19th Century.

There is little evidence remaining from the momentous actions of April 1865. No sign of the two armies that gathered on the town's dirt road to witness Lee's armies surrendering their rifles to the Union army receiving them. All that remains are the quiet forested hills and the brick buildings preserved to document where and how it happened.

All that's left has been the troubled efforts of this nation to build the arc of history towards a pure justice for ALL Americans...