Virginia - Day 29 - Appomattox and the Blue Ridge

Fancy Gap/Blue Ridge Parkway KOA
Friday, 29 March 2019

today's route

My campground was just a few miles west of the National Park.

Appomattox Court House National Historical Park.
The town of Appomattox Court House, originally known as Clover Hill until a courthouse was built in 1845, included 60 buildings in 1860 and was formed around a tavern that was built at a crossroads of the Richmond-Lynchburg Stage Road.  Hostilities of the Civil War largely bypassed the town until April 1865.

From June 1884 to March 1886, Grant's army waged trench warfare against Lee's army, with trenches stretching from the edge of Richmond (the capital) 30 miles to the edge of Petersburg (a railroad hub).  In April Lee finally abandoned defense of both cities and moved his army south to Appomattox, intending to pick up supplies there and meet Gen. Johnston's army in North Carolina.

Grant's army was not only on Lee's tail but also trying to cut him off from reaching the railroad at Appomattox Station.  On April 8th, Union soldiers succeeded in capturing trainloads of supplies, including food that the Confederates badly needed.  I've never had a very high regard for George Custer, but this marker informed me that his history is not as simple as I'd thought.

On April 9th, Grant was able to attack Lee from above and superior Union numbers kept Lee from effectively retaliating.  Lee had been trying to break through the Union line to take the Stage Road down to Appomattox Station.  But with his men poorly fed, the railroads in Petersburg cut off, and now the Union troops around him, Lee had run out of options.  One of his aides suggested just letting his men scatter, and Pres. Jefferson Davis had called for guerrilla warfare, but Lee realized that could mean chaos in the country and decided surrender was preferable.

Grant suggested he choose a meeting place for them, and the front parlor of the McLean family house was chosen.  Here are 3 views of that meeting.
Two of them include George Custer, though one doesn't, despite all 3 being the same picture.  However, the National Portrait Gallery says none of them is accurate and offers yet another view.  npg.si.edu

Still the National Park Service is using these other pictures to go by and has furnished the parlor in today's McLean House to match.


Whatever the parlor looked like, the meeting between Lee and Grant lasted about an hour and a half.  Grant wrote a short statement of the terms of surrender, which were charity itself, considering these men had been fighting and losing men to each other for nearly a year.  Grant's primary stipulation was that Lee's men agree not to take up arms again against the Union.  He also asked that they forfeit their flags and weapons.  He agreed, however, that the officers could keep their sidearms and that those who had horses could keep them.

Once they'd agreed, Grant ordered his men to stop their wild celebrations, because he wanted to leave the southerners with some dignity and not be humiliated.  He also ordered that they be fed with the Union's supplies.  His actions raised a sense of gratitude among most of Lee's men.

Grant then sent a short note to Washington, DC, that could hardly have been more simple.

Less than 5 years later, he was sworn in as president.

Our history lessons tend to ignore that this day was by no means the end of the Civil War.  Lee surrendered only the Army of Northern Virginia.  There were other armies that were still fighting and, in fact, the final surrender of the war didn't come until November.  This link describes them all, with an interesting reference to Coca-Cola.  wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil-War-Conclusion

Two days after Appomattox Court House, Pres. Lincoln gave a speech about what he believed the future would look like for the country, including voting rights for black people.  His primary concern was to bring about reconciliation and reestablish a real union, not just one in name.  However, John Wilkes Booth was in the audience and was so inflamed by the speech that he decided to kill Lincoln.  On April 14th, he did exactly that and, in my opinion, is one of the direct causes for the disaster that we know as Reconstruction.

Lincoln was our first president to be assassinated.  Coming so close on the heels of the surrender, many southerners feared northern retribution.

The exterior of the McLean House today is much like it was in 1865, thanks to a failed business venture.  In 1898, a man bought the house, intending to move it to Washington, DC, and open it as a war museum.  He got as far as having it disassembled when the crash of 1898 happened and all his funds dried up.  For the next 30 years, the pile of house parts lay unattended and were likely scavenged by the neighbors.  But in 1933 the National Park Service took control.  With the help of archaeologists and researchers, they figured out where the original foundation was and what it should look like.  Today, much of the front of the house is built of the original bricks.

I saw a pair of Bluebirds in the front yard.  True.

... and now

McLean House then ..

The drive through the Blue Ridge Mountains
We had a beautiful blue sky for much of the day, though the temperature wasn't as warm as they'd forecast.

Throughout this month I've been seeing signs by the side of the road saying: Open Air Fires Unlawful Before 4 PM.  That seemed so odd to me that finally, today, I looked it up.  Turns out they're an attempt by the Virginia Dept. of Forestry is trying to minimize forest fires.  During the winter months, forest fuels cure (they say) and result in high fire danger in the early spring before the new growth appears.  I'd never thought about it.  The ban runs every year from Feb. 15th to April 30th.

But speaking of new growth, today I started to see those neon green leaves that you get in the early spring on some bushes.  Very hopeful.

more signs of spring

Interstate 81 runs down the Shenandoah Valley as far as I can tell, and I had mountains on both my right and my left.  Very pretty.

I passed a sign for the town of Grahams Forge, so I looked it up, and I'm glad I did.  I can't see that there's much of a town there, but there must have been once and there's still a mansion that's haunted.  They swear.  And you can read about it here.   majorgrahammansion.com  They include a lot of exclamation marks!

This campground is at Fancy Gap, and I have no idea where the name came from.  I've thought of about 5 explanations so far and haven't wanted to look it up in case it's just something ordinary, like a person's name.