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With Grant's staff the morning of April 10thAnother day of grey skies and unseasonable cool weather greeted me this morning as I made my way to the battlefield. I had been so rigidly scheduled the day before, that I hadn’t had the time to visit the visitor’s center, the book store or even to eat lunch. Not to worry, this last happens to me quite frequently while on a battlefield. By the time I register I am hungry, it is late afternoon and usually far away from life support, I decide it is easier to skip lunch altogether and just eat dinner. In this instance it was a good thing I hadn’t been hungry the previous day as the two food trucks serving as the site’s only food vendors both sold out of all of their edibles.
After the surrender had been signed, and the Generals went back across their lines, the news of the cessation of fighting hit the troops. There was no general celebration allowed in the Army of the Potomac, because with the signing of the surrender, the Confederate and Union troops were again (or still, depending on your point of view) countrymen. On the morning of April 10, the Generals met again under
General Grant and his staff ride out to meet General Lee on the morning of April 10than apple tree on the east side of the village. There is no documentation of what was discussed at this meeting, but the actions taken by General Grant following the meeting’s conclusion indicates that General Lee was advocating for assurances of General Grant’s generous articles of surrender.
Those articles allowed the Confederate troops safe passage and protection from molestation (harassment, criminal charges, jail time and execution) as long as they laid down their weapons, returned home, did not take up arms again against the United States until properly exchanged and obeyed the laws of the land where they resided. Officers were to retain their side-arms and personal baggage and artillery men and cavalry who had brought their horses with them could take them home to use on their farms.
Considering General Lee anticipated being Grant’s prisoner upon entering McLean House the day before, the unexpectedly, and unusually, generous surrender terms were the promise of a new beginning. But as much as Lee could appreciate the sentiment, the execution thereof was going to be…difficult.
National Park historians believe that one of the primary benefits that came from the unrecorded discussion on April 10
th was the printing of parole
Grant returns from his meeting with Leepasses to ensure that soldiers in the Army of Northern Virginia wouldn’t be mistaken as enemy combatants or deserters. Parole passes also allowed the bearer to report to any United States government installation to receive clothing, shoes and food. He could also use the parole pass as a literal ticket home, receiving free transportation on any government conveyance (boat, train).
As was demonstrated this morning in the Clover Hill Tavern, on a portable press resembling the one donated for the cause by Corps Commander John Gibbon, the passes were printed 4 at a time, on a single sheet of paper. The press had to be hand inked and rolled, the inked paper air dried, and the four passes cut from the full blue-lined sheet (resembling today’s loose leaf paper). If the entire process took one minute to complete (which is probably too short a time), printing passes in this manner for 26,000 troops would take over 108 hours, or four and a half days if the press ran around the clock.
The previous days’ rain and the threat of severe weather postponed the two events I was most looking forward to: a demonstration of horse-drawn artillery (something I
Solemn Confederate infantryhave been trying to wrap my head around for several years), and the Keystone Event—a funeral for Hannah Reynolds and an illumination throughout the village with each luminary representing one person who was delivered from the bondage of slavery with the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia.
That meant that the majority of my day was spend wandering between lecture and demonstration: The April 10
th meeting; the Union artillery demonstration; the cause of the Civil War; Confederate infantry demonstration. It also meant frequently passing by McLean House and on nearly every occasion, I would glance up to find myself walking alongside General Sheridan. Only my social awkwardness kept me from commenting on his almost constant escort (which I am sure he did not even notice). The real time surrendering of the Confederate cavalry was poignant, as the living historians dismounted their horses, and laid their flags that the feet of the Union cavalry officers. An older gentleman living historian was visibly grieving the moment.
The big event of the day was the not-real time stacking of arms. While this event happened on the April 12, 1865, the organizers realized that with competing events in the area, it
The Union cavalry salute the surrendering Confederate cavalrywas important to have a recreation on Friday. Hundreds of people lined the Richmond-Lynchburg Stage Road east of town as the Union soldiers detailed to receive the arms marched in and lined the road facing south. After a pause in the action (and a terribly undignified grumble and press of bodies that at one point found me perched on the upper railing of a fence hoping my ankle and the fence would both hold me up out of the fray of older men and women pushing themselves to the front of the line), the Confederates marched up the road from the east. Each rank stacked their arms in the center of the road, draping their cartridge boxes over the points of the bayonets, and placing the band’s drums alongside. The regimental flag was held aloft parallel to the ground and paraded over the heads of the men, some of whom touched it, others kissed it, before it was furled and laid in the dust. The Confederates marched back to camp.
Two things will always remain with me from my time at Appomattox. The first was that both armies were filled with men, many of them unknown to us and
The Confederates have stacked their arms and have marched awaysome whose names have been passed through the ages. These men fought for things that may or may not reflect the personal or societal values we currently espouse, but every one of them believed that something was more important that their lives. And in the end, the vast majority of the men who carried the fight, who suffered the fatigue of forced marches and the pains of empty stomachs or a diet of green corn, were not the men who made policy. Never more in history was this a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight. And on a purely personal level, one person to another, this moment, the beginning of the end, is bittersweet. For men to see their brothers, friends and comrades cut down, and to survive it all only to have nothing to show at the end but a piece of paper is oddly more disheartening than I expected.
The other thing that I will take away from this is the joyful oddities I got to experience. The absolute absurdity of walking along in a daze only to find when my attention does focus that I am somehow in the middle of General Grant’s entourage. The thrill I get when a passing regimental band strikes up
The Campbells are Coming and the instinctive skip step I employ to ensure I am marching along beside them in step. And the moment when I looked up to see the familiar face of “Chicago”, a woman who had saved up enough money to follow Grant’s entire Overland campaign the year prior--she and I had last spoken after the emotional candle light vigil commemorating the bloody 22 hours of fighting at Spotsylvania’s Bloody Angle 11 months prior.
I closed out this part of the war, much like many of Lee’s soldiers did. One more night in bivouac, then a cross country journey back to my “home.”
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