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Monday, December 3, 2012

South met its Waterloo - and so can you

From the Vancouver Sun:  South met its Waterloo - and so can you

When the U.S. Civil War broke out in 1861, an unwitting farmer named Wilmer McLean suddenly found himself and his family caught in the middle of the momentous conflict's first big battle in a Northern Virginia town called Manassas.
A Southern general commandeered his home as headquarters and Yankee shells were soon falling all around the house as McLean and his family cowered inside. Their barn was destroyed during the battle which saw more than 3,500 soldiers killed or wounded on both sides. After it was all over, McLean decided to pick up and move 200 kilometres south to a sleepy little village called Appomattox where he thought his family would be safe.
Although everyone in both the North and the South had thought the war would be over in a matter of weeks, it dragged on for another four horrendous years during which a staggering total of 630,000 American soldiers lost their lives - more than were killed in all of the country's other wars combined including both the First and Second World Wars.
In an ironic twist of fate, McLean found his new home being commandeered yet again - this time by Northern forces - when Gen. Robert E. Lee was finally forced to surrender his battered army at Appomattox following a weeklong retreat from Richmond on April 9, 1865.
The front parlour of McLean's modest two-storey brick home was where Lee and Gen. Ulysses S. Grant agreed on surrender terms and signed papers that ended the war. Although there were still two or three pockets of resistance in other parts of the South, all hostilities ended a short time later. In later years, it was said that "the war began in McLean's front yard and ended in his front parlour."
The McLean House is one of more than a dozen of the village's original buildings which have been restored or reconstructed to look exactly like they did in 1865 as the centrepiece of the 1,750-acre Appomattox Courthouse National Historic Park. The rebuilt courthouse serves as the visitors' centre where you can get a detailed map for a self-guided tour of the village and its surrounding battlefield. On the second floor is a small auditorium where you can view an excellent 15-minute slide show on the war, Lee's last retreat from Richmond and his subsequent surrender at Appomattox which was home to fewer than 150 people at the time.
Among the village's other carefully restored buildings are its original tavern, which houses a number of Civil War artifacts including muskets, swords and poignant letters home from soldiers on both sides; a country store full of colonial wares and bizarre-looking kitchen gadgets that look more like torture devices; and a county jail complete with iron bars, shackles and a ghostly voice-over recording of a hapless old "prisoner" guaranteed to scare your kids out of their wits.
But the most fascinating of all the buildings is the McLean House where you can walk up the same steps that Lee and Grant did on their way to the front parlour where a small painting in the doorway depicts the surrender scene with the two generals sitting at one of the room's two small tables and more than a dozen aides hovering in the background. Dark red drapes, a faded red-and-green carpet and a stark black-and-white fireplace round out the picture.
As I stood there silently gazing back and forth from the painting to the parlour, I found myself suddenly overwhelmed with an eerie feeling of being present at a great and dramatic moment in history.
But if it hadn't been for the meticulous details in the memoirs of one of Grant's aides, Col. Horace Potter, the recreation of the historic parlour scene might never have been possible. For as soon as the two legendary generals had left, a frenetic bidding war broke out for souvenirs from the tiny room and it was stripped bare in less than an hour.
One of Grant's aides paid McLean $40 for Lee's marble-topped table as a present for Mrs. Grant and the table at which Grant had sat was purchased for $20 by Gen. Phillip Sheridan. Even the upholstery on the chairs was ripped up and torn into small pieces as mementoes of the occasion.
When Appomattox's courthouse burned down in 1892, the old village was abandoned and the town was moved five kilometres west to the railroad junction where Lee had hoped to get supplies for his starving army but was cut off by Northern cavalry troops under a young Gen. George Custer, who faced a demise of his own at Little Big Horn some years later.
The new town was built around an old railroad station which is now a well-appointed visitor centre with free maps and brochures for the thousands of tourists who visit the national park every year. Inside is a desk where you can make reservations for a room at one of the town's two motels or its handful of B&Bs. There is also a model of the old Civil War village and a table where children can colour pictures of both Grant and Lee while their parents peruse a raft of souvenir coffee cups, baseball caps and T-shirts.
Also available is a walking tour guide of the town's 44 heritage houses, some of which date back to the late 1800s. Although the town's present-day population is barely 1,700, it has a charming town square like most other southern cities with the customary statue of a rebel soldier, an old cannon and a war memorial with the names of all its fallen heroes.
The biggest hero of them all though, was Robert E. Lee, who is the focal point of a marvellous new $10-million Museum of the Confederacy that was opened just last March three kilometres west of the national park. The museum's pride and joy is the elegant brass-button coat that Lee wore to his surrender meeting with Grant, as well as his gleaming gold-handled sword decorated with the head of a lion. Also on display is the slender gold-nibbed pen with which he signed the surrender papers.
Throughout the museum are dozens of other uniforms, battle flags and weapons of every description as well as countless photographs, letters, documents and huge murals outlining the progress of the war and its final culmination at Appomattox.
One of the most fascinating exhibits of all, however, is the Wall of Faces consisting of more than 100 photographs of individual soldiers, ordinary citizens and former slaves, along with mini-biographies explaining what happened to each of them after the war.
One photo that haunts me still is that of an elderly black woman who apparently stayed on with her former "owners" until the day she died in 1870. She had the saddest face I have ever seen - etched with lines of woe that made me wonder what her long life of involuntary servitude must have been like.
She looked as though she was still carrying the weight of the world on her thin shoulders and her eyes reminded me of all the Holocaust victims I have ever seen.
Sad, sad, sad ...
IF YOU GO
Getting There: Appomattox is situated at the intersection of three major highways in central Virginia. It is 35 kilometres east of Lynchburg, 140 kilometres south of Charlottesville and 150 kilometres east of Richmond.
Accommodations: There are only two motels in Appomattox (pop. 1,700) and three or four
B&Bs, but there are many more motels and B&Bs in Lynchburg (pop. 66,000), Charlottesville (pop. 40,000) and Richmond (pop. 200,000).
Admission prices: Appomattox Courthouse National Park: From May 10 to Labor Day: $4 US per person or $10 per ca, including all passengers. Rest of the year: $3 per person or $5 per car.
Museum of the Confederacy at Appomatto $10 per person; $6 children ages seven to 13: free for children under seven.

 

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