The "End" of the Civil War

Virginia is a snooty state. When my folks lived in Richmond, they made that statement about the city of Richmond, because if your family didn't have roots going all the way back to the Revolutionary War in that city, you were no one in Richmond society. But when my parents moved to this area, we encountered a different kind of "snootiness" about Charlottesville, which is one of the "urban centers" close to where my folks live. In the vicinity of Charlottesville, you can find the homes of three different presidents of the United States: Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, and James Madison. Of course, Jefferson is the most famous, and after doing a unit of CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education) at the University of Virginia Medical Center, I discovered exactly how large Jefferson's shadow looms at UVa: as the founder of this university, Jefferson's wishes that no plants that are not native to Virginia should be planted on university grounds are respected even to this day, which has caused some embarrassment when visiting dignitaries have presented non-native plants as gifts to the institution. In short, Virginia has produced many significant historical figures as well as having many significant historical battles take place within its boundaries, so perhaps it has a right to be a bit snooty.

The town of Nellysford, which encompasses the Wintergreen resort, lies in a sort of center of three bigger "urban centers":  Charlottesville, which is a 45-minute drive to the northeast, Waynesboro, which is a 30-minute drive to the northwest, and Lynchburg, which is a 45-minute drive to the south. During my time here, my father has worked in Lynchburg, my mother (and I, when I was doing temp work) have commuted to Charlottesville for work, and general grocery shopping and attending worship services was done in Waynesboro. Most of the time when we have gone anywhere for leisure activities, it has been to Waynesboro or Charlottesville, with occasional excursions on my part to Staunton, which is further west of Waynesboro (more on that later). The few times that we did go in the direction of Lynchburg, we would always see signs for Appomattox, and say, "Hey, isn't that where the Civil War ended? We should go check that out sometime." But we never did. Today I made it a point to drive over there.

What struck me as I drove there was how rural a state Virginia really is. (Northern Virginia should just be its own state, but I guess they don't break off because  most of Virginia's tax revenue comes from them.) From here to Appomattox was very rural, though, with cute little churches dotted along the way (no Lutherans that I saw, though, with apologies to all of my friends and colleagues interested in rural ministry--but maybe you could learn how the Baptists handle rural ministry!). As I entered Appomattox, though, I was greeted with a Walmart, a Dairy Queen, and a McDonald's, and I followed the signs that said "historic downtown" thinking that's where I needed to be headed.

But after driving around and finding nothing resembling the place where the Civil War was supposed to have ended, I finally pulled in at the Visitors' Center, located in the old train station. The woman there very kindly directed me to where I was supposed to be, which was out of the downtown a ways. And once I drove out there and began walking around, these are some of the things I discovered:

Where General Lee surrendered to General Grant was the original village of Appomattox, which was nothing more than a stagecoach stop on the road between Richmond and Lynchburg. The downtown that I had found did not grow up until 1893 around the train that came through there, rendering the original village obsolete. And, the original village fell into disrepair--after all, the state of Virginia, home to the capital of the Confederacy, did not want to remember its humiliating defeat and surrender. So, unlike Gettysburg, no monuments or markers were put up. It wasn't until around post-World War II that interest arose in reconstructing the village and memorializing the surrender, and so they used blueprints and what the park ranger termed SWAG--scientific wild-ass guess--to reconstruct how everything looked. In fact, there were no photographs of the actual surrender, because Lincoln's assassination happened around the same time and all the reporters were up in D.C. So, they just have paintings based on people's descriptions of the event.

Regardless of all of this, there is a sense of history about the place. In fact, after looking down my nose at the Civil War re-enactors that go around Gettysburg, I was treated (with other tourists) to a description of the events and the daily life of the soldiers during that time by a man dressed in Union garb and so deep into his character that the park ranger warned us ahead of time to pretend along with him that it was 1865 and make no mention of vehicles like cars or airplanes.  "If he asks you how you got here, say by coach or by horse." I also learned that California and Oregon were states in 1865, so if you were from there, you were allowed to tell the man that's where you were from, but in 1865 the only way you got from the West Coast to Virginia was by boat around South America--stagecoaches at that time only went from East to West, not in the reverse. And if you were from someplace like Oklahoma, you had to say that you were from Indian country. It all seemed rather silly, but I remember it, so perhaps this is an effective way to teach history.

Another thing I learned is that, contrary to the history books, the surrender did not happen in the courthouse, but rather in the house owned by a man with the last name of McLean. And that this marked only the surrender of the army of Northern Virginia--there were still other Confederate armies running around out there, so this really wasn't the definitive end of the Civil War. But because of that, the surrender terms were very easy--the Union was trying to make it easy for the other Confederate armies to want to surrender.

This forgotten site of Civil War history was thus very fascinating. As I drove into Appomattox County, there was a sign which said, "Welcome to Appomattox County--home of the reunification of America." I wish I could have gotten a picture of it, but there was really no safe place to pull over and do that. The sign is a rhetorical sign, I think--America wasn't really reunified at Appomattox, and the Civil War wasn't really over. And I don't know that America really has been unified. The old saying about the Holy Roman Empire was that it was not holy, it was not Roman, and it wasn't much of an empire--just a loose confederation of individual countries. Perhaps the same thing can be said about the United States--we haven't really been united, we're just a loose confederation of states and each person has his/her own opinion, expressed in various ways. Is there any way for us to be united? Thoughts to ponder on this cool evening in Virginia.