Appomattox

On this date, in 1865, a tired old gentleman from Virginia rode his gray horse eastward toward a little, red brick courthouse in Western Virginia and met with a contingent of blue-clad army officers. They met in the front parlor of a farmer named Wilmer McLean, who had moved there from near Manassas, Virginia. Mr. McLean had moved there to remove himself and his family from the vicinity of battles between the competing armies which had been fought there in 1861 and 1862. Now his family was playing host to the end of hostilities. Ironic.

The terms of the end of hostilities allowed officers to keep their sidearms and further allowed the surrendering soldiers to keep their mules and horses, if they had any. This was what the federal government allowed these men to keep of their possessions. It would be a few weeks or months before these men would find out what the federal government had allowed them to keep when they returned to their homes. A lot of them didn't have much waiting for them when they returned to their families.

Isn't it ironic that this date falls so closely to the date upon which the federal government allows us to retain some of our possessions every year?

Within a year, the gentleman from Virginia, whose home had been confiscated by the Federal government, would take a position with a small college in Lexington, Virginia, where he would serve as President until he died in 1870. His son, who would follow him as President of Washington and Lee, would later negotiate with the federal government to receive some portion of compensation for his confiscated house and the land upon which it stood across the Potomac from the capitol. Military personnel, politicians and a President would ultimately find a place of rest on the grounds of his former residence.

Meanwhile, the Virginia gentleman lies in a family crypt beneath a chapel which is situated beyond the colonnade at Washington and Lee University. We try to keep his memory, despite the changing opinions of recent days.

The site of the surrender is quite an interesting place to visit. Turning off the highway, you drive through foliage which separates the frantic cacophany of modern living from the site of the surrender. Once you pass through the green curtain, you come into a place where the clock seems to have stopped and you really grasp a sense of what it might have looked like on April 9, 1865. The only missing parts of the scene are the men, horses and mules which were congregated around the buildings.

Within four days of the scene enacted on April 9, 1865, the leader of that federal government would lie in a stranger's bed across the street from a theater in Washington, D.C., dying from a gunshot wound in the back of his head. His death would, in some sense, be one of the last casualties of the hostilities from that difference of opinion played out in the fields, rivers, and pasturelands of America. It would have been nice if the agreements which were reached on April 9, 1865 in Appomattox, Virginia could have ended all of the injuries and deaths from that argument.

Unfortunately, we still suffer.