Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 1, 1990 TAG: 9003290393
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHRIS GLADDEN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
But next Sunday, this normally quiet community of 1,500 just beside U.S. 460 will not be so quiet.
Park officials expect at least 10,000 visitors. Shuttle buses will run from the parking lot at Armstrong Furniture Co., from Appomattox High School, from Court Street downtown and from a nearby shopping center.
In that shopping center parking lot, food concessions operated by local civic groups will sell hamburgers, hot dogs, barbecue, funnel cakes, pork rinds, shish kabobs and other alfresco fast-food to visitors whom local restaurants won't be able to feed.
April 9 marks the 125th anniversary of Robert E. Lee's surrender to Ulysses S. Grant and the park is marking it with a week of activities.
Experience dictates that 125th Civil War anniversaries are popular with Civil War enthusiasts, says park Superintendent Jon B. Montgomery. He notes that the 125th anniversaries of the Battle of Gettysburg and the Battle of the Wilderness drew 40,000 visitors. So the prediction of 10,000 may be conservative.
Another 4,000 Civil War re-enactors are expected from as far away as England and Germany. They will be on hand for the highlight of the week, Sunday's re-enactment of the stacking of arms, certainly one of the most emotional and dramatic ceremonies in American history.
Three days after Lee's surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia and four years to the day that the war began, thousands of Northern troops lined each side of the Richmond-Lynchburg Stage Road that ran through the sleepy village of Appomattox Court House. Lee's forces had been ordered to lay down their arms that day. Regiment by battered and bloody regiment, they marched through the Union ranks.
Gen. Joshua Chamberlain, the Northern general who was to receive the formal surrender that day, ordered his men to salute the Confederates who had fought bravely in the midst of great deprivation.
Moved by the gesture, Confederate Gen. John B. Gordon, who led the Southern column, wheeled on his horse and returned the salute by touching the tip of his sword to his stirruped boot. Then he commanded the Confederate brigades to salute the Northern soldiers.
For six hours, the Southern troops marched down the middle of the road and stacked their rifles neatly between the flanking Union troops. When it came time to lay down the battle flags, many of the Confederates broke ranks with tears streaming down their faces and kissed the ragged banners they had followed for four years.
Though Lee's surrender won't be re-enacted, Montgomery expects the stacking of arms to provide drama aplenty. It's the largest event the park has sponsored since the 100th anniversary, when 10,000 to 12,000 showed up for similar re-enactments.
And, park officials say, some re-enactors have become so swept up in the event that they plan to leave their arms there for good, just like the Confederate soldiers.
Lee's surrender at Appomattox ended the Civil War for all practical purposes, though some Southern units fought on for a time.
What put the tiny village of Appomattox Court House at the focal point of history was Lee's desperate search for supplies and Grant's dogged pursuit with his superior forces. Lee evacuated his troops from Richmond and Petersburg, hoping to connect with supply trains as he marched westward through the spring mud.
But the Union forces cut off his supply lines. Fierce skirmishes were fought along the way. The Southern forces were game but weak from hunger.
Wrote one: "Sumpter Wilkins of A Company invited me to dine as he had captured some fine rats in a barn. I felt grateful for his invitation but I can't eat a rat."
During the pursuit Grant sent Lee letters offering surrender terms.
Finally, the great gray cavalier, the general called Uncle Robert by his men, surveyed his starving troops and decided with great sadness to end the fight that had lasted four bitter years.
He and Grant met at the modest brick house of Wilbur McLean on April 9.
McLean was a businessman who had married a wealthy planter's daughter and lived in Northern Virginia during the beginning of the war. But the two bloody battles of Manassas took place practically in the McLeans' back yard, so Wilbur moved his family to central Virginia to escape the war.
But McLean unwillingly seemed to draw the war into his orbit. On that Palm Sunday, he looked out at 100,000 opposing troops camped around his home.
Lee and Grant sat at separate tables in McLean's parlor and went over the Union leader's generous terms. The men would be paroled and allowed to return to their homes. Those who owned their own horses could keep them. And officers could keep their pistols and swords.
One of the most devastating wars in the history of the United States had come to a dramatic end.
As one witness described the scene when Lee's soldier's heard the news: "Many of the men were sobbing and crying like children with convulsions of grief after a whipping. They were sorely grieved, mortified and humiliated."
War, not peace, draws tourists
The national park that was a sleepy village of 100 residents at the time of the surrender still looks much the same, though it draws 120,000 people a year through its visitors' center.
The park sits beside Virginia 24, which branches off U.S. 460 about an hour and a half's drive from Roanoke. The modern town of Appomattox is just on the other side of 460.
Montgomery says most of the park's visitors are day-trippers. Tourism hasn't blossomed around this hugely important historical site.
There's a Lee-Grant Motel, a Lee-Grant Campground and a History Junction Shopping Center. There's a Traveler's Motel that may or may not be named after Lee's beloved horse, Traveller: The steed's name is spelled with two Ls.
Montgomery likes the town and the park the way they are.
"Most people stop for a day and move on. There's not a wide choice of motels," he says. "I would hate to see it become another Gettysburg."
Even before the Civil War ended, tourists flocked to Gettysburg and the tourist industry kept pace. After all, it was a terrible and bloody battle, and Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address there.
As James D. Landrum, a South Carolinian who recently visited the park notes: "More people are interested in war than in peace."
There are other reasons Appomattox hasn't become a tourist hub.
In 1892, the courthouse that gave the village of Appomattox Court House its name burned down. A new courthouse was built in the nearby town of Appomattox, thus shifting the little activity in the village over to the town. Locals took the tumbled down village for granted. It didn't occur to them to exploit its historical significance.
When the courthouse moved, the village was deserted - but that preserved the area from any development that might have prevented it from becoming the park that it is today.
It covers 1,325 acres of rolling hills, restored buildings and rail fences. Among the buildings are the McLean House, the restored courthouse, a tavern, country store, law offices and a book store that sells a wide variety of Civil War books and almost no souvenirs. A $400,000-a-year budget pays for park maintenance.
Interest in turning the site into a National Park didn't occur until the 1930s. The first plan was to move the McLean House to Washington, D.C., and turn it into a museum. The house was dismantled.
But the restoration of Colonial Williamsburg began to grab headlines, and the momentum changed from moving the house to restoring it on its original site. By then, souvenir hunters had stolen many of the original bricks.
About 5,000 bricks from the original house were put back into the restored structure. The park was established in 1940.
The fact that the house was torn down and rebuilt on the same spot is just one of the ironies that hover over the park like the ghosts of the dead warriors.
Another irony is that the pine table where Grant sat and the marble-topped table where Lee sat belong to the Smithsonian Institution and the Chicago Historical Society. Montgomery would love to see them returned to the McLean parlor. "But the society and the museum won't give them up," he says, despite vigorous efforts by the Park Service to obtain them.
Tables or no tables, Appomattox exerts a strong pull on visitors who want to see where the Union finally was rejoined.
"The people who come here really want to come here," Montgomery says. "This is a destination point. At least half the visitors come from out of state. It's a rare day when someone is not here - even in a blizzard."
by CNB