Tag Archives: General Ulysses S. Grant

Appomattox Courthouse Village Part 2

Posted on October 20, 2023 | 8 comments

I gave an overview of Appomattox Court House and the importance of General Robert E. Lee’s surrender of the Confederate Army of Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant, on April 9, 1865, in my previous post.

*Clicking on a photo will give you a closer look!

This post features Wilmer McLean’s reconstructed home. The original home was built in 1848. After the terms of surrender were signed in the best home in Appomattox Court House, much of what the McLean’s owned was taken as souvenirs. The McLean family moved and, in 1893, it was dismantled to be put on display in Washington, D.C. (that never happened).

The table where Robert E. Lee sat.

The table where Ulysses S. Grant sat.

Ely S. Parker was a Seneca Indian born in 1828 on the Tonawanda Indian Reservation in western New York. The Senecas were one of the tribes of the great Iroquois Confederation called the Six Nations.

He was present at the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia where he helped draft the surrender documents and render them in his own hand. At the time of the surrender, General Robert E. Lee is said to have mistaken Parker for a black man, but apologized saying, “I am glad to see one real American here,” to which Parker responded, “We are all Americans, sir.”

Parker was brevetted a brigadier general of volunteers on April 9, 1865 and continued to serve as Grant’s secretary until the general’s retirement from the army in 1869. Grant created a sensation in 1871 when he appointed Parker the nation’s first Native American Commissioner of Indian Affairs.

Union officers tossed little 7-year old Lula McLean’s rag doll to one another. She was called the ‘Silent Witness’ by Colonel Horace Porter, an officer of Lieutenant General Grant’s staff.

The doll was carried to New York by Captain Thomas W. C. Moore of Major General Sheridan’s staff. The Moore family treasured the doll for 128 years.

The ‘Silent Witness’ is on display at the visitor’s center. She is not the doll on this parlor horsehair sofa at the McLean house (this is a representation)…she is under lock and key in a glass case.

The McLean house kitchen.

The ice house.

Slave quarters.

Appomattox Courthouse Village Part 1

See the world around you!

8 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged American Civil War, Appomattox Courthouse Village, Ely S. Parker, General Robert E. Lee, General Ulysses S. Grant, LCsCottage, Silent Witness, Virginia, Wilmer McLean

Appomattox Courthouse Village Part 1

Posted on October 18, 2023 | 13 comments

I dislike my photo taken, and I rarely show one, but I just wanted to show the other Laura (she knows who she is) that, yes, it did rain on this road trip. The rain, however, was never a big deal.

Appomattox Court House and the surrounding countryside is beautiful and peaceful; a bucolic place that anyone would want to live in.

*Clicking on a photo will give you a closer look!

The antebellum village began as Clover Hill. The village was a stop along the Richmond-Lynchburg stagecoach road. It was also the site of organizational meetings, so when Appomattox County was established by an Act on February 8, 1845, Clover Hill village became the county seat.

In early April 1865, Confederate States Army forces commanded by General Robert E. Lee were being pursued by Union Army troops commanded by Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant.

The Richmond-Lynchburg Road was important to Lee’s retreat from Grant. However, the Federals blocked this route, and in spite of Lee’s attacks, his army was surrounded, forcing him to surrender.

“Then there is nothing left for me to do but to go and see General Grant, and I would rather die a thousand deaths.”

Lee formally surrendered to Grant on April 9, 1865 at the Wilmer McLean house in Appomattox. (After the Battle of Bull Run, McLean had moved here to escape the war.)

On April 12, a formal ceremony of parade and the stacking of arms led by Confederate Maj. Gen. J ohn B. Gordon to Federal Brig. Gen. Joshua Chamberlain marked the disbandment of the Army of Northern Virginia.

Nearly 28,000 remaining officers and men were paroled, free to return home without their major weapons, but enabling men to take their horses and officers to retain their sidearms (swords and pistols), and effectively ending the war in Virginia.

There were perhaps 100 soldiers killed here between April 8 and 9. 19 of those are buried here in Appomattox Court House Confederate Cemet ery.

Only 8 of these soldiers are known. Alabamian Private Jesse H. Hutchins enlisted only 5 days after Confederate troops fired upon Fort Sumter. He had survived 1,454 days of service, only to be killed a few yards from the Appomattox Courthouse in the evening of April 8, 1865, just hours before General Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant.

The unidentified Union soldier was found in a wooded lot after the Federal dead had been removed in 1866 and 1867.

I discovered Thomas Tibbs in the Appomattox Courthouse museum. He stood out to me because he was an Appomattox County native and served in Custer’s U.S. 7th Cavalry. He did not die at the Battle of Little Bighorn, which I have visited twice, but at the Battle of Washita.

Since 1903, when General Joshua Chamberlain revisited Appomattox Court House, and described the McLean house as a heap of ruins, the house has been reconstructed. I will share that in the next post.

See the world around you!

13 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged American Civil War, Appomattox Court House Confederate Cemetery, Appomattox Courthouse Village, Clover Hill, General John B. Gordon, General Joshua Chamberlain, General Robert E. Lee, General Ulysses S. Grant, LCsCottage, Virginia

Bennett Place North Carolina

Posted on September 21, 2023 | 13 comments

I am going to show my ignorance here, by stating that I did not realize that the surrender of the Northern Army of Virginia by General Robert E. Lee to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse did not end the American Civil War.

On our road trip, the Hubster and I discovered Bennett Place, where I learned the rest of the story.

*Clicking on a photo will give you a closer look!

General Joseph E. Johnston was the highest-ranking United States officer to resign his commission and fight for the Confederacy. William T. Sherman left his position as superintendent at Louisiana Seminary and Military Institute to fight for the Union.

The two met in battle in 1861 at First Manassas (Bull Run) where Johnston’s Confederate army forced Union troops, including a brigade led by Colonel Sherman, into a full retreat.

After recovering from wounds sustained in 1862, Johnston was sent to the Western Theater of Operations.

Within two years, the men confronted each other at Vicksburg and again in the Atlanta Campaign.
They faced off for the fourth time, in 1865, in the Carolinas Campaign, and ultimately jointly orchestrated the war’s final chapter at Bennett Place.

In 1846, James and Nancy (Leigh Pierson) Bennett purchased the property here. They supplemented their farm income by tailoring clothes, selling liquor, providing transportation with their wagon, and renting space in their home to travelers.

On April 17, 1865, Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston and Union General William T. Sherman, met under a flag of truce midway between their lines on Hillsborough Road, seven miles west of Durham Station, to discuss surrender terms.

Johnston suggested that they use this nearby farmhouse, the home of James and Nancy Bennett, for privacy.

Sherman offered terms similar to those that General Ulysses S. Grant had given to General Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia on April 9, 1865.

After negotiations, on April 26, Sherman and Johnston met at Bennett Place, where Johnston accepted the terms and surrendered the armies under his command including those in the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida, about 89,270 Confederates. It was the largest surrender of troops in the war.