Courthouse at the end of the war

The McLean House, Appomattox Court House

The edges of Roanoke quickly shed their grunge for green mountains. The day shone brightly on the Blue Ridge Mountains. Early Sunday we crossed the Blue Ridge Parkway. While he did not divert onto the scenic route, our path across rural Virginia never failed any scenery tests.

U.S. Route 460 veers away from the Blue Ridge, but the terrain remains mountainous and hilly for miles. Only late in the day would the hills recede as our travels reached the Atlantic coast plain. From Roanoke to Chincoteague we traveled 350 miles, less than 30 miles of interstate. Aside from a few miles around Petersburg and Virginia Beach, we stuck to U.S. routes.

Most of sparsely Virginia’s southern tier left little to visit. These sparsely populated farming villages barely registered on the map
. The small towns averaged a few traffic lights before the farm field resumed. But it got us into Virginia Beach by traveling through one less tunnel, the one on I-64 where traffic always crawls.

Where the last shot was fired.

The day’s first stretch of road set us through Lynchburg. Best known as evangelist preacher Jerry Falwell’s town and home to Liberty University, which he founded, Lynchburg is a growing town on the edge of a familiar river- the James.

The town of 75,000 has much to recommend for those with time to stop. Lynchburg sits off the interstate and requires a network of state highways to reach the city, but it works as well as any interstate system.

Lynchburg’s terraced downtown on the James River seems like a redevelopment bonanza soon to take off. Here the James is a narrow, winding ribbon through forested banks and dotted by islands with pedestrian access. It’s as wild as the stretches close to its juncture with Chesapeake Bay, but narrower and more manageable. Cyclists can pedal to Percival’s Island, which stretches for one mile in the James.

Meeks General Merchandise, Appomattox Court House

We stopped at Wild Hart Café for lunch, a wood-paneled coffeehouse one block above the downtown riverfront.

When paying I discovered that two earlier declines on my bank card were no accident. As always, some scumbag went to Wal-Mart and attempted to load up. For the duration of the trip I would have no access to my account.

After settling the situation with my bank, assuring them at the Virginia charges were legitimate and those from Illinois and Texas were not, I unceremoniously wolfed down a chicken salad sandwich. Nancy had already eaten while I sparred with the bank. Some brownies and cookies from Wild Hart soothed any bank-related wounds along the drive.

Thirty miles later, our day’s top destination had everything to do with ceremony. The reconstruction of Appomattox Court House sits a few miles east of the modern city of Appomattox, which later became county seat. Set amid some farm fields, deep forest groves and rolling hills, Appomattox Court House seemed out of place given its role in American history. At the 150th anniversary of the Civil War's end, Appomattox Court House has more lessons for American's 21st century partisans as it did when opposing armies stopped fighting here in 1865.

Pardon-printing press

The National Park Service had restored much of the town, site of General Robert E. Lee’s surrender to Ulysses Grant and effectively the end of the American Civil War. They hashed out terms in these buildings, and thousands of soldiers from both armies passed through the town. Confederate troops heading home left some of their arms in Union hands.

More importantly those soldiers stopped here to receive their official pardons, food and vouchers for free train transportation home. Lee negotiated pardons as a condition of surrender, and the move was widely seen as a goodwill gesture to those who fought against the Union.

Picturing armies positioning for battle on the lush grove-topped hills proved highly inaccurate. Everything surrounding the courthouse had been converted to farming and the opposing armies would have seen each other from miles away.

The McLean House was a restoration, but it had been rebuilt from the original blueprints and most of the original brick. Furnishings were modest, as was the room where General Lee signed the articles of surrender. None of them give away the enormity of what happened here.

The McLean House  seemed like any other mid-19th century home. Maybe it served history better this way; neither Grant nor Lee could have approached the other’s camp, so the house provided neutral ground. Then again, even Grant seemed unprepared for what Lee offered at Appomattox – he showed up at McLean house in a coat borrowed from another officer and only his shoulder strap ranks marking his identity.

A few cabins, the Clover Hill Tavern (Appomattox Court House’s original name), the county jail and Meeks store were among the more prominent buildings that remained. The tavern kitchen and slave quarters has been converted into a bookstore and restrooms, respectively. Most buildings could be visited.  The store hosted printing presses like those that churned out thousands of pardons for surrendering Confederates.

Cabin at Appomattox Court House

The court house was also a restoration, and its interior house the park visitor center and some historic displays.

For the 150th anniversary, the center had been loaned artifacts including Lee’s original copy of the surrender document, an American flag that covered Lincoln’s casket in Philadelphia, and headquarters flags from both armies, including one from George Armstrong Custer.

More Confederates than those in Lee’s army passed through the small town. After the cease fire, thousands of Confederate troops marched through town on their way to points south to deposit flags and rifles. Encounters between lines of Union soldiers and the defeated Confederates were respectful.

Like most Civil War sites, the positions of armies and shots fired are marked in stone, including a spot noting the last shot fired by the Army of Northern Virginia.

Zoom in. It's worth a read if you'll never visit Appomattox.

A marker in a field at the edge of town notes the April 10 meeting of Lee and Grant, where the two finalized the pardons and Lee refused to help the Union urge the surrender of other armies still in the field. It was the second and final meeting. Even at the McLean House, the two met for just 90 minutes.

Throughout it all, Grant’s treatment of Lee had no air of a conquering general, but a gentle grace. Most books on Appomattox notes this, and it comes through in Grants memoir as well. That always struck me – Grant could have been brash and given Lee unfavorable terms. Instead he treated the much-older Lee fairly. When not discussing terms of surrender, they recounted old army days.

 If opposing generals could behave justly at the end of a bloody, ugly war, all of us could stand to act similarly in our dealings with others. In Virginia, a little restored town on a hill speaks to that ability in all of us.

The old Lynchburg-Richmond Stage Coach Road