No, no, no...I am not talking about Thomas Jefferson anymore. I promise! Although...did I mention that macaroni and cheese happens to be one of my favorite foods? Which, of course, further proves the theory I developed yesterday - TJ and I are destined to date each other in another life!!! OK, now I promise I am officially done specifically talking about Thomas Jefferson. I would like to, however, talk about a population that he was a part of - the men of the 19th century.
Today, I visited Appomattox Courthouse. For those of you who, like my students, assume that I am referring to one building...you are wrong! Appomattox Courthouse is actually the name of the town in which Appomattox Courthouse, the building, is located. This little town was the site of Lee's surrender to Grant, putting an end to the American Civil War in April of 1865. While many of the town's buildings are no longer with us, the buildings that have survived and those that have been reconstructed provide a definite sense of what it would've been like to live there.
Because I cannot show you my pictures, I will do my best to re-create what I saw with words. Set back from the road, up a slight incline, sits the town of Appomattox Courthouse. The brick facades of the houses are set off nicely by clean, white, wood trim and the surrounding, lush, green lawns, dotted by tall, gangly trees. Reddish-brown dirt pathways and white picket fences weave about the buildings giving the scattered dwellings a sense of order and unity. Although very small, I would imagine that living in Appomattox Courthouse would have afforded a person the luxury of a peaceful, happy and fulfilling existence. I, in fact, found myself wishing that I lived there!
Anyways, back to my point. The site is specifically designed to teach visitors about what happened in the days leading up to Lee's surrender, the actual surrender, and then its immediate impact. Although Lee and Grant are robust historical figures and the definite protagonists to the story, I couldn't help but feel attached to the ordinary men of the Union and Confederate armies.
One of the plaques told the story of a soldier from Alabama who enlisted three days after the attack on Fort Sumter (the very beginning of the war). He managed to survived 1,454 days of war. While this number alone is significant, we should remember that the Civil War was the bloodiest war in American History. Therefore, this man's ability to survive all of that time is that much more amazing. The plaque then tells visitors that in the final rounds of gunfire, in the last twenty-four hours at Appomattox Courthouse, this man was killed. The kicker, though, was that in spite of deaths like these, in spite of four years of struggle, confusion, and a heated commitment to a cause (whether it be Yankee or Rebel), when things were all said and done, these men respected one another.
As Lee and Grant were inside the McLean house, signing the terms of the surrender, their men sat outside, Yankee facing Johnny Reb, and they waited. They didn't fire guns. They didn't fight or make one last ditch effort to sucker punch the enemy. They stood there in silence, and when Lee and his men passed by to hand in their weapons - the ultimate and final show of defeat - Unions soldiers, led by General Joshua Chamberlain, turned and saluted these men. Their former enemies, then, did the same in return.
If I had the chance to travel back in time, I have always said that I would visit the Civil War era. This is largely because I am enamored with the book and movie, "Gone with the Wind", and want to see what it would be like to wear a hoop-skirt (shhh, our little secret!), but it also has to do with the behavior presented in the story above. The war that happened from 1861 to 1865 is called the Civil War because it happened between the states of one nation. However, I would argue that the word, civil, is also significant for its other definition - "the act of showing regard for others". At the end of the day, only hours after firing canons at one another, these men recognized the humanity within one another and consequently the connections that bound them together. That may not be hot, but it sure melts my heart.
(Picture: The McLean house. Lee signed the official surrender papers here.)
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