This was one of the highlights of our vacation. The weather was perfect (as it was for the entire trip), the park was beautiful, we had it almost to ourselves, and, of course, the history that happened here was fascinating.
The McLean house, where Lee surrendered to Grant.
Taken in 1865, a few months after the surrender.
I asked the ranger in the house about the story that McLean had lived on the Manassas battlefield where the first major battle of the war had taken place, and then moved to Appomattox to get away from the fighting, only to have the war end in his parlor. The story is essentially true, although the ranger told us McLean wasn’t just protecting his family. He was a speculator who made tons of money off the war through black-market smuggling and so forth, only to have it all become worthless when the war ended because it was in Confederate dollars.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the original house. A group of men took the original apart, intending to erect somewhere else as a money-making attraction, but they ran out of money and the pieces sat in the yard and rotted. There were a few bricks laying around that were incorporated into the reconstruction — mostly between the door and the windows on the front porch.
On the left is the Meeks Store and the smaller Woodson Law Office. On the right is the kitchen for the Clover Hill Tavern.
The Clover Hill Tavern.
The Union army set up a printing press in one of the upstairs rooms to print passes for the surrendering confederates.
The town as it exists today. (L to R) Appomattox County Jail, McLean House (visible through the trees to the left of the court house), Appomattox County Court House (now the visitor center), Meek’s Store, Woodson Law Office, Tavern Kitchen, Clover Hill Tavern, Tavern Guesthouse (now the park bookstore), Slave Quarters.
The final shots by Lee’s army were fired from the yard of the Peer’s House.
We walked the paths and read the plaques and drove to the few spots that were up and down the main road — where Lee and Grant met on the second day to finalize a few details, where the Confederate artillery surrendered, where Grant had his headquarters, etc.