Surrender town: An 1881 visit to Appomattox Court House

The McLean house, where Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia.
(Library of Congress)

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In 1881-82, Philadelphia Times correspondent George Morgan embarked on an epic road trip to Civil War battlefields in the South. (Oh my, I wonder if the man had an expense account, and if so, how did he sneak it past his editor?)

Morgan's journey took him to hallowed ground from Bull Run in Virginia to Kennesaw Mountain in Georgia. His lengthy, detailed accounts of those visits appeared on the front page of The Philadelphia Times and in other newspapers throughout the country. 

In fall 1881, newspapers published Morgan's report of his visit to Appomattox Court House, Virginia, where Army of Northern Virginia commander Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses Grant on April 9, 1865.

"The Court House landscape, made up of a little valley and its bordering hills, seemed to me to be as soft and pleasant a picture as one could wish to see," wrote Morgan.

Here's Morgan's complete account from that visit as it appeared in The Times on Sept. 12, 1881:

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Special correspondence of The Times

"A school in the jail!" I said in surprise.

"Yes," repeated Dr. Patterson, the obliging physician of the village, "we had school there all winter."

"Well, I should — irradiate!" remarked my jocose companion, who was here with [Phil] Sheridan sixteen years ago.

"But where were the prisoners?" I protested; "the thieves, vagabonds, cut-throats, forgers and awful creatures of that kind?"

"Why, sir, sometimes Appomattox Jail is without a tenant of that class for two or three years; we are a law-abiding people and love God."

"An',begad, strangers," interrupted a less polished native; "ef ye feel kind o' thirsty ye'll be 'bleeged ter g' way from heah ter git yo' licker, 'cause there aint a dran o' the critter in ole Appomattox."

Such was my introduction to the scene of Lee's surrender and Grant's triumph — as peaceful and pleasant a spot as can on the continent. What I take to be the common idea of the whereabouts of the out-of-the-way Court House and its apple tree is that they are lying around loose somewhere within an hour's ride or so of Petersburg.

At least that was my notion until I tried to get here. I had forgotten that when Lee left his Cockade City lines and that when Grant unleashed his army in hot pursuit the worn veterans of the one and the jubilant host of the other pushed westward on level land for five full days. So it was that when, with a fellow-traveler of chance acquaintance, I got out of the cars at Appomattox Station on the Southside Railroad I was surprised to learn that the smoke of busy Lynchburg could be seen on clear days just over among the mountains to the west. The station is a scraggy collection of stores, which apparently have more clerks than customers. The ride thence to the Court House is three miles northward, across flat fields and through thick timber.

Until we issued upon the Appomattox Valley the only thing that relieved a trot otherwise tiresome was the sight of a score of little darkeys at play around a school house, on the stoop of which sat the white-haired and strong-armed swinger of the hickory gad.

Appomattox in a beautiful valley

But as soon as we got out of the woods and drew near the village the whole surroundings took upon themselves that which forced our close scrutiny and admiration. The Court House landscape, made up of a little valley and its bordering hills, seemed to me to be as soft and pleasant a picture as one could wish to see. To the right from the roadway stretch rolling lands and to the left are similar clearings, with a plantation house a quarter of a mile distant, in the midst of its field.

Beyond and in the direction we were driving the road runs down a long declivity. At the foot of the hill is the Appomattox and crossing this stream, here a mere rivulet, the road ascends at slight grade until it is lost to sight in the horizon line to the north. Up the valley are hillocky fields and down the valley, which curves to the south, are hillside groves. Where we now rein in our horses to get a mental picture of the stretch of rolling earth Grant once stood, as with field-glass he scanned the tent-dotted slope whereon Lee's last bivouac was made. The sunlight is soft, the sky is one of pearl, the air is perfumed with the breath of the pine, the oak and the locust, and far away rise the Peaks of Otter, pyramids of blue beauty, standing as sentinel towers hard by the gateway of the sun.

Slightly below the point from which we see these sights is the Court House village. It is snugged up against the hill, half way down the slope, and is nearly hidden by shade trees. As we move on we pass a graveyard that covers less than a square rood of ground. Within the enclosure, as our driver tells us, are buried the last victims of Lee's last campaign. The only slabs in the place of burial are wooden ones, and the only tombstones are such rude rocks as have been gathered from the highway. A few hundred yards further along the road we come to the McLean House, the place of surrender, and a moment later we hitch our horses in front of the Court House, in the heart of the little settlement.

United States soldiers at the court house in Appomattox Court House, Va., in April 1865.
(Library of Congress)

An odd little place 

It is plain at first glance that the village was built with an eye to the geometrical. The half acre of grassy ground in which squats the Court House is of octagonal cut and hedge. Four short streets form a square around the octagon and along the outer sides of the streets are the one hotel, the three stores and the thirteen dwellings that constitute the village.

The Court House is a brick building of low pitch in a grove of locusts. Stone steps lead in steep succession up to a porch, passing which Judge or juror finds himself in the hail of justice. Blackstone is uppermost in the main room, but in the basement below the Bible holds sway, for upon occasion the Court House can serve as a church. The jail looks like a brick dwelling, and its harmless appearance is in keeping with every other thing about the delightful village. 

"The only excitements wo have," said Dr. Patterson, "are in court weeks. Court met yesterday and Colonel Readjuster Cameron spoke here, but, as you see, there isn't much stir. Yes, the apple-tree place is beyond the creek there, and, by the way, do you see that house ? Well, there's where Mr. Peers lives; in the yard of his house the last Confederate gun fired in Virginia went off on the Sunday morning of the surrender. On the other side of the county building is the McLean House; do you see, gentlemen? — that brick house.' "

In at the start and the death

We went to the McLean house and were pleasantly greeted by its occupant, Mrs. N. G. Ragland. It stands, with slight change, as it stood at the surrender. In 1861 Wilmer McLean, a quiet citizen, owned a farm near Bull Run stream, in Prince William county. When on Sunday, the 21st of July, in that year the great armies clashed for the first time his fields were devastated and his home despoiled. He jumped at the conclusion that the war would be waged in front of Washington, and so, to get away from the fuss, he pocketed his household goods and moved southward to the untroubled hills of Appomattox. 

Strange does it seem that he should have beheld the first act and the last act of the war in Virginia, but it was immediately around him that the conflict had its beginning and end. He was at Manassas when the gay young rebel, sashed and plumed, gave [Irwin] McDowell that first sockdolager, and he was here at Appomattox when the same rebel — ragged, shoeless, shirtless, the recipient of a thousand blows — stacked arms forever.

Where the war ended

An early 20th-century view of the ruins of the McLean house. (Read more on my blog.)

In Mrs. McLean's parlor Grant and Lee met to agree upon the terms of surrender. The house is a two-story brick structure, with a porch extending the full length of its front. It was intended originally for a tavern. The yard is a large square grass plot, bordered by six towering locust trees. A huge willow that stood at the time of the surrender has been cut away, stump and all. In the middle of the yard is a well of sweet water. The summer house that once covered the well is gone. At the edge of the porch are a number of geranium pots with flowers in bloom.

The pailings are white with a fresh coat of lime and altogether the property is as neat and pretty as it is possible to make it. A wide hall leads from the porch through the middle of the house. It was with one room only — the parlor to the left of the entrance — that the commanders had anything to do. An alleged engraving of the historic conference hangs over the parlor door, but the villagers say that several of the Federal officers who show their fine uniforms in the picture were not present except in the engraver's accommodating eye. The room would seat comfortably fifty or more persons.

There is a window at each end and both windows are wide. The fireplace is screened by a pictured board. Around the room are portraits of Ragland beauties and beaux, and while Mrs. Ragland's furniture and ornaments make the historic parlor quite pretty they also make it commonplace. The big chair in the corner suggests tender courting episodes rather than incidents of hard campaigning.

15th New York Cavalry
officer Augustus Root
was killed on April 8, 1865
at Appomattox Court House.
(Find a Grave)

A pleasant breeze was swaying the tops of the locusts as we left the McLean house and passed once more through the village, clear over which my companion swore that he could knock a base ball in sky-scraping curve, Here at this wheelwright shop fell the dashing [Lieutenant Colonel Augustus Israel] Root, the last officer of the Army of the Potomac to die. 

Further along we see an oak and black gum, uninteresting of their own account, but which enable the villager to get the bearings of the now uptorn locust where Grant and Lee first met to talk. That spot is in an open field, about two hundred yards north of the Court House and well down the slope towards the Appomattox.

When we forded that stream the clear, spring water flowing over sandy bottom did not so much as wet the hubs of our buggy-wheels. It is less than ten yards in width at this time, though in stormy weeks, when the red soil above takes to itself something of the fluidity as well as the color of blood, the rivulet truly swells into a river and passes eastward its one hundred and fifty miles to the James with rush and roar that tell of the highland bed wherein it was born. The source of the stream is three miles above — a spring that is visited daily by darkey boys who balance buckets upon their heads with as much dexterity as the thumb of the sweet swell at Long Branch throws into the twirl of his cane.

At the apple tree 

The spot where stood Lee's apple tree is soon reached, as leaving the creek we go a part of the way up the slope and halt by a roadside orchard. Persons have said that the hole left by the removal of the stump is now visible. If so it is microscopic. The driver showed us "near 'bout " and "put nigh" the place where the hole ought to be.

The day after the surrender the tree was removed root and branch by soldiers who wanted relics to take home to their wives and sweethearts. And as apple wood is apple wood, several other trees in the same orchard were cut up into relics also. This season a crop of oats was taken by Farmer E. G. Hicks from the field and September stubble now makes the whole hillside brown. It is true that Lee held a brief council under the apple tree and the story of the tree is not a myth. 

Lee's apple tree, locusts and poplar

The weary leader was hemmed in on all sides. The thousand days of fighting were over and the one day of parley had come. The Army of Northern Virginia had spent its strength in many manœuvres, in tireless marches and in terrific battles.

Robert E. Lee, days after his army's surrender,
poses for Mathew Brady in Richmond.

Hungry, sore and sick, the poor remnant of a once seemingly invincible host now under the bright light of an April moon slept its last sleep with the knapsack for its pillow. From the apple tree the rebel chief sent out his white sign of peace — a poor, torn rag, but how fateful! Riding down hill and across the stream he met Grant near the locust. County Clerk George T. Peers saw Grant and Lee meet. They saluted, chatted, touched hats, wheeled and rode in opposite directions.

To appearances it was an ordinary meeting of two mounted men. Soon afterwards Lee returned from the further side of the creek and, with Grant, entered the McLean house. Then the vanquished captain rejoined his comrades and under a poplar, now flourishing in its growth on the farm of J. W. Flood, one mile northeast of the Court House, bade farewell to battle-fields.

Here ended the long, fierce, pitiless struggle which in the record of the world's wars vastly overtops all others. Following the lines of scarred earth from Manassas hither, a youth predisposed to carp becomes aware of the smallness of closet critics and of after-battle valiants. He feels that the war was waged under mighty impulse and that those who taught overcame obstacles to which the labors of Hercules were as the tricks of toys. The footprints of the grand armies will outlast the generation that made them and grow to gigantic breadth and import for those who come after.

Myriad graves border the grounds of combat, but peacefully above each battle-field the flag of the Union has its place. — G.M.

Will historic 'Bachelor's Rest' farmhouse walls be saved?

In early April 1865, the Union Army used Truely Vaughan's farmhouse near Deatonville, Va.,
 as a makeshift hospital. Confederate prisoners may have been cared for here, too. 
(All photos courtesy of Michael Meehan)

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In early April 1865, as the battered but still deadly Army of Northern Virginia crept toward Appomattox Court House, the U.S. Army fought Robert E. Lee's rearguard near Truely Vaughan's farm outside Deatonville, Va. To care for their wounded, the Federals' III Division, II Corps established a makeshift hospital at the bachelor farmer’s modest, four-room plantation house.  

The farmhouse, now in disrepair, dates
to the late 18th century.

For posterity or perhaps simply because they were bored, some of the 250 to 300 wounded at Vaughan’s farm—it was known during the war as “Bachelor’s Rest”—wrote their names or initials on the homestead's walls. One of them, John Shivler of the 105th Pennsylvania, suffered from a ghastly, life-altering battle wound to his face. 

More than 155 years after the corporal left his mark in a house near Lee's final retreat route, his heart-rending story touched a Pennsylvania native with a deep interest in Civil War history and historic preservation.

“It’s almost like he has reached back in time—I really have affinity for this guy,” says Michael Meehan, who aims to preserve the scrawling in the farmhouse for future generations.

“Just walking into that room in the farmhouse and seeing that man’s name on the wall and you go, ‘Holy cow!’”  

Meehan—who grew up in Stewartstown, Pa., roughly 45 miles from Gettysburg, but now lives in Meherrin, Va.—must work fast. Victimized by nature, time, and neglect, Vaughan’s late-18th-century house has nearly deteriorated beyond repair. With the blessing of the farm’s current owner, who acquired the house and surrounding property in 2011, Meehan intends to remove the walls. But he needs the public's help, so he has established a GoFundMe Page to raise $3,500 to defray costs. Ultimately, Meehan and other local preservationists want to have the artifacts displayed in a museum.   

A view of the Virginia countryside from the farmhouse.

Besides Shivler, Meehan has identified three other soldiers who wrote on the farmhouse walls: Privates Luther Calkins and Cornelius Mahorn of Company K of the 105th Pennsylvania; and Corporal George McKechnie of Company I of the 1st Maine Heavy Artillery. With the aid Patrick Schroeder, the historian at Appomattox Court House National Historical Park, and others, Meehan has researched the backgrounds of each soldier. Pension file documents provide rich details.

On April 6, 1865—three days before Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House—the 105th Pennsylvania fought Confederates near Deatonsville, a continuation of fighting at Saylor’s Creek. Among the regiment's 16 wounded that day were Shivler, Calkins, and Mahorn. 

Calkins suffered a wound in his left foot, between his second and third toe, with the bullet coming to rest near his ankle. “It must have been incredibly painful,” Meehan says. Less than a year earlier, he had suffered a wound in the right arm in brutal fighting at the Wilderness. After the war, he married, raised a family, and moved throughout the country. 

Meehan identified Mahorn by his initials on the wall, but the nature of the Pennsylvanian’s wounds and his background require more research. 

McKechnie, who battled dysentery in 1864, suffered a wound from a stray bullet in his left hand in support of a firing battery near Amelia Springs, Va. The bullet tore through his index finger and middle finger, exiting below the thumb. Following the war, McKechnie—who was probably in his late teens when he enlisted—returned to Maine.

Near his name, Private Luther Calkins of the 105th Pennsylvania may have drawn
 the illustration at lower left.

Severely wounded John Shivler of the 105th Pennsylvania wrote his name on the farmouse wall.

But it’s the story of Shivler, who served in the 105th Pennsylvania’s color guard, that moves Meehan most. 

After a bullet struck the corporal in the face, a 105th Pennsylvania comrade feared he was dead. As Shivler, who was 30 or 31, staggered to his feet, a horse nearly trampled him. He made it to Vaughan's farmhouse, where he received treatment for his wound. Perhaps Vaughan, who remained on his farm during fighting in the area, walked through his house as Shivler and other Federal wounded lay in the cramped quarters. 

An illustration from John Shivler's pension file
depicts his April 1865 battlefield wound.
(Courtesy Michael Meehan)

In an era long before plastic surgeons,  Shivler endured with a terribly mangled face. After the war, the veteran married a widow named Maria and became a  tailor. But by 1902, he resided in an insane asylum in Mahoning Township, Pa. Nine years later, Shivler died at age 77 and was buried in a cemetery in South Philipsburg, Pa.

“This incident affected him forever,” says Meehan of the corporal's wounding, perhaps in a “grand charge” on earthworks near Deatonville. 

In addition to money, the removal of the  fragile walls requires expertise. Meehan's brother, a building contractor, will aid the effort. The plan is to cut studs from the walls, put plywood behind and Plexiglas in front of them, squeeze the Civil War treasure together “like a sandwich,” and remove the artifacts.

"I saw John Shivler wounded in the face," 105th Pennsylvania comrade Daniel Shomber
testified in an affidavit found in Shivler's pension file. "He fell and I thought was killed."
(Courtesy: Michael Meehan)

Meehan will continue to research the backgrounds of each of the ID’d soldiers as well as Truely Vaughan, who owned roughly 1,400 acres, 30 slaves and farmed tobacco, among other crops. Through ancestry.com, a genealogy site/rabbit hole, Meehan has even tracked down descendants of Calkins and McKechnie. The Maine soldier’s descendant was “absolutely stunned” when Meehan contacted her.

Meehan also will continue to research the fighting at Deatonville, the little-known scrap in the war's waning days. "We are still trying to lay out battle there because there are very sparse records on it," he says. Dozens of soldiers wounded from the battle may have been cared for on Vaughan's farm.

For Meehan, the effort brings immense satisfaction.  

“I have been passionate about history since I went to Gettysburg when I was 6,” he tells me, "and I’ve been married to it ever since.”

John Shivler's grave in Philipsburg Cemetery in South Philipsburg, Pa.
(Find A Grave)

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'Utter desolation': A visit to Lee-Grant 'Surrender House' in 1915

Early 20th-century postcards of the ruins of Wilmer McLean's house, where Lee surrendered to Grant
 on April 9, 1865. (National Park Service) | CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE.

(National Park Service)

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Fifty years after the Civil War, the once-impressive, two-story brick house in Appomattox Court House Va., where Lee surrendered to Grant lay in ruins. "No one familiar with Civil War history," the Washington Times wrote in 1915 about the site of Wilmer McLean's home, "can view this scene of abject and utter desolation ... without an involuntary sigh."

Headlines in the Washington Times
on Sept. 26, 1915.

In its glory days, the "Surrender House" featured seven wide steps leading to a spacious porch supported by five white pillars. McLean's property included a large, well-kept front lawn, a flower garden, ice houses, a weaving house and quarters for slaves. The commodious residence, where Wilmer lived with his wife Virginia, was described as one of the finest in the state at the time — a "typical country residence of a Virginia gentleman of wealth and culture."

Unable to keep up with mortgage payments, McLean defaulted on a bank loan after the war, and the house was sold at public auction in 1869. After a succession of owners, it was purchased in 1891 for $10,000 by former Union officer Myron Dunlap, who originally planned to hold Grand Army of the Republic gatherings at the site. Later, Dunlap and other investors aimed to dismantle the structure and display it at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago. That was followed by another scheme to haul most of it off to Washington, re-build it as a Civil War museum and charge visitors admission. The "Surrender House" was dismantled in 1893 for a move, but both plans were scotched for lack of money and legal issues.

And so the remains of the historic house just sat there.

In the years afterward, nature, thieves and souvenir hunters targeted the mishmash of bricks and rotting wood. "The McLean house site," the Times wrote, "is a foreboding looking, dank dark spot in the woods, overgrown with tall, foul-smelling weeds, saplings and underbrush."

To get there, the Times reporter maneuvered through a cornfield that once served as McLean's spacious front yard. The only mention of the site's historical importance was an iron tablet near the ruins that noted: "Gen. Robert E. Lee, C.S.A., met and agreed upon terms of the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia on the afternoon of April 9, 1865." Near the plaque, the reporter discovered a ramshackle ice house and a small weaving house; in a thicket lay three large piles — all that remained of the historic home.

An image of the iron historical tablet
at the McLean House site appeared
in the Washington Times
on Sept. 26, 1915.

"The wood is water-logged, moss-covered, and so soft and decomposed that a finger will make an impression in it," the Times reported. "The steps are intact and lie upon one of the piles. The lumber from which the porch was constructed lies rotting on another pile, with weeds, vines and underbrush almost obscuring it from view." A "greenish accumulation" coated piles of crumbling brick. To keep intruders from the ruins, a makeshift wire gate stood near the original entrance to the house.

R.H. Browning, who lived across the road, served as unofficial tour guide and watchman of the rubble. He complained to the Times reporter about thieves swiping McLean house woodwork to use as firewood. Browning, who claimed to have witnessed Lee's surrender as a boy, used "shotgun methods" to chase off those miscreants. It apparently was a losing battle.

April 1865 photo of McLean house by Timothy O'Sullivan. (Library of Congress)

Schoolchildren examine bricks at the McLean house ruins. (National Park Service)

An early 20th-century postcard of visitors at the ruins of the McLean ice house. (National Park Service)

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Several other historic buildings in the rural village suffered from neglect, the Times reported. A reporter found the old Raine tavern in "dilapidated and tumbled-down condition." Weeds and underbrush hid the charred ruins of the war-time courthouse, which burned in 1892. The city jail nearby was an eyesore, with a "badly dilapidated" roof and "decomposing and disintegrating" bricks. A hotel, used as a headquarters by both armies, sat in a "sad state of disrepair."

"The raging winds and waters have done their worst," the Richmond Times-Dispatch wrote about Appomattox Courthouse in the summer of 1915, "and what they have left is crumbling from human neglect."

Added the newspaper: "Why isn't Appomattox to-day a literal shrine, as well as a historical shrine?"

Plans to restore the McLean house stalled early in the 20th century. As late as the 1920s, Civil War veterans occasionally stopped at the site with their families. Tourists often sought souvenirs, so enterprising local boys sold them bricks for candy money. After the improvement of roads at remote Appomattox Courthouse, even more souvenir-seekers arrived. "The old house," the Richmond Times-Dispatch wrote in 1936, "is scattered from Maine to California."

A front-page photo in the Richmond Times-Dispatch 
on April 17, 1950, of the huge crowd at the
 official dedication ceremony for
the reconstructed Wilmer McLean
 "Surrender House."

In 1940, after Appomattox Courthouse became a national historical monument, momentum finally built to reconstruct the McLean house. The feds conducted archaeological studies and collected data, but the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, stopped the effort. Finally, in 1949, a reconstructed McLean house — using many of the old bricks — opened to the public.

The next April, a crowd estimated at 10,000 attended the official dedication ceremony. Direct descendants of Robert E. Lee and Ulysses Grant were honored guests. Bands played Dixie, The Battle Hymn of the Republic and Chattanoogie Shoe Shine Boy. Lee biographer Douglas Southall Freeman spoke for 45 minutes. He said he planned to will his tattered, bullet-riddled 61st Virginia flag to the McLean house. Photographers swarmed around U.S. Grant III and Robert E. Lee IV as they stood on the porch for the official ribbon cutting. And a national magazine writer asked other reporters, "Have you seen any nice old ladies crying?"

1915 was a distant, ugly memory.

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SOURCES

-- National Park Service, Appomattox Court House site, accessed April 4, 2020
-- Richmond Times-Dispatch, Aug. 29, 1915, March 24, 1936, April 17, 1950
-- The Washington Times, Sept. 26, 1915