Appomattox, Look Away

On the way to Appomattox General Lee's forces were engaged once again by Major General Philip Sheridan at Sayler's Creek who had deviled him previously at the Battle of Five Forks. Lee was racing to Appomattox to catch up with a supply train after abandoning Richmond and Petersburg a few days earlier. This action along with a delay at Amelia Court House hoping to be resupplied there gave the Union time enough to reach the supply train ahead of Lee and lie in wait for his arrival. It was April of 1865.

For me it was December of 2011 and I was winding up a lengthy tour of the United States immediately after the attacks on September 11th in an attempt to determine what the next phase of my life would be. I knew I would not go back to the industry that had just cast me aside but after over two decades in the field I needed to figure out what transferable skills I had and where they might fit in to the new United States labor market. And who knew what that market was going to look like? How fitting to wind up at Appomattox Court House where the United States may have been preserved but it was surely quite different from the nation it had been or set out to be.

General Lee was in the last desperate throws of trying to preserve the Confederate States of America, he of West Point vintage but Virginia birth and loyalty. After a ten month siege at Petersburg he had been forced to abandon his erstwhile capital at Richmond and decided to head west in an attempt to regroup with the Army of Tennessee. Union forces dogged his retreat and preceded him to Appomattox Court House where a supply train waiting for him had been captured. Seeing no way out, General Lee fought one of the last battles of the war in the vicinity on April 9, 1865. As an astonishing courtesy at the end of the battle, Grant allowed Lee to choose the location of his surrender, Appomattox Court House.

Specifically, the place chosen was brick home of Wilmer McLean who had moved to the area to get away from the war! Appomattox then was like any highway town one might find today, there mainly as a county seat but specifically to serve travelers on the road to somewhere else, in this case the trade between Richmond and Lynchburg. It is preserved virtually intact today as it was nearly 150 years ago, farm houses, cross fencing, the court house and a general store. In this building there is such and such, in that building over there one can find so on and so forth while in that field over there is where this, that and the other took place, etc.

It was too neatly preserved. Almost like an over-manicured battlefield Appomattox Court House was so well preserved as to almost be more of what to expect at a Disney resort. I did not expect to see field hospitals tending the wounded or the pall of cordite smoke and decay in the air, nor did I anticipate damaged buildings unsafe to enter. I was one of maybe six people not counting the national park staff there to run the place that day. No screaming kids, thank the heavens, but too quiet and ghostly for the significance of the event that took place here. The air was crisp, the skies above bright blue and the rest of the world nearby went blithely about its business, almost wanting to forget anything happened here at all.

Only Lee's army surrendered that day. Almost 200,000 Confederate men at arms remained in the field but the final campaigns soon played out, the last major battle occurring in May. At least, the last major battle of the killing fields.

Gotta go.

Away to Appomattox

The last leg of the trip around America was at hand. Since being furloughed immediately following the attacks on September 11th I'd sought to find myself and my future through a journey across the country, literally and figuratively putting as much distance as possible between myself and my former life and career. Some said it was wasteful not to immediately look for work, I felt there was no real work to be had in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy; the layoffs had only just begun everywhere you looked.

After meaningful and significant stops in the Rockies, Texas, Florida and Georgia I found myself in Wilmington, North Carolina at the beginning of Interstate Highway "I-40" heading northwest towards Virginia by way of Goldsboro and Raleigh where old friends lived. There had been many opportunities to visit friends and family in Dallas, Oklahoma City, Tampa, Orlando, Atlanta and Wilmington on this trip of rediscovery. My oldest friend from Junior High lives in the Raleigh area and has always been a rock of stability in the chaos of my own life. We all should have at least one friend of many years that keeps us grounded whenever there is an opportunity to spin out of control. His son, my godson, lives nearby in Goldsboro, allowing both to serve as a good, loving one-two gut check on the things that really matter.

The trip provided a not entirely planned but satisfyingly balanced cross section of American history and achievement. Pioneering the western frontier through Wyoming and South Dakota, musical history via Lubbock and space technology at Cape Canaveral in Florida. There was American Civil War history at Andersonville in Georgia so now, on the final leg towards home in Maryland, it was time for one more call to a Civil War landmark destination deep in the heart of Ol' Virginny.

By early April of 1865 the City of Richmond, capital of the Confederate States of America, was a lost cause. The Army of the Potomac under Ulysses S. Grant had crossed the James River the previous summer and finally broken through Robert E. Lee's lines after ten months at the Siege of Petersburg to force a Confederate retreat from the area. Lee headed west to regroup and resupply at Amelia Courthouse from where he planned to move farther west to reunite with the Army of Tennessee. At Amelia, however, there were no supplies and a full day's marching was lost in scouting the area. This delay gave the pursuing Union forces an opportunity to catch up and disrupt Lee's plans.

Even today if any American is asked about Appomattox Court House they might be able to say it was where Lee surrendered but they would know very little else about the place. Certainly I was one of those Americans as I moved north from the Carolinas in to southern Virginia towards a town that remains next to nothing in the middle of nowhere to this day. Lynchburg, home of Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, is the closest major city at the junction of US Highways 29 and 460. Interesting.

I followed US #460 west from I-95 at Petersburg, probably the same route Lee had taken in at least a few places, past towns such as Farmville and Pamplin City towards history. A supply train waited for General Lee at Appomattox, his last hope to pull off his plan. Grant was there, too, by the time he arrived.

Gotta go.