our next speaker Patrick Schroeder will discuss some of the most notable points of his book's 30 myths about Lee surrender and more myths about Lee surrender he will explore what really happened to apom matics separating fact from fiction Patrick Schroeder holds a Bachelor's of Science and Historical Park Administration from Shepherd's College in Shepherdstown West Virginia he has a master's degree in civil war history from Virginia Tech Patrick has written written edited and contributed to more than 25 Civil War titles includ including the Confederate Cemetery at aomax recol excuse me Recollections and reminiscence of old aomax Tar Heels sailor Creek General Curtis Lee's capture with controversy and civil war soldier life in Camp and battle Patrick has worked as an independent researcher author historian and tour guide he resides in Lindburg Virginia and serves as a historian at aomax Courthouse National Historical Park since 2002 please join me in welcoming Patrick [Applause] Schroeder thanks for coming out today it's an honor and privilege to be here and speak to you folks and tell you a little bit about anomatic or discuss anomatic I do have some uh Gettysburg connections I had a civil war cousin that was killed here 153 years ago today uh with the 120th New York uh his brother and his name was Edward Ketchum uh his brother John catch him with the fourth New York cabry buried him on the battlefield so and they were known as the fighting Quakers because uh they were were they were of the Quaker uh Faith uh but they believed that slavery uh the evil of slavery superseded uh being a pacifist so they both joined the army and unfortunately both of them died during the war his brother was later captured and died in Libby prison uh also my pet regimen I'm I'm originally from UD New York and my Hometown regiment it was the 146 New York zaves and they fought up on little Roundtop so if you go up there and visit General GK Warren and you look down to the right there's the monument to the 146 New York so they're they're my uh pet regiment now how many of you folks have visited apama matic's courthouse at some point good more than more than half the people great well all those that haven't visited us you need to come pay us a visit and everyone that has visited Us in the past you need to come back uh because with the 150th last year we've got a uh quite a bit of stuff in on loan on display relating to the the surrender we've added quite a few displays the village we restored the village first massive restoration of the village since the the 1950s 60s um so uh come back and see us uh when people come to ematics they usually say wow we didn't know there was so much to do here uh because you could really spend all day at the park especially in the Summer with the ranger programs and the living history talk so do come back and uh pay us a visit when you think about it a lot of people look at Gettysburg as the beginning of the end right but the end comes two nearly two years later at aomax Courthouse which is about a 5H hour car drive south of here if you go down 15 and then take a right um so if you have the in intuition to come to atics uh please do pay us a visit uh when I say the surrender took place at aptic Courthouse one of the things we typically have to explain to visitors when they come in is that aamax courthouse is a town courthouse being two words Capital C Capital H that's the town in Virginia each County had a county seat and it was called courthouse so surrounding aromatics Courthouse there's Buckingham courthouse Charlotte Courthouse princess Edward courthouse and Buckingham Courthouse Towns now they do have a courthouse building but if you're talking about the building it would be one word Courthouse all right so the surrender took place at appom matic's Courthouse but it didn't take place in the courthouse if you're following me it's is confusing the surrender took place in the home of Wilmer mlan in the village of aptic courthouse uh so I think there are probably more Miss and misunderstandings about atics than any other place I personally personally know perhaps even more than Gettysburg and what I started doing back in my college days I started writing down the stories people would come through atomatic and tell us it weren't true and so I eventually develop that into two little books uh where I tell what the myth is and then what really happened uh and I did 30 myths a book called 30 myths about Lee surrender and then I did a second little book called more myths about Le surrender and there's 52 myths in those book books there's of course more stories people have told me over the years that but I haven't compiled them into another book yet and uh if I ever do that we'll call it even more myths about Lee surrender okay but what I'm going to focus on I I mean the stories are great they get passed down from generation to generation but what I'm going to do is tell you that some of those stories and what's not true about them uh after General Grant heard some of these stories later in life he said Wars produce many stories of fiction some of which are told until believed to be true and I think you will find that the case and later when he was asked about giving General Lee back his sword which didn't happen he said I for one never believe those stories so us Grant was all in favor of dispelling myths how did these stories even start uh well some of the stories started right there in April of 1865 with the soldiers themselves uh they didn't witness the event but they heard about it and they passed along the information that wasn't correct and it grew from there if you think about it re some of you probably remember that school room game we used to play where you would start a story over here and you would pass it along around the room and if it got to the back of the room it was a completely different story than the one that started at the front of the room and that happened right there in 1865 sometimes it's journalists and reporters they don't have a full understanding of the events at athematics they go back home they write their story and they put it in print and once something's in print people believe it to be true sometimes it's historians ourselves they don't research the uh topic properly uh or they tend to slant their information to uh make their point better or carry their Point um and sometimes they just borrow from other sources and sometimes it's our fault just our failure to understand the way life was in 1865 and also the military operated differently than it does uh today and then there is just the fact that people prefer the Romantic version they like that story keep your sword General even though it never happened people like that that story so so now you may not believe you probably have a better understanding than a lot of uh the visitors um but uh these are some of the things we typically hear people come to the park they want to tell you something they want to show you that they know something and many people will throw out something like this we'll start with the two main characters they'll say you know Lee and Grant were classmates at West Point but Lee and Grant were not classmates at West Point Lee was 16 years older than Grant at the time of the surrender Roberty Lee was 58 years old and ulyses Grant was 42 interestingly enough both men died at age 63 but 16 years apart Lee attended the United States Military Academy at West Point from 1825 to 1829 and Grant attended from 1839 to 1843 and while we're on the subject of Roberty Lee people will typically tell us something like this well you know Lee finished first in his class at West Point but Lee did not finish first in his class at West Point do any of you know who finished first in that class somebody that's right Charles Mason yeah you probably read my book didn't [Laughter] you yeah it's Charles Mason and uh the reason you never heard of him uh is because after his uh couple years of service after two years of service he left the Army uh he was from upstate New York uh but he went out to settle in Wisconsin and there he became a patent lawyer he taught engineering and became later became the first Supreme Court justice of Iowa so he did go on to make a name for himself but not in the military world so finished second in his class now often I and I used to tell people this myself that you know Lee graduated with no demerits and that's true but there were six other Cadets in that class that also graduated with no demerits Now Grant finished 21st in the class of 39 he was a noted excellent Horseman and one of the things I heard I used to do living history at athematics and if any of you folks that have been there we typically run our programs from the Clover Hill Tavern porch building that was built in 1819 and there were displays inside and back in my college days I I could hear people talking in the building and I heard one visitors say well ulsi Simpson grant that wasn't his real name he changed his name and they were right about that but then he said I think his name was Jerome but he was never Jerome Grant he was born hyram ulses Grant but he went by so like so many people did in the Civil War time period he went by his middle name ulses rather than ham just like Ambrose Powell Hill of the Confederate Army went by Powell Hill he went by Ulisses Grant thing is when his Congressman got him to enrolled at West Point he only knew him as ulyses Grant and didn't have a middle name for him so he gave Grant Simpson as his midle mother's made name his middle name uh so when Grant gets to West Point the name they have on the rols is not hyam ulyses Grant but ulyses Simpson Grant and so he goes ahead and adopts that name at West Point and it's very fitting because he becomes us Grant or Uncle Sam Grant how much more appropriate can that be for him later in life uh interestingly enough his family gave him a chess to take his personal belongings to West Point and they put his initials and Brass tax on top of that chest so when he left home it said h u g hug you know what Grant did with those brass tacks he took them off exactly yeah he didn't want to get to West Point and have the other Cadet start calling them hug or Huggy Grant could you imagine if that name stuck and at aromatics General Roberty Lee would have surrendered to Huggy grant that just wouldn't be right would it now theomatics campaign is a very interesting intriguing campaign because it's very different than the Gettysburg campaign you have from April 2nd through April 9th the armies cover over a 100 miles in a straight line it's a 100 miles but when you look at a campaign map these guys are Marching north south and ultimately West so they cover probably closer to 200 miles during that week and they're fighting engagements every day but they are not big battles like Gettysburg or antium they small actions smaller actions for strategic positions holding roads things like that the largest Battle of the campaign is at a place called sailor's Creek and there Lee loses somewhere over 8,000 men killed and wounded but mostly captured uh and in many books you will read that Lee lost half of his army at sailor Creek or Lee lost a third of his army at Sailor's Creek but it's not true he did suffer significant losses not only 8,000 plus men he also lost eight Generals in that engagement including his eldest son custus Lee who was captured but when he reaches atics we have What's called the parole list all the Confederate soldiers that physically receive a parole pass to go home after the surrender and there's 28,2 31 men on that parole list and about 2400 Confederate Cav escaped atomatic nearly 2,000 men were captured on April 8th so when you put the numbers together you're looking somewhere between 32 and 35,000 men and if you add 8,000 to that that's roughly 40,000 men I'm much better at history than I am at math but if you lose 8,000 out of 40,000 men that's about one5 to me so Lee didn't lose half or a third of his army at Salish Creek uh he did lose a fifth now interestingly enough after these losses at sailor Creek on April 6 you might think that it was General Grant that first asked Lee to surrender but it wasn't it was William Nelson Pendleton Lee chief of artillery at that time that proposed surrender he said he had a council with high ranking Confederate officers and they felt they should lift the burden from Lee's shoulders if he wished to surrender and he goes to General Lee and tells him what these other officers think and Lee responds around noon on April 7th to General Pendleton I hope it hasn't come to that we Must ALL determine to die at our post so on April 7th Lee is still ready to fight his army to the to the end to the death if necessary so when does Grant first ask Lee to surrender well it's later that day about 5:00 and he's at what becomes the it's the Randolph house later the Prince Edward hotel in Farmville Lee has suffered these uh terrible casualties lost a fifth of his army but what really Sparks Grant is he meets Dr Smith now Dr Smith was a surgeon in the United States Army his cousin was General Richard Ule of the Confederate Army and after he was captured at the battles of Sailor Creek Smith happened to meet Ule his cousin they talked and Ule said that he thought Lee would surrender of course Ule has a Gettysburg tie here too uh he said he thought Lee would surrender if Grant asked him to so at 5:00 General Grant sits down and writes a letter asking General Lee to surrender his army it passes through the lines very dangerous several couriers orderly get killed passing these messages through the lines the message reaches Lee at about 9:00 he reads the note from Grant asking for a surrender and he hands it to his right-hand man and his right-hand man is General Pete Long Street Long Street reads a note from Grant and responds do you know what he responds not yet not yet so he's not ready to surrender the Army yet but Lee uses his opportunity to write Grant and find out what kind of terms he will receive because who's he dealing with unconditional surrender Grant exactly this is a smart crowd unconditional surrender Grant is Grant going to demand unconditional surrender that's what Lee needs to find out and when Grant writes back he spells out that he will not ask for unconditional surrender he will be rather generous in his his terms but that opens a three-day correspondence most people don't know that General Lee and General grants corresponded for three three days before the the surrender now when you come down to athematics people often think that well Lee must have been going for Lynchberg because lynchburg's the next town of any size about 25 miles away way so he must have been going for Lynchberg but he wasn't he was trying to get to North Carolina in North Carolina General Joseph Johnston had an army somewhere around 30,000 men so the idea is if Lee with all his troops from Richmond Petersburg Bermuda 100 the clerks and everybody somewhere around 60,000 men can get South to link up with Joe Johnston they might have 80 or 990,000 men they can try and take on Sherman hopefully deal him a blow turn back and fight Grant with better odds pretty long hopes to do that but that was really their only choice so theomatics campaign really develops with Lee trying to once he concentrates his army at a place called Amelia Courthouse he's going to try turn in South but see that's where Grant does things a little bit different than other previous Union Generals he gets in blocking position so Lee cannot turn South so every time Lee goes south he's blocked and has to go further west and eventually ends up at aax Courthouse but even when he got to aax he intended to go through a present day town called rusber historically Campbell Courthouse which is about 8 miles south of Lynchburg and then head down to Danville and into North Carolina so so he never intended to come to apama matic's courthouse people come in the visitor center and say why did Lee come all the way out here to surrender Lee didn't come to aaox to surrender he didn't know he was going to end up there in fact when you look at Lee headquarters Maps over there in Harrisburg at the Civil War Museum there aomax isn't even on those Maps the what's on those maps are the counties along the Richmond Danville railroad the route he was going to go to North Carolina now when people come to atics they know they know about the surrender and the National Park Service itself perpetuated the story that atics was a place of Peace A surrender site this is where the war ends very little talk about the battles at aomax courthous on April 8th and April 9th now we didn't have a battle of Gettysburg we didn't have a chancers Ville or Fredericksburg but you had some more that strategic fighting making for very unique battles on April 8th the Confederates are trying to get to atic station where their supply trains that have been brought over for Lynchburg somewhere 180,000 to 300,000 rations ammunition fodder for the animals new uniforms blankets everything the Army needs to continue this campaign to link up with Joe Johnson is waiting at atic station which is a separate place about three miles west from aptic courthouse now the federals use some devious means in this campaign they just in Confederate uniforms and infiltrate the Confederate Army in the sheno valley they called them Jess Jesse Scouts in this campaign typically call them young Scouts major Henry Young's Scouts these men could affect Southern dialect they would infiltrate the Confederate Army posing as Confederate Cav men turn wagons down the wrong road tell them to unhitch their mules cause bottlenecks things like that well one of these men are scouting over near aptic station and finds out that the supplies are coming from Lynchburg on these trains he rides back to General Sheridan Sheridan turns to his right-hand man who was a young Brigadier General here at Gettysburg at aptic he's 25 years old but commands a division of calary and is a brevit major general I say saw you m mouth it yes George Armstrong kuster his division advances on atomatic station and captures those supplies he then runs into the Confederate Reserve artillery General uh Ruben Lindsay Walker has about 100 artillery pieces but no infantry support and at shortly after 4:00 about 4:30 commences the Battle of aptic station a very unique battle of the Civil War some of these artillery men have muskets with them but it's primarily mounted Federal Cav attacking unsupported Confederate artillery in a 4-Hour engagement so very unique battle I've never been able to place any other civil war engagement that has mounted Cavalry against unsupported artillery so kusters man of course they're they're advancing through these woods they don't find it very it's a terrible area to fight a battle because the cut Cav have to come through the woods they tend to funnel into these trails and when they come out they come into an area where walkers have got about 30 guns into a semicircle and they start hammering kuster's Cav with canister and of course you don't have to necessarily kill a cavman to take them out of action at least temporarily just take out his horse right first West Virginia Cav claimed they lost half their horse in that engagement so every time kuster has a brigade come in he launches an attack three attacks are repulsed it's now dark it's about 8:00 he has all three brigades on hand he launches an attack overruns those 30 artillery pieces capturing about 25 guns he captures the Confederate Hospital trains one regiment the 15th New York Cav charges into the village of appa's Courthouse 2 three miles away and they run into Lee's army that has gone into camp in the apam River Valley Lieutenant Colonel Augusto P Augusta rud of the 15th New York calary is killed and that ends the fighting on the evening of April 8th the the Cav fall back to the Ridge West of town and they send a brigade up to relieve it under General Charles Smith now that night General Lee holds a council of War at his headquarters with General Long Street General John Gordon and fitu Lee who commands his Cavern that is General Lee's nephew he does have three three sons that were serving with the Army but fitzu Lee is his nephew they think they can break out because it must only be Federal Cav could that could get that far ahead of them so on the morning of April 9th General Gordon second Corps makes an assault to the west to open the road and they are initially successful in opening the road but Federal infantry of the 24th Corp John Gibbon who is wounded here on July 3rd over there where they repulsed pickets charge is in command of the 24th Corp he has two divisions of white troops and then he has a division of United States colored Troops that has been attached to them those men on April 8th cover anywhere between 30 and 35 miles in 20 hours of marching as probably the most incredible feat of marching during the war and then they get up and March some more on the morning of April 8 April 9th to come up and support the Cav and when that Federal infantry appears on the the road the Richmond Lynchburg Stage Road the Confederates knew the that it the game was over really because if they were going have to engage infantry they just would not have enough Force to push through and the federals push the Confederates back into the athematics river valley and that's when the white flags come out again it's not a Gettysburg or a battle of of like nature but there's somewhere 7 800 men killed on April 8th and April 9th and those two engagements another 2,000 Confederate soldiers captured so we're talking somewhere 2 to 3,000 men in those fights at aax Courthouse the thing is most people never even heard about that fighting and I think it's probably the most tragic thing is to die on April 8th or April 9th 1865 and they did one confederate soldier Jesse Hutchins he enlisted April 15th 1861 you look at his service records he's Pres throughout the entire war and he's killed April 8th 1865 there was another Soldier color bearer of the 14th Virginia calary uh his name was uh James Wilson he is shot in the battle on the morning of April 9th his friend William Moffett after the surrender takes place goes out to find out what happened to his friend Wilson and he finds him out on the battlefield and what Wilson says to mof it just makes tears come to my eyes because uh Wilson says to mfet he knows the surrender is taking place but he knows he's been wounded so bad that he's going to die he says mfet it's hard to die now that the war is over and he died all right so you KN you know a little bit about the engagements at atics Courthouse do you know we had a Jenny Wade at atics I bet you didn't see all know about the Jenny Wade here at Gettysburg we had a civilian fatality at aamax her name was Hannah Reynolds she was a slave of the Coleman family and during the fighting on the morning of April 9th the Confederate artillery shell passed through the house where she was she had stayed behind the family left but she stayed behind and the artillery shell struck her in the arm they took her two Federal surgeons a surgeon from the eighth main infantry worked on her and in fact One account says she was treated with as much attention as they would a major general uh but they did not save her life she died two days later but interestingly to note there's a record of her death of April 12th it notes it she's a free woman because think about it when she's hit with that artillery shell she's not free but once that surrender takes place the Emancipation Proclamation is in effect in aamax county and really throughout Virginia and she is a free woman even though she passes away now I used to love to watch stuff like on A&E when they had history programs or the History Channel when they had history programs right the good old days well I saw uh one program and there was they had a historian on there he was very enamored with kuster and he said well kuster did this and kuster did that and that's why kuster received these surrender flag at athematics that's why I said well time out that I'll start writing more myths about lease surrender right now Custer did receive a truce flag and it was the first truce flag but about a dozen truce Flags went out to various points of the line because that line stretched several miles long now kuster was over on the federal right flank his Cav was getting ready to pounce into the aamax river valley they were in a very strategic position but it's not like the Confederates look and said oh oh gosh Here Comes kustard we better send out a surrender flag in that direction they didn't have any idea who it was coming down that way so he did receive a a truce flag it was the first truce flag it is now on display in our Visitor Center Museum uh but multiple truce Flags went out along the lines now one of the Lost Cause stories and it still gets perpetuated today is that Lee only had 10,000 men when he surrendered at aomax and you will see that no matter what you do you see that number and it's absolutely untrue we know because there is that parole list that enumerates 28,2 31 Confederate soldiers that receive their parole passes to go home from atics um where did they get this number they get this number from a letter that Lee sent to Jefferson Davis saying that he had to surrender he could only put 10,000 men into battle he later revises the number to 25,000 but if you want to make the odds seem more drastic more severe you will seize on that 10,000 kind of forget Lee later says 25,000 and use that now Lee was outnumbered Grant had about 65,000 men at athematics uh so he was outnumbered two to one uh but he would had about three times as many as as 10,000 men one of the interesting things we often see at atics or here is you know who was the last Soldier to die who fired the last shot and you go through just about every regiment that was there if they wrote a regimental history they will claim to have fired the last shot or had the last man killed at atics and most of them I would say typically just about all of them are not true because they don't know these soldiers that are with the Infantry don't know that there's a Cav action about 3 miles away because fitu Lee General Lee's nephew with the Cav when they find out there's going to be a surrender they don't want to surrender because they don't know what's going to happen to them for all they know they may go to prison camp and they'll lose their horses so Fitz Lee takes about 2400 Cav tries to escape to the West well Federal Cav is watching these guys ride off to the north and west when they hit the Richmond Lynchburg Stage Road about 3 miles away they go to fighting now there's a wall Walmart there so we call it the Battle of Walmart right historically it was a Robertson house and they actually charge and countercharge there are men killed and wounded in that fighting and you know we don't know who bled out and died last so there's multiple men that that could have been the last fatalities but that's where the last shots are uh and uh fortunately they did uh pay I uh with War Trails I was able to get two Wayside exhibits put up there so we pay tribute to men that were killed and wounded in that last fighting that was at about 11:00 in the morning and the fighting back in the village ended somewhere between 10 and 10:30 so the the the Robertson house Walmart fight was where the last fighting occurred now uh oh I I'll go back there and and tell you just tie it in with one of those myths when I was telling you about Hannah the civilian that was killed the slave woman we had a journalist from the Atlanta Journal come through this early 1990s before we used internet and relied on that he came to atics saw the story about Hannah found it intriguing went back and wrote this article about how Hannah Reynolds was the only civilian killed only person killed at aptic apparently it intrigued him so much CU he didn't even look at the Battle display that was right next to it the thing is he went back to Atlanta wrote this article about the only person killed at atics was Hannah Reynolds and that went out to millions of readers so as far as they knew there was only one person killed at atics the unfortunate Hannah Reynolds so that's one of those ways those these myths get started but the original myth of atics are you ready for it is it Lee surrendered under an apple tree yep you know how that started with the soldiers themselves see because General Lee and General Grant were corresponding for 3 Days on the morning of April 9th Lee gets a message from John Gordon that he has fought his core to a frazzle and I cannot go forward without the support of Long Street well long Street's four miles to the rear facing the federal second and sixth core Long Street can't help Gordon and Lee says he must go meet with General Grant even though he'd rather die a thousand deaths surrender the army so he sends a message to General Grant that he wishes to surrender the army Grant at that time is changing fronts he is with General me that morning and he writes a note to well they had corresponded the night before in that morning as well but as far as Grant knows Lee is not going to surrender on April 9th it's going to be a day of battle and what Grant wants to do is change his headquarters from me who was following behind Lee to the front which is being uh led by Sheridan the uh fifth Corp and the army of the James under general or which John Gibbon so he goes on this 22-mile ride to get to Sheridan and in the meantime Lee gets us note from General Gordon so the messenger has to be sent to catch up with General Grant I'd estimate maybe 11 miles into this 22 Mile ride and when Grant reads a note from General Lee saying he wishes to meet to surrender the Army Grant had been suffering with a terrible headache said that headache instantly disappeared but Grant has with him a headquarters company and several cavy regiments of escort third West Virginia Cav leas part of it my estimate is he had an Entourage of about 200 men riding with him of course you're not going to go out there as a Commanding General and just search for a way to get through the lines he sends Lieutenant Colonel Orval Babcock and Lieutenant William mck Dunn to find General Lee and give grants response about having the meeting so B oral and Lieutenant Dunn set out they get passed through the lines they find General Lee resting even sleeping under an apple tree by the aax river the thing is behind General Lee is where General Gordon has reformed his men General Mahone has formed General EP Alexander's artillery has been sent over there to support them and they all see this Union officer talked to General Lee under this apple tree they lead later rides to the Village shortly thereafter when he comes back they learn that they've been surrendered so mistakenly they assume that Lee surrendered to Grant under an apple tree and that news spread so American soldiers have always loved to collect souvenirs those Confederate soldiers went over there and started cutting down that apple tree Once a fighting stopped Federal soldiers started to come through the lines curious to get a look at the Confederates I see a bunch of them gathered around this tree chopping it down they say Johnny why you cutting down that tree they say this is where General Lee surrendered to General Grant they say I want a piece of that tree too by that night they cut all the branches off they cut down the tree they dug up the roots there was nothing but a hole in the ground and soldiers took away pieces of the Apple Tree from where Lee surrendered and so that myth got spread because Confederate soldiers on the way home they said hungry Confederates would go up to a house and they'd say I've got a piece of the apple tree where Lee surrendered can I have something to eat and so that myth spread the Union Soldiers spread that myth a lot of soldiers thought that Lee surrendered under an apple tree it's not largely dispelled until Grant's Memoirs come out uh after his death uh it's interesting too because as a kid I used to love to listen to Paul Harvey and the rest of the story I always love to hear the rest of the story but now I call into question anything I ever heard from Paul Harvey before he passed away uh because at one time he did this story and said that the surrendered apom matics really happened under an apple tree because he had the solders letter but that wasn't true so people often say well why didn't they use the courthouse well the courthouse was closed it was Palm Sunday Union troops got into the courthouse they could have gotten into the courthouse if they wanted to but Grant instructed Lee to find a suitable place to meet and Lee sent Colonel Charles Marshall into the village to find a private residents and in the village he ran into a fell named Wilmer mlan okay here's one of the myths two miss one is and I see it posted all the time and in books that it's wil bur mlan w i lb R he didn't have a talking horse named Mr red Wilmer w i l m r Wilmer mlan they say farmer mlan McLean's not a farmer okay where does that come from his wife had a plantation in Manasses she was a widower but mclan ran a wholesale and Retail grocery business in Alexandria before he marries the Widow so they're there at the time of the battle of first Manasses Bull Run actually they've rented the house out in the out buildings to the Confederate Army they a aren't physically at the house uh of course this is a battle of second manasse second Bull Run and then he goes to atics now you'll see you know in the Ken burn series and all that they they tell you the story that Wilmer mlan told people I left Manasses to escape the war and came to aomax and the war found me again poor old me do you feel sorry for for me he told people that all the time what he didn't tell people was that he made somewhere between $40 and $90,000 Confederate money in Sugar speculation during the war he was a war profiteer of course all that money on April 9th was worth nothing uh but he would offer to sell you his autograph for a dollar so don't feel too sorry about Wilmer mlan okay I'm not saying he wasn't a nice guy everybody seemed to like him uh but he did have money would seemed to be the C his wife was the Widow of was very wealthy when he married her uh so anyways um not Wilbur Wilmer mlan now interestingly enough most people don't realize that me still commanded the army of the pomac at a atics people always think it's well Grant commanded the army of the PTO well he did because he commanded all the armies of the United States he was overseeing the operations of three armies at the time of atics personally overseeing the operation of the army of the James the army of the Shan andoa the army of the James is under general or Army of the shenoa is under Wesley Merit but Sheridan commands all the Cav Army of the shanoa is has two divisions of cavy and then the army of the pomac which is still commanded by General me so me is still with the Army uh at athematics Grant is just over top of it now one of the things you typically get is you read in all the books and we typically say it ourselves the soldier said it is the surrendered atics ended the war now to us the war really comes to an end at athematics because there are no major battles after the fighting at atics could have been fortunately there wasn't and all the other Confederate armies that surrender receive the same terms that Lee received at aax but Lee is the beginning of the end his surrender on April 9th is the first surrender Joe Johnston surrenders two weeks later in North Carolina on April 26th he surrenders the 30,000 man army he has with him but he surrenders all the troops in North Carolina South Carolina Georgia and parts of Florida when you total all that up there were somewhere between 80 and 90,000 men so that is the largest surrender to the Civil War May 4th uh Richard Taylor surrenders the troops in Louisiana and Alabama and then Kirby Smith surrenders after some negotiation in New Orleans surrenders in Texas officially on June 2nd so that is the last surrender of a Confederate Army okay I don't say oh don't forget about Stan Wy but Stan W didn't command an army we're talking about Army surrenders now the last Confederate Force to to surrender uh was not infantry it was a uh ship the Confederate Raider the Shen andoa and that doesn't surrender till November 6th 1865 in Liverpool England they had been out sinking whaling vessels off what became the state of Alaska bearing straight uh and they thought that they would be tried as pirates if they surrendered so they went circumnavigated the globe and surrendered in Liverpool England on November 6 the way I look at it is that the Confederate Navy was saving Wales in 1865 last thing I'll wrap up with here and then we'll throw it open to uh some questions because I've got I could go on all day with these myth stories but uh when people come to the Village of appa's courthouse today they'll say oh you did a great job reconstructing this Village isn't this awesome most of the buildings are original but they've been restored uh some needed more restoration than others the two buildings they rebuilt the main buildings they rebuilt was the courthouse which is now our Visitor Center looks historic on the outside but inside we have our Museum and theater uh that burned down in 1892 it was reconstructed in 1964 uh the mlan house is an interesting story it is dismantled in 1893 now people often say oh it was dismantled they were going to send it to the Colombian Exposition the world fair in Chicago and put it on display there not true not true at all they tried to sell it to them up there but they didn't have an interest in it because they already bought Libby prison and John Brown's Fort and moved it up there they were averaging 11 visitors a week they weren't making any money on that so they didn't want to buy the mlan house and move it to Chicago so it was proposed but it was never acted upon so it was a group of Union veterans that came in bought the house they were going to make a retirement community at aromatics for Civil War soldiers this is where veterans could come and live and that never took off either so they decided to dismantle the house and move it to Washington DC where they could make it into a Civil War Museum and many more people would see it in Washington than would ever come to athematics they take the house down in 1893 and there's a financial panic in the stock market and the company The Firm that is dismantling it goes bankrupt after they took the house apart so the house just sat out in the yard people would come by take bricks home as souvenirs the wood rotted away and so when the Park Service takes over the the from the war department they determined their main goal will be to reconstruct the mlan house of course World War II intervenes so they stop they've done all the archaeology but they haven't started rebuilding it after World War II they go out had it with a will they finish it late in 1948 they open it up for visitation in 1949 and in 1950 they have the dedication I think on April 16th uh 1950 they have Roberty Lee the uh you Liss srant I third and Robert E Lee I 4th come cut the ribbon so that's when the house is and they had they got the original plans from the company that dismantled it so they were able to reconstruct it the way it looked in 1865 uh they also uh used there were 5,500 original bricks still on site that could be used in reconstruction they put those on the front of the house so when you walk up into the door you are passing through the bricks that were there in 1865 now so the furniture that all went with the generals all people say they stole it not true Sheridan gave $25 $20 in gold for Grants table which is now at the Smithsonian Le's table general or bought for $40 in Gold that's at the Chicago historical society which changed their name to something else year or two ago uh and I will wrap up with uh something that's not in my books it's just interesting I think you you might find intriguing is people think that the Civil War happened in the Stone Age they couldn't communicate back then I tell you when you read letters from soldiers in Camp back home I think the mail ran better back then than it does today you will get correspondence from a soldier in Camp to New York and back within a week excellent but Grant strung up Telegraph with him throughout the campaign and after the surrender at the mlan house Grant comes out about 3:00 in the afternoon 4:00 he sends a telegraph message to Washington DC letting him know that Lee surren and from Washington it arrives at 9:00 it goes out throughout the north most of the cities in the Northeast find out the night of April 9th that Lee surrendered that day and so it goes out very quickly a couple days later they are printing all the correspondence between Lee and Grant in the newspaper in San Francisco California within 5 days I was doing research at the National Archives not even related Appa I was going through a solders pension file he' been a prisoner of war he been exchanged he gets to Vis is a Union soldier he gets to Vicksburg on April 10th writes his parents a letter to let them know that he's all right and in that letter on April 10th in Vicksburg Mississippi he says we learn Lee surrendered yesterday in Vicksburg Mississippi so the news gets out very quickly so they they it got out very quickly now Aries Telegraph isn't takes longer uh but Confederate soldiers carry word with them when they they go home all right got time for a few questions here thank [Applause] you was Robert Lincoln at the surrender ceremony very good question and yes Robert Lincoln was at the surrender ceremony in the room yes uh Robert Lincoln was the son of Abraham Lincoln he had joined the army I think early March of 1865 on General R staff of course his mother did not want him to join the Army uh after losing several children very protective of them Robert felt he needed to do his duty uh and uh Lincoln Abraham Lincoln gave him his Blessing told Grant that he would pay for Robert's salary and so forth Grant said no he's a fine young man he had just graduated from Harvard and Grant took him on his staff so he was with Grant staff in March and April 1865 he's on the porch comes into the room for a time uh when Grant is introducing his staff to him the interesting thing is when he leaves with Grant on April 10th they get to Washington on April for 14th that morning he has breakfast with his father and that night his father is assassinated so undoubtedly they would have discussed the events at atics uh before his assassination in fact Robert was invited to go to the the theater that night but he said he was too tired for after this rigorous campaign question in the oh over here sorry I I actually have two questions you mind um the first question is um I was uh I've read in some uh books uh and magazines where that Grant had in total of those three armies about 80 to 120,000 men and the second question is uh there was uh some another thing I read where uh Jeff Davis said uh to Lee if all else fails um disband the army send them to the mountains so we can fight for 20 30 years as almost like a via con kind of thing yeah the two questions are that um um trying to think back to the first one um what was your first question again I'm sorry oh Grant between 80 and 120,000 men yeah at the uh uh that's another one of those things that distorts the numbers because physically present within a 10m radius of athematics about 65,000 men but you see he had troops that went into Richmond and occupied Richmond the army of the James uh division from the 24th core two from the 25th Corp he had troops occupy Petersburg he had the ninth core detailed the relay track on the railroad because it was a different gauge and if he needed to bring supplies it would have to be the federal gauge to get those cars to them so they were detailed more than 30 Mi away so yes those numbers 100 to 120,000 are in the union armies in Virginia but physically at aamax was about 65,000 so with the Civil War numbers you can always twist them to how you want it to portray what you're trying to to to get across uh second question now was Lee did what Jefferson Davis told Lee to continue the fight uh gorilla Warfare and that actually was brought up also by ep Alexander artilleryman here under Long street that bombards the federal lines before picket and pedigree charge and when pedig uh when EP Alexander mentions that to Lee he says you young men may go bushwacking but the only honorable course for me is to see General Grant so Lee did not look at bushwacking as a sustainable way to see their cause to Victory um also people often ask us about that at atics and what I found interesting is that it is not General Gordon or general Long Street the infantrymen that are fighting physically With the Enemy it's an artillery men that is firing from the rear that suggests they should scatter and go to the mountains um even so Lee estimated that he said you know how many men would get away you know maybe a third so it wouldn't be a great deal of men and Lee thought that that would bring War to other parts of the state that would not be visited by the armies so he did not look that look at it as an honorable thing to do in fact Joe Johnson does the same thing when Jefferson Davis tells him to keep fighting Davis leaves Johnson opens uh talks with with Sherman to surrender his army so it just wasn't really feasible for for them that's not how Civil War armies fought they could have done it but it would have just added to the destruction of the country um Lee saw that his men would have no way to supply themselves with arms ammunition or food and that they would raid the people of the South to get that stuff so back here yeah with General me being commander of the army of the pomac is there any known reason why he was not asked to be at the surrender ceremony yes why was he Why was General and if Andy wy's look watching this he can we we had to uh talk about this at had a civil war table where he pre presented the the views of General me I like me there just was no reason that he needed to be there of course when Grant leaves me that morning they have coffee together he leaves me and he is has no idea the surrender is going to take place when he gets to where the surrender is takes place he's more than he's you know had gone on a 20 mile ride to get there if me is he doesn't need me all he needs is his staff and that's who's in the room any of those paintings you see where kuster's in the room no kuster's not there General Grant staff's in in the room he doesn't need me there it would have been nice but he doesn't need me for this meeting what would they have to do to get me there they'd have to pass him through the Confederate Army to get them to the mlan house Grant doesn't need them passing them through the Army is really impractical I guess it could have been done uh but I don't think they wanted to wait uh last thing I think General Lee wanted to do is sit around waiting for other people to come to this meeting uh let's just say though Grant gets in that room and says nah we're not going to parole your men terms he gave them were very generous going to parole them and allow them to go home let's officers keep their sidearms personal baggage men that own horses could take them home with them but let's just say Grant has a change of heart no we're going to send all your men to prison camp Lee says well we're going back to fighting Mees in that room how do you get me back to the army of the pomac so it just wasn't really practical in the end it would have been nice but he he wasn't needed there all right let's check time we got one more question here or two we'll do these two questions then we'll wrap it up is it true Eli Parker told Lee we're all Americans now according to Elie Parker yes he did we don't have any way to to uh dispute that uh it it is a very feel-good thing Elie Parker for those of you that don't know was a Sena Indian chief on General Grant staff he actually wrote out this final letter to Lee to for the surrender terms uh beautiful penmanship they said he had the best penmanship in the Army uh that original copy is at Stratford Hall Le's uh boyhood home uh they loaned it to the park service last year we had it on display for a year here we have a copy of it now uh but he's a senica Indian Chief and Grant introduces his staff to Lee and Parker said that when he said to was introduced to Lee Lee said it's good to see one real American here and Parker responded General we're all Americans so and that's true I mean the these soldiers North and South they were all Americans uh it was a coming together of the country again it's going to be a difficult Road um but we were all Americans so we can't deny that I never seen anybody deny it but other than what Parker says we can't substantiate you know all the people if you could go into a time machine go back in time I think probably most people here I'd go to Gettysburg I'd go to the mlan house on April 9th from 1:30 to 3:00 that afternoon because you know what you know what we have written down transpires in about 15 minutes maybe they were in there an hour and a half I'd love to hear all the things that were said in that room but we don't know there was one more question here and we'll wrap it up if uh you can uh think back to last year at your Park and uh share some uh thoughts with us about how you thought that all went you must have worked for years and years and years towards that commemoration um oh the commemoration right uhuh so um just sort of um share with us your uh thoughts about all of that yeah last uh well about a year and half ago we had our 150th event it was a concluding event for the 150th for the National Park Service went extremely well uh we did do have a lot of preparation it rained every night but it didn't rain during the day uh got a feeling the neatest thing about April 9th 2015 was the morning of April 9th got up at 4:00 that morning I think I had a radio interview at 6 but when we went out that morning it was foggy and it was foggy the April 9th 1865 so it just raised the hair on the back of your head so and they did a uh battle demonstration uh and the smoke hung low and so you could actually get a Feeling uh of what it was like in April 1865 and uh like I said it wasn't a reenactment it was just a demonstration but when the Confederate troops started to fall back and the union troops were coming over the ridge we could see a United States flag but you couldn't see the troops and that was pretty pretty neat uh we had descendants of uh Elie Parker uh Charles Marshall uh General Grant uh were present uh for the events and everything went as well as any event uh could be expected and we also did a thing called called footsteps of freedom in the evening we did uh we worked with the local African-American community and had the F funeral service for Hannah Reynolds the lady that was killed and then we lit the uh village with uh luminaries with uh about 4,500 luminaries to represent the 4,500 African-Americans that were freed because of the surrender at atics so I I could talk about atomatic all day I'd love to talk with you some more I'm going to go in here and sign my books if you have an interest or small books inexpensive I think they also brought some of my books on the 146 New York zabs that fought on little Roundtop and the uh Pennsylvania bucktales a photographic album book that I did with with photos from Ron Palm's collection so uh please stop in and see me thank you
