Appomattox Court House

Today we had the privilege of visiting Appomattox Courthouse.

I was not picturing this: cannons, because there was a battle going on the morning of the surrender.

I was picturing this: a courthouse.

But this is a picture of what really happened.

And it didn't take place in the courthouse, but in a private home across the way.

In the downstairs parlor.

While the family waited upstairs in a bedroom.

The name of the town where this all occurred is Appomattox Courthouse. So the surrender took place in the town, but not in the courthouse itself.

The movie in the visitor center was really well done. I loved hearing the heart of President Lincoln: for the confederate officers (and soldiers) not to be punished, but be given rations and free passage home so that the country could begin to heal.

My big "aha" moment of the day was when I realized that less than a week after Robert E Lee surrendered to Ulysses S Grant, President Lincoln was assassinated. How a freshly united country could survive after that is pretty miraculous.