Posted on 04/10/2010 6:38:26 AM PDT by Colonel Kangaroo
A big anniversary is drawing extra tourists to the battlefields of Appomattox.
One hundred and forty-five years ago Friday, General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Confederacy at Appomattox, bringing the Civil War to an end.
Crowds gathered to re-live the historic moment at the Appomattox National Historic Site.
Actors are playing the part of townspeople to help visitors understand what the area was like in the 1860's.
Friday's events have attracted visitors from across the U.S. Some drove from as far away as Oregon and California.
"We had about 400 people out here on Thursday. It was nice. Don't know the count so far today, but I anticipate even bigger numbers on the weekend when more people have the ability to come out," said Ernie Price, with the national park service.
Events to mark the anniversary continue next week with live music, demonstrations, and re-enactments.
Here are some dates & times:
On April 8-12, 2010 at the Appomattox Court House National Historical Park, the public is invited to enjoy military and civilian living-history presentations, guided tours, ranger programs, book signings by authors, and a Stacking of Arms Ceremony on Sunday afternoon.
April 9-11 at Clover Hill Village, the Appomattox Historical Society will hold a small-scale reenactment of the events that led to the surrender. Lee's Lieutenants, a reenactment group, will be on-hand at Clover Hill Village to participate in these activities, including: Lee's last war counsel, General Gordon's attempted break-out, Lee-Grant meeting, Stacking of Arms and Reduction of Colors.
April 17-18, Union and Confederate re-enactment groups will be encamped at the Appomattox Court House National Historical Park. Living history re-enactors will demonstrate historic weapons and battle tactics, including horse-drawn artillery, on the last battlefield of Lee's Army. Activities will include cooking, military inspections, drill, and printing of parole passes for Confederate soldiers in the same building where they were printed in 1865. Each day there will also be a "Stacking of Arms Ceremony" along the stage road, exactly where General Lee's army stacked arms 145 years ago.
April 17, after hours at the Appomattox Court House National Historical Park, Bring your blankets and chairs for an evening concert of Civil War music at the National Park. The 26th North Carolina Regimental Brass Band will perform a variety of pieces that were familiar to both Union and Confederate soldiers. The park grounds will be free after 5:00 p.m. and the public is invited to walk the village lanes and visit the re-enactor camps. The concert will be at the McLean House and begin at 6:30 p.m.
More information is available on the web at: www.TourAppomattox.com
You are going to get flamed for that statement...
“The day Lee’s army surrendered was one of the best days in our history.”
Yes, federalism was born, comrade, and we are better for it today!
That post doesn’t even warrant a response.
“All ahead full. The Threadnaught has cleared the harbor.”
If one wants to study the birth of intrusive government in our nation, the place to look at is Jeff Davis’s gun-grabbing, constitution-ignoring, extortion-condoning regime.
It isn’t the Confederate’s government we have today, so your point is worthless.
Slavery was a great immorality and remains so today: it denies an individual of the product of his work for the enrichment of another. (Remind you of anything else?)
Still, there are those who would tell you that the Civil War was about state’s rights. And THAT is a war that we lost.
getting rid of slavery? a good thing.
crapping on the constitution as Lincoln did on multiple occasions? a bad thing...
and I am sure that zer0bama will use the past practices as instituted by Lincoln to limit our rights as far as the 1st, 2nd, and 10th amendments are concerned. I am not a fan of our 16th president but I especially LOATHE our 44th Pres__ent.
If the rebs had won, we'd have two federal leviathans today in our land.
Other arguments aside; this article says Lee surrendered the Confederacy. I could have sworn he surrendered the Army of Virginia.
That’s right. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia, whose hopes were all gone, not the Confederacy, over which he did not have command.
Us Great Great Great grandchildren are the only ones left to speak on behalf of our forefathers, and we should never let up fighting against the Nazification of them. And that is exactly what your post is doing.
These are the same forefathers who also were heroes of the Revolution, stopping Cornwallis’s army at places like King’s Mountain, Cowpens, and New Orleans. You molding them into slave beating, jackbooted Nazi thugs, is not what Lincoln meant when he said “Malice Towards None”
Only about 5% of the soldiers in the Confederacy even owned slaves, and from their small farms or shops they worked in, few benefited in any way from the slavery system.
I have two non slave owning Great Great Uncles who were with the famed 11th North Carolina Infantry Regiment who’s motto was “First at Bethel, furthest at Gettysburg, and last at Appomattox”. I am proud as hell of them, for standing up not for slavery, but for standing up to what they saw as an invading army.
Gee, how history does seem to repeat itself as that sound like a description of today's regime.
The Battle of Palmitos Ranch, the last land battle of the war--and a Confederate victory--was fought more than a month later, on May 12-13. The war at sea continued, as the CSS Shenandoah captured a Yankee whaling fleet in the Bering Sea, probably saving hundreds of whales. One might say the war was finally over when the Shenandoah docked at a port in England and struck its flag on November 22, 1865.
Tell me again about ignoring the Constitution.
Good post.
You ought to be proud of those men and I too honor their bravery and fortitude. And the fact that they were putting their lives on the line meant that they were not back home extorting, murdering and exploiting their countrymen like the political criminal class that in too many cases led the Confederacy back home and who were unworthy of your great uncles' devotion and courage.
MYTH- Southerners supported slavery while Northerners hated it. No Southern alive today disputes that slavery was morally wrong, but the fact remains that all Northern states once had slaves, and virtually all of the slave ships were owned by Yankees. Profits from the slave trade stayed in the North.
MYTH - Southerners tried to break up the Union. It was New England which invented the idea of secession; first in objection to the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 doubling the nation’s land area, and then in 1814 when New England wanted to trade with enemy England during the War of 1812.
MYTH - The War For Southern Independence was about “slavery.” While the South foolishly defended slavery in early 1860s rhetoric, The War was really fought over power and money. If Northerners had a moral objection to slavery in the 19th century, why did they finance the slave trade in the 18th century?
NOT A MYTH - It was only in the NORTH where owning slaves was still legal during the Civil War.
Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation did not free all slaves in the United States. Rather, it declared free only those slaves living in states not under Union control. William Seward, Lincoln's secretary of state, commented, “We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free.” Lincoln was fully aware of the irony, but he did not want to antagonize the slave states loyal to the Union by setting their slaves free.
[edit] Suspension during the Civil War and Reconstruction
On April 27, 1861, the writ of habeas corpus was suspended by President Abraham Lincoln in Maryland and parts of midwestern states, including southern Indiana during the American Civil War. Lincoln did so in response to riots, local militia actions, and the threat that the border slave state of Maryland would secede from the Union, leaving the nation's capital, Washington, D.C., surrounded by hostile territory. Lincoln chose to suspend the writ over a proposal to bombard Baltimore, favored by his General-in-Chief Winfield Scott.[2] Lincoln was also motivated by requests by generals to set up military courts to rein in “Copperheads” or Peace Democrats, and those in the Union who supported the Confederate cause. His action was challenged in court and overturned by the U.S. Circuit Court in Maryland (led by Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney) in Ex Parte Merryman, 17 F. Cas. 144 (C.C.D. Md. 1861). Lincoln ignored Taney's order. In the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis also suspended habeas corpus and imposed martial law. This was in part to maintain order and spur industrial growth in the South to compensate for the economic loss inflicted by its secession.
In 1864, Lambdin P. Milligan and four others were accused of planning to steal Union weapons and invade Union prisoner-of-war camps and were sentenced to hang by a military court. However, their execution was not set until May 1865, so they were able to argue the case after the war ended. In Ex Parte Milligan 71 U.S. 2 (1866), the Supreme Court of the United States decided that the suspension of the writ did not empower the President to try and convict citizens before military tribunals. The trial of civilians by military tribunals is allowed only if civilian courts are closed. This was one of the key Supreme Court Cases of the American Civil War that dealt with wartime civil liberties and martial law.
In the early 1870s, President Ulysses S. Grant suspended habeas corpus in nine counties in South Carolina, as part of federal civil rights action against the Ku Klux Klan under the 1870 Force Act and 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act.
And shortly after at Bennett Place Gen Johnston surrendered the Confederate Forces in the Southeast.
“If” is for children. Lincoln was a monster, that we know. Lincoln’s vision for the country was that of a massive and powerful federal government, that we know as we live it today. What the Confederate States would have done, you do not know.
That link mentions purported cases of habeas corpus violations by both Lincoln and Jeff Davis. There is a difference however. In the Confederacy, habeas corpus for the anti-Confederate often meant that the survivors usually got the body, or what was left of it, after the home guard had murdered the political opponent.
Amen.
Isn’t it comforting to know that we can rely on the news organizations for accurate information?
In one of my favorite writings from a regular soldier of the Civil War, “DIARY OF A TAR HEEL CONFEDERATE SOLDIER” No mention is made in the entire diary of the cause of slavery or even of the black race, until after the soldier is captured in 1864 and sent to a POW camp where they were guarded by black guards who had a very nasty reputation for brutality and murder against the Confederate prisoners.
In fact the North Carolina soldier is a Jew with both parents living in New York, his place of birth. So what pray tell made this young man decide to leave his job and take up arms against other Americans? I can assure you is was not to protect slavery. He couold of probably cared less about that hot-button issue of the day.
http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/leon/leon.html
Lincoln's vision was only to fulfill his Constitutional duty in holding federal property and make the collections that the Constitution required him to do. Too bad modern presidents do not limit themselves to Lincoln's vision of Constitutional restraint.
And it KILLS us as a movement.
An interesting side story:
The First shot of the Civil War (Battle of Bull Run) was fired into the McLean house in Manassas (used as Beauregard’s headquarters). McLean and his family moved to Appomatox to get away from the War, only to have the surrender take place in McLean’s parlor in Appomatox.
Don’t give up the fight.
It’s not North versus South however. There were copperheads in the North, loyalists in the South. From 1861 to today, Southern leaders and manipulators have been able to justify and explain their power grab as a North versus South conflict and thus force better men like your great uncles into making a hard choice.
“Lincoln’s vision was only to fulfill his Constitutional duty in holding federal property and make the collections that the Constitution required him to do. Too bad modern presidents do not limit themselves to Lincoln’s vision of Constitutional restraint.
“
That was a load of garbage. He had a vision of keeping the union together and that was that. He violated the constitutiona all to Hell. So, don’t try to rewrite history. We already know the truth.
If current Southerners realize how badly the Confederate leaders abused the good instincts of their ancestors, the world would be a happier place. And it might give them a little extra insight to the nature of the growth of governments today.
“Southern leaders and manipulators “
I see, the Southern people were just too stupid not to follow along; they were “manipulated”. The arrogance of the North as you display is exactly why the war was fought.
“If the rebs had won, we’d have two federal leviathans today in our land.”
No, because half of it wouldn’t be “your” land. Just like whatever Canada is, isn’t in “our land.”
” nature of the growth of governments today”
You sound just like a “progessive”, a Marxist.
You want to talk about murdering and exploiting their countrymen - It was the North who invented the term “SHOCK AND AWE”.
You should read some of the eye witness accounts of Shermans March.
http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/sherman.htm
“And it KILLS us as a movement.”
Truth is a killer? To what “movement”?
Too bad the McLeans didn’t move to Fredericksburg instead. A surrender at Fredericksburg would have saved many lives.
People fail to notice those points. They are brainwashed from elementary school forward that the North was anti-salvery and the South was pro-slavery, and that’s what the war was fought about. They fail to know that the North had slavery the entire time of the war or that their States as late as 1842 even added to their Constitutions further strength to their slave holdings.
State's right to do what?
It would have been lost in any event. The government that davis cobbled together was a poor imitation of the one he tried to abandon.
Ever since that day, the industrialist “progressives” have continuously removed our freedoms, sent carpetbagger thieves South to take our land, re-write our history and “correct” our heritage. In three generations, they moved textile mills South so they could get at the cotton, farmed on land they then stole with confiscatory taxes administered through Freedmen’s bureaus and put-up politicians. The sharecropper system continued with former slaves and poor whites the vassals of northern opportunists, who came to “help” us dumb po folks don’t you know. Two more generations, and the mills shut down and went to Asia,tobacco was declared a poison yet allowed to be sold and grown only by industrial combines who could use their power through controlling tobacco tax revenues, and the furniture industry disappeared— all in the desire to seek cheap labor. States rights were eliminated through federal dictat. FDR and his pals in the elite liberal progressive Marxists, drove us into a war that took the lives of many of the children of the South who volunteered to defend the remnants of America they still love. And the Democrat party grafted onto this new Tammany of federal progressivism a neo-Marxist agenda, to enrich themselves and consolidate their power. The obamacare is the effort to completely eliminate States rights and complete totalitarian control. Southerners know what this means.
There are a great many lessons to be learned from the conservatism of the South, and the historical reality of the outcome of the War Between the States that established the abomination that is the federalized centralized US ruling class.
And where did the profits from the slave labor stay? Who profited from the buying and selling of the slaves. You're like the junkie who blames the drug dealer for all his woes when the fact of the matter is that without demand there would be no supply.
MYTH - Southerners tried to break up the Union. It was New England which invented the idea of secession; first in objection to the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 doubling the nation’s land area, and then in 1814 when New England wanted to trade with enemy England during the War of 1812.
It was the South who actually tried to break it up and resorted to armed rebellion to accomplish their goals. Having started the war your main complaint is that the North didn't let you win it.
MYTH - The War For Southern Independence was about “slavery.” While the South foolishly defended slavery in early 1860s rhetoric, The War was really fought over power and money. If Northerners had a moral objection to slavery in the 19th century, why did they finance the slave trade in the 18th century?
Tell that to the people who lived there:
"What did we go to war for, if not to protect our [slave] property?" - CSA senator from Virgina, Robert Hunter, 1865
"What was the reason that induced Georgia to take the step of secession? This reason may be summed up in one single proposition. It was a conviction, a deep conviction on the part of Georgia, that a separation from the North-was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery." -- Speech of Henry Benning to the Virginia Convention
"But not to be tedious in enumerating the numerous changes for the better, allow me to allude to one other -- though last, not least. The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution -- African slavery as it exists amongst us -- the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution." - Alexander Stephens, 1861
NOT A MYTH - It was only in the NORTH where owning slaves was still legal during the Civil War.
Say what? Are you claiming that Davis ended slavery?
Lincoln was fully aware of the irony, but he did not want to antagonize the slave states loyal to the Union by setting their slaves free.
And then he went and pushed through the 13th Amendment which...freed the slaves. Damned tricky of him.
But then what would they have to blame Lincoln on?
Actually the war went on for a few weeks longer as the Conferderate Government fled south from Richmond and Joe Johnston had to decide to continue fighting or surrender his Army
I want one of those Union Victory Appreciation chess sets. I await the day when there's more $$$ to be had from selling cheap trinkets commemorating Union victory than there is from peddling junk commemorating Confederate defeat.
I’m with you on most of this but you got to admit that the farmers and factory workers from the North whipped up on the fancy Southern plantation boys
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.