Appomattox: Where the Army Surrendered but Not Its Spirit

The monument near this site carries words that have long stirred debate. Erected in nineteen twenty-six, it marks the surrender of April ninth, eighteen sixty-five, with an inscription that reads: after four years of heroic struggle in defense of principles believed fundamental to the existence of our government, we surrendered nine thousand men, the remnant of an army still unconquered in spirit. The language of the Lost Cause is embedded in that stone, framing Confederate defeat not as the end of a war to preserve slavery, but as an honorable stand cut short.

Appomattox itself witnessed the practical conclusion of the Civil War, when General Robert E. Lee met Ulysses Grant in the McLean house parlor and signed the terms that began the formal dissolution of the Confederate armies. What that surrender meant, and how it would be remembered, is a question Americans are still answering.