Civil War Today

The story of Lee’s surrender and the strange case of Wilber McClain has been told so many times I’ve been tempted to skip it, but I can’t: so here goes, one more time.

There is a great deal of opinion about where the first land battle of the Civil War was fought and where the first casualties happened; but there is no question where the first MAJOR battle was fought: Bull Run AKA Manassas. The general naming convention for battles used by the Union was to name battles after the nearest water, in this case Bull Run. (A run is a stream or creek.) The Confederates named the battles after the nearest town, Manassas. There are a few exceptions of course; the Union named the big battle in western Tennessee Shiloh after a nearby Church, while the South called it Pittsburg Landing after the river landing where the North came ashore. This is of course, exactly backwards, but what are you going to do?

So, anyway, the first big land battle was fought near the town of Manassas on the banks of the Bull Run in the fields, and front yard of a farmer named Wilber McClain. Wilber was a crotchety old goat who just wanted to be left alone and so after the battle he sold his farm and got out of Manassas altogether looking for some peace and quiet. He bought a new farm in the very little town of Appomattox Court House deep in the Virginia hill country, a place, Wilber said, where nobody would ever find him to bother him again.

Lee left Richmond and Petersburg looking to meet up with Johnston at Danville. Finding his way blocked by Grant Lee was gradually forced west to, of all places Appomattox Court House. Once Lee realized he was surrounded and there would be no escape this time he sent a message to Grant to meet him in Appomattox Court House to work out terms of surrender. Of all the places in town to pick, Lee selected Wilber’s house to surrender in. Later Wilber would say that the war began in his front yard and ended in his parlor; and he was right, it did. Except that it didn't end with Lee's surrender, Jeff Davis was still on the run and Confederate forces were still fighting on other fronts.

Some of Lee’s officers did not want to surrender, they rightly pointed out that only a light cavalry screen separated them for the food train at Appomattox Station a few miles away and if they swarmed the train and it could get up speed before the Union recovered they might just get away. While this would have been a dashing move full of romance and daring, Lee thought that any more killing would just be murder, not war.

No long before, on the high ground above Saylor’s Creek, Lee has wondered aloud, ‘what would the country think?’ as his army crumbled before his eyes.  One of his generals spun on him and said that Lee was the country; that his men fought for him and him alone. In those final days between Sailor’s Creek and Appomattox you can see the weight of those words on Lee’s shoulders, he was a changed man. I guess that is the process of defeat, that thing that happens that makes someone not want to fight any more.