"SURRENDER AT APPOMATTOX AND THE BEGINNING OF THE LOST CAUSE"

 “SURRENDER AT APPOMATTOX AND THE BEGINNING OF THE LOST CAUSE”

One hundred and fifty-nine years ago tomorrow was the surrender of Confederate forces to the Union army at Appomattox, to end the Civil War.  Joshua Chamberlain was a professor at Bowdoin College in Maine when he volunteered for the Union army in 1862.  He fought in many famous battles in the Civil War, including Gettysburg, where he led his Maine soldiers in a defense of the Union position at Little Round Top, forcing the Confederate army back and leading to the Union victory at Gettysburg.  He kept a diary during the War, and he has a very powerful account of the surrender of the at Appomattox, which took place on April 9, Palm Sunday. Here is an excerpt from that diary about the surrender at Appomattox;

     "Ah, but it was a most impressive sight, a most striking picture, to see that whole army in motion to lay down the symbols of war and strife, that army which had fought for four terrible years after a fashion but infrequently known in war.

At such a time and under such conditions I thought it eminently fitting to show some token of our feeling, and I therefore instructed my subordinate officers to come to the position of 'salute' in the manual of arms as each body of the Confederates passed before us.

      When General Gordon came opposite me I had the bugle blown and the entire line came to 'attention,' preparatory to executing this movement of the manual successively and by regiments as Gordon's columns should pass before our front, each in turn.  The General was riding in advance of his troops, his chin drooped to his breast, downhearted and dejected in appearance almost beyond description. 

     By word of mouth General Gordon sent back orders to the rear that his own troops take the same position of the manual in the march past as did our line. That was done, and a truly imposing sight was the mutual salutation and farewell.  At a distance of possibly twelve feet from our line, the Confederates halted and turned face towards us. Their lines were formed with the greatest care, with every officer in his appointed position, and thereupon began the formality of surrender.

    Gordon, at the head of the marching column, outdoes us in courtesy. He was riding with downcast eyes and more than pensive look; but at this clatter of arms he raises his eyes and instantly catching the significance, wheels his horse with that superb grace of which he is master, drops the point of his sword to his stirrup, gives a command, at which the great Confederate ensign following him is dipped and his decimated brigades, as they reach our right, respond to the 'carry.' All the while on our part not a sound of trumpet or drum, not a cheer, nor a word nor motion of man, but awful stillness as if it were the passing of the dead. 

      "Bayonets were affixed to muskets, arms stacked, and cartridge boxes unslung and hung upon the stacks. Then, slowly and with a reluctance that was appealingly pathetic, the torn and tattered battleflags were either leaned against the stacks or laid upon the ground. The emotion of the conquered soldiery was really sad to witness. Some of the men who had carried and followed those ragged standards through the four long years of strife, rushed, regardless of all discipline, from the ranks, bent about their old flags, and pressed them to their lips with burning tears.

     And it can well be imagined, too, that there was no lack of emotion on our side, but the Union men were held steady in their lines, without the least show of demonstration by word or by motion. There was, though, a twitching of the muscles of their faces, and, be it said, their battle-bronzed cheeks were not altogether dry. Our men felt the import of the occasion, and realized fully how they would have been affected if defeat and surrender had been their lot after such a fearful struggle.

     Nearly an entire day was necessary for that vast parade to pass. About 27,000 stands of arms were laid down, with something like a hundred battleflags; cartridges were destroyed, and the arms loaded on cars and sent off to Wilmington.  Every token of armed hostility was laid aside by the defeated men. No officer surrendered his side arms or horse, if private property, only Confederate property being required, according to the terms of surrender, dated April 9, 1865, and stating that all arms, artillery, and public property were to be packed and stacked and turned over to the officer duly appointed to receive them.”

Chamberlain’s moving account of honor to honor reminds us of the “brother against brother” of the Civil War.  But, it also begins to cloak the Civil War in romantic white myth, a myth that would morph into the beginning of the Lost Cause.  Five days later it would begin with the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in Ford’s Theatre on Good Friday, April 14, 1865, by John Wilkes Booth in a conspiracy to win back the Confederacy.

That Lost Cause is being revived again in the MAGA movement, a 21st century version of the continuing struggle in American history to deny the power of slavery and to maintain white supremacy.  This year’s elections in November will tell us whether we will return to 1877, when the Confederacy was reinvented, or to 1965, when the Voting Rights Act sought to diminish the power of the Confederacy.   More on this next week, but for now, let us remember this week of April 9-14, 1865, and let us think on its meaning for our time.