Friday, Apr. 16, 1965
This Hallowed Ground
In the two-story brick house of Major Wilmer McLean at Appomattox, Va., on Palm Sunday, 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Lieut. General Ulysses S. Grant. That act signified the end of the Civil War, and with it the bloodshed that cost the lives of 618,000 men--more than have died in all of America's other wars combined.-
Last week, 100 years later to the day, 17,000 people gathered under a leaden sky at the Appomattox Court House to witness the centennial commemoration.
Hawking Hucksters. So concluded an observance that began 41 years ago under the direction of a 25-man Centennial Commission established by President Eisenhower. With $100,000 a year to spend, the commission wrote up plans to give historical dignity to a succession of battle anniversaries. But dignity all too often went down the drain. Practically from the outset, Civil War buffs wearing uniforms and carrying old muskets set out to re-enact alt the war's major battles. At Bull Run, in July 1961, 70,000 spectators cheered more than 2,000 men and boys as they replayed the battle, charging across the battlefield, shooting blanks, and falling off their horses. Casualties at 1961's Bull Run: 185 cases of heat exhaustion, twelve bee stings.
Similar engagements were run at other battlefields, and in nearly every instance the "soldiers" were accompanied by modern-day camp followers--hucksters hawking vulgar souvenirs like beach towels imprinted with the Confederate flag, ashtrays embossed with the faces of Grant and Lee, cigarette lighters emblazoned with the words FORGET, HELL! and which played Dixie when opened.
Reminder. Happily, the commission prevented such lapses in last week's Appomattox ceremonies, much to the dismay of an outfit called the North-South Skirmish Association, which sent 42 costumed emissaries. Instead of shenanigans, there was a band concert and an address by Virginia's Governor Atbertis Harrison Jr. Senator Harry F. Byrd was present, and so were Lee's great-grandson, Robert E. Lee IV, 40, national advertising manager of the San Francisco Chronicle, and Grant's grandson, retired Army Major General Ulysses S. Grant III, 83.
The main address came from Historian Bruce Catton. Appomattox, said Catton, should remind Americans that "We have one country now, but at a terrible price, cemented everlastingly together because at the end of our most terrible war the men who had fought so hard decided that they had had enough of hatred."
*Total war dead (excluding the Civil War): 598,585. The breakdown: Revolutionary War, 4,435; War of 1812, 2,260; Mexican War, 13,283; Spanish-American War, 2,446; World War I, 116,516; World War II, 405,399; Korean War, 54,246.
This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.