Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 9, 1990 TAG: 9004090146
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: DAVID REED ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: APPOMATTOX LENGTH: Medium
Nearly 8,000 spectators, some attired in bonnets and hoop skirts from 1865, lined behind wooden fences along the old stage road through Appomattox Court House National Historic Park.
There was scattered applause and a few rebel yells as David Seay of Amelia, riding a stocky chestnut horse and playing the role of Gen. John Gordon, led the Confederates marching in columns of four between the Union troops shouldering their arms.
But the Rebel and Yankee men in uniform were, for the most part, grim through the formal ceremony in the isolated, reconstructed village where the nation reunited after four years of devastating warfare.
"It's a solemn occasion," Joe Pitts of Winston-Salem, N.C., said a few minutes before the Confederates surrendered their weapons and battle flags. "We don't particularly care for it and the troops back then didn't care for it."
One young Confederate wept as he stacked his rifle in one of the teepee-style piles along the dirt road winding through the rolling hills.
"You get into what the soldiers felt back then," said Lake Day, of Jacksonville, Fla. "To subject yourself to surrender is tough."
Soldier-actors on both sides who have been re-creating battles on anniversaries for the past four years said they were sad because this was the last major re-enactment. A few said they planned to quit the expensive hobby after this.
Following Appomattox, more than a month went by before the remaining Confederate armies surrendered and a few isolated forces west of the Mississippi laid down their arms. But historians agree that Lee's surrender ended the war for all intents and purposes.
"There is going to be a slowdown in re-enactments now; some won't be held for several years," said Edward Sachs of Hampton, who played the role of a foreign observer, a captain in the Royal Artillery of England.
The re-enactors, ranging in age from preteens to septuagenarians, came from as far away as California, Maine, Canada and even Europe.
Pitts, who brought his 11-year-old son, Nathan, to join the fife and drum corps, said they tried to depict the surrender at Appomattox exactly as the ragged, starving soldiers went through it. "It can't be totally correct; we can't be emaciated like they were."
The stacking of arms came on April 12, 1865, exactly four years after the war started at Fort Sumter, S.C., and three days after Lee surrendered to Gen. Grant at a private home on the edge of the village. Lee's surrender was not re-enacted.
by CNB