>> Remember the guy who moved away from Manassas in the Civil War after the >> First Battle of Bull Run, to get away from the fighting, to a peaceful place >> called Appomattox...and the surrender was signed in his living room. >> >> (Am I remembering this correctly?) >> >> --Mike >> > > No Idea, but it sounds preposterously funny :)
Here's the story: >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Wilmer McLean--The Beginning and the End by Simone J. Pace Wilmer McLean stood on the front porch of his two-story brick house awaiting the arrival of General Robert E Lee. In the early afternoon on that day, General Lee, accompanied by Colonel Charles Marshall, arrived on horseback. Wil extended his greetings to the two Confederate officers and invited them into his parlor. And there, on April 9, 1865, they awaited the arrival of the other guests. At about 1:30pm, a group of Union officers arrived on horseback. Among those were Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, Major General P. H. Sheridan, Major General E. O. C. Ord, Major General Wesley Merritt, Major General George Armstrong Custer, and Captain Robert Todd Lincoln, son of President Abraham Lincoln. General Grant and several of the Union officers entered the parlor where General Lee was waiting. For the next hour and a half, General Lee and General Grant discussed and came to agreement on the terms of surrender of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, which, for all practical purposes, ended the long, bloody war. And, while Lee and Grant were conferring, Wil McLean waited outside the house where, I can only surmise, he must have thought about the hand of fate that brought this event to his home at Appomattox Court House. Wil, a retired Major in the Virginia militia, was too old to be conscripted when that un-civil war began. For the majority of the duration of the war, he was a merchant primarily dealing in the buying and selling of sugar. But, at the outset of the war in 1861, he was a farmer living in northern Virginia with his family. The war had struck close to home early on, so, concerned for the safety of his family, Wil and his family moved from the war zone in northern Virginia to central Virginia and eventually bought a home at Appomattox Court House. And just how close to his northern Virginia home had the war come? Well, you see, the first battle of the war, the First Battle of Manassas, also known by northerners as the First Battle of Bull Run, fought on July 21, 1861, took place on Wil McLean�s farm. So, in a most unusual twist of fate, the War Between the States started in Wil McLean�s back yard in 1861 and ended in his parlor in 1865. <<<<<<<<<<<<
