lipscomb. the museum hare opened three years. we are an extension of the museum that was originally founded in 1890 opened in 1896 in richmond virginia. we house here a lot of aircraft facts that were from the confederates. we'll tell you how we got some of the artifacts. here we tend to focus on appotomax because we are in the location. a lot of people ask the question, why appotomax why did lee come here to surrender. it was not his original intend. lee has been looking for supplies. his goal is to find supplies for his men and then turn south to meet with general john ton who was down in north carolina. as he is traveling from petersburg here, gran has been able to effectively block off all of the railroad supplies that lee has waiting for him as he is coming along. he gets into appotomax courthouse here, and that is the

name of the village which was built on a stage coach road between richmond and lynchburg here. courthouse being spelled as two words. appotomax was a county that was formed in 1845. and in virginia the county seats are always known with the county name, and then the two words, court house. but it was a village that did have a courthouse building in it. lee arrives here on the afternoon of april the 8th. he deemploys some of his artillery here in front of him on this road on the way to appotomax station. this is where he has supply trains waiting for him. so he sends some of his artillery out into a position mere. then he sends men out here to start unloading his supply trains. while they are unloading these trains they are surprised by general custer's californiavy who comes in and captures the supply trains and some of the men. some of them escape and start

heading back towards the court house village is where their main military is. the cavalry has caught up to them. this is one of the two battles that were done here in appotomax. this is the one known as the battle at appotomax station. the only battle fought between a con californiavy unit and a confederate -- the next morning lee sends out more troops to be able to take those trains because he believes the infantry men, the troops he has can overtake a cavalry unit in the area and get back to their supply trains. 597:30 in the morning another battle glins in the area when lee fairly soon discovers that

general ord has arrived overnight with reinforcements and they have effectively cut off lee's approach back here to his supply trains. that battle lasts only to about 10:30 ton the morning when general lee sends his final message to general grant telling him he is now ready to surrender his army. you will notice here high bridge, this was going from farmville to appotomax. it crossed the appotomax river that you can see here. this photo was taken in august of 1865 when they were doing final repairs to the bridge after the war. we are going to go into the gallery and show you some of the items that we do have. some of them were specific here to appotomax. and of course our collection is very broad, very deep. so we have a lot of other interesting things to share with you as well. this sword here is one of our

outstanding pieces in our collection. this was general lee's dress sword. it was given to him in 1863 by a amerilander. that's all we know about this donor of of the. he wore it in his formal par alal portraits. he wore it on his dress appearances. he wore it on the day he surrendered to general grant because he was in his dress uniform. he didn't know what was going to happen to him personally that day. he knew he was surrendering his army but didn't know what was going to happen to him. the sword has a myth that comes with it. the writers not long after the surrender started staying things that grant asked for his refused it. those were strictly myths. both grant and lee tried to dispell those rumors as soon as they started cropping up. that lee did not ever surrender his sword.

grant never requested his sword. that in grant's words were this and much more that has been said about it is the purest romance. so it was just a myth. it never happened. the museum of the confederacy was founded in 1890 and opened as a museum in 1986 in richmond. our collection was gathered by a group of women who were prominent in each state. and they would gather art facts from the veterans or the veterans' family to add to our election collection in richmond this. flag that is here which is an army of northern virginia pattern battle flag is one of over 500 flags we have in our collection, the world's largest collection of confederate flags. you notice up on the top there there is a stencilled number 384. this signature if i phis this was a captured battle flag. during the war if a federal soldier captured a confederate

flag and turned it into the war department he was aawarded a medal of honor. the war department then stencilled these numbers on them when they would take them into their collection noting who it was that captured it the date all the period of timen in information that was there. after the war in 1905 president teddy roosevelt came to visit our museum in richmond. when he was there, he noted the pride that the women had in their collection. he went back to washington and made it possible so that the war department could return these flags back to the states from which they originally came. so if it was identified as a texas flag it was given back to texas. the virginia flags, when it came to virginia in the -- to the government, was given to the confederate museum as we were called then. there was not a historical ♪ virginia or a library of virginia that existed at that time, so they were returned to us. after the war department had gone through its process and had

disbursepersed all of the flags it could identify. it had over 200 left. it turned those over to the confederate museum for its safekeeping. that's how our collection came to be that large. this particular case talks about primarily over the overland campaign and shows things. this is when lee and grant began to fees each other in 1864. you will notice that there are photographs of the men along with the artifacts. for example, jub aisle early next to his saddle. we put a picture, a face, to the artifacts so that you can get a personal connection with the men and with the items that you are looking at, not just an article. for example, this one of general john bellhood -- if you look at that uniform and then look at his photograph that is there, you will see that is the same uniform that he is wearing there in that particular photograph. the same here with general

claiborne's uniform. this is the uniform that he was wearing when he was killed at the battle of franklin in 1864. you can see it's also the one that he is wearing in that photograph there. the damage that is done to it is -- some of it is battle damage but most of it is insect damage. it's the first that we've ever been able to display it. we have the denies and being able to display it on a slant board like this so people can see it. this is the first it has been on display since his family gave it to us. his family didn't want to give it to us because they were embarrassed by the condition it was in. but there are so few artifacts that remain of patrick claiborne, this is a very important piece to have of him. the graphic that is here depicts the surrender of some of lee's army at the battle of sailor's creek. he lost about a third of his army at that particular battle. and this is where after this battle that general grant initiates a conversation with

general lee by messenger telling him he does not want any more blood shed and asking lee to surrender his army. over the next few days they continue this correspondence saying lee doesn't want blood shed either but he does not feel it is time to surrender his army. and they continue this until the battle of appotomax court 8 house on the morning of april 9th when lee sends his final message back to grant telling him he is ready to surrender his army. there are two significant images in this case. in d. is an aide to general fitsualy. he was wounded in action in appotomax on the morning of april 9th. lee noted that he left him writhing in his great pain and

assumed he had died n. fact, he survived. he was -- he posed for this picture with his uniform that showed where the bullet passed through his coat. and that is the bullet that was recovered from him. he was operated upon by a union surgeon who saved his life, and he continue to live after the war. the gentleman that is in number f, next to him is sergeant robert parker. he was with the second virginia cavalry. and on that morning he also was engaged in a battle here in appotomax. he is known as lee's last casualty. sergeant parker was wounded in these engagements, and he passed away in the robertson's house. he was the last man in lee's army to die before lee sent his message to grant that he was ready to surrender. sergeant parker was only 40 miles away from his hometown of bedford at the time that he had passed away.

another item that we have of what lee wore the day that he surrendered to grant is his frock coat here and his gaunt lets and the pen that he used to sign his acceptance of grant's term of surrender. this is a coat that was given to us bice by his son. when he gave it to us he told us this is the one that lee was wearing the day he did is your vendor to grant. we know those were his gaunt lets that he had that day. and the pen that is here is one that he used to sign his acceptance. a lot of people don't know that general lee and general grant never signed the same piece of paper. when they met at the mclean house on april 9th. they had a cordial meeting and lee asked grant to set down on paper his terms of surrender. he had heard them in general a few days before as they had been corresponding but he asked him to write down his particular terms of surrender, which grant

did. and he gave it to lee to read. and gran signed the terms of surrender that he was offering. lee read it he made a couple corrections to it and gave it back to general grant. he wrote his letter of acceptance of those particular terms. and lee signed his own letter. but they never signed the same piece of paper. there is no formal peace treaty that originated from there. there was no document ever signed between president lincoln and president davis ending any of this. this was just lee surrendering his army to general grant at this particular time. in this particular case, there are a lot of uniforms and swords and flags that pertain specifically here to appotomax. these were on the men that were here with them and these flags are ones that were camtured or surrendered here in appotomax. the museums that started