tv American Artifacts CSPAN May 30, 2015 10:30am-11:01am EDT
10:30 am
peace to the world. and congratulations to every member of the class of 2005. may god bless you. [applause.] >> you are wanting "american history tv. 48 hours of programming every weekend on c-span3. follow us on twitter for information on a schedule of upcoming programs and to keep up with the latest history news. >> each week, american artifacts takes viewers to historic sites around the country. on april 9, 1865, can have it -- confederate general lee met general -- union general ulysses s grant surrendering and
10:31 am
effectively ending the civil war. next, we visit appomattox to see items related to the surrender. we also toured the museum's exhibits. linda lipscomb welcome -- linda lipscomb: welcome to the museum. the museum here has been open for almost three years now. and 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 the artifacts that were from the confederates. we will tell you about how we got some of those artifacts. here, we kind of focus on appomattox since we are in this location. one of the things people ask us about is why appomattox? why did lee come here to surrender? it was not his original intent of course. lee, on his retreat from petersburg, had been looking for
10:32 am
supplies. his goal was to find supplies for his men and turn south to meet with general johnston in north carolina. as he is traveling from petersburg grant had been able to effectively block all the railroad supplies lee has waiting for him. he gets into appomattox courthouse. that is the name of the village , which was built on a stagecoach road between richmond and lynchburg. courthouse spelled as two words. appomattox was a county was -- a county formed in 1845. the county seats are always known with the county name and the two words, courthouse. but it did have a courthouse building in it. lee arrived here on the afternoon of april 8. he deployed some of his artillery here in front of him on this road on the way to appomattox station.
10:33 am
this is where he has supply trains waiting for him. he sent some of the artillery to a position here and sent men out to unload the supply trains. while they are unloading these trains, they are surprised by general custer's cavalry, who comes in, captures the supply trains and some of the men. some of them escape and start heading back towards the courthouse village, where the main army is. when they are in this area where the artillery troops are the federal calorie -- calvary has caught up to them. this was known as the battle of appomattox station. the only battle in the civil war that was fought between a federal calvary union and a confederate artillery unit. no infantrymen involved. the federal cavalry can overrun artillery positions quickly. so they are all retreating to the appomattox courthouse village. the next morning, lee sends more
10:34 am
troops to be able to take the trains. because he believes that his infantrymen and the troops that he has can overtake a cavalry unit in the area and get back to their supply trains. at 7:30 in the morning, another battle begins in the area. when lee discovers that the the general -- the general and his army have arrived overnight with 20 federal reinforcements. they have effectively cut off lee's approach to the supply trains. the battle last till 10:30 the morning, when general lee sends a message to general grant telling him he is ready to surrender his army. you will notice here the bridge. this is highbridge, going from farmville to appomattox. it crossed the appomattox river. that you can see down here. this photograph was taken in august of 1865, when they were
10:35 am
doing one of their final repairs to the bridge after the war. we are going into the gallery. i will show you some of the items we have. some of them were specific to appomattox. of course, our collection is very broad, very deep. we have a lot of interesting things to share with you as well. this sword is one of our outstanding pieces. this was general lee's dress sword given to him by a marylander. that is all we know about it. he wore it in dress appearances . he wore it on the day he surrendered to general grant. he did not know what was going to happen to him personally that day. he knew he was surrendering his army but did not know what was going to happen to him. the sword has a myth that comes with it.
10:36 am
the writers not too long after the surrender, writers started saying things that lee offered his sword, grant refused it. those were strictly myths. both grant and lee tried to dispel those rumors when they started cropping up, that lee did not ever surrender his sword. grant never requested his sword. this, in grant's words, is the purest romance. it was just a myth, it never happened. the museum of the confederacy was founded in 1890 and opened as a museum in 1896 in richmond. our collection was gathered by a group of women who were prominent in each state. they would gather artifacts from the veterans or their families to add to our collection in richmond. this flag that is here, an army
10:37 am
of northern virginia battle flag , is one of 500 we have in our collection, the world's largest collection of confederate flags. on the top, there is a stencil number, 384. this signifies this was a captured battle flag. during a war -- the war, if a soldier captured a confederate flag and turned it into the war department, he was awarded a medal of honor. the war department would then stencil the number on it as part of their records, noting who captured it, the date, all the pertinent information. after the war in 1905, president teddy roosevelt came to visit our museum in richmond. and when he was there, he noted the pride the women had in the collection. he went back to washington and made it possible for the war department to return the flags back to the states from which
10:38 am
they came. if it was identified as a texas flag, it was given to texas. the virginia flags were given to the confederate museum, as we were called them. -- then. there was not a historical society in virginia or a historical library that existed at that time. so they were given to us. after the war department went through the process and dispersed all the flags it could identify, it had 200 left. in turn, it turned those over to the confederate museum for safekeeping. that is how the collection came to be that large. this particular case talks about primarily the overland campaign. this is when lee and grant began to face each other in 1864. you will notice there are photographs of the men, along with the artifacts. we put a picture of a face to
10:39 am
the artifacts so you can get a personal connection with the men and with the items you are looking at. not just an article. for example, this one of general john bell hood. if you look at his photograph, you will see that is the same uniform he is wearing there in that particular photograph. the same with general clayburgh's uniform. this is the uniform he was wearing when he was killed at the battle of franklin in 1864. you can see, it is also the one he is wearing in the photograph there. some of that is battle damage, but most of it is insect damaged. the first we have been able to display it. this is the first it has ever been on display since his family gave it to us. his family did not want to give it to us because they were embarrassed about the condition it was in. thinking that we would not want
10:40 am
anything like this. but there are such few artifacts that remain of patrick clayburgh so this is a important piece to have of him. the graphic here depicts the surrender of some of lee's armie -- army at sailor's creek. he lost about one third of his army at the battle. after that battle, general grant initiates a conversation with general lee by messenger, telling him he does not want anymore bloodshed, asking lee to surrender his army. over the next few days, they continue the correspondence. with lee saying he does not want bloodshed, but it is not yet time to surrender the army. they continue in this correspondence up to the battle of appomattox courthouse on the morning of april 9, when general lee sends a final message to grant, telling him he is ready
10:41 am
to surrender his army. there are two significant images i would like to tell you about. in d is an aid to general lee, and he was wounded in appomattox on april 9. lee noted that he left him writhing in great pain and assumed he died. in fact, he actually survived. he posed in this uniform, that shows a bullet that was recovered from him. he was operated on by a union surgeon and continued to live after the war. the gentleman in f is his sergeant, robert parker, with the second virginia cavalry. on that morning, he was also engaged in a battle in appomattox.
10:42 am
he is known as lee's last casualty. sergeant parker passed away at the will robertson house. he was the last man in lee's army to die before he surrendered. sergeant parker was only 40 miles away from his hometown at the time he passed away. another item that we have of what lee wore is a gauntlet and a pen he used to accept the terms of surrender. this is a code that was given to us by his son, the day -- the one he was wearing the day he surrendered. the pen was used to sign the acceptance. a lot of people do not know that
10:43 am
general lee and grant never signed the same piece of paper. when they met at the maclean house on april 9, they had a cordial meeting. lee asked grant to set his terms of surrender. he had heard them in general a few days before, but he asked him to write down the particular terms of surrender, which grant did. he gave it to lee to read. and grant signed the terms of surrender that he was offering. lee read it, made a couple corrections to it and gave it back to general grant. he wrote his letter of acceptance of those particular terms. lee signed his own letter, but they never signed the same piece of paper. there is no formal treaty, no document ever signed between the president lincoln and president davis, ending any of this. this was just lee surrendering to grant at this particular time.
10:44 am
in this particular case, there are a lot of uniforms and flags and the swords that pertain specifically to appomattox. these were the men that were here with them. the flags that are here are ones that were captured or surrendered in appomattox. the museum has started a flag conservation program. these flags are perfect examples of that. we have been able to have the flags conserved so they will not deteriorate any further. it is an expensive process that can cost $20,000 to $30,000. we have been fortunate that some of our supporters have stepped forward to help us. some of them may have ancestors that fought for a particular unit, so it is personal to them. we still have a lot of the flags that have not been conservative -- conserved like this that we cannot display. we have a system that we can
10:45 am
display them in, some of the drawers that i will show you. we have 59 flags surrendered or captured at appomattox. not all of them are in the condition of the ones we looked at earlier that have been conserved. a lot of them look like this. this is obviously one that has probably souvenir damage done to it, taken as they were unfurling the flags on april 12, turning them in for the last time. a lot of the men tour -- tore off pieces to take home with them as souvenirs. this particular flag, not quite as much damage. but you can see some of the stars are missing from it. some of the men took those to take home with them as souvenirs. the flag we have in this last case on the bottom is one that does not have any damage other than wear and tear of 150 years.
10:46 am
this was carried by sergeant david lowery. he refused to surrender his flag at the surrender ceremony. he wrapped it around his body, put his uniform on top of it and walked home with it. he kept it in his parlor and it remained there until he passed away. the flag was given to us by his daughter. in the fall of the first year we opened in 2012, his great-granddaughter came to visit and told us the same story. that he had brought it home with him this way, kept it on an easel in the parlor. so he kept it with him at all times. the battle flags that the men followed into battle were significant for them. the color bearer was a target for the enemy. they felt that they shot down the color bearer, it would morally defeat that particular
10:47 am
unit. color bearers were particularly courageous. some of the things that they carried these flags on, some of them you can see here in our flagstaff. some of them are nice pieces of wood. others are just tree branches. they are making do with whatever they have there. when lee surrendered his army to general grant, he surrendered only his army of northern virginia. he did not surrender any other armies, although grant had asked him to. there was over 100,000 soldiers still in the field. so appomattox was just the first surrender, but certainly not the last surrender that ended the war. but effectively, it did. one of the larger armies in the field was joe johnston's army in north carolina. it had been lee's goal to meet johnston.
10:48 am
general johnston surrendered about three weeks after lee surrendered. the sad the portraits, the sword that you see here, the spurs the gauntlets, the sash, and this chest all belong to joseph johnston. the last surrender on land was by brigadier general stan wadde. we only have a portrait of him but he is notable because he was a cherokee. he surrendered his men, who were mostly native american, in oklahoma territory in june of 1865. that was the last surrender on land. the last surrender of a confederate flag occurred in november of 1865. from the css shenandoah. in liverpool, england. the shenandoah had been a rating -- raiding ship.
10:49 am
it was operating off the aleutian islands when it got word that the war had ended. the captain did not want to put into any u.s. court -- port because he and his men would have been hanged as pirates. so they sailed all the way around south america, back up to great britain to liverpool which is where the ship had been made. they surrender their flag and went quietly back home. the map shows some other places where people went after the war. about 10,000 former confederate soldiers were given land grants by the emperor of brazil to come down and establish a colony. these men were known as confederatos. about 3000 remained, 7000 came back. it is very difficult to establish new land but there are still descendents that live
10:50 am
there now. peru, belize, mexico, were also places where soldiers had gone. african-americans, some of them went back to liberia, which was a country that had been created for them with the idea of them going back to their native lands and to reestablish colonies there. it was not very successful. only about 4000 african-americans went there. a much larger number went to kansas after reconstruction, about 15,000 of them to establish life on farms there in kansas. some of the soldiers also became mercenaries or worked for other armies. notably in egypt, a lot of them went to join fighting there. some of the coats show some of the alterations that soldiers made after the war. this one has buttons covered and shows no insignia.
10:51 am
the u.s. army regulations required them to remove any insignia and military buttons if they were going to continue to wear them. other modifications we see to things, to coats, there were shortages in the south. so clothing was very valuable. this is one example where a woman has taken her husband's coat and cut it down to make an overcoat for her son to where. -- wear during the winter months. this is our wall of faces that shows nearly 100 men and women african-american and white and tells their stories on the screens. what happened to them during the war and what happened after the war. one of the people is elizabeth van lew. she lived in richmond and she was a union spy. she was very wealthy. but she wanted to help union
10:52 am
soldiers. and was down at libby prison, helping them to pass messages back and forth. after the war, she was appointed postmistress. after she passed away, her home was torn down by the people of richmond. they did not have the same opinion as president grant did. this is an image of judah benjamin, the first jewish cabinet officer in the u.s. he -- in the united states. he served as secretary of war and secretary of state for the confederate states of america. another image is related to some of the people that live here in appomattox today. this is nancy martin. she was born a slave, about two or three years old when lee surrendered here in appomattox. so she became free and she grew up to be a midwife. she was a very good midwife. if you were expecting a child,
10:53 am
you called nancy martin, regardless of whether you were african-american or white. according to reverend jones, who gave us this image, his great great grandmother. nancy martin had her own wall of faces. she always had a portrait made with every child she brought into the world. we also have a death mask of robert e lee. after he left appomattox in 65 -- in april of 1965 -- 1865, he returned to richmond with his wife. they moved to lexington, where he was president of washington college for the next five years. he passed away in 1870, 5 years after his surrender. this is one of the death masks. the image that is back there behind him is an image of appomattox courthouse. the village. you can see the ruins of the burned out courthouse, taken after 1892, when it burned.
10:54 am
it had been the county seat up until that point. but as we showed you on the map before, this was built on the stagecoach line. the railroad line did not come through the village. it was a few miles away, where lee was trying to get to. after this courthouse burned, they built a new courthouse and moved the county seat to where it exists today, near the railroad station in the town of appomattox. this gallery focuses on the confederate veterans. many of them were wounded during the war and lost limbs. some of them had prosthetic limbs, like this, made. although, when this was given to us, the gentleman said he did not wear it very often. his grandkids probably played with it more often than he wore it. another example is this hat worn by sergeant duckett.
10:55 am
you can see that there is a whole -- hole in it. there is a photograph of him wearing that with where a bullet grazed him during a battle. it came that close to ending his life and took out a big chunk of his hat. when the men came back from the war, they were significantly changed. a lot of times, those boys had not been outside of their own county. now they had traveled to different states and seen the horrific effects of the war. a lot of them came back with physical wounds, such as you see here. but when they came back, they tried to reclaim their lives. a lot of them were farmers. but some went into politics. they were seen as war heroes, so it was easy for them to run on platforms and become elected officials in their home community. but some of these men were radically different than when they had left. a lot of these conditions they
10:56 am
did not understand. this is a time when we do not understand bacteria and germs let alone the psychological issues the men were finding. in journals, they referred to this condition as "soldier's heart," because it often came along with a heart condition. today, we call it posttraumatic stress disorder. they did not understand it at the time. there were high rates of alcoholism, suicide also, as the men tried to deal with what they had seen during that time period without the benefits of counseling or understanding what is going on. very similar to what we see with veterans today. like i said previously, the men were not permitted to wear their uniforms after the war was over. but yet, the men wanted to get together and have reunions. so they designed a confederate
10:57 am
veteran uniform that was available for $7.50 that you will see in a lot of the reunion photographs we have here. most of the reunions we see in these images were just of confederate veterans or union veterans with their particular unit. there were a few reunions held with troops from the north and south. there were not as many, but they were given wide publicity. these were two punch bowls made to signify one of those reunions in the 1880's between the north and the south. throughout the south, many veterans homes became organized as places where veterans could live if they had no one at home to care for them. some of the examples where from -- we have here are from the veterans home in richmond, virginia. this veteran was celebrating his 103rd birthday. one of the things they did at
10:58 am
this particular home as a fundraiser was carve furniture -- doll house furniture out of cigar boxes. one day, i was taking some of our board members on a tour, and they were admiring this and commented that they used to have dollhouse furniture just like this as a child. but then their mother took it away from them because she was saying they were going to break it. as they were looking at it and admiring the furniture, start reading the label and see who it was donated by, it was their parents. this was the dollhouse furniture that was taken away from them as a child, now at the museum. the museum was first opened in 1896 as a confederate museum. chosen to be here because of the people that come to this particular area.
10:59 am
appomattox is one of the top draws for civil war historians or people who are just interested in civil war history. so, we wanted to give them another experience out here where we could bring more of our collection out and bring that collection to appomattox. i have been it with the museum for 15 years. four years as the director. loved the job totally. it has been absolutely fantastic. and excited about the future that is going to happen with the museum as it continues to grow and expand and improve our collection. we hope you will stop by and see us. please do. >> you can watch you this or other american artifacts programs at any time by visiting our website, c-span.org/history. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> to join the conversation,
11:00 am
like us on facebook. up next on american history tv author michael mccarthy discusses the july 1915 capsizing of the ss eastland in the chicago river. over 800 factory workers died in the tragedy, including 22 entire families. mccarthy examines the faulty ballast system that caused the ship to capsize and he talks about the forgotten legacy of the ss eastland. posted by the new york public library, this program is about 90 minutes. michael: thank you very much. i really appreciate this turnout. i know it is beautiful outside and the tulips are fantastic. thank you for taking the time to come to this presentation. the -- it is correct. i spent over a dozen years looking into this story, and i had worked at "the wall street journal" for over 20 years and i had never encountered a story of this magnitude or drama.
45 Views
IN COLLECTIONS
CSPAN3 Television Archive Television Archive News Search ServiceUploaded by TV Archive on