After packing up all our camping gear at Paradise Lake on 5/15, we headed with the J-Crew, Dan, and Brendan to Appomattox, which is just a stone’s throw away from Spout Spring.
L to R: Brendan, Piper, Houston, Jax, Asher, Gabriel, & Zeke get punchy after a fun-filled weekend of camping & doing history in beautiful rural Virginia.
The tourism billboards leading to historic Appomattox Court House had me a bit concerned about the propaganda factor of the national park we were about to visit. I don’t remember the exact verbiage, but they touted something about how it was there that a country divided became reunified again. Uh, really?!
If you hadn’t noticed, America couldn’t be more disjointed, bifurcated, and split on most everything, from free speech to safe spaces, bathrooms to healthcare, marriage to gender, guns to schooling, faith to atheism, race to rape, mob rule to individualism, stewardship to environmentalism, and truth to suspension of reality. It’s scary.
But it wasn’t just happenstance that this is how the nation has unfolded. I would be so bold as to say this actually roots back to the Union winning the War Between the States and forcing perpetual nationhood on sovereign states, who are made up of very diverse peoples.
The McLean House where, on April 9, 1865, C.S.A .Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to U.S. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. However, this is the not actual house. In 1893, Yankee speculators dismantled the house in hopes of taking it to Washington as a war museum. The money-making scheme failed, & the house was eventually rebuilt to its original specifications on site.
South from North. Midwest from West. Southwest from Northeast. Northwest from Southeast. East Coast from West Coast. Americans and the regions they call home have always been vastly from one another.
Different cultures. Different food. Different accents. Different faiths. Different guiding principles. And sometimes, we don’t like each other very much. And that’d be okay, if we weren’t forced to try to be indivisible and monolithic.
After all, at the founding, we were referred to as “These” United States of America. This reinforced this assumptive separateness and took a healthy jab at a central authority.
For the majority of the Founders (save Alexander Hamilton, John Marshall, and their pro-federalist ilk), the union was a contingent thing — a voluntary compact based upon divided sovereignty, checks and balances, a central government limited to only a few powers delegated to it by the states, and negative rights.
Here’s the parlor of the McLean House where the generals met, Lee in the desk on the left w/ his aid, C.S.A. Lt. Col. Charles Marshall, & Grant on the right w/ some 14 U.S. officers. But what was actually signed? A military surrender, & this is very important, since the Confederate government never surrendered. But even if it had wanted to — which it didn’t, as many Confederates wanted to keep fighting a guerrilla campaign — the U.S. would probably not have accepted. To do so would have given the C.S.A. legal legitimacy both domestically and internationally. So, why was a treaty not signed? Sure, the Confederacy has the trappings of an authentic government, like raising armies & taxes, but treaties are signed between two sovereigns, & the Yankees would never concede the existence of something it held in such disdain.
But the feds are a “general government,” as historian Brion McClanahan aptly describes the feds. It was meant for and Constitutionally written as such solely for general purposes only, those being only commerce and defense.
Obviously, the general government has always been forcing and promoting the union mentality of these disparate regions and peoples for their own gain. Just check out Hamilton’s actions (not his words) in pushing for a powerful general government and weak states. He was one cunning, duplicitous dude.
“Still a Union that can only be maintained by swords and bayonets, & in which strife & civil war are to take the place of brotherly love & kindness, has no charm for me.” — Robert E. Lee
The federalists always wanted the country to be a homogeneous blob, a nation-state which now spans four time zones and two oceans, and includes 320+ million people. No wonder there’s so much division and angst. Empires just aren’t natural or healthy.
The kids sprint across a field due west, toward the Lafayette Meeks’ grave. It was just beyond this point that the final battle of the War of Northern Aggression began to wage @ dawn on the morning of April 9, 1865. Even after fleeing their defenses @ the besieged city Petersburg & fighting battles along the way of Lee’s bloody retreat, the Army of Northern Virginia originally outnumbered the Union cavalry at Appomattox. But eventually, U.S. infantry arrived. Moreover, the Yankees had also captured & destroyed supply trains @ the Battle of Appomattox Station the day prior, cutting off both military rations & food from the Confederates. Lee was encircled. “Then there is nothing left for me to do, but to go & see General Grant,” he said, “& I would rather die a thousand deaths.” But he surrendered his once-mighty regiment & set the stage for other Confederate leaders & their beleaguered units to do the same.
So, why all this talk about the Founding? Because Lincoln is the one who took the dream of the federalist statists and brought it to fruition. He once and for all, answered the question of secession in the negative, say the “experts.” Of course, I vehemently beg to differ.
“I cannot trust a man to control others who cannot control himself.” — Robert E. Lee
Unfortunately, Lincoln shared the philosophy of Daniel Webster, whose “Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable” speech in 1830 had a lasting impact on the would-be president in his formative years. Lincoln’s eventual usurpation of power, authority, and law roots back to this obsessive sentiment of unity, no matter the cost.
As Alexander Stephens, vice president of the Confederate States of America, said: “The Cause of the South is now the Cause of all [Americans].†In other words, if the South took a stand, many other states may follow the leadership. After all, it was some Northern states in the 1860s that first talked of secession.
The dudes act silly (shocking!) in & around the privy behind the McLean House. Piper & Gabriel are nowhere to be seen. Perhaps they had too much sense to get involved in all these shenanigans & are reading the historic literature w/ their parents instead … ha, doubt it!
And today, California bandies about the notion of separating into five sovereign regions, and you sometimes hear the sentiments of peaceful separation in places, like North Carolina, Texas, and even Vermont. Nobody likes to be told what to do from a distant capital, unless, they’re the one calling the shots.
And that’s where we’re at today: people vying for power in order to coerce the masses, since ours is a country “united” under duress. Our collapsing society is proof that Lincoln’s “A house divided against itself cannot stand” has failed miserably.
The 16th president who is lauded almost universally (save for libertarians like me and historians like Tom DiLorenzo) set the precedent for mob rule. Today’s progressive hordes think they know what’s right for me. Or they just want to kill me. And these benevolent tyrants learned from the best despot of all. Thanks, Lincoln.
The gang explores (& even does a little butt-shaking groove) around the village of Appomattox Court House. Originally known as Clover Hill, the settlement consisted of only a few houses, a tavern, a store, a courthouse, a jail, & a law office. It was initially established as a town because it was a stopping-off point on the integral Richmond-Lynchburg Stage Road.
I’m not saying that the Confederacy would have been perfect. After all, it was a government, of which I’m no fan. And C.S.A. president, Jefferson Davis, was opposed to nullification, which I think is the proper moral and legal remedy to an overreaching government.
But it would have been better to break the ties peacefully. Let the Union be, let the Southern states sink or swim on their own, let slavery wither on the vine, as it was a dying institution anyway, and let the chips fall where they may.
No bloodshed. No “total war” strategy of Sherman. No murderous and destructive “scorched earth” policy. No horrific Reconstruction. No coercion. And way less animosity and revenge-lust between people, both Yankees and Rebels, and black and white.
Inside the tavern, printing presses were set up to issue parole papers for Confederate troops. Three days after the surrender, 10 divisions of Lee’s army (some 23,000 soldiers) stacked their arms along the Richmond-Lynchburg Stage Road, symbolizing a final end to the war. Two days later, Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, who shouted “Sic semper tyranus” as he leapt from the balcony of Ford’s Theater. History’s a bitch, ain’t it?!
I’ll leave you with the words of a famous libertarian essayist and social critic, from his prophetic1930 satirical work, The Calamity of Appomattox:
” … the tradition that the Union is indissoluble is now firmly established. If it had been broken in 1865, life would be far pleasanter today for every American of any noticeable decency. There are, to be sure, advantages in Union for everyone, but it must be manifest that they are greatest for the worst kinds of people. All the benefit that a New Yorker gets out of Kansas is no more than what he might get out of Saskatchewan, the Argentine pampas, or Siberia. But New York to a Kansan is not only a place where he may get drunk, look at dirty shows & buy bogus antiques; it is also a place where he may enforce his dunghill ideas upon his betters.” — H.L. Mencken
Oh my. Sound familiar?! Man, secession never sounded so good.
