THE SILENT WITNESS AT APPOMATTOX

1001 Heroes, Legends, Histories & Mysteries Podcast

Jon Hagadorn

Society & Culture, History

4.4 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 6 November 2015

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

"The Silent Witness at Appomattox"- This episode tells the little known story of the McLean family's unwilling participation at both ends of the Civil War, beginning with their Northern Virginia farmhouse being bombarded at the Battle of Bull Run in 1861, prompting them to move. They choose to move to safer climes 120 miles south in the quiet village of Appomattox Courthouse, where one of the last battles of the Civil War takes place, and where their house, by pure coincidence, is used as the site for the signing of the surrender. The youngest child in the family, Lula McClean, has a little rag doll which her mother made for her, and the rag doll. left in the parlor, becomes a witness to and an unwilling participant in the surrender and subsequent ransacking of the home's parlor by the Union officers in their post meeting hunt for memorabilia. It is a sad reminder that the losses of the Civil War extended beyond battles and generals to children as well. Sources and Music: www.civilwar.org/battlefields/appomattox courthouse www.eyewitnesstohistory.com Catton, Bruce. A Stillness at Appomattox. Doubleday 1953 Friedman, Robin. The Silent Witness: A vTrue Story of the Civil War 2008 the popular Civil War Song Lorena, Arranged and Performed by Jay & Molly Ungar from the CD "Civil War Classic" available at Amazon and all music stores, Used with permission. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode is brought to you by Pepsi Max. Christmas is great, but there's loads of ways to make it better.
0:08.0	Like sneaking some chili into the gravy for some extra oint, or building a playlist that will even get your
0:14.8	none up on the table or just cracking open an ice cold Pepsi Max.
0:20.1	Christmas. Better with Pepsi Max.
0:25.0	The new Samsung Galaxy Z-Flipive and Chromebook are better together.
0:33.6	Take hands-free selfies which automatically sync to your Chromebook,
0:37.0	ready to edit, and access recent Chrome tabs across both devices.
0:41.0	The new Galaxy Z Flip-5 and Chromebook, better together.
0:45.0	Available on Sky Mobile.
0:46.8	Bluetooth and internet connection required.
0:48.8	You must be signed into the same Google account on both your phone and Chromebook. Oh, Oh, You're not going to be here.
1:43.0	You're doing going to be here. I won't. I will never forget the visit we made to the Appomatics Courthouse in Virginia a few years ago.
2:20.0	My wife and I had visited a number of American historical sites from Fort Ticonderoga to Yorktown,
2:26.2	and we had no idea of what we would find at Appomatics,
2:29.3	knowing that it was the site of the surrender of Lee's Army to Grant and believing it would be a short walk
2:34.7	through a dusty courthouse mixed with some artifacts of the past. We found it to be a moving
2:40.0	experience in a number of ways. We were met by one of the character actors there,
2:45.0	all the actors having taken the identity of real persons who experienced
2:49.0	epimatics in some way. Ours was an epimatics farm boy who left the farm to join the Army of Northern Virginia,
2:55.8	and four years later, having lost his brothers in the fighting, was with Lee's army in
3:00.5	Appamatics when the terms of surrender were agreed upon.
3:04.5	We also learned the story of the silent witness, the rag doll owned by the McLean family's
	...

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