President obama gave the commencement address at the u. S. Coast Guard Academy this past wednesday. On American History tv, we are looking at president ial commencement addresses from a decade ago. You can watch george w. Bushs 2005 address at the Naval Academy tonight at 9 30 p. M. Eastern on cspan3. Each week, american artifacts takes viewers to museums and Historic Sites around the country. On april 9, 1865, general robert e lee met ulysses s. Grant in the village of appomattox courthouse and surrendered his army of Northern Virginia, effectively ending the civil war. Next, we visit the museum of the confederacy in appomattox to see items related to the surrender. We also toured the museum, looking at the wars aftermath. Welcome to the museum of the confederacy appomattox. I am the site director here. For museum has been open for almost three years now. We are an extension of the museum that was originally founded in 1890, opened in 1896 in richmond. We house 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. Lead, on his retreat from petersburg, had been looking for 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, greta 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 built on a stagecoach road between richmond and lynchburg. Courthouse spelled as two words. Appomattox as a county was 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. Key deployed artillery in front of him on this road on the way to appomattox station. 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 custers cavalry, who 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 fatter Confederate Army has caught up to them. This was known as the battle of appomattox station. The only battle in the civil war fight between federal Cavalry Units and confederate artillery units. 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 troops to be able to take the trains. He believes that his infantrymen and the troops that he has can overtake a cavalry unit in the area and get back the supply trains. At 7 30 in the morning, another battle begins in the area. When lee discovers that the general and his army have arrived overnight with 20 of federal reinforcements. They have effectively cut off lees 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. The bridge is highbridge, going from farmville to appomattox. It crossed the appomattox river. This photograph was taken in august of 1865, when they were doing 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. Our collection is very broad very deep. We have a lot of interesting things to share with you as well. This sort is one of our sword is one of our outstanding pieces. It is generallys dress sword given to him by a marylander. That is all we know about it. He wore it in dress appearances ended the day he surrender 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. 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 never surrendered his sword. This, in grants words, is the purest romance. It never happened. The confederacy was founded in 1890 and opened as a museum in 1896 in richmond. Our collection was rather by a group of women who were prominent in each state. They would gather artifacts from veterans or their families to add to our collection in richmond. The flag is an army of Northern Virginia battle flag is one of 500 we have in our collection, the Worlds Largest collection of Confederate Flags. On the top, there is a stencil number 384. This signifies this was a captured battle flag. If a soldier captured a Confederate Flag and turned it into the War Department, he was awarded a medal of honor. The War Department with 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 roosevelt came to visit our museum in richmond. 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 to the states from which they can. 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. It was not there was not a Historical Society or library that existed at that time. 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 the overland campaign. This is when lee and grant began to face each other in 1864. You will notice there are photographs of the man with the artifacts. This picture of earley next to the saddle. You can get a personal connection to the men and the items you are looking for. 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 clayburghs uniform. This is the uniform he was wearing when he was killed at the battle of franklin in 1864. It is also the one he is wearing in the photograph their. Some of that is Battle Damage but most of it is insect damaged. As the first we have been able to display it. It 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. There are such few artifacts that remain of patrick clayburgh that this is a important piece to have of him. The graphic here depicts the surrender of some of lees armie at sailors creek. He lost about one third of his army at the battle. After that battle, general grant initiates a conversation with generally 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. Lee does not want the 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 to surrender the army. There are two images i would like to tell you about. In d is an aid to general lee wounded in appomattox on april 9. Lee left him writhing in great pain and assumed he died. He actually survived. That is 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 his Sergeant Robert parker, with the second virginia cavalry. On that morning, he was also engaged in a battle in appomattox. He is known as lees last casualty. Sergeant parker passed away at the will robertson house. She was the last man in thes lees army to die before he surrendered. He was only 40 miles away from his hometown at the time he passed away. Another item that we have of what the war lee wore is a gauntlet and a e pen he used to accept the terms of surrender. This coat was given to us by his son, the day the one he was wearing the day hes rendered. The pen was used to sign the acceptance. A lot of people do not know that 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. He 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 was no formal treaty, no document ever signed between the president lincoln and president davis, ending any of this. It was just lee surrendering to grant at this particular time. In this particular case, there are a lot of uniforms and flags 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. To 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 have a a lot of flags that have not been conservative that we cannot display. We have a system that we can 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 mentor off pieces to take home with them as souvenirs. This particular flag, not quite as much damage. You can see some of the stars are missing run it from it. 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. 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 remain there until he passed away. The flat was given to us by his daughter. In the fall of the first year we opened in 2012, his greatgranddaughter 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. The battle flags that the men followed into battle were significant for them. The color of their bearer was a target for the enemy. They felt that they shot down the color bearer, it would defeat that particular unit. Color bearers were particularly courageous. These flagstaff steps were all surrendered in appomattox. Some of them are nice pieces of wood. Others are just tree branches. When lee surrender 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 were 100,000 soldiers still in the field. Appomattox was just the first surrender, but certainly not the last surrender that ended the war. Effectively, it did. One of the larger armies in the field was Joe Johnstons army in north carolina. It had been meat lees goal to meet johnston. Johnston surrendered about three weeks after lee surrendered. The gauntlets, the sash, and this chest all belong to joseph johnston. The last surrender on land was by stan wadde. We only have a portrait of him but he is notable because he was a charity. He surrendered his men who were mostly native american, in oklahoma. That was the last surrender on land. The last surrender of a Confederate Flag occurred in november of 1865. In liverpool, england. The shenandoah had been a rating ship. 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 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. Based they surrender their flag and went 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 confe deratos. About 3000 remained, 7000 came back. They are still descendents that live there now. Peru, belize, mexico, were also places where soldiers had gone. Africanamericans, 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 to reestablish colonies there. It was not very successful. Only about 4000 africanamericans went there. A much larger number went to kansas after reconstruction, about 15,000, to establish life on farms there in kansas. Some of the soldiers also became mercenaries or worked for other armies. In egypt, a lot of them went to join fighting their there. Some of the coats show alterations that soldiers made after the war. This one has buttons covered and shows no insignia. U. S. Army regulations required of 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. Clothing was very valuable. This is one example where a woman has taken her husbands coat and cut it down to make an overcoat for her son to where. This is our wall of faces that shows nearly 100 men and women 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 was a union spy. She was very wealthy. But she wanted to help union soldiers. She was down at libby prison passing 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 judah benjamin, the first jewish cabinet officer in the u. S. 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. She grew up to be a midwife. If you were expecting a child, you called nancy martin regardless of whether you were africanamerican or white. According to reverend jones, who gave us this image, his great great grandmother, netting martin had her own wall of faces. She 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, 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 behind him is an image of appomattox courthouse. You can see the ruins of the burned out courthouse, taken after 1892, when it burned. This had been the county seat up until that point. As we showed you on the map of death 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. When the courthouse burned, they build a new courthouse and move 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. 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 or it wore it. Another example is this hat worn by sergeant duckett. 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 travel to different states and seen the horrific effects of the war. A lot of them came back with physical wounds, and i missing, and are missing, but when they came back, they trying to tried to reclaim their lives. 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 communities. But some of these men were radically different than when they had left. A lot of these conditions they did not understand. This is a time when we do not understand bacteria and germs and of psychological issues the men were finding. In journals, they referred to this condition as soldiers 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 try to deal with what they had seen during that time period without the benefits of counseling. 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. They designed a confederate veterans uniform of available for 7. 50 that you will see a lot of the reunion photographs we had 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 1880s between the north and 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 the Veterans Home in richmond, virginia. This veteran was celebrating his 103rd birthday. One of the things they did at this particular home as a fundraiser was carve 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. Than 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 i, it was their parents. This was the dollhouse furniture that was taken away from them as a this was their dollhouse furniture. It was opened in 1896 as a Confederate Museum. Chosen to be here because of the people that come to this particular area. 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. And loved the job totally. It has been absolutely fantastic. And excited about the future that is going to happen with the museum as a continues to grow and expand and improve our collection. Hope you will stop by and see us. Please do. You can watch you t