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Questions about McLean House (Appomattox, Virginia)

Short answers, pulled from the story.

Where did the surrender of the Confederate army take place at the McLean House?

General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant in the parlor of the McLean House near Appomattox, Virginia, on the 9th of April 1865. The surrender occurred in a private home, not a courthouse, despite the village being named Appomattox Court House.

Who owned the McLean House during the Civil War surrender?

Wilmer McLean owned the house at the time of the surrender. He had purchased it from the estate of Eliza D. Raine in 1863. McLean was a retired major in the Virginia militia who had previously owned a farm where the First Battle of Bull Run was fought in 1861.

What happened to the McLean House after the Civil War?

McLean lost the house to debt and it was sold at public auction on the 29th of November 1869. In 1891 it was purchased by Captain Myron Dunlap of Niagara Falls, New York, who had it disassembled for planned display in Washington, D.C. That plan collapsed, and the materials sat in a pile for over fifty years before the National Park Service reconstructed the building in the 1940s.

When did the McLean House reopen to the public after reconstruction?

The McLean House opened to the public on the 9th of April 1949, exactly eighty-four years after the surrender. A dedication ceremony held on the 16th of April 1950, drew approximately twenty thousand people, with a ribbon cut by Major General Ulysses S. Grant III and Robert E. Lee IV.

What are the surrender terms Grant gave Lee at the McLean House?

Grant's terms required Confederate officers to give individual paroles not to take up arms against the United States government until properly exchanged, with regimental commanders signing paroles for their men. Officers kept their side arms and private horses; Confederate soldiers who owned horses or mules were also allowed to keep them.

Where are the furniture and artifacts from the McLean House surrender today?

The table and chairs used by Lee and Grant during the surrender negotiations are now held by the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History and the Chicago History Museum. Two flags of truce used at the surrender, along with a surrender table, were noted by Elizabeth Bacon Custer's 1926 will as being at the Memorial Hall of the War Department Building in Washington, D.C.