Civil War for the day

Civil War News has an article by Patrick A. Schroeder about preserving land at Appomattox, Virginia:

Appomattox has had a battlefield identity issue dating back to 1930. After years of discussion about preserving or commemorating something in the village of Appomattox Court House, the government has finally taken action.
On 18 June 1930, a bill was passed to build a Peace Monument on one acre of ground, where the Courthouse building once stood, to memorialize the surrender. The idea predated the Eternal Light Peace Memorial at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania by eight years.
The old Courthouse building burned in 1892 and the new Courthouse was built in the present-day town of Appomattox, historically known as Appomattox Station.
Many Southerners bristled at the idea of erecting a Peace Monument at Appomattox, which to them symbolized the South’s defeat. Instead, local support to restore the village to its 1865 appearance was embraced by the National Park Service, much like what was going on at Williamsburg, Virginia.
This plan was adopted in 1933 and, on 3 August 1935, President Franklin Roosevelt created the Appomattox Court House National Monument. In 1954, the site designation changed to Appomattox Court House National Historical Park (hereafter referred to as the Park).
The initial goal was to reconstruct the McLean House, where General Robert E. Lee had surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant on the afternoon of 9 April 1865. Dismantled by a private company in 1893 for reconstruction in Washington, DC, the house was never transported there and the materials deteriorated on site.
The Park was officially established on 10 April 1940, and two hundred African-Americans of Company 1351 of the Civilian Conservation Corps began clearing the overgrown McLean House site and then the archeological work, but work came to a halt with United States' entrance into World War Two.
Reconstruction of the McLean House finished in late 1948 and it opened on 9 April 1949. U.S. Grant III and R.E. Lee IV cut the ribbon at the official dedication on 16 April 1950. Thus began the interpreting of the Surrender at Appomattox.
For many years, that was the interpretative theme. The 8 April 1865 Battle of Appomattox Station and 9 April 1865 Battle of Appomattox Court House were hardly discussed, and remained almost unknown to the public at large.
These fights pale in comparison to those such as Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, or Gettysburg. Yet, the engagements at Appomattox had more tangible and immediate results, as they signaled the death knell of Lee’s army and, with it, the end of the Confederacy.
These two battles determined that there would be a armistice signed on the afternoon of 9 April 9, as they were fights for key positions, trapping Lee’s army. An estimated seven to eight hundred men were killed or wounded in the two engagements.
Historian Chris Calkins began exploring the two battlefields in the early 1970s. His interest culminated in a lengthy book on the subject. It started to take hold slowly, but some people were actually talking about the battles at Appomattox.
Congress passed legislation on 21 October 1976, allowing for additional land acquisition and authorizing a new park boundary. In 1977 the Park completed its General Management Plan, and the National Park Service (NPS) purchased land on the north side of Route 24, within sight of the village and containing some of the core area of the final battle site.
A 1992 amendment to the 1976 law authorized further boundary expansion and acquisition of land by donation to allow for the addition of adjacent sites considered important to the outcome of the battle of Appomattox Court House and lands highly visible from within the Park.
In 1992 and 1993, the NPS acquired two parcels of land in the northwest quadrant of the Park where the heaviest fighting occurred on the morning of 9 April 1865.
Also in 1992, the Park acquired a non-contiguous parcel three miles north of the Park’s eastern edge, where remains of the last Confederate breastworks near New Hope Church were dug by Longstreet’s men to oppose General Meade’s Army of the Potomac.
This land had been purchased by the Association for the Preservation of Civil War Sites, a forerunner to the Civil War Trust.
Since the 1990s the preservation of battlefield land has exclusively been accomplished by groups outside of the NPS, primarily by the Civil War Trust.
Though the area where the Federal Army of the James had arrived on the morning of 9 April to support the cavalry and seal Lee’s fate was protected, the area where the Federal Fifth Corps advanced south of the village of Appomattox Court House and engaged Confederate General John B. Gordon’s infantry lay in private hands.
The same is true for the properties along the historic LeGrand Road, where General George Custer and General Thomas Devin’s division advanced against the Confederate left flank, ultimately tangling with troopers from Confederate General Martin Gary’s brigade. The Civil War Trust has preserved or protected several properties in this area through the purchase from willing landowners and easements.
Among the areas now preserved by the Trust is the historic Sears property, across which Grant traveled to reach the McLean House and receive Lee’s surrender. It is also where the Federal Fifth Corps men of Brigadier General Joshua Chamberlain’s brigade (the 185th New York and 198th Pennsylvania), skirmished with Confederates while advancing toward Appomattox Court House.
Adjacent to this property, the Trust secured an area where Federal artillery pieces took position on the morning of 9 April, and where Custer and Devin’s cavalry camped, as did some of the Fifth Corps.
Further to the east, the Trust has protected the land where Confederate batteries guarded Lee’s left flank and the ground over which General Gary’s Seventh South Carolina cavalry charged and were repulsed by Custer’s Eighth and Fifteenth New York after the first truce flag made its appearance on Custer’s front, made somewhat famous by Alfred Waud’s sketch.
There are also preservation setbacks in the Appomattox area. In 2007 and 2008, Walmart built a new store on the ground where the last fighting took place.
About eleven on the morning of 9 April 9, 1865, three miles west of Appomattox Court House, the Confederate cavalry divisions of General Tom Rosser and General Tom Munford were effecting an escape and were attacked by General Henry Davies’ brigade. This is where the last soldiers were killed and wounded at Appomattox.
Though preservationist halted the Walmart slated for construction on the Wilderness battlefield, there was no stopping the Walmart in Appomattox. Walmart did fund two interpretive waysides that are emplaced at the site of the old Robertson House. They tell the story and honor the men who fought there.
The most significant Civil War Trust acquisition came in 2010, when the Trust secured fifty acres of the Appomattox Station Battlefield, which was entirely unprotected and in private hands. The property owner was seeking to sell the land for development when the Trust stepped in to acquire and preserve the property, the only preserved portion of the Appomattox Station Battlefield to date.
A key action in forcing Lee’s surrender, the Battle of Appomattox Station commenced shortly after 4 pm and lasted until after 8 pm with varying intensity, although more fighting continued in the direction of Appomattox Court House until probably 9 o’clock.
After capturing the trains loaded with supplies for Lee’s army, Custer’s troopers made four distinct charges against Confederate artillery General R.L. Walker, who had about a hundred cannon under his command. Custer’s men broke through in the final assault, and
Walker lost two dozen cannon to Custer, the rest dispersing in various directions. Custer’s horse soldiers nabbed more than a thousand prisoners and two hundred wagons. Most importantly, following the battle, they secured the vital Richmond-Lynchburg Stage Road, squarely across Lee’s line of march.
It was this action, on 8 April 1865, that determined the surrender would take place on 9 April in the village of Appomattox Court House.
The Trust plans on conveying this property to the Appomattox 1865 Foundation in 2015. Several interpretive signs have been installed at the site as part of the plan to develop a battlefield walking trail.

Rico says that, having just been to the Sesquicentennial reenactment (not on the actual battlefield, of course), this is a good thing.