Season 8, Episode 6
April 9, 2023
Theme: Armistice
Playlist
Wilmer McLean is a notable name in the history of the American Civil War. It’s likely you aren’t familiar with him: he wasn’t a general or soldier; wasn’t a politician in Washington or in Richmond. He was a grocer. Yes, I hear your surprise. With all due respect to the merchants who put food on American tables, how could this man be important to the story of the great civil war which Lincoln framed as a test of whether “a nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal…could long endure”?
The Battle of Bull Run in July 1861 was the first major battle of the Civil War. The Northern army marched against the forces of Brigadier General P. G. T. Beauregard, camped near Manassas Junction, on the morning of July 21st. At 5:15 am, a few artillery rounds hit Beauregard’s headquarters – located inside the home of our grocer, Wilmer McLean. The Battle continued, with the Union retreating that evening. Many in the North had expected a decisive victory. The results at Bull Run made them realize how brutal the war would be.
Almost four years later, the forces of Union General Ulysses S. Grant battled the Army of Northern Virginia, led by Confederate General Robert E. Lee, at Appomattox Court House. The battle on April 9, 1865 was brief; Lee quickly realized that surrender was the only option. In response to Lee’s request, General Grant allowed Lee to choose the site where they would meet to discuss terms. Charles Marshall was tasked with finding a suitable location, and chose the brick home of Wilmer McLean. (In the intervening years between Bull Run and Appomattox, McLean had moved from northern Virginia to the area.) It was in McLean’s parlor where the Generals – who had not seen each other since the Mexican–American War 20 years prior – met to sign the terms of surrender.
Lee’s surrender at Appomattox is largely seen as the end of the Civil War. However, it took time for news to spread. Land battles continued until May 13th; the final shots of the war were fired by the CSS Shenandoah on June 22nd. The war was not declared legally over until August 20, 1866 – over a year after Appomattox. The gap between the laying down of weapons and the signing of the paperwork is wild to me. Another example: 81 years to the day prior to Lee’s surrender, the Treaty of Paris was ratified by King George III of Great Britain. This treaty officially ended the Revolutionary War roughly a year after peace negotiations began, and over a year and a half after British General Charles Earl Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown.
In my experiences learning the history of national, European or global wars, my teachers focused on the names of generals and politicians. We rarely dove into what these wars meant for everyday people. Details about the “home front” focused on broad experiences: rationing of goods and materials; protests and political calculations. But I think that to ignore the individual experience of those living through war – the soldiers on the front, the merchants dealing with shortages of goods, the residents of towns bombarded with sounds and shrapnel – creates a distortion. Terrible, haunting things happen during war. We must reckon with that; we must pause before we commit ourselves to belligerence.
These reflections brought the word ‘armistice’ to mind. It’s not a word that I hear often, which is lamentable given that it was once the name of an American holiday. To quote Kurt Vonnegut: “When I was a boy…all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month. It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.”
Our theme for episode 6 of Community Radio, season 8 is armistice.