American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

148 Years Ago Today....

You know of all the scenes of the war the armies that met that day must have been surreal to see. After years of bloody Civil War for everyone to just "make up" as gentlemanly as most did is really quite remarkable. You can say what you want about the way the war started or about how it was fought but Lee knew when it was over and then ended it the right way.

This is rather late, but I am new here...thought you might enjoy the ONLY poem that I know, written about Appomattox by a soldier who was there to witness it...the immortal William Harrison Merrit, Co. B, 124th New York Volunteers, the Bard of Pony Hill

It's beyond the power of tongue or pen
To describe that scene with those brave men
With flags and banners waving high
Ten thousand caps flung in the sky
With joyful shouts and bugle note
As if to split each swelling throat
And tears of joy filed many an eye
While the welkin rang with the deafening cry

No shout for victory in the fight
But one wild yell of pure delight
That host became without alloy
One seething mass of human joy
Joy for our Union strong and great;
Joy we had saved our ship of state
Joy for the bloody war was past
Joy for our home and friends at last
And say, our hearts were thankful too
That we had lived to see it through

Take history if you will and scan
its pages since the birth of man
It gives but just the slightest gleam
Of only one such joyful scene.
On the red sea's banks where Moses stood
And stretched his rod out o'er the flood;
Then through the path Jehovah gave
to freedom led the Hebrew slave.
They safely reached the other side
While their foes were drowned in the returning tide;
Three million captives here set free
held joyful dance and jubilee

Our victory too, like theirs, had gave
Freedom to full four million slaves.
Grant was our Moses, tried and true
Who led the victorious armies through
These scenes of blood and dire distress,
Where thousands fell in the wilderness
Those gory fields were our red sea,
Appomattox proved our Galilee
Our Union which at Sumter slain
At Appomattox rose again.

William H. (Billy) Merritt
Co. B, 124th NYSV
Veteran of Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, Wilderness, Cold Harbor, Petersburg and Appomattox.