In the mid-1940s, Ronald F. Lee, the National Park Service’s chief historian, was dispatched to Appomattox, Virginia, to dissuade some local citizens who were eagerly supporting the proposed reconstruction of the McLean House, where General Robert E. Lee had surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant in 1865. The McLean House had been dismantled in 1893 for possible reconstruction as a Civil War memorial in Washington, D.C. But that memorial had not been built, and the dismantled McLean House had lain in heaping piles of boards and bricks, left to the elements and vandals for some 50 years.
Mr. Lee had his work cut out for him. Installing such “fabrications” on historic battlefields was contrary to established NPS policy regarding the stewardship of these properties. It was Lee’s job to convince the local boosters, who were “all wild on restorations,” that his agency could not support—despite substantial architectural documentation–the reconstruction of the vanished building.
Mr. Lee did not succeed. This so-called “second defeat of Lee at Appomattox” is just one example of the diverse challenges that impact the preservation, interpretation, and management of historic properties associated with the Civil War. Since the early 1930s battlefield preservation has had a central place in the story of the National Park Service and its partners. This presentation will survey the story of battlefield preservation as it relates to “the late unpleasantness.”
John H. Sprinkle, Jr., serves as the Bureau Historian for the National Park Service in Washington, DC. With a quarter century of experience in the field, he is the author of Crafting Preservation Criteria: The National Register of Historic Places and American Historic Preservation. Dr. Sprinkle is now at work on Saving Spaces: Land Conservation in the United States.
Join us for History Happy Hour, at 4 p.m., Friday, February 6, 2015 at the Bordley History Center, corner of High and Cross Streets in Chestertown, and learn more about the preservation of Civil War battlefields. Admission is free. Wine and cheese will be served.
Lead photo: McLean House, site of Lee’s surrender to Grant in 1865.
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