It is a fundamental truth that all things come to an end. But it is how those things end which are often the most compelling stories. Wars are events of enormous upheaval. One of the reasons that scholars, students, and citizens have been studying warfare for a thousand years is because the subject is heavy with natural drama. The history of war is replete with life and death decisions, stunning success, tragic failure, and horrific loss all in the hands of the most human of beings.
Some of the most significant events in our history have taken place at the end of wars. It is often the end of war that does much to determine how the peace will be conducted. I have always been fascinated by the ends of wars, because the events of those final days are full of portent, move at a rapid pace, and take on a life of their own. If the American Civil War was a grand and terrible drama, then the final act was the most important.
The history of those early days in April, 1865, is well known. But it is difficult to imagine what it was like to be there. After the fall of Richmond and Petersburg, Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia was desperately scrambling to the west in order to get to a rail junction that could carry his men south to unite with Gen. Joseph E. Johnston’s army in North Carolina. Nipping at their heals are Gen. U.S. Grant and the Army of the Potomac. When the spring campaign of 1865 began, few of the officers and men of the Army of the Potomac doubted it would be the last of the war. The string of defeats suffered by the Southern Confederacy in the fall and winter had left it staggering like a wounded animal toward its death.
Though they marched west on the same roads, the two armies were, in fact, marching in different directions. For the Army of Northern Virginia, the end was near. Exhausted and starving, the Rebels were carried along by the frail hope that they could get to Johnston and carry on the war. For many, however, this hope was not enough, and thousands of Lee’s men chose to desert and make their way home. The Army of the Potomac was marching faster than it had ever marched before. Equally exhausted, but well feed and equipped, these men were motivated to greater effort by the knowledge that if they just marched a little faster, and a little farther, they could get in front of Lee’s army and end the four year struggle that had taken the lives of so many of their friends and comrades.
The end came at the little hamlet of Appomattox Court House, Virginia. Lee discovered that the Union Cavalry Corps and the Fifth Infantry Corp under Gen. Phil Sheridan had gotten in front of him and closed the door. There was no where else to run. With an overwhelming sense of relief, both armies collapsed into rest, and themselves became spectators in the final act of the war in Virginia: the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia.
We have in our collection several relics that relate to the epic events of the last days of the war. Little did we know we may have one of the most significant artifacts of them all. Prior to moving the collection out of the building, we went through the archival collection in order to account for every item. In the process, we discovered what we believe to be a truly incredible piece of not only the end of the war, but of all of American history: a copy of the surrender document signed at Appomattox on April 10, 1865.
Needless to say, we were somewhat surprised.
The document was found by a former employee of ours, Herb Kaufman. He was going through all the boxes in the archives to make sure we knew exactly what was there before we packed it up. He came to me with a document that he had found at the bottom of a box of old, worthless prints of our old museum. The document consisted of two sheets of slightly yellow paper glued to a fragile heavy stock backing paper and brushed with some sort of lacquer on the surface. The sheets had handwriting and signatures. We had both recognized what it was right away; it was the protocol for the formal surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia. We both assumed it was a facsimile. The lacquer on the surface gave it a shiny, artificial appearance. But the shiny surface drew our eyes to one of the most important aspects of the document: pen marks on the paper.
The pen marks, slight indentations on the surface of the paper, were the first indication we had that the document in our hands may not be a facsimile. The indentations lined up exactly with the pen strokes on the page, indicating that the document was hand written. We were intrigued. So we had this document, and an idea what it might be, but we had no proof. We had to start somewhere, so the first step was to establish how many of these documents may exist in the world. It was time to solve a mystery!
I should take a moment here to provide a little historical background on the document we believe we have. On April 9, 1865, Generals Lee and Grant met in the McLean parlor to negotiate a preliminary agreement on the terms of surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia to the Army of the Potomac. At that meeting, Lee and Grant agreed to appoint three commissioners each to meet the next day to create the formal terms of surrender. Grant appointed Generals John Gibbon, Wesley Merritt, and Charles Griffin, and Lee selected Generals James Longstreet, John B. Gordon, and William N. Pendleton. After an all day meeting on April 10, the terms were agreed to, and all six men signed the document. It is the April 10 document of which we believe we have a copy.
So my first step in unraveling the mystery was to call an archivist at the National Archives. Without saying what we thought we had, I asked him about the April 10 surrender document and where the existing copies might be located. Without having the benefit of looking into it, he told me that there was one copy, and it was in their possession. He indicated to me that not only did they have it, but that it was available to view on their website. This proved to be very helpful, because it was clear that the one we had was very different than theirs. The document in the National Archives was written on lined paper and had words added and other editing marks. Our copy was unlined, was not edited, and was in a different handwriting. At this time I described the document we had and asked for his help in tracking down the history. He told me he would get back to me.
He did so within the next couple days, and the information he had was not entirely clear. He told me that he had found a reference to there being another copy, that it was at the Maryland Historical Society and that it may have been donated by Col. Walter Taylor, who lived in Baltimore after the war. Taylor was Robert E. Lee’s aid during the war. This led us to believe that perhaps the answer was in the person of Gen. John Gibbon. Gibbon was the officer that presided over meeting that produced the surrender document and was, after the war, commander-in-chief of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, the organization that founded our museum. It seemed to be a reasonable hypothesis that if he had a copy, he might have given it to M.O.L.L.U.S.
This theory led me to call the Maryland Historical Society to confirm that they had a surrender document. I spoke to a librarian down there who told me that they did in fact have a surrender document and that he believed it had been donated by Taylor. This seemed to confirm the information we received from the National Archives. Or at least it did, until I received another call from our man at the National Archives. He had managed to track down a magazine article written by Gibbon and published some years after his death in which he described the surrender meeting in some detail. Gibbon wrote that there were three copies of the surrender document made, and that he had kept one of them for his personal records. He then stated that he himself had donated that copy to the Maryland Historical Society.
So our theory that we had Gibbon’s copy went right out the window. I called the Maryland Historical Society back and talked to an archivist who was more familiar with the document. He confirmed Gibbon’s account, and told me that they had a letter from Gibbon documenting that their copy was the one from his collection. So we had to come up with a new theory. At the same time, we contacted a conservator from the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts so that we could have someone look at the document at tell us something about what we had. While they could not comment on the historical aspects of the document, they could give us a condition report on its physical nature. One of the most important things they told us was that the document was a hand written original and not a facsimile. This was extremely important as we continued to investigate.
Where we went from there was a simple process of elimination. We knew from Gibbon that three copies were made. We could account for two of them. Gibbon’s personal copy was at the Maryland Historical Society. We knew that in any such written agreement as this, both parties would get a copy of the terms. It was logical enough to believe that the copy in the National Archives was the one that would have been forwarded to Grant’s headquarters and on to Washington. As an official document, it makes sense that it would end up in the National Archives. Therefore, the only copy unaccounted for would be the Confederate copy. If our document was authentic, then we must have the Confederate copy.
Having reached this conclusion, we were confronted with the next obvious question; why on Earth would we have the Confederate copy? In the history business, it is not enough that you think you have something of enormous historical significance; you must also be able to explain how you came to have the object. So I began to dig through our old records to find out what we had on the document. The first record of the objects in the Museum’s collections was an inventory of relics and framed items done in 1935. One of the very first projects I worked on when I was hired as a Project Assistant Curator four years ago was to help transcribe everything written in this inventory into an Excel spreadsheet. It was among the most mind-numbing things I ever had to do at the Museum, but I was sure glad it had been done on this occasion. It was so much easier to search the database than to go through the old book.
I found the document listed in the Catalogue of Pictures and Framed Relics section of the inventory. The citation read:
“Original Terms of Surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox. Presented by Companion Bruce Ford.”
The transcription indicated that someone had handwritten the word “Photostat” next to the listing. I pulled out the box with the original inventory books and checked to see if there was anything else written in them that we may have missed when we originally transcribed them. The first two copies of the inventory had no handwritten note. The third did, so it must have been the one we transcribed from. Unfortunately, there was no additional clue to be found. However, in the box was another partial inventory of notable objects done in 1968. The inventory gave the same information as the 1935 inventory, and also said that the document was framed and hanging by the front door. It too had a handwritten note, this one saying “copy??”
As was true with every step in this mystery, every piece of information we found brought as many questions as it answered. We now knew that the document had been framed at on time, and that it had been on display. We knew it was in the collection in 1935, and was still on display in 1968. We also knew that a Mr. Bruce Ford gave the document to the Museum. Now we needed to find out about this Bruce Ford.
Herb took on the task of looking through the old M.O.L.L.U.S. application files and he found that Bruce Ford had joined M.O.L.L.U.S. in about 1917. He was eligible because his father had been an officer from New York during the War (though his father had never joined). Some digging around on the internet revealed that Bruce Ford had established a company that made batteries for U.S. Navy submarines, a company that later became Exide Batteries. Ford also married a woman named Sophia DuPont. Yes, of THOSE DuPonts. We looked up the service record of Bruce Ford’s father, and found no evidence that he was present at the surrender meeting. Mr. Ford certainly had the resources to buy the document, as did his wife and her family. A call down to the Hagley Library revealed no immediate evidence that the document came through the DuPunt side of the family.
So at this point there were some things we knew, and many more we did not. We knew that there were three copies made, and that we knew the location of two of them. We knew that the object had been framed when it was hanging in the museum, but had been removed from that frame sometime after 1968. We knew it had come to the Museum sometime between 1917 and 1935. We knew that Bruce Ford, a man of some means, had donated it sometime in those years. With the information we had, we could make some educated guesses. It seemed to me that the notations in the 1935 and 1968 inventories indicated that as time passed they had lost the provenance of the document and began to believe it was a Photostat copy even though the 1935 inventory entry firmly states that it is an “original copy.” I believe that sometime after 1968 the document was removed from its frame and placed in an obscure box in the archives because the individuals handling it at the time believed it was a worthless copy.
One of the things we could not account for was the time period from April 10, 1865 until 1935. Nor could we find any evidence of how Bruce Ford came into possession of the document. It did make sense that of the three copies, the Confederate surrender document would be the one most likely to end up in private hands. The Confederate government had fled Richmond and was on the run when the Confederate copy reached Robert E. Lee’s headquarters. There was no government to speak of when Lee and his staff finished the surrender procedures and left Appomattox Court House. Any official documents not turned over to the Federal government were likely carried off as souvenirs. It is not unlikely that someone at Lee’s headquarters simply pocketed the document and walked away.
At this point, we were making some progress toward solving the mystery when things got away from us a little. Due to the pending move, we had put the continuing investigation of the document on hold for a while. We had a full plate. In anticipation of the move, we had submitted some stories and images to our publicity people in order to generate some press coverage around our closing. We included an image of the document and a little summary of what we knew so far. Soon after, we got a call from an Associated Press reporter who wanted to do a story on the document. We agreed and the reporter stopped by, did the usual interviews, took some pictures and was gone. We didn’t give it any thought after that.
In our next installment, we’ll see how a little news story turns into a very big deal, and a curator has a moment of doubt.
Next time on History Mystery Theater!
Some of the most significant events in our history have taken place at the end of wars. It is often the end of war that does much to determine how the peace will be conducted. I have always been fascinated by the ends of wars, because the events of those final days are full of portent, move at a rapid pace, and take on a life of their own. If the American Civil War was a grand and terrible drama, then the final act was the most important.
The history of those early days in April, 1865, is well known. But it is difficult to imagine what it was like to be there. After the fall of Richmond and Petersburg, Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia was desperately scrambling to the west in order to get to a rail junction that could carry his men south to unite with Gen. Joseph E. Johnston’s army in North Carolina. Nipping at their heals are Gen. U.S. Grant and the Army of the Potomac. When the spring campaign of 1865 began, few of the officers and men of the Army of the Potomac doubted it would be the last of the war. The string of defeats suffered by the Southern Confederacy in the fall and winter had left it staggering like a wounded animal toward its death.
Though they marched west on the same roads, the two armies were, in fact, marching in different directions. For the Army of Northern Virginia, the end was near. Exhausted and starving, the Rebels were carried along by the frail hope that they could get to Johnston and carry on the war. For many, however, this hope was not enough, and thousands of Lee’s men chose to desert and make their way home. The Army of the Potomac was marching faster than it had ever marched before. Equally exhausted, but well feed and equipped, these men were motivated to greater effort by the knowledge that if they just marched a little faster, and a little farther, they could get in front of Lee’s army and end the four year struggle that had taken the lives of so many of their friends and comrades.
The end came at the little hamlet of Appomattox Court House, Virginia. Lee discovered that the Union Cavalry Corps and the Fifth Infantry Corp under Gen. Phil Sheridan had gotten in front of him and closed the door. There was no where else to run. With an overwhelming sense of relief, both armies collapsed into rest, and themselves became spectators in the final act of the war in Virginia: the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia.
We have in our collection several relics that relate to the epic events of the last days of the war. Little did we know we may have one of the most significant artifacts of them all. Prior to moving the collection out of the building, we went through the archival collection in order to account for every item. In the process, we discovered what we believe to be a truly incredible piece of not only the end of the war, but of all of American history: a copy of the surrender document signed at Appomattox on April 10, 1865.
Needless to say, we were somewhat surprised.
The document was found by a former employee of ours, Herb Kaufman. He was going through all the boxes in the archives to make sure we knew exactly what was there before we packed it up. He came to me with a document that he had found at the bottom of a box of old, worthless prints of our old museum. The document consisted of two sheets of slightly yellow paper glued to a fragile heavy stock backing paper and brushed with some sort of lacquer on the surface. The sheets had handwriting and signatures. We had both recognized what it was right away; it was the protocol for the formal surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia. We both assumed it was a facsimile. The lacquer on the surface gave it a shiny, artificial appearance. But the shiny surface drew our eyes to one of the most important aspects of the document: pen marks on the paper.
The pen marks, slight indentations on the surface of the paper, were the first indication we had that the document in our hands may not be a facsimile. The indentations lined up exactly with the pen strokes on the page, indicating that the document was hand written. We were intrigued. So we had this document, and an idea what it might be, but we had no proof. We had to start somewhere, so the first step was to establish how many of these documents may exist in the world. It was time to solve a mystery!
I should take a moment here to provide a little historical background on the document we believe we have. On April 9, 1865, Generals Lee and Grant met in the McLean parlor to negotiate a preliminary agreement on the terms of surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia to the Army of the Potomac. At that meeting, Lee and Grant agreed to appoint three commissioners each to meet the next day to create the formal terms of surrender. Grant appointed Generals John Gibbon, Wesley Merritt, and Charles Griffin, and Lee selected Generals James Longstreet, John B. Gordon, and William N. Pendleton. After an all day meeting on April 10, the terms were agreed to, and all six men signed the document. It is the April 10 document of which we believe we have a copy.
So my first step in unraveling the mystery was to call an archivist at the National Archives. Without saying what we thought we had, I asked him about the April 10 surrender document and where the existing copies might be located. Without having the benefit of looking into it, he told me that there was one copy, and it was in their possession. He indicated to me that not only did they have it, but that it was available to view on their website. This proved to be very helpful, because it was clear that the one we had was very different than theirs. The document in the National Archives was written on lined paper and had words added and other editing marks. Our copy was unlined, was not edited, and was in a different handwriting. At this time I described the document we had and asked for his help in tracking down the history. He told me he would get back to me.
He did so within the next couple days, and the information he had was not entirely clear. He told me that he had found a reference to there being another copy, that it was at the Maryland Historical Society and that it may have been donated by Col. Walter Taylor, who lived in Baltimore after the war. Taylor was Robert E. Lee’s aid during the war. This led us to believe that perhaps the answer was in the person of Gen. John Gibbon. Gibbon was the officer that presided over meeting that produced the surrender document and was, after the war, commander-in-chief of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, the organization that founded our museum. It seemed to be a reasonable hypothesis that if he had a copy, he might have given it to M.O.L.L.U.S.
This theory led me to call the Maryland Historical Society to confirm that they had a surrender document. I spoke to a librarian down there who told me that they did in fact have a surrender document and that he believed it had been donated by Taylor. This seemed to confirm the information we received from the National Archives. Or at least it did, until I received another call from our man at the National Archives. He had managed to track down a magazine article written by Gibbon and published some years after his death in which he described the surrender meeting in some detail. Gibbon wrote that there were three copies of the surrender document made, and that he had kept one of them for his personal records. He then stated that he himself had donated that copy to the Maryland Historical Society.
So our theory that we had Gibbon’s copy went right out the window. I called the Maryland Historical Society back and talked to an archivist who was more familiar with the document. He confirmed Gibbon’s account, and told me that they had a letter from Gibbon documenting that their copy was the one from his collection. So we had to come up with a new theory. At the same time, we contacted a conservator from the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts so that we could have someone look at the document at tell us something about what we had. While they could not comment on the historical aspects of the document, they could give us a condition report on its physical nature. One of the most important things they told us was that the document was a hand written original and not a facsimile. This was extremely important as we continued to investigate.
Where we went from there was a simple process of elimination. We knew from Gibbon that three copies were made. We could account for two of them. Gibbon’s personal copy was at the Maryland Historical Society. We knew that in any such written agreement as this, both parties would get a copy of the terms. It was logical enough to believe that the copy in the National Archives was the one that would have been forwarded to Grant’s headquarters and on to Washington. As an official document, it makes sense that it would end up in the National Archives. Therefore, the only copy unaccounted for would be the Confederate copy. If our document was authentic, then we must have the Confederate copy.
Having reached this conclusion, we were confronted with the next obvious question; why on Earth would we have the Confederate copy? In the history business, it is not enough that you think you have something of enormous historical significance; you must also be able to explain how you came to have the object. So I began to dig through our old records to find out what we had on the document. The first record of the objects in the Museum’s collections was an inventory of relics and framed items done in 1935. One of the very first projects I worked on when I was hired as a Project Assistant Curator four years ago was to help transcribe everything written in this inventory into an Excel spreadsheet. It was among the most mind-numbing things I ever had to do at the Museum, but I was sure glad it had been done on this occasion. It was so much easier to search the database than to go through the old book.
I found the document listed in the Catalogue of Pictures and Framed Relics section of the inventory. The citation read:
“Original Terms of Surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox. Presented by Companion Bruce Ford.”
The transcription indicated that someone had handwritten the word “Photostat” next to the listing. I pulled out the box with the original inventory books and checked to see if there was anything else written in them that we may have missed when we originally transcribed them. The first two copies of the inventory had no handwritten note. The third did, so it must have been the one we transcribed from. Unfortunately, there was no additional clue to be found. However, in the box was another partial inventory of notable objects done in 1968. The inventory gave the same information as the 1935 inventory, and also said that the document was framed and hanging by the front door. It too had a handwritten note, this one saying “copy??”
As was true with every step in this mystery, every piece of information we found brought as many questions as it answered. We now knew that the document had been framed at on time, and that it had been on display. We knew it was in the collection in 1935, and was still on display in 1968. We also knew that a Mr. Bruce Ford gave the document to the Museum. Now we needed to find out about this Bruce Ford.
Herb took on the task of looking through the old M.O.L.L.U.S. application files and he found that Bruce Ford had joined M.O.L.L.U.S. in about 1917. He was eligible because his father had been an officer from New York during the War (though his father had never joined). Some digging around on the internet revealed that Bruce Ford had established a company that made batteries for U.S. Navy submarines, a company that later became Exide Batteries. Ford also married a woman named Sophia DuPont. Yes, of THOSE DuPonts. We looked up the service record of Bruce Ford’s father, and found no evidence that he was present at the surrender meeting. Mr. Ford certainly had the resources to buy the document, as did his wife and her family. A call down to the Hagley Library revealed no immediate evidence that the document came through the DuPunt side of the family.
So at this point there were some things we knew, and many more we did not. We knew that there were three copies made, and that we knew the location of two of them. We knew that the object had been framed when it was hanging in the museum, but had been removed from that frame sometime after 1968. We knew it had come to the Museum sometime between 1917 and 1935. We knew that Bruce Ford, a man of some means, had donated it sometime in those years. With the information we had, we could make some educated guesses. It seemed to me that the notations in the 1935 and 1968 inventories indicated that as time passed they had lost the provenance of the document and began to believe it was a Photostat copy even though the 1935 inventory entry firmly states that it is an “original copy.” I believe that sometime after 1968 the document was removed from its frame and placed in an obscure box in the archives because the individuals handling it at the time believed it was a worthless copy.
One of the things we could not account for was the time period from April 10, 1865 until 1935. Nor could we find any evidence of how Bruce Ford came into possession of the document. It did make sense that of the three copies, the Confederate surrender document would be the one most likely to end up in private hands. The Confederate government had fled Richmond and was on the run when the Confederate copy reached Robert E. Lee’s headquarters. There was no government to speak of when Lee and his staff finished the surrender procedures and left Appomattox Court House. Any official documents not turned over to the Federal government were likely carried off as souvenirs. It is not unlikely that someone at Lee’s headquarters simply pocketed the document and walked away.
At this point, we were making some progress toward solving the mystery when things got away from us a little. Due to the pending move, we had put the continuing investigation of the document on hold for a while. We had a full plate. In anticipation of the move, we had submitted some stories and images to our publicity people in order to generate some press coverage around our closing. We included an image of the document and a little summary of what we knew so far. Soon after, we got a call from an Associated Press reporter who wanted to do a story on the document. We agreed and the reporter stopped by, did the usual interviews, took some pictures and was gone. We didn’t give it any thought after that.
In our next installment, we’ll see how a little news story turns into a very big deal, and a curator has a moment of doubt.
Next time on History Mystery Theater!
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