Appomattox: 150

From Yahoo:
"US interior secretary tours Appomattox ahead of 150th"

Pivotal battle scenes and scenic views near Appomattox Court House National Historical Park have been shielded from harm. U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell on Tuesday announced a partnership between the federal government, Virginia and the Civil War Trust to accomplish the feat.

Jewell said three battlefield tracts that figured in Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's surrendering his army here 150 years ago Thursday are now secure. On the eve of one of the last events of the Civil War sesquicentennial, Jewell toured the park, viewing the newly preserved land from the 19th-century village. Jewell toured some of the historic site's buildings, including the McLean House and the Clover Hill Tavern, where a Union Army field press printed parole papers for thousands of Southern troops.

 

^ This is an important part of American History and it needed to be saved and restored. Virginia was the capital of the Confederacy for most of the Civil War and the fact that the South surrounded in that state  - at Appomattox - is poetic. Americans from around the country need to remember the Civil War not solely from textbooks, but also from the battlefields and other historic sites that played a key role in the War. The US wouldn't be the country it is today without the Union winning. I don't think I would want to even imagine what we would look like had the South won. I have visited many battlefields across the US (from the Revolutionary War and the Civil War) and across Europe (from World War 1 and World War 2) and know how standing on the exact spot something major happened makes you feel more in-tuned with history. ^

http://news.yahoo.com/us-interior-secretary-tours-appomattox-ahead-150th-205536268.html;_ylt=AwrTWfxahCVVZVUA843QtDMD