Appomattox Court House is a village in Appomattox County, Virginia, historically significant as the site where General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant on 9 April 1865, effectively ending the American Civil War as a military conflict. The site includes the McLean House, where the surrender terms were signed, and is preserved today as Appomattox Court House National Historical Park, administered by the National Park Service.

By early April 1865, Confederate forces under Lee had evacuated Petersburg and Richmond following a sustained Union siege. Pursued by Grant's Army of the Potomac and Army of the James, Lee's army was cut off near the village of Appomattox Court House when Union cavalry and infantry blocked the Confederate line of retreat westward. After a final engagement on the morning of 9 April 1865 - the Battle of Appomattox Court House - Lee determined that further resistance was futile and requested a meeting with Grant to discuss surrender terms.

The two commanders met that afternoon in the home of Wilmer McLean. Grant's terms were generous by the standards of the time: Confederate officers and men were to be paroled and allowed to return home, officers could retain their sidearms, and soldiers who owned horses or mules could keep them for use in the spring planting. Lee's army of approximately 28,000 men was formally surrendered over the following days. Though other Confederate armies remained in the field - most notably General Joseph Johnston's Army of Tennessee - the surrender at Appomattox is widely regarded as the effective end of the war as a military conflict.

The surrender at Appomattox has been interpreted in a range of ways across American history and culture. Historians broadly agree on the factual sequence of events, but the meaning and legacy of the surrender remain subjects of ongoing discussion. Some emphasize Grant's generous terms as a deliberate act of national reconciliation; others argue that the leniency of those terms facilitated a postwar Southern political resurgence that undermined Reconstruction and the rights of formerly enslaved people. The ceremony of stacking arms and the reported gestures of mutual respect between the opposing forces have been romanticized in some accounts and criticized as mythologized in others.

The site itself has been the subject of interpretive debate over how national parks and historic sites should contextualize Civil War battlefields - particularly regarding the role of slavery as the war's central cause and the legacy of the Confederacy. See Appomattox Court House - Debate for discussion of competing interpretations.

• Reconciliationist view: The meeting between Lee and Grant, and Grant's generous terms, represent a defining moment of national healing - a model of how enemies can conclude a conflict with dignity and begin the work of reunion. Reconciliationist Viewpoint

• Revisionist / Lost Cause view: Some Southern traditionalists have framed Appomattox not as a defeat of a morally wrong cause but as the honorable conclusion of a struggle for constitutional self-determination, downplaying or rejecting slavery as the war's primary driver. Lost Cause Viewpoint

• Emancipationist view: Scholars in this tradition emphasize that the war's conclusion was inseparable from the abolition of slavery, and that the terms at Appomattox - by allowing Confederate soldiers to return home largely unpunished - set the stage for the rollback of black civil and political rights during and after Reconstruction. Emancipationist Viewpoint

• Appomattox Court House - History
• Appomattox Court House - Debate
• American Civil War
• Reconstruction
• Army of Northern Virginia
• Ulysses S. Grant
• Robert E. Lee
• Battle of Appomattox Court House
• Appomattox Court House National Historical Park

1. Marvel, William. A Place Called Appomattox. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.
2. Catton, Bruce. A Stillness at Appomattox. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1953.
3. Gallagher, Gary W., and Alan T. Nolan, eds. The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000.
4. Blight, David W. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.
5. National Park Service. “Appomattox Court House National Historical Park.” U.S. Department of the Interior. https://www.nps.gov/apco/index.htm