Although Appomattox Court House is one of the most symbolically charged places in America, it was an ordinary tobacco-growing village both before and after an a

Few events in Civil War history have generated such deliberate mythmaking as the retreat that ended at Appomattox. As the popular imagination would have it, Rob

WINNER OF THE BANCROFT PRIZEA New York Times Book Review and Atlantic Monthly Editors' ChoiceThomas Jefferson denied that whites and freed blacks could live tog

The Civil War did not end with Confederate capitulation in 1865. A second phase commenced which lasted until 1871—not Reconstruction but genuine belligerency

In April 1865, a legendary moment in the story of the United States, two great Civil War generals met in a small Virginia village called Appomattox Court House.