Getting the flavor of...The Civil War’s last chapter, and more

The Civil War’s last chapter

Ghosts of the Civil War fill the air in Appomattox Court House, Va., said Bob Downing in the Akron Beacon Journal. The village is, after all, where the bloody war ended, when Robert E. Lee formally surrendered his army to Ulysses S. Grant on April 9, 1865, in a private home near the town’s namesake courthouse. For a historical site, the 1,695-acre national park (nps.gov/apco) that’s been created here is not “heavy-handed,” though. The re-created village, which includes 13 original buildings and a reproduction of the courthouse, is “a quiet, subdued place—with the feeling of a cemetery or a church.” Notable sites include the jail, the old general store, and the Clover Hill Tavern. A short walk from the McLean House, where the terms of surrender were drafted and signed, stand the tombs of 19 soldiers, a fraction of the 600 who were killed nearby on the last two days of the war.

Mississippi’s dream drive

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Natchez Trace Parkway is “one of the most beautiful roads in the United States, if not the world,” said Max Davidson in the London Telegraph. Originally a Native American trail, this “lovingly preserved” two-lane, 400-mile-long road bisects Mississippi and offers “a primer in rural America.” It’s a calm drive, thanks to the 50 mph speed limit and a commercial vehicle ban, and the scenery is “picturesque rather than spectacular.” You pass through beech forests and across farms where old men sit on rusty tractors. Paths lead from parking places to remote waterfalls, burial mounds, and pools where signs warn of alligators. Gradually, the beeches give way to pines “with Spanish moss cascading from the branches.” The state’s segregationist past feels long gone in “vibrant, forward-looking” towns like Oxford, where people of every race crowd cafés. The parkway ends in Natchez, home to many pre–Civil War houses and wonderful views of the Mississippi River.