Or, more accurately, The War of the North surrender document is no photo copy.
Bear with me. I'm no confederate, but that term 'civil war' has always bothered me.
A civil war, by definition, is two factions fighting for control over the same government. And that is not what happened when the Southern States of America seceded from the United States of America. The Southern States were expressly attempting to establish a new and independent nation.
Now that I've got that off my chest...
Museum officials believe they have one of the three original documents signed by representatives of the Union and Confederacy in Appomattox Court House, Va., on April 10, 1865, a day after Lee's surrender.
The National Park Service historian at Appomattox said it's more likely a souvenir copy signed by the same men at that time , still a significant discovery, he said, even if it's not an official copy.
The document was donated to the museum by Bruce Ford, a wealthy businessman and son of a Union veteran. He joined the veterans' group that formed the museum around 1917, and the document was noted in an inventory in 1935. How Ford got the document is unknown.
