For generations, Americans basically had one painting/lithograph of Lee’s surrender at Appomattox in 1865. It showed Lee sitting amicably at the same table with Grant. It was Northern propaganda intended to help reunite the country.
Finally, back in the mid-1980s, the print was replaced with this one from participant descriptions of the actual scene and it began to be sold in National Park Service bookstores. It helps explain why North-South animosity endured for more than a hundred years after the war.















