Alan J. Pitts
Re: Surrender site - Citronelle, AL
Wed Apr 11 09:13:37 2001


I'm using Microsoft Internet Explorer and tried using that URL. I followed the following steps (1) highlight the URL in the message, (2) click on Edit, then select Copy, (3) click on the address line, press backspace to clear the line, (4) click on Edit, then select Paste, (5) click on Go. That brought the website up almost immediately.

If there's a problem there, you should be able to search and find the right website. As a search engine, google yields great results for me. On your address line, key google.com and press enter. On the search line, key "Citronelle" "surrender oak" and press enter. A rootsweb page should appear as the only result for that search argument. The part about the surrender oak is a little more than halfway down the page.

That's the best I can offer; perhaps someone else knows more. Failing that, I've copied the relevant section below. Thanks for mentioning this; I've either not heard of the surrender oak or forgotten much of what I once knew.

TAYLOR'S SURRENDER

A meeting was schedule for the last day of April, 1865 between Gen. Richard Taylor, CSA and General E.R.S. Canby U.S.A about 12 miles up the railroad from Mobile, AL.

The place was called Magee's Farm. Canby was waiting at the scheduled time beside the tracks with a full brigade drawn up as guard of honor, a band, and a brassy array of staffers. They all turned out in their best dress.

Taylor and an aide who's uniform was as weathered and battered as his own arrived on a handcart from Meridian, MS that was "pumped" down the tracks by two Negroes. Taylor and Canby retired to a room that was prepared in a nearby house. They agreed to a truce while they awaited ratification by their two governments of terms given to Johnston twelve days earlier by Sherman. Copies had been forwarded to both of them. This being done, they went into the yard and shared a luncheon that included several bottles of champagne. Taylor commented "these were the first agreeable explosive sounds I had heard for years." The musicians began playing "Hail, Columbia" and "Dixie."

Back in Meridian the next day, Taylor had heard from Canby that the Sherman-Johnston agreement had been disavowed; fighting would resume in forty-eight hours unless he surrendered on the terms accorded Lee three weeks earlier. Taylor had neither the means nor the inclination to continue the struggle on his own. On May 2, 1865 he accepted Canby's scaled-down offer. Two days later on May 4, they met again, this time in Citronelle, AL also on the Mobile-Ohio Railroad, twenty miles north of Magee's farm. Taylor delivered as he put it "the epilogue of the great drama in which I had played a humble part."

In Alabama, Mississippi, and East Louisiana, as had already been done in Virginia, Georgia, North and South Carolina; all survivors were to lay down their arms in exchange for assurance by the victors that they were not to be "disturbed" by the U.S. government "so long as they continue to observe the conditions of their parole and the laws in force where they reside."


A historical marker marks the spot on Celeste Road in Citronelle.

This marker is in Citronelle, AL on Celeste Road. Just across from it is Boy Scout Camp Pushmatahah where the actual surrender took place under an oak tree called Surrender Oak. This oak tree was destroyed during a hurricane in 1952, but one has been planted in its place.