When did freedom come for enslaved people living in and around Appomattox, and what did that freedom look like? Lee’s surrender did not automatically guarantee freedom. Some enslaved servants were held in bondage weeks beyond April 9. They accompanied their captured masters to hospitals or prisons before returning home or were kept from leaving plantations by cruel overseers who beat them when they sought aid from the Freedmen’s Bureau. Others were treated harshly by their Union deliverers who showed no regard for the wellbeing of the “freedmen.” With local historian, Reverend Al Jones