It turned out that the vegan version of the ritual magic time traveling spell worked reasonably, and I materialized early in the morning of April 9, 1865 somewhat closer to the McLean house than I had been worried I might have (there had been concerns about the vegan version of the spell in particular, and ritual magic in general is notoriously flaky about time and distance, so I had tried to give myself a decent safety margin so as not to miss the surrender). I took care of the various things one has to deal with after using ritual magic to travel through time, oriented myself, double-checked spaciotemporal placement, and found that I had nothing to do but sit and wait for a while.

It was a pretty nice morning, though still somewhat chilly. The trees hadn’t quite put out leaves, although some leaf buds were in evidence. The lawns around the house were pleasantly green, and at that point very damp with the morning dew.

I unfolded my folding chair and tried to read, but found the occasional sounds of distant shooting and the general sense of excitement about the occasion to be too distracting, so after a few minutes I decided to open the liquor hamper and mix a martini to steady myself. Something about the time traveling spell seemed to have given the gin a weird edge, but this may also have been the wafting smells of gunpowder and woodsmoke. It was still a pretty good martini, and it helped. I had made up my mind to drink the martini pretty slowly, and I would say that I did drink it more slowly than I might have, but this ended up being objectively pretty quickly. It was so pleasant that I thought I should probably have another one right away, and then I had an egg sandwich, which was also very nice.

At this point I felt relaxed enough to get some reading done, so I kicked back in my folding chair and pulled out Grant’s memoirs, but then found that I was in fact somewhat too relaxed, and couldn’t do much more than re-read the anecdote about the guy in Nashville who wants his receipts back (in my defense: it is a really great anecdote). Then I started to wonder if it had been a good idea to come at all, and also to feel a real sense of concern about my plan to try to say hello to Grant and ask him to sign my copy of his memoirs.

I tried to sketch the McLean house, but could not get the columns right. Then I thought I should walk around a bit, so I went over to a creek and listened to it gurgle for a while. I saw a hawk. I thought about trying to get a picture of all the pillars of smoke rising from the Confederate campfires, but when I got my phone out I found that they didn’t photograph at all well, because the phone camera made them seem much smaller and less significant than they looked to the naked eye. I also realized that I had meant not to take out my phone while time traveling, and felt pretty dumb about that.

Around mid-morning I thought I might as well have a bit of a nap. I moved the folding chair and the rest of my things to the edge of a stand of walnut trees, found what I considered a decently shady spot, and managed to sleep for about two hours, then woke up at the arrival of a bunch of Confederate officers on horseback. They said good day and asked if I what I knew about the house. I said I didn’t know anything in particular about it, and asked if anyone wanted a drink, but they claimed to be in a hurry.

There was still quite a lot of gin in the hamper, so I made another round of martinis. At this point the day gets a little bit blurry, but I can remember being really effusive to Grant when he was on his way into the house, and wanting to say something snide to Custer but managing to refrain from doing it, which was on the balance probably the right thing to do. I also kept myself from saying “and if I’d been feeling better we would’ve licked ya” to anyone, which I consider to be a real coup. In all a pretty good time, but I’m not sure that my being there was entirely appropriate, and I wish I had managed to leave more gracefully.