Appomattox Court House was a village in Appomattox County, Virginia, centered around a courthouse building erected in 1846. The community developed around the Clover Hill Tavern on the Richmond-Lynchburg Stage Road after 1819, and the village was known as Clover Hill before the construction of the Appomattox Court House in 1845 on the creation of Appomattox County. Attorneys, court clerks, printers, and other government officials moved into the village after it became the county seat, and the area was initially Whig-heavy politically. During the 1850s, the railroad bypassed Appomattox Court House and instead ran through Appomattox Depot, which eclipsed Appomattox Court House as the major population center of the county. The demise of the Whig Party, coupled with the area's tobacco production, resulted in most former Whigs joining the Southern Democrats rather than the Constitutional Union Party, and the county voted for Southern Democratic presidential candidate John C. Breckinridge in 1860. In April 1865, Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia withdrew to Appomattox Court House from Farmville, and failed to break out of a Union encirclement at the Battle of Appomattox Court House, resulting in Lee surrendering to Union general Ulysses S. Grant at the nearby McLean House. The courthouse burned down in 1892, and the county seat was moved to the town of Appomattox. The courthouse was rebuilt from 1963 to 1964 to serve as the visitor center for the Appomattox Court House National Historical Park, and the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989.