 Today, each April, the Appomattox Court House National Historical Park commemorates this event with a luminary ceremony, wherein a lantern is lit for each of the 4,600 slaves freed in Appomattox County alone.The railroad became the Atlantic, Mississippi and Ohio Railroad in 1870.The inconvenience of the railroad's location to the original Appomattox Court House in the village of Clover Hill led to the decline of the courthouse community.