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"Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox Court House evokes a highly gratifying image in the popular mind-it was, many believe, a moment that transcended politics, a moment of healing, a moment of patriotism untainted by ideology. But as Elizabeth Varon reveals in this vividly narrated history, this rosy image conceals a seething debate over precisely what the surrender meant and what kind of nation would emerge from war. The combatants in that debate included the iconic Lee and Grant, but they also included a cast of characters previously overlooked, who brought their own understanding of the war's causes, consequences, and meaning. In Appomattox, Varon deftly captures the events swirling around that well remembered-but not well understood-moment when the Civil War ended. She expertly depicts the final battles in Virginia, when Grant's troops surrounded Lee's half-starved army, the meeting of the generals at the McLean House, and the shocked reaction as news of the surrender spread like an electric charge throughout the nation. But as Varon shows, the ink had hardly dried before both sides launched a bitter debate over the meaning of the war. For Grant, and for most in the North, the Union victory was one of right over wrong, a vindication of free society; for many African Americans, the surrender marked the dawn of freedom itself. Lee, in contrast, believed that the Union victory was one of might over right: the vast impersonal Northern war machine had worn down a valorous and unbowed South. Lee was committed to peace, but committed, too, to the restoration of the South's political power within the Union and the perpetuation of white supremacy.Lee's vision of the war resonated broadly among Confederates and conservative northerners, and inspired Southern resistance to reconstruction. Did America's best days lie in the past or in the future? For Lee, it was the past, the era of the founding generation. For Grant, it was the future, represented by Northern industry and material progress. They held, in the end, two opposite views of the direction of the country-and of the meaning of the war that had changed that country forever"-- "General Robert E. Lee's surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant's Army of the Potomac might look serene in the amber-tinted popular images of two gentlemen sharing cigars, but that image conceals seething debate over precisely what the surrender meant and what kind of United States would emerge from war. The combatants in that debate included the iconic Lee and Grant, but they also included a cast of characters previously overlooked, who brought their own understanding of the war's causes, consequences, and meaning. Whereas April 1865 has been commonly viewed as a clear breaking point, Elizabeth Varon's Appomattox promises to connect the war to the immediate postwar in ways that have the potential to tell us far more than we currently know about how the creative potential generated by the destruction of war went unfulfilled in the decades that followed. Painting a portrait of this event between the triumphalist version of 1865 as a moment of strength and healing and a more persuasive but still incomplete portrait of the postwar painted by David Blight in Race and Reunion, Varon's work seeks to examine the surrender at Appomattox with an eye toward (a) narrating the events of April 1865, (b) exploring the immediate reactions, North and South, to the surrender, (c) exploring the political uses of the surrender during Reconstruction, and (d) challenging the popular, and comforting, perception that Appomattox inaugurated an easy end to a tragic war by beginning a process of reunion that reminded Americans that they were, after all, one people who shared far more similarities than differences. Varon will bring African American voices and attitudes into a story typically limited to white actors"--… (more)
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The author uses personal reflections, diaries, letters, editorials, and WPA interviews with former slaves, to illuminate how various factions in the country viewed the surrender, and how they
Those in the South who wished to return the region to a prewar condition (sans slavery) used the surrender terms as a shield, arguing its terms proscribed the Federal government from imposing equal rights for African-Americans, allowing them to reestablish the social caste system that existed before the war. A system in which former slaves would return to its lowest rung.
For many in the north, particularly liberal Republicans, Grant's terms were interpreted as a way to keep from the South any excuse to belligerency.Its generous terms it was believed, would disabuse the prevalent, though mistaken, notion of the North as a pack of scoundrels and profiteers only looking to subjugate the South and destroy its way of life. And, it was believed those who had rebelled against the union should not be returned to power at the expense of those who fought for its restoration (southern unionists, African-American soldiers etc). Far from guaranteeing the South would not have to pay a penalty for its treason, Grant's surrender terms were viewed as a military measure only.
There were gradations in these views held among citizens in both regions, with some in the North believing for example that the Appomattox terms did protect Confederate soldiers from any legal retribution, but did not protect their leaders. And in the South, there were unionist factions as committed to justice for freedmen as northern radicals.
The takeaway is one of lost opportunities. Had events transpired differently, and had certain people behaved in a more decisive way, the author appears to argue that reconstruction may have had a better outcome and that freedmen might not have had to wait until the 1960s to have their civil liberties restored to them.
Had Lincoln survived and had not been replaced by a man - Andrew Johnson - committed to an interpretation of the surrender that comported well with its view among southern elites, there is little doubt the freedmen would have been better protected. By the time 1869 rolled around, enough damage had been done by Johnson that even the heroic efforts of the new President Ulysses S. Grant, could not prevent the failure of reconstruction.
Had Robert E. Lee been able to rouse himself from his prewar view of social caste and had followed the example of more courageous former Confederates such as James Longstreet and John Singleton Mosby who publicly accepted the necessity of establishing civil rights for former slaves, there is no doubt his influence could have helped prevent the retrenchment of southern society along with the violent excesses that went along with it.
Up until now most books that look at the Appomattox surrender do so through the lens of reconciliation and American exceptionalism. Jay Winik's excellent book April 1865: The Month that Saved America is an example of this. Appomattox goes a long way toward reorienting the way history views this singular event, one stripped of its patina of chivalry and reconciliation to lay bare its role as a catalyst for the failure of reconstruction and the denial of equality for former slaves.
An excellent book, extremely well written. Highly recommended!!!