A H EUNITED HOW MERICA URVIVED THE IVIL AR COURSE GUIDE

Professor Jay Winik UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND

A HOUSE REUNITED:HOW AMERICA SURVIVED

THE CIVIL WAR

COURSE GUIDE

A House Reunited:How America Survived the Civil War

Professor Jay WinikUniversity of Maryland

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Professor Jay Winik

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COURSE GUIDE

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Lecture content ©2003 by Jay Winik

Course guide ©2003 by Recorded Books, LLC

72003 by Recorded Books, LLC

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#UT034 ISBN: 978-1-4025-6695-0

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Course Syllabus


About Your Professor...................................................................................................4

Introduction...................................................................................................................5

Lecture 1 A Nation Delayed...................................................................................6

Lecture 2 The Dilemma: America as Two Nations ..............................................10

Lecture 3 The Warrior: Robert E. Lee .................................................................17

Lecture 4 The Epic Fall of Richmond ..................................................................23

Lecture 5 The Chase: Grant Hot on Lee’s Heels ................................................29

Lecture 6 The Fateful Decision: Guerrilla War? ..................................................35

Lecture 7 U.S. Grant and the Historic Meeting at Appomattox ...........................41

Lecture 8 April 14: Decapitation and the Great Unraveling?...............................48

Lecture 9 Abraham Lincoln: On Whom So Much Depends ................................53

Lecture 10 Post-Assassination: Would It Now All Come Undone? .......................58

Lecture 11 The Volatile Ones: Nathan Bedford Forrestand Bill Sherman .................................................................................64

Lecture 12 The Surrender Continues ....................................................................70

Lecture 13 The Final Obstacles to Reconciliation .................................................75

Lecture 14 What Happened to Make a Nation? ....................................................79

Course Materials ........................................................................................................85

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About Your Professor

Jay WinikJay Winik, acclaimed best-selling writer

and one of the nation’s leading publichistorians, is the author of the award-

winning April 1865: The Month That Saved America. Focusing on the end ofthe Civil War, this work was a New York Times best-seller and one of thoserare books to be considered “an instant classic.” April 1865 was also thebasis of a critically acclaimed and Emmy-nominated two-hour documentaryspecial by A&E/History Channel. A popular public speaker and a frequent TV and radio guest, he contributes regularly to the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, as well as numerous other publications, and he appearswidely on the History Channel, NPR, Fox, C-Span, and NBC.

Born in Connecticut, Winik is a graduate of Yale College and holds an M.Sc.with distinction from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from YaleUniversity. Now a Senior Scholar of History and Public Policy at theUniversity of Maryland’s School of Public Affairs, College Park, he has had adistinguished government career in national security, including advising thelate Defense Secretary Les Aspin and helping to create the landmark UnitedNations Plan for ending the Cambodian civil war. He has also been in thethick of civil wars around the globe, from the former Yugoslavia to ElSalvador, Nicaragua, and Cambodia. He has served on a number of nonprofitfoundation boards, including the Civil War PreservationTrust, the Advisory Committee of the Abraham LincolnBicentennial Commission, the Washington Tennis andEducation Foundation, and the Advisory Council of theJames Madison Book Award for excellence in foster-ing the “understanding of American History to the nextgeneration.” He lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland, withhis wife, Lyric, and son, Nathaniel.

The following book provides an excellentsupplement to the lectures found in this course:

Winik, Jay. April 1865: The Month ThatSaved America. New York: HarperCollinsPublishers, 2001.

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IntroductionIt was a most precarious moment: In 1865, Atlanta had been overwhelmed.

Columbia had surrendered—and burned. Charleston was abandoned. Thepeace conference at Hampton Roads had been fruitless. And the British andFrench had refused to intervene. The Army of Northern Virginia, havingstruck its own harsh blows against the Union in the six bloodiest weeks of thewar, had wriggled free of the enemy’s clutches and fallen back, assuming adefensive position around the cities of Petersburg and Richmond.

And across the slim divide of trenches and water lay U.S. Grant’s swellingand mighty Army of the Potomac.

It was the Confederacy’s direst crisis since the start of the war, vaster thanthe fall of Vicksburg, more terrible than the failure of Gettysburg. But astrange emotion prevailed throughout much of the Confederacy. It, asSoutherners knew, was not the first time in history that defenders had beencut to pieces, starved, demoralized, enervated, and yet had somehow foundthe will to prevail. They still had four armies in the field. Their guerrilla fight-ers—and cavalry—were second to none.

Robert E. Lee and the generals who looked to him for guidance were asaggressive as ever: not ready to give up, to give in, or to relinquish theirConfederate identity. The war was not over, not by a long shot. And the impli-cations for the peace to follow were profound.

It is the eve of April 1865. Even today, what followed in the remaining days ofthe Civil War seems almost miraculous. April 1865 is a month that could haveunraveled the American nation. Instead, it saved it. It is a month as dramaticand devastating as any faced in this nation’s history—and it proved to be themost moving and decisive month not simply of the Civil War, but quite likely, inthe life of the United States.

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Federal soldiers posed in front of the McLean House in Appomattox Court House, Virginia the dayafter Union general Ulysses S. Grant accepted the surrender of Confederate general Robert E.Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, April 9, 1865.

Introduction

To understand how two warring nations became one, wemust start at the beginning—not just the beginning of theCivil War, but all the way back to the very beginning of thecountry. Our view of April 1865 will encompass not merely

one fateful month in the life of this nation, but in many ways, the totality of theAmerican experience from its very founding.

III. Ambiguous Constitution—Thirteen States and a Nation Undefined

A. When the Founding Fathers formed this country, nowhere in the writingof the Constitution did they talk about America being “a nation”; theyused a more ambiguous phrase, “the United States.”

B. It is equally noteworthy that unlike in the Articles of Confederation,nowhere did the Founders talk about America lasting in perpetuity.

Consider the obstacles. The fragility of America from its very first dayscannot be exaggerated.

1. Unlike the rest of the world, America was not born out of ancientcustom or claim, arising naturally as a nation of tens of centuries, theproduct of generations of common kinship, common custom, com-mon language and myths and shared history and tradition.

2. It was born artificially, abstractly, as a series of states woventogether by negotiated agreements. Unlike Europe, or China, orPersia, it did not arise naturally, but was made, almost abstractly,out of ink and paper, and lawyers and diplomats, at theConstitutional Convention.

C. When the first Declaration of Independence was introduced intoCongress in 1776, Richard Henry Lee, seconded by John Adams,declared, “That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be,free and independent States.” Independence created not one nation,but thirteen.

III. History of Secession

A. Like the colonies that preceded them, these new states were as differ-ent from each other as they were from England.

1. Each state jealously guarded its own self-rule, its own government,its own independence, and its own sovereignty.

2. Each had its own navy or commanded its own military.

3. Each had its own legislatures, or president or governor, its owncourts and taxes, and its own individual constitution.L

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The Suggested Reading for this lecture is Jay Winik’s April 1865: TheMonth That Saved America, prelude, “A Nation Delayed.”

Lecture 1:A Nation Delayed

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4. The colonists were no longer Britons, but nor were they yetAmericans; they were faithful members of their proud states, as theyhad been for more than a hundred and fifty years in some cases.

5. Geography was also against the success of this emerging nation.Already the thirteen states together were considered far too large.As Americans trekked farther south or west, the wilderness and therivers and the mountains created breathtaking differences in life -styles, culture, and political outlooks.

B. For these and many other reasons, when the Constitutional Conventionwas finished, an elated George Washington said it was little short of a“miracle” that delegates from “so many states” should have united toform a national government.

C. What did not change was the secessionist tradition of America. Fromthe very beginning, the discovery of the new world was made possibleby repeated secessionist efforts.

1. The pilgrims, of course, were the first great secessionists, coming toPlymouth after their failure to extrude themselves from England tothe Netherlands.

2. Roger Williams, a separatist fanatic, was driven from Massachusettsand went on to found Rhode Island.

3. Thomas Hooker seceded to Connecticut.

4. Lord Baltimore enabled a group of Catholics to create an exclusivecommunity—for a time—in Maryland.

5. William Penn provided Quakers with a refuge. And, of course, theAmerican Revolution was itself a monumental act of secession.

D. Independence had not changed a steady pattern of secession.

III. Secession a Constant Threat

A. America after the revolution perpetually seemed to be on the brink ofsplitting apart.

1. It began with the Whiskey Rebellion.

2. The next shot was fired on paper with the Virginia andKentucky resolutions.

3. It would not be long before the next crisis, the War of 1812. This timeit was New England who was openly threatening secession, andopenly collaborating with our adversaries, the British, in that conflict.

4. Between 1830 and 1833, South Carolina demanded regional self-interest and self-rights by trying to nullify federal tariff duties. The crisis was averted by President Andrew Jackson and Senator HenryClay, and for a brief time it even appeared that Southerners andNortherners might come together to forge one nation.

5. Fierce debate began to rage over slavery, and the secessionist cryrose and spread.

B. In the years running up to the Civil War, slavery became the wedgetearing the country apart. Yet it was hardly the only wedge.

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1. Even the way Americans spoke of the young republic betrayed con-cerns about the country lasting. To be sure, Americans spoke ofUnion, but just as often as not they spoke of the “republic,” or the“Confederacy,” or the “league of sovereign states.” In the parlance ofthe day, it was not the United States “is,” but the united states “are.”

2. In fact, in the years running up to Civil War, others flirted with secession, including California, Oregon, New Jersey, and even New York City.

C. But what ultimately drove the country to war was slavery.

1. Slavery flourished, North and South, until 1790, when beginning withMassachusetts and ending with New Jersey, the Northern statesabolished bondage.

2. It was hoped that the Southern states would do likewise, but it stub-bornly persisted. Slavery became so intertwined and intermixed withthe fabric of the South that even though only one-third ofSoutherners owned slaves, it was still seen as an integral part ofSouthern institutions. An assault on slavery was regarded as anassault on Southern values and the Southern way of life.

3. In the nineteenth century, the ferment over slavery only grew.

a. In the North, slavery soon became a matter of deep conscience,spurred on by the religious fervor of the Second Great Awakening.

b. Year after year, Southern politicians and Southern leaders bitterlyfought back.

c. In the vortex of this debate, once the battle lines were sharplydrawn, moderate ground became hostage to the passions of thetwo sides.

4. By 1860, slavery thrived only in Brazil, Cuba, and the American Southand its border states. But that was enough.Slavery would plunge America into war.

5. Four long years later, with America at theend point of this terrible civil war, therewere bitter and haunting questions.

a. How would the war end and peace be made?

b. Would the country emerge united, onenation, which was Abraham Lincoln’sfervent dream?

c. Would America remain tattered, everready to disintegrate into petty squab-bling, minor or fragmented republics, orbecome chronically vulnerable to anarchyand low-level violence as had been thedismal fate of so many other republicsthroughout history?

“Taylor,” an African-American drummer boyfor the 78th Union Regiment, 1863.

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1. How did the Second Great Awakening fuel secessionist sentiments?

2. What is meant by the “secessionist tradition” in America?

Winik, Jay. April 1865: The Month That Saved America. 2nd ed. New York:Harper Perennial, 2006.

Berkin, Carol. A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution. NewYork: Harcourt, 2002.

Boorstein, Daniel J. The Americans: The National Experience. New York:Vintage, 1965.

Murrin, John H. “A Roof Without Walls: The Dilemma of American NationalIdentity.” Beyond Confederation: Origins of the Constitution and AmericanNational Identity. Eds. Richard Beeman, Stephen Botein, and EdwardCarter II. University of North Carolina Press, 1987.

�Questions

Suggested Reading

FOR GREATER UNDERSTANDING

Other Books of Interest

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Introduction

It is a great dilemma to make two nations into one. Historic -ally, America was as much a loose confederation of statesas it was one nation. It used to be said, in the parlance of

the day, the United States “are”—that is, the United States are growing andexpanding, the United States are vivid and dynamic. Yet somehow, in thefinal months and final weeks and final days of April 1865, the phrase becamethe United States “is.” In other words, the states went from a plural to a sin-gular. This meant, of course, that the great challenge for bringing the countrytogether was that much greater, that much more daunting. As the countryincreasingly became torn apart, the task would become even more frightfullydifficult. Would America come together at long last? How? The answers tothis were hardly evident, as shown on one of the most important days in theUnion’s history, near the end of the war. It was a day that began with bells.

III. Inauguration Day and Looking Ahead

A. The bells rang that day in Washington. It was March 4, 1865,Inauguration Day of the Union.

B. Lincoln, cloistered in the Senate wing signing a stack of bills, was thevery picture of exhaustion. His face was heavily lined, his cheeks weresunken, and he had lost thirty pounds in recent months. He was sick-ened by the ongoing turmoil of bloodshed and death and destructionthat had consumed the country for four terrible years. Though only fifty-six, he looked years older.

C. This was a day for all the Union, and like a great herd, the people wereseemingly everywhere.

1. Military patrols formed a watchful guard. Reporters and photogra-phers crowded the stoops, ready to record the event for posterity.Flags waved, people cheered, and bands played. But mostly, the vastthrong jostled for position by the newly capped dome and the tower-ing bronze statue of freedom, to catch a glimpse of the president.

2. Finally, a roar of applause rose from the crowd as Lincoln made his way to his seat. The roar dipped and mounted again as thesergeant at arms beckoned, and Lincoln stood, towered over theother men, and made his way to the podium. A mere 703 words,succinct, memorable, this would be Lincoln’s greatest speech.

D. His goal was not to take political credit or assess blame, but to send aheartfelt message to the Union and the Confederacy alike.

The Suggested Reading for this lecture is Jay Winik’s April 1865: The Month That Saved America, part 1, “March 1865,” chapter 1, “The Dilemma.”

Lecture 2:The Dilemma: America As Two Nations

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1. Neither side had expected the war to last as long or grow to such amagnitude as it had. Both sides read the same Bible and prayed tothe same God.

2. He saved his most soaring words for the conclusion, the true heartand spirit of his speech. The words are immortal. “With malicetoward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as Godstrives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have bornethe battle.”

3. Lincoln then bowed his head and exclaimed, “So help me God,”kissed an open Bible, and then as he bowed again to the cheeringassembly, an artillery salvo exploded in the wind.

E. Lincoln was looking ahead.

1. At long last his armies were now enjoying significant gains andwere finally poised to drive a stake through the heart of the Southern armies.

a. In February, Sherman’s army, having completed its mighty marchto the sea, drove into South Carolina, where secession began; thestate’s capital, Columbia, lay in flames, a smoking ruin.

b. In the breadbasket of the Confederacy, the Shenandoah, GeneralPhil Sheridan had cut a channel of destruction.

c. Grant’s army was hunkered down around Petersburg and Rich -mond, ready to mass against Lee’s vaunted army of NorthernVirginia once and for all.

2. But Lincoln was also the “most tired man in the world”—his words.For every union success he could count a time when Lee had beenwithin his grasp and eluded his generals.

a. Certainly, there were indications that the Confederacy was slowlyfalling apart, but there were also indications that the war coulddrag on for months more of murderous fighting, or even a year.

b. There was the unthinkable specter of Lee and his men slipping intothe western mountains to continue a campaign of harassment.

c. There was Lincoln’s greatest fear: the glory of a restored unionmust be built on more than butchery, revenge, and retribution. Buthis dilemma was that in the spring of 1865, the requirements oftotal war he had been waging were incompatible with the require-ments of reunification and the peace he hoped to make.

III. Lee Continues the Fight

A. Robert E. Lee, the daring commander of the Southern forces, wasthinking ahead as well—to how the conflict could be continued. On thevery same day that Lincoln was speaking, Lee rode into Richmond, thecapital of the Confederacy, with a daring plan to reignite the waning for-tunes of the Confederacy.

B. But his first concern was news of his army, and it was dismal.

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1. His men had been living along a thirty-seven mile labyrinth of trench-es around Richmond and Petersburg for the last eight and a halfmonths. Month after month, during this prolonged siege, these twoarmies shadowboxed. All throughout the summer and fall, U.S.Grant, the Union commander, sought to smash Lee’s lines, but hewas unsuccessful each time.

2. However, even as the Confederates repulsed Grant, Lee’s men werein desperate shape. Despite efforts to secure food and clothing forhis army, little was available. Scurvy, night blindness, and dysenteryinvaded the Confederate trenches. There were no shoes, no over-coats, no blankets for his men. And too little food: his men scram-bled between the legs of horses for dung to sift for undigested corn.

3. Morale plummeted, and deserters mushroomed, particularly duringthe last winter, the coldest in memory. Grant’s army numberedsome 110,000—new, fresh, well-fed soldiers. Lee’s hearty veteransnumbered no more than 55,000. But Lee also was convinced thathe could rely on the unparalleled endurance of his veterans, theirloyalty, their fight.

C. Lee had a daring plan.

1. He had resolved that once the opening was there, his army wouldbreak free of Grant’s clutches, abandon Richmond and Petersburg,hook down south another 140 miles, and from there link up withanother Confederate general, Joe Johnston. At that point, they wouldstrike at, of all people, Union general Bill Sherman, and then take tosafe territory and continue the struggle. This, of course, wasAbraham Lincoln’s worst nightmare coming true.

2. Precisely for this reason, Lincoln had already undertaken his owndaring plan to somehow bring this terrible war to an end.

a. In February, aboard Grant’s steamer ship, the River Queen, atHampton Roads, Lincoln had met with three Confederate peacecommissioners to discuss ways of ending the conflict.

b. Lincoln was so sickened and exhausted by the ongoing turmoiland killing that he had recently held a cabinet meeting from, of allplaces, his bed.

c. Lincoln went to meet with the Rebel peace commissioners, includ-ing Alexander Stephens. En route to the River Queen, one couldhear along the lines cries of the men: “Peace, peace!”

3. Once inside this extraordinary meeting, Lincoln so wanted to bringthe terrible killing to an end that it was he who offered dramatic con-cessions to the South.

a. Lincoln told them that if they stopped fighting by April 1, 1865,they would be compensated for the slaves they would lose—inother words, he offered a form of compensated emancipation—tothe tune of $400 million.

b. What did the South say to this stunning offer? They said no,because they still prized and privileged their independence.

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c. Jefferson Davis used the failure of this peace meeting to rejuve-nate Southern pride and nationalistic ardor, and from Richmond toMobile, all across the South, the people rallied accordingly in sup-port of the Southern cause.

4. Never was this more evident than in Richmond, known as the capitalof the Confederacy, mother of states and statesmen, which baskedin the golden age of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, JamesMonroe, and James Madison, all Virginians.

a. For some three years the Confederate capital lived under threat ofassault from the Union, yet amid the ever-increasing stress oftotal war, Richmonders danced, laughed, and somehow thrived.

b. They did this despite hardship, hunger, and disease. Amazingly,as scarcity, impressment, and inflation ravaged the city, crowdsstill cheerily frequented the theatre, and entertained one anotherin private gatherings. Even when food was so scarce, like in thespring of 1865, that many citizens were reportedly forced to feaston dogs and even rats, they were not deterred in their fervor forthe cause.

D. Indeed, these final months in 1865 actually constituted some of thecity’s most stirring hours.

1. Even as their comrades in nearby Petersburg were dodging federalfire, social events flourished in Richmond as perhaps never before.“Starvation Balls” became the rage—water was all that would beserved. Church attendance rose. Believers flocked to churches, andincreasingly came to compare themselves to the Jews wandering inthe desert. They also held on to revolutionary moorings, much asthey believed the colonists did during their trials and tribulations inthe Revolutionary War.

2. One noted scholar, John Murrin, has remarked that Confederatenational identity was stronger than any collective American nationalidentity at the time of the Constitution; this is almost surely correct,part of a swelling belief that the Southerners formed a new nation,very much apart from their Union brethren.

3. Thus Richmond, and much of the South, was not in the spring of1865 as it had been in 1861, or for that matter in 1776. Hardenedand toughened by the privations of war, the South had a very differ-ent conception of itself, its identity, its heritage, and its future.

III. Emancipation . . . for the Confederacy?

A. At about the same time that Lincoln was making his dramatic offer atHampton Roads, another momentous event was taking place. TheSouth had reached a profound decision that had been in the public eyefor over a year and had been a private discussion for nearly four years.

1. Blacks would be put into the army—some 300,000 of them.

2. As James Longstreet, the Southern general put it, “Slavery is dead,slavery is all played out,” and this was before the end of the war.

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3. The great Union intellectual, Ralph Waldo Emerson, as early as1862, had feared that the Confederacy might preempt the Union andadopt emancipation first. His fears were not wholly unfounded.

B. The debate was a heated one. Georgian Robert Tooms thundered thatit would be “the worst calamity that could befall us to gain our indepen-dence by the valor of our slaves.” Robert Hunter of the ConfederateSenate agreed: “What did we go to war for,” he bellowed, “if not to pro-tect our property.” And said one Georgian, “If the slaves make goodsoldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong.”

C. But others, in high places all across the South, felt differently.

1. One of the most eloquent of these voices was Patrick Cleburne, aSouthern general who was known as the Stonewall Jackson of theWest: “As between the loss of independence and the loss of slavery,we assume that every patriot will freely give up the latter—give upthe negro slave rather than be a slave himself,” he told his corpscommanders in Joe Johnston’s army.

2. A mass meeting in the African Church in Richmond, JudahBenjamin, the Confederate Secretary of State, and the closest confi-dant to Jefferson Davis, gave a rousing speech.

a. On this historic day in the Confederacy, the church was filled withsome two thousand people, and outside, some two thousandmore people crowded around to hear this momentous speech.

b. Benjamin soon had these determined Confederates on their feet,cheering, to put the blacks in. “Is it any time for antiquated patrio-tism to refuse to send in reinforcements and aid, be it white orblack,” he said. “Put in the blacks,” a voice cried out, to muchcheering. Benjamin continued: “Let us to say to every negro whowishes to go into the ranks on condition of being free, ‘Go andfight, and you are free!’”

3. The debate would be long, and rage all across the South, but thedeed would be done in March of 1865.

a. The deciding voice to sway the Confederate Congress, as well asthe Virginia legislature, was General-in-Chief Robert E. Lee, whowould add his enormous prestige to supporters of this measure.Lee forever changed this debate, and most everyone recognizedthis. As one newspaper put it at the time: “The country will notventure to deny General Lee anything he may ask for!”

b. An astonishing 300,000 were to be enlisted, and, in fact, Lee haddecided to go one step further than even the Union. He decidedhe would more tightly integrate blacks and whites in his divisionsin a way that the Union itself had never even contemplated.

c. Then, in late March, came one of the most incredible sights imag-inable: two companies of blacks drilling in Capitol Square inRichmond alongside three companies of whites.

D. Amazingly, having gone to war to preserve slavery, the South was will-ing to scrap slavery to preserve its independence.

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1. Some have seen this decision as simply a last-ditch measure by adying people, a pitiful deathbed conversion.

2. In truth, it had been an on-and-off debate for four years; someConfederates had been for it from the start. Lee himself had longsupported it.

3. To be sure, it was done less for reasons of conscience and more forutilitarian reasons, and this is what separated the debate from theUnion’s own often-bitter debate over ending slavery. There were anumber of opponents to the measure.

4. Nonetheless, by the spring of 1865, it had the support of all themajor figures and institutions, from Lee and Davis to the VirginiaMilitary Institute, to many soldiers and slaveowners themselves.

5. In the end, as April 1865 approached, what the Confederacy mostcherished was its independence.

E. Going into the fateful month of April 1865, there was a supreme para-dox and a supreme challenge.

1. The supreme paradox was that, on the great issue that drove thiswar as much as any other issue, the question of slavery, going intoApril 1865 the two sides were arguably closer together than at any time in history.

2. Yet this brings up the supreme challenge. On the equally great issueof one nation versus two nations, arguably, the sides were never fur-ther apart. As Robert E. Lee had said around that time, “We must beprepared to fight to the death.”

This photograph of Lincoln delivering his second inaugural address on March 4, 1865, is the onlyknown photograph of Lincoln giving a speech. Lincoln stands in the center (indicated by a white cir-cle and an arrow), with papers in his hand. John Wilkes Booth (also indicated by a white circle andarrow) is visible in the photograph, in the top row right of center.

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1. How were the requirements of the total war Lincoln had been wagingincompatible with the requirements of reunification?

2. What factors led to the South’s decision to enlist blacks into theConfederate Army?


Donald, David Herbert. Lincoln. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.

Foote, Shelby. The Civil War: A Narrative. Vol. 3. New York: RandomHouse, 1986.

Kirkland, Edward C. The Peacemakers of 1864. New York: Macmillan, 1927.

Oates, Stephen B. With Malice Toward None: A Life of Abraham Lincoln.New York: HarperCollinsPublishers, 1994.

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Introduction

Lee, prepared to fight to the death,was precisely what AbrahamLincoln feared more than anything.

Lincoln was so anxious that he went to City Point,the nerve center of Grant’s Army of the Potomac, tobe near the battle.

III. Lincoln Grows Anxious for the End

A. On March 25, he heard about an attempt by Lee to break through at Fort Stedman and rushed to see the battlefield.

1. From the inside of a slow-rolling train,Lincoln looked out upon the hideousmementos of war: In every direction there seemed to be mutilated corpsesbeing carried off; in every direction, thereseemed to be the wounded of both armies,blasted and bloodstained and forsaken.

2. Lincoln watched all this and grieved; theywere all his soldiers, all his men, and as hesaw a long line of Southern prisoners, stum-bling in the “sad condition,” it pained him.

B. Lincoln said he had seen enough of the horrors of war and hoped this would be thebeginning of the end.

1. As Lincoln met with his two top generals atCity Point he wanted to talk about when the warwould end, how it would end, and what would happen when it did.

2. Lincoln was exhausted and weary from the ongoing turmoil andbloodshed that had plagued the country.

C. There was one other thing that Lincoln wanted to talk about: As he put it, when this war finally ends, “there must be no bloody work, nohangings, none of that . . . I want no one punished,” he said, “treatthem liberally all around.”

1. One of the things that Lincoln was thinking about was what loomedlarge on the minds of all Americans in that day and age: the FrenchRevolution. The French Revolution started out with the best of ideals,

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The Suggested Reading for this lecture is Jay Winik’s April 1865: TheMonth That Saved America, part 2, “April 1, 1865,” chapter 2, “The Fall.”

Lecture 3:The Warrior: Robert E. Lee

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Robert E. Lee(1807–1870)

yet before long, the revolutionaries were guillotining the opposition,then each other and had started a cycle of bloodshed and violencethat would haunt a continent for many years to come. What Lincolnwas saying was that there must be no repeat of the FrenchRevolution, and what he enunciated to Grant and Sherman wouldbecome known as the River Queen doctrine.

2. Lincoln knew the dreadful particulars of winning the war had to beweighed against the lofty considerations of restoring the union. Butfirst he knew he had to ensnare Lee.

III. Robert E. Lee—Man of Destiny

A. Lincoln understood the odds arrayed against him. Robert E. Lee was thedistinguished product of not only one of the country’s most impeccablepedigrees, but was the seeming embodiment of America’s very destiny.

1. By birth and inheritance, Lee was tied to the Union, its creation, andits preservation. Two of his ancestors had signed the Declaration ofIndependence; his father, Lighthorse Harry Lee, was a celebratedRevolutionary War general, an ardent Federalist, and the soldier towhom George Washington turned to stamp out the first great seces-sionist threat, the Whiskey Rebellion.

2. Lee’s father immortalized the famous words about George Wash -ing ton with the soaring phrase, “first in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen.”

B. But if destiny drew Lee to the Union, it also drew him to his home stateof Virginia.

1. He was related to most of Virginia’s first families—the Lees, theCarters, the Randolphs, the Harrisons. For a century and a half, hisfamily had played leading roles in the state as soldiers, counselors,emissaries, and planters. His own father had been three times aVirginia governor and a Virginia congressman, for whom GeorgeWashington made quite a show of publicly voting. And Robert E. Leehimself was born at Stratford, a great brick home overlooking thePotomac, one of the most famous estates in all of Virginia.

2. Destiny haunted Lee in one other way.

a. His father was a compulsive land speculator who squandered hisfamily fortunes before abandoning Lee’s family when he was just six.

b. Lee became a man of virtue. He graduated from West Point, wenton to become its superintendent, and then became one of theUnited States’s most valorous heroes in the Mexican war.

c. He led U.S. cavalry against Comanche Indians; he was the com-mander of the Marines who put down John Brown’s rebellion in1859; and he was considered the most promising soldier in theentire United States.

d. Lee’s mentor, General-in-Chief Winfield Scott, himself a leg-endary hero, called Lee a military “genius” and boasted that inevent of war, the U.S. government should insure Lee’s life for$5 million a year.

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3. In 1831, Lee had married Mary Custis, the great granddaughter ofMartha Washington, and, through adoptions, of George Washingtonhimself. Lee became heir not only to Arlington, the grand family man-sion overlooking the Potomac that had belonged to Washington’sadopted son—it is, of course, the nation’s cemetery today—but alsoto everything that Arlington stood for. Lee was no less than the solescion of the founding father of America.

C. When the Southern states began leaving the Union and war loomed,Lee was the man to whom Abraham Lincoln first turned. General-in-Chief Winfield Scott summoned him to a fateful meeting in Washington;it was here that a stunning offer was made, bearing Lincoln’s seal ofapproval, for Lee to become commander of the Union Army.

1. All his life, this is what Lee had wanted. It offered him the chance to walk in the footsteps of not only his own father, but also thefather of the country, with a chance for military glory rivaling even Washington’s.

2. For three hours Lee and Scott spoke; there is no exact record ofwhat was said, a testimony to the dignity of both men. But we doknow that, in one of the most fateful decisions of the war, if not thelife of this nation, Lee declined Lincoln’s offer, saying that he couldnot raise his sword against his birthplace, his family, and his homestate of Virginia.

3. Lee longed for a compromise to save the Union, but in the end, hecould not defy the permanency of birth and blood.

4. Lee resigned; five days later, he became commander-in-chief ofVirginia’s military forces, then brigadier general in the Confederacy,and then general-in-chief of the entire South. Lee had said that hedid what he did for “honor,” and with the heaviest of hearts, he saidthat he foresaw the country “passing through a terrible ordeal.”

D. Would Lee be equal to the task? Handsome and charming, he was oneof the most watched men of his era, but as diarist Mary Chesnut said:“Can anybody say they know the general?”

1. Despite his legendary self-control, his foul moods and his temperwere equally legendary.

2. Lee had a killer instinct in battle second to none—his aggressive-ness, his intuition, his audacity were all well known and much feared.

3. Yet at the same time, there was an unusually feminine side to him, asweetness unthinkable in many other fighting men. His eyes couldbe large and sad and brooding; his cold stare was unforgettable.Women swooned over him. Once, as a Union girl watched him makehis way to Gettysburg, she cried out: “Oh, I wish he were ours!” AtWest Point, he was called the “marble model,” and in his mid-fifties,he had acquired the aura of a Homeric Patriarch.

4. Dignified, humble, gentle, he invariably saved the best not for himself,but for battle and for his men. In turn, they idolized him. “I’ve heard ofGod,” one Southerner remarked, “but I’ve seen General Lee!”

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III. A General Without Peer

A. In battle, Lee was largely without peer; his genius was in turningadversity to advantage. As the war ground on, Lee increasingly lacked troops, resources, and resourceful subordinates, but againstenormous odds, he won great battles.

1. He halted McClellan’s threat to Richmond, routed Pope at secondManassas, destroyed Burnside at Fredericksburg, and pummeledHooker at Chancellorsville.

2. A military realist, he also took chances that few other military mendid, gambling that the South had few other alternatives. This led himto such maddening tactics as dividing his army, twice, while facingan army nearly twice his size, as at Chancellorsville—a stunning vic-tory. Or halving his army and using the mountains as cover, as hedid at second Manassas—or taking the boldest risk of all, fightingone great battle on Northern soil, which culminated in his disappoint-ment at Gettysburg.

3. Lee was a born warrior. He was at home with all the fanfare of war—the raising of arms, the fixing of bayonets, the gallantry, the turn ofthe flank. He accepted bloodshed with an alacrity that civilians, evenmany generals, would find hard to fathom. But it is not clear he lovedwar itself: “It is well that war is so terrible,” he once memorably said,“or we should grow too fond of it.” And this, he said, not after adefeat, but after his stunning victory at Chancellorsville.

B. Lee relentlessly went for the enemy’s jugular, and his face never bright-ened more than at the prospect of military success.

1. Where other generals had setbacks, or felt panic in the swirl of conflict or the urgency of defeat, Lee resolved never to quit.Through out the war he was beset by physical problems: at fifty-seven, he was not a young man. He had sore throats, heavy colds,chest pains, back pain, arm pain, diarrhea, lumbago, angina, twosprained hands and broken bones in one of them, and predictably,exhaustion and sorrow.

2. And with greater frequency, he seemed to get even more aggres-sive, flirting with death, riding with his men and leading charges. Orsalting his speech with the language of offense: “We cannot be idle”or speaking fervently about a “battle of annihilation” that would erodeUnion morale, once and for all.

C. Grant would find this out the hard way when he and Lee squared off inthe Wilderness campaign over six weeks in 1864. It was the first timethese two great generals met, over a hundred-mile crescent of whatwould be the six bloodiest weeks of the war.

1. In the first two nights alone, Grant lost some 17,500 men to Lee. Thefirst night, he went into his tent and wept. When he came out the nextmorning, everyone expected him to do what every other general haddone when confronted with Robert E. Lee, which was turn tail andrun. Instead, he memorably declared that he will fight it along the line,if it “takes all summer.” Actually, it would take much more than that.

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2. After one assault, Lee’s army faced its own peril, as Grant threatenedto smash his lines with his juggernaut. This wilderness with its tangledthickets was in the same woods where Stonewall Jackson had beenkilled by friendly fire the year before, and where one of Lee’s mostvaunted generals, James Longstreet, was badly wounded that verymorning. With Federals a mere 200 yards away, a red-faced Leebegan to lead his own men in a charge. Glimpsing Lee, his menunleashed a wild cheer and began to fight back with a special fury:“I would charge hell itself for that old man,” declared one Texan. But

even as Lee battered Grant, Grant declared “we will not retreat.”

3. At Cold Harbor, a mere nine and half miles from Richmond, Grantbelieved that “Lee’s army was really whipped” and decided hewould smash him with one grand, massive assault, all along aseven-mile front.

a. A row of blue uniforms came forward. The Confederates, in theirtrenches, greeted this dense mass with a round of firepower.

b. For Grant, it was an unmitigated bloodbath. In under an hour,much of it perhaps in the first eight minutes alone, Grant lostsome nine thousand people, three times as many as Pickett hadlost the year before in his charge at Gettysburg.

c. When one man in Grant’s command suggested another assault,the rest of them would have none of it: “I wouldn’t take my men inanother charge if Jesus Christ had ordered it!”

4. The battle of Cold Harbor became a test of wills. For three days andnights, the cries and moans of the wounded grew weaker and fainterand more desperate, even as sharpshooters kept up their deadlypractice. The sun beat down mercilessly, and corpses exploded inthe heat. When litter bearers finally made it on to the field—afterGrant acknowledged he had been beaten in this battle, of the thousands of blue-coated troops found, only two were alive.

5. In this six-week campaign, Grant lost some 52,000 men, nearly as many men as the United States lost during the entire VietnamWar. Said one of Grant’s top generals: “I think Grant has had hiseyes opened.”

a. Back in the North, a pall of gloom hung over the Union psyche.Grant was denounced as a “butcher.” Northern morale sharplyplummeted. The peace movement gained steam. And Northerndemocrats glumly proclaimed that “Patriotism is all played out”and derided Grant as little more than a “bull-headed Suvarov,”after the Russian general.

b. But Grant continued on, this time settling down to deadly siege,seeking to smother the famed mobility of Lee’s army. As April 1,1865, opened, the Battle of Five Forks, the siege had stretchedon for some nine months, but a still-confident Grant knew betterthan to underestimate his vaunted foe, Robert E. Lee, or theragged veterans of his Army of Northern Virginia.

1. Why was Robert E. Lee’s decision to refuse the position of Commander ofthe Union Army such a difficult decision for him?

2. Why was the Civil War called the last of the old wars and the first of the new?


Connelly, Thomas. The Marble Man: Robert E. Lee and His Image inAmerican Society. New York: Knopf, 1977.

Dowdy, Clifford. Lee’s Last Campaign: The Story of Lee and His MarchAgainst Grant, 1864. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1994.

Freeman, Douglas Southall. R.E. Lee: A Biography. 4 vols. New York:Simon Publications, 2001.

Lee, Robert E. Memoirs of Robert E. Lee. Ed. A.L. Long. Virginia: The Blueand Gray Press, 1983.

Thomas, Emory. Robert E. Lee: A Biography. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997.

Wert, Jeffrey D. General James Longstreet: The Confederacy’s MostControversial Soldier. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994.

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Introduction

On April 1, the Battle of Five Forks, a coordinated assault bythe Federals crumbled Lee’s right flank and provided thelong-sought-after opening that he had waited nine months

for. On April 2, Lee was dictating a dispatch when his headquarters receiveda direct hit. Making his way to Petersburg, he planned to use the cover ofdarkness to join Joe Johnston. He dictated a fateful message to JeffersonDavis, the Confederate president: Richmond will have to be “abandoned.”Lincoln was still aboard the River Queen, moving red and black pins aroundto follow the rapidly changing battle. After a diet of sleepless nights, hoveringbetween anxiety and exhilaration, the Union president had been presentedwith some captured battle flags from Five Forks. Lincoln was ecstatic. “Hereis something I can see, feel, understand,” he exclaimed. “This means victory,this is victory.” Grant too could feel it. But even as Richmond and Petersburgstood to fall, the ultimate prize still evaded Grant and Lincoln. Under the cloakof darkness, Lee had escaped across the Appomattox River—and wassteadily forging westward. It was now a race.

III. The Exodus of Richmond

A. As Five Forks was unfolding, an equally dramatic set of events wasoccurring in Richmond.

1. Most Richmonders were unaware of the dire situation unfolding onthe battlefield, and under a blazing sun, thousands crowded intochurches, as they did every other Sunday. In St. Paul’s EpiscopalChurch—the (still-standing) church of Richmond’s elite—was a distinguished group of worshippers: government officials, assortedConfederate officers, and in pew #63, Confederate PresidentJefferson Davis.

2. In a moment forever frozen in the annals of the Confederacy, therector Charles Minnergerode was reading the Habakkuk, when sud-denly a military messenger eased his way through the door. A sex-ton carried a sealed envelope to Davis—it was the news of thenecessity for withdrawal. Davis quickly rose and walked out. Theservice was finished and grew steadily more frantic; in the end, therector explained Davis’s abrupt departure. Then the vast throngsurged to its feet and quickly exited.

3. Outside, stacks of government documents were piled up on thesidewalks by government offices. They were burning. The exodushad begun.

The Suggested Reading for this lecture is Jay Winik’s April 1865: TheMonth That Saved America, part 2, “April 1, 1865,” chapter 2, “The Fall.”

Lecture 4:The Epic Fall of Richmond

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B. Throughout the day, panic mounted, as did the melee, andRichmonders began to fall.

1. A column of refugees began plodding toward all points west. As thecity emptied, the streets became choked with humans, beasts, andall manner of wagons. Soon, the gathering night shook with thesounds of desperation: screaming, swearing, wailing, and the dread-ful sounds of animals being whipped.

2. At 8:30 P.M., Davis and his other government officials boarded aramshackle train, with cars labeled War Department, QuartermastersDepartment, Treasury Department. At 11 P.M., it finally pulled out,jerking and clacking toward Danville, Virginia—the new capital of theConfederacy. The burden of government now fell to city authorities.But even as the minutes ticked by and Richmonders wondered ifthey would be made targets for Yankee vengeance, a new terrorarose: the near impossible task of maintaining order—and then fire.But first, the city militia had given the order to pour thousands of gallons of whiskey into the gutters—it was a grave mistake.

3. Soon, shifty looters ruled the night, and enlivened by the spirits, themelee began in full force. Prisoners, escaped from abandoned jails,began sacking everything in sight, and a swelling mob ruled thenight. But then the new terror struck: fire.

C. As is common in all military conflicts, the order went out to destroy theremaining military stocks, lest they fall into the enemy’s hands. Thisand a series of orders to destroy the precious tobacco warehouses,were a fatal mistake.

1. A blaze began, and the fires spread. Soon, the flames began to leapfrom one building to the next.

2. Building after building began to come down. Block by block, thesmoke, the heat, and the ash climbed, unimpeded until the NationalArsenal was detonated. Some 100,000 shells went off and the blastswere uncontainable.

3. In the last moments before light, the city almost seemed suspendedin an eerie stillness. At first light, Richmonders realized that all theroutine noises and views that had for so long been a part of theirConfederate lives had changed forever.

4. As the sun rose, the city’s vistas were chilling. The fires still burnedout of control. But everywhere were broken houses, charred build-ings, and dead animals. Many buildings did survive—barely, like thegovernor’s mansion, the oldest continually occupied governor’s man-sion in America.

5. The refugees were the worst sight. Hundreds of families had gath-ered in Capital Square, homeless and penniless, holding what littlethey could salvage.

a. By day’s end, nine hundred homes and businesses weredestroyed. Fifty-four square blocks were virtually eliminated.

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b. Blackened bricks were still hurtling through the skies. Blackenedbuildings were still toppling to the ground, and the heavens werestill choked by fire, and smoke, and the overheated air.

6. Only one bridge remained standing as Lee’s army continued itsretreat. Then the order came: “Blow her to hell.”

D. Within the hour, Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, would beoccupied territory. Union troops, including the black 25th Corps, wereracing to enter Richmond. And racing to meet them was Joseph Mayo,the mayor of the city, asking the Union to restore order and protect thewomen and children.

III. “A Day Never to Be Forgotten”

A. At exactly eight o’clock in the morning came a stunning sight: theConfederate flag that flew on the capitol was taken down and the starsand stripes were run up. Richmond was U.S. property once again. Unionbands played Yankee Doodle and the Star Spangled Banner, and blackand white troops alike marched up Main Street. In the days that fol-lowed, most of white Richmond retreated behind shutters and blinds.

B. The Confederates were devastated. Said one woman: “We covered ourfaces and cried aloud. All through the house was the sound of sobbing.It was a house of mourning.” Or as another Richmonder put it:“Anything would be better than to fall under the United States again!”

1. Said The New York World, “Richmond is indeed most beautiful,in spite of the hideous ruins . . . There is no sound of life but the

A lone Federal soldier stands guard over the remains of the Richmond Arsenal a few days afterthe Union took possession of the devastated city.

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stillness of the catacomb, only as our footsteps fall dull on thedeserted sidewalk, and a funeral troop of echoes bump against thedead walls and closed shutters . . .”

2. To its credit and wisdom, the Union sought to ease the pain of occu-pation. Though martial law reigned, the Union worked overtime to getthe railroads functioning, work parties fought the fires and cleared thestreets, and rations were provided for the starving Richmonders.

III. A Glorious Moment

A. For one group this was a magnificent moment. From the moment Uniontroops entered the city, including a contingent of black troops—shouting“Richmond at Last”—blacks, now free, enthusiastically took to the street.

1. Ignoring the furnace-like heat and the smoke-choked air, they lin-gered for hours, singing and dancing and greeting the Union troops.For these former slaves, what had been foretold in hundreds ofsecretly worded spirituals sung at dusk on thousands of plantationsacross the South had now come to pass. In these early headymoments, it was as if the Richmond heavens had been turnedupside down.

2. The full implications of freedom were not yet clear to all theseslaves, but they did know this, as one ex-slave put it so eloquently:“Bless God, the nigger’s free. No more hoeing of corn for ’dis poorchild, and no more lashes from dat cruel overseer.”

a. What was clear is the newly freed men and women would knowthat the days were finished when women and girls would be tiedto one another by ropes wound like harnesses around their necks.

b. Never again would black men and boys wear heavy iron collarslinked by their wrists cuffed behind their backs.

c. No longer would blacks be taken to wooden blocks to be auc-tioned off as property.

d. And no longer would families be arbitrarily ripped apart.

3. A particularly powerful moment was captured by one reporter, T. Morris Chester, who sat at the desk of a former ConfederateSpeaker in the capitol penning dispatches for the Philadelphia Press.“What a wonderful change has come over the spirit of the Southerndream,” he wrote. Morris was the son of a former slave and the onlyblack correspondent for a major daily paper in the North.

B. The city continued to burn, yet on April 4 one of the most poignantscenes in all of this nation’s history would take place.

1. Abraham Lincoln arrived at Rockett’s Landing because he wanted tosee the former Confederate capitol with his own eyes. Quite sponta-neously, he was surrounded by a sea of black faces. They were thefreed slaves who wanted to get a look at the great man they saw astheir redeemer.

3. Lincoln stretched out a plaintive hand and said, “You are free, freeas air.” A black woman called back, “I know I am free, for I haveseen father Abraham and felt him!” In another touching moment, a

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black man knelt at Lincoln’s feet, and Lincoln wagged a stern fingerat him and said, “From now on you do not kneel to me, you kneelonly to God, you kneel only to your creator.”

C. Then Lincoln declared his desire to see the Capitol. He was taken bycarriage because the flames were still roaring. And then he made hisway to the Confederate White House, recently departed by theConfederate President Jefferson Davis.

1. Once inside, he went from room to room, until he made his way tothe first-floor study often used by Davis. Once there, looking paleand utterly worn out, he asked for a glass of water, took a drink, andthen sat down at Davis’s desk—while Union troops broke into waveafter wave of cheers. “Thank God I have lived to see this day,”Lincoln said. “I never thought I would live to see it.”

2. Lincoln wasted no time in laying groundwork for reconciliation. Hedidn’t want the occupation of Richmond to be a repeat of Sherman’smarch to the sea or the treatment of Atlanta or Columbia. Here, inthe most important city in the Confederacy, restraint would be thewatchword. Lincoln had come, as one aide put it, as a “peacemak-er,” so that all would see that he had no “horns or hoofs.”

3. But Lincoln that day also sternly reminded the Federals of onething—the war was not over. As far as he could tell, the bloodshedcould go on for months, even longer—if not on an organized battle-field, then on a deadly guerrilla terrain. He didn’t want a repeat of thewilderness swings. He wanted Robert E. Lee.

A portrait of freed slaves living among the debris of a still-ruined Richmond in December 1865.

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1. What fatal mistakes were made by Richmond’s city militia as the citybegan to burn?

2. What role did Lincoln hope to embrace after the fall of Richmond?


Catton, Bruce. The Centennial History of the Civil War. 3 vols. New York:Doubleday, 1961–65.

Davis, William C. Deep Waters of the Proud: The Imperiled Union, 1861–65.New York: Doubleday, 1982.

———. Stand in the Day of Battle: The Imperiled Union, 1861–65. New York:Doubleday, 1983.

Lankford, Nelson D. Richmond Burning: The Last Days of the ConfederateCapital. New York: Penguin USA, 2003.

Sears, Stephen W. To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign.New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2001.

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Introduction

Finally, Lincoln had in place a man,U.S. Grant, who would fight thewar to its conclusion. Just as

importantly, Grant gathered men who understoodwhat had to be done and set them to it, whateverthe cost. Despite the constant political infighting ofWashington, both leaders had the strength to trustthe men they’d picked, and the courage to let themget on with it. As Lincoln said to those who wantedGrant fired after the terrible losses of the Battle ofCold Harbor, “I can’t spare this man; he fights!”

III. Lee Retreats South

A. On April 3, Lee’s men continued their retreatto hook up with Joe Johnston farther downsouth. In fact, far from dispirited, the morale of his men was quite high.

1. They knew that every time that Robert E.Lee had been out in the open, where hecould be audacious and aggressive, hehad performed miracles. Freed of the yokeof Richmond, which had been tying himdown for months, Lee was determined toescape Grant’s clutches. And while Grant’sarmy was hot on his heels, Lee’s men had aone-day jump on the Federals. Moreover,Lee was relying on his old ally in this fight: the Virginia countryside.

2. For them to be successful, they had to reach a place called AmeliaCourthouse. There, 350,000 rations of food were waiting. (They hadleft Richmond and Petersburg with everything but one thing: food.)

3. The retreat was an inordinately complicated ordeal.

a. It required the movement of five separate commands of men,moving in long, snaking lines extending over a breathtaking arc ofsome thirty-seven miles of road.

b. There were cartloads of crucial papers and documents of theConfederacy, 1,000 supply wagons, 200 heavy guns, and 4,000horses and mules to pull them.

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The Suggested Reading for this lecture is Jay Winik’s April 1865: TheMonth That Saved America, part 2, “April 1, 1865,” chapter 3, “TheChase—and the Decision.”

Lecture 5:The Chase:

Grant Hot on Lee’s Heels

General Robert E. Lee and his horse Traveller, ca. 1862.

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c. There were the plans of retreat: a key bridge had been washedout, so pontoons had to be sent ahead of time to shore it up.

d. And there were the plans themselves, as the retreat of these end-less streams of men and material had to be coordinated flawlesslyto prevent escape routes from becoming clogged and to set thefoundation for their eventual reunion.

B. Lee was seemingly everywhere, his head held high, his eyes calm,making his presence known and his presence inspiring.

1. Theirs was a story of enormous sacrifice and agony that only thosewho have been pushed to human extremes can comprehend. Menwere crumbling and withering away or dropping off. They were soexhausted or emaciated or hollow cheeked that they literally couldn’tgo on.

2. But many men did press on. They were the strongest and heartiest;they saw victory at second Manassas, at the Seven Days, atFredericksburg and Chancellorsville, and Cold Harbor. Lee knewthat when the time came, this army would fight and fight valiantly.And once at Amelia Courthouse, his men could rest, catch a bit ofsleep, and eat a solid meal before moving on.

3. The contingent “if” for Lee was that everything depended upon aspeedy and uninterrupted retreat, even as his men were subsistingon the meagerest of rations. In the pitch black, Lee posted himselfatop his horse, Traveller, at a fork in the road, and for hours hedirected traffic.

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4. The obstacles were considerable. The men continued on for the better part of two solid nights and one continuous day to keep theirlead. They did this with little sleep and even less respite, over a roughand often unforgiving terrain. At one point, another critical bridge waswashed out; the material to shore up another bridge never arrived.Lee improvised, densely wedging three separate corps over onebridge—delays costing Lee precious ticks of the clock.

5. Meanwhile, there were signs of growing peril as Grant’s men wereincreasingly nipping at Lee’s heels with their cavalry.

III. The Retreat Grows Desperate

A. Amelia courthouse came into view, a sleepy little town of unpavedstreets, white houses neatly tucked behind tumbled roses, a few weath-ered fences, and small shops converging around a grassy square.

1. The men arrived in the tens, then the hundreds, and soon convergedaround the town in the thousands, and then, soon enough, aroundmidday, Lee himself appeared.

2. Lee was less interested in his men, who gave him a lusty cheer,throwing up their hands, shouting and waving, than in the rationswaiting for them by the Confederate boxcars. He spurred himselfforward. Upon locating the boxcars, he ordered them opened. They found caissons, ammunition, and artillery harnesses, but not a single ration.

3. Lee was stunned. Ammunition but no food? He was coordinating amassive retreat, holding his army together, and keeping the Union atbay while maintaining almost a day’s lead on most of Grant’s men.But now an administrative mix-up threatened to undo his mightyArmy of Northern Virginia.

4. Lee feared his army could starve, and he had no way of knowing ifthey would secure food on that day, or the next, or the next afterthat. However, he resolved that his men would forage for food onthat day—and the day after, even if it meant squandering his price-less lead over Grant.

5. At dawn on April 5, Lee received the answer from his forage teams.The situation was ugly. Amelia courthouse had been cleaned out. Anumber of Lee’s generals compared the subsequent retreat to adeath march.

B. A cold, hard rain began to fall. Lee could no longer wait at Amelia forrations: with the buffer of the Appomattox River gone and crucial hourslost, Grant’s army was closing in. Lee ordered his men west toBurkeville, and when that route had been cut off, he then ordered themdue west once more, toward Lynchburg.

1. As they marched, Lee’s men gnawed on wild buds and peeled andate the bark of trees. Artillery mules collapsed in roads turned to liq-uid by rain. In every direction, dead horses, men, and mules began tolitter the roadside. Lee learned from captured federal spies that theUnion was gaining ground, and pushed his men that much harder.

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2. Hungry, with barely one night of rest in three days, many men wan-dered forward in a giddy state, slipping in and out of sleep and con-fusion. To complicate matters, after Deatonville, a network of parallelroads collapsed into a single dirt lane, and the men, animals, andwagons were thickly sandwiched in.

3. The toll began to wear on Lee, but he knew that the essential fact ofthe retreat had not changed: drop down south to North Carolina,beyond the Roanoke River. There was still a measure of good news.Lee learned that there were 80,000 rations waiting nineteen milesaway in Farmville.

III. Grant and His Army Sense the Kill

A. Grant was wasting no time. Nor was his army. Fueled by the prospectof victory, the Federals began to show a fighting spirit that had beenlacking since the Wilderness campaign: gone was the dread of anotherCold Harbor; no longer did they fear seeing “the elephant of battle.”

1. Sensing the kill, on April 6, Grant planned to move against Lee’sarmy in a pincer movement—moving ahead of Lee’s army with hiscavalry and pushing forward in the rear.

2. But by all accounts, there was still fight in the half-starved rebels.

B. On April 6, come they did, along an obscure stream called Sayler’sCreek. Three separate battle sites merged into one, and what followedwas one of the most savage battles of the entire war.

1. At one point, a man was holding the colors of Lee’s army, and hegot shot down. Another man rushed up to hold the flag—he was thefirst man’s brother—he too got shot down. A third man rushed up tohold that flag, and he also got shot down. This happened five timesuntil a sixth man survived and planted the flag in a low bush.

2. But for all the ferocity with which Lee’s army fought, by day’s end, itwas the South’s worst defeat of the entirety of the campaign.

C. Lee felt the sting of defeat sharply. During the course of the war, hehad forged a mighty army, waged titanic battles against the enemy, andhelped hold together a fledgling nation. But it seemed every hope haddied. Still Lee refused to be vanquished. On April 7, the next day, hisarmy actually inflicted severe losses upon the Federals, even taking aUnion general prisoner, and his men secured rations in Farmville.

D. Grant, fast on Lee’s heels, sensed victory.

1. Grant’s general, Phil Sheridan, had already telegraphed: “If the thingis pressed, I think Lee will surrender.” Monitoring the telegraph traffic,Lincoln bluntly telegraphed back to Grant: “Let the thing be pressed.”

2. Grant opened a line of communication with Lee, sending him a lettercalling on Lee to surrender. Lee handed the note to his top aide,James Longstreet. Longstreet read the message and handed it back,saying two words: “Not yet.” Lee was thinking of anything but.

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3. But that afternoon, he was approached by an officer on behalf ofseveral in his command, broaching the most dreaded word in theConfederate vocabulary: surrender. “Surrender,” Lee thundered coldly. “Our men are fighting far too bravely ever to think of surren-der.” And he added ominously: “Indeed, we must all be determinedto die at our posts.”

4. The exchange of letters between Grant and Lee continued, but Leerefused to quit. At day’s end on April 8, Grant could not shake hisdoubts about the ever-elusive Lee. By the time he received the sec-ond dispatch from Lee, refusing to surrender, Grant had collapsedwith a severe migraine. When his aide read Lee’s brash response,the aide was furious. But Grant just coolly shook his head, and said ,“It looks as though Lee still means to fight.”

E. Grant had read his old foe’s mind. On the early morning of PalmSunday, Lee had formulated another breakthrough plan. Six days ofrelentless march westward had not dimmed his audacity or his remain-ing men’s courage.

1. Lee would try to slice through Grant’s slumbering army, and if suc-cessful, they would march southward.

2. If necessary, there was a fall-back position; they could make theirway to the Blue Ridge Mountains, where Lee once said that he couldhold out “for twenty years.”

3. At 5 p.m., Lee’s men fought with a special fury to drive a hole inGrant’s army, but then suddenly, they came up against a solid wall ofblue, two miles wide, advancing forward. The apocalyptic messagewas sent back to General Lee from General Gordon: “I have foughtmy corps to a frazzle, and I fear I can do nothing.”

4. At this point, Lee was surrounded on the west, the east, and thesouth. The only direction he could move was north, which was theonly direction he didn’t want to go in.

5. It is at this point that he called for a meeting of his top advisors. Allwere expecting a council of war. And this meeting, in terms of itsimpact not just on the end of the war, but on the Civil War and onAmerica itself, would be one of the most fateful meetings in thenation’s history.

1. What were the differences in the command styles of Lee and Grant?

2. How important was industrial power in the Civil War?


Catton, Bruce. A Stillness at Appomattox. New York: Doubleday, 1990.


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Introduction

Lee’s army was surrounded. It was Palm Sunday, April 9,1865, a day that was fated to go down in history. Seemingly,Lee now had only two choices—surrender or throw his life

on one last murderous fight. He summoned his advisors. General JamesLongstreet joined Lee, along with several others. All were expecting a councilof war; instead, the talk turned to surrender. When a lull occurred, E.P.Alexander, one of the most talented and respected men in Lee’s command,began to plead for a third option. “You know,” he said, “We are proud of yourname and the record of this army. A little more bloodshed makes no differ-ence. We could be like rabbits and partridges in the bushes, and they couldnot scatter to follow us. Two thirds of our army would get away.” Alexanderwas recommending what Jefferson Davis had already called for: guerrilla war.

III. A Long History of Guerrilla Warfare

A. The methods of guerrilla war—insurrectionist, subversive, chaotic—have worked over time with astonishing regularity.

1. Its application is classic and surprisingly simple: shock the enemy byconcentrating strength against weakness. Guerrillas employ secrecy,deception, and terror as their ultimate tools.

2. Guerrillas move quickly, attack fast, and just as quickly scatter. Theystrike at night—or in the day. They hit hard in the rain, or just ashard in sunshine. They may hit the enemy in the rear, or at its infra-structure, or most harmful of all, at its psyche. By luring their ene-mies into endless, futile pursuit, guerrillas erode not just the enemy’sstrength, but the enemy’s morale as well.

3. America saw guerrilla war turned against it with devastating successin Vietnam. But America has not been its only victim.

4. An astounding number of powers, large and small, have been hum-bled by guerrilla war in the last century. The heavily outnumberedBoers in South Africa held off the mighty British empire for fouryears. The Algerian guerrillas fought off the powerful French. The Khmer Rouge used it with great success in Cambodia. TheMujahadeen used it to stave off the mighty Soviet Union inAfghanistan; and the Palestinians have used it with frightening success against Israel in the West Bank.

B. Guerrilla war was well known in the days of the Civil War.

1. The actual word “guerrilla” came from the Spanish insurgency

The Suggested Reading for this lecture is Jay Winik’s April 1865: The Month That Saved America, part 2, “April 1, 1865,” chapter 2, “The Chase—and the Decision.”

Lecture 6:The Fateful Decision:

Guerrilla War?

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against France in the early 1800s, a conflict Jefferson Davis oftenreferred to. In 1807, Napoleon’s mighty legions were mired down inSpain, where they came to grief fighting against Spanish guerrillas.Napoleon referred to this as his “Spanish ulcer,” and the ulcer onlygrew, as it tied down no less than three of Napoleon’s armies.

2. There were other equally well-known examples of guerrilla war famil-iar to Americans in the 1800s. The Thirty Years War and the Frenchreligious wars, the Netherlands against Spain of Philip II, Switzerlandagainst the Hapsburg Empire, revolutionary France in the RoyalistVendee, and Polish uprisings in 1831 and 1861, just to name a fewexamples. At the same time that Lee was making his fateful deci-sion, the tiny country of Paraguay was waging a fierce struggleagainst a triple alliance of Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay, whosecombined population would outnumber it 30 to 1. Paraguay wouldhold these countries at bay for six long years.

3. And there was the example of guerrilla tactics against the British inthe American Revolution. American heroes like Francis “The SwampFox” Marion, Thomas Sumpter, and General Nathaniel Green foughthistoric engagements like Kings Mountain, Cowpens, and GuilfordCourthouse, which the British General Lord Cornwallis spoke of asthe sort of victory “which ruins an army.”

4. The day after Richmond fell, Davis had already called for a dynamicwar of attrition, designed to wear down the North. He said, “We havenow entered upon a new phase of struggle, the memory of which isto endure for all ages. Relieved from the necessity of guarding cities,with an army free to move from point, operating from the interior ofour country, where the foe will be far removed from his base. Let usbut will it, and we are free.”

5. Years later, Charles Adams, the grandson and great-grandson oftwo presidents, would remark balefully: “I shudder to think of whatwould happen if Robert E. Lee had been of the same turn of mind asJefferson Davis.” But was he?

C. From a military point of view, the plan had considerable merit. TheConfederacy was a tangle of swamps and streams and a jumble offorests and mountains. Its people knew the countryside instinctivelyand intimately and had all the talents for bushwhacking, from shootingand riding, to tracking and foraging. Moreover, had they decided to dothis, Lee’s men would constitute one of the most formidable partisanarmies in all of human history.

1. For its part, the Union would have to occupy the entire Confed-eracy—which would entail Federal forces having to subdue andpatrol an area as large as today’s France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland,Germany, and Poland combined. While the Union did control a num-ber of key cities, like Nashville, New Orleans, Memphis, and nowRichmond, it had conquered only a small part of the physical South.As the Romans found out two thousand years before, cities couldbecome useless baggage weighing down the military forces, whatancient commanders called “impedimenta.”

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2. Confronted with a guerrilla phase, Grant’s strategy of exhaustionwould be turned on its head. Rather than a restored United States,in time the country could come to resemble Swiss cheese, withUnion cities here, pockets of rebel resistance there, ambiguousareas of no man’s land in between. From New York to Philadelphia,Washington to Boston, potential targets would abound: banks, busi-nesses, local army outposts, state houses, and on and on.

3. In fact, success had only come in the nick of time for the North. As late as August 1864, the Northern homefront had nearly crumbled first.

a. Some 200,000 men had deserted the Union army; a peace move-ment had been sweeping the country; the Democratic party ran ona peace plank in the 1864 election; and as the great Union jour-nalist, Horace Greeley, had put it: “Our bleeding, bankrupt countrylongs for peace.”

b. Only Sherman’s stunning victory in Atlanta staved off the peacemovement and won Lincoln the election.

c. But in a guerrilla war, the North, deprived of the legitimacy all vic-tors clamor for, would at some point reach a reckoning: at onepoint, would it decide the agonies and cruelties of a guerrilla warwere not worth it? That it would pervert America as a republic?

III. Lee’s Warriors

A. John Mosby was a pint-sized, daring cavalry man.

1. Operating on horseback at night, with stealth and surprise, Mosbyearned the sobriquet of the “Grey Ghost,” and the romance of hisexploits brought him recruit after recruit.

2. Mosby’s partisans mauled Union outposts with such effectivenessand whirlwind fury that the regions stretching from the Blue Ridge toBull Run came to be known as “Mosby’s Confederacy.” The destruc-tion inflicted upon Union Lines was considerable, and Mosby wasdetested accordingly.

3. Union plan after Union plan was employed to subdue or kill or cap-ture him. All failed. While Mosby roamed freely, General Sheridan,himself a blunt instru-ment of war, oncethundered about theguerrilla, “Let himknow that here is aGod in Israel!” Threetimes Mosby waswounded; once he

Mosby’s Rangers

In a photograph taken at Richmondca. 1864, John Singleton Mosby isshown (circled) with some of his men.

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was given up for dead. His obituary actually ran in Union newspa-pers. But by April 1865, Mosby was still very much in action, waitingfor word on what to do next.

B. Hard-bitten cavalryman Nathan Bedford Forrest had pummeled theYanks so often that he became known as the “Wizard in the Saddle,”and many believed he was the best soldier in either army. No less thanthe great Union general Bill Sherman once called him “the mostremarkable man produced by either side,” and Sherman ordered thatForrest be captured or killed if it cost 10,000 lives or bankrupted theU.S. treasury.” Yet Forrest and his men were still at large, willing tofight to the death.

C. William Quantrill of Missouri was one of the most bloodthirsty of all the guerrillas.

1. He and his band were responsible for a raid on Lawrence, Kansas,that literally garnered global attention and shocked the conscience ofthe world. In their raid on Lawrence, Quantrill and his men torchedthe town, rounded up every man and young boy—150 in all—andmurdered them in cold blood.

2. Although Quantrill was dead, there were his understudies: JesseJames and the boys.

D. But as Lee weighed the possibility of guerrilla war, there was one otherthing he had to consider in his decision, Missouri.

1. This guerrilla war reached new points of savagery that were once unthinkable.

a. It was routine for terrorists to ride around wearing necklaces withhuman scalps, noses and ears, teeth, and fingers, as vivid tro-phies to their latest victims.

b. Robbing stagecoaches, harassing citizens, and cutting telegraphwires were all common occurrences.

c. It was no longer enough to kill the enemy. They had to scalp andmutilate. When that wasn’t enough, the dead were stripped andcastrated. When that wasn’t enough, they were beheaded.

d. In one massacre, those who surrendered were clubbed to death,while others were pinned to the ground, their guts spilling out.

e. The wounded were actually far luckier. They met death far morequickly—their throats were slit. As one general put it, these guer-rillas “recognize the life of man less than you would that of a dogkilling a sheep.”

2. Stage lines were routinely attacked, as were steamboats. To run thegauntlet of the Missouri, pilots started to request and receive a thou-sand dollars for a single trip to Kansas. Every two or three days, anew corpse was found floating in the river.

3. In Missouri, the very fabric of civil society was torn apart; all moralsdisintegrated. The true victims were, of course, the civilians. It was

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not unheard of for civilians to undergo torture at the hands of oneside or the other. A favorite tactic was repetitive hanging. One father,as his family watched helplessly, was strung up three times—only onthe last time was the deed done.

4. The efforts of the Union troops were feeble and ineffective—whenthey weren’t doing the terrorizing themselves. Just as often as not,the innocent didn’t know who was terrorizing them: the fabric of lifehad so snapped that townspeople wouldn’t trust their own neighbors.As time wore on, ever greater numbers of people fled to Texas,Colorado, California. Missourians became refugees inside or outsidetheir own state.

III. What Would Lee Do?

A. Lee had the two faces of guerrilla war before him.

1. The first was the face of temptation, that with a little bit more guerrillawar, perhaps he could cleave the South from the North; with a littlemore guerrilla war, perhaps the South could at long last secure its self-determination.

2. Then there was the other face of guerrilla war, of Missouri. Thebloody face of death and destruction and of ongoing chaos. In alllikelihood, a guerrilla war countrywide would be a combination ofthe two, and even at this late date would have a vast impact.

B. In the end, he said “no” to guerrilla warfare, because as he reasoned, aguerrilla war would make a wasteland of everything he loved.

1. Brother would be set against brother, not just for years, but for gen-erations, and such a war would not only destroy Virginia, but quitelikely the country as well.

2. In the end, against the advice of Jefferson Davis, against the adviceof his own men, Lee said “no” to guerrilla warfare.

3. It was at that point that Lee straightened himself up and said, “Sonow, I must go and meet General Grant, and I would rather die athousand deaths than do that.”

4. Ironically, the great warrior’s finest moment came not in war, but inpeace. Lee said “no” to a deadly guerrilla conflict that could havealtered this nation not just for generations, but perhaps for all time.

1. How does guerrilla warfare allow vastly overmatched forces to resist pow-erful enemies?

2. How did the bloodshed in Missouri affect Lee’s decision to abandon the con-cept of guerrilla war?


Castel, Albert, and Thomas Goodrich. Bloody Bill Anderson: The Short,Savage Life of a Civil War Guerrilla. Portland, OR: The Civil War Society.Portland House, 1997.

Connelly, Thomas. The Marble Man: Robert E. Lee and His Image inAmerican Society. New York: Knopf Publishing Group, 1977.

Gallagher, Gary. The Confederate War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress, 1997.

Stiles, T.J. Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War. New York: KnopfPublishing Group, 2002.

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Introduction

It is said the warended with Lee’svain, quixotic

retreat, followed by the surrenderat Appomattox. But the picture isfar richer than that. On April 9, Leewore his finest uniform, expectingto soon become Grant’s prisoner.He rode along that morning withGeneral James Longstreet, unchar-acteristically speaking in mumbledhalf sentences. He was nervous.He knew that centuries of traditionand history did not bode well fordefeated rebels, generals, and rev-olutionaries. That very morning theChicago Tribune editorialized,“HANG LEE,” a sentiment laterrepeated by the New York Times.Just days before, Union VicePresident Andrew Johnson andseveral Senators gave a rousingset of speeches, in which they said,among other things, “Hang Davis,hang Lee, hang them twentytimes!” And this was all said tomuch great cheering. Beyondbecoming the North’s prisoner, Leehad no way of knowing what would happen once the two sides met. If thiswas Lee’s finest day, so too it would be the finest day for his erstwhile adversary, Grant.

III. Ulysses S. Grant

A. Grant is a quintessential American, but history hadn’t always beckonedfor him. Just four years earlier, Grant had been an unsuccessful soldierturned shabby, insolvent Midwestern civilian, known only for the persis-tence of his failures. In fact, his name wasn’t even U.S. Grant—it wasHiram Ulysses.

Ulysses S. Grant(1822–1885)

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The Suggested Reading for this lecture is Jay Winik’s April 1865: The Month That Saved America, part 2, “April 1, 1865,” chapter 4, “The Meeting.”

Lecture 7:U.S. Grant and the

Historic Meeting at Appomattox

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1. As a boy, he was a curious mixture of insecurities and talents. Hewas withdrawn in public and tongue tied around people, yet was awonderful horse rider. The vile stench of his father’s tannery was oneof his earliest memories—which imbued in him a horror for blood, andmost of his life, he wouldn’t eat meat that wasn’t fully charred.

2. His father somehow got his short, scrawny son into West Point,hoping that the army would provide him direction and a living. It didn’t. A clerk at West Point mistakenly put his name down asUlysses Simpson Grant, and instead of correcting it, Grant simplyshrugged his shoulders and that became his new name.

a. He was an unremarkable cadet who read romantic novels ratherthan study hard.

b. He was such a lackluster student that he actually prayed that aCongressional resolution to close West Point would pass.

c. His only real passions were for riding and watercolors, and he could never compare with the more refined Eastern andSouthern boys.

B. Life after West Point was hardly better.

1. He opposed the Mexican War, though he bravely fought in it.

2. He married the sister of his West Point roommate and had four chil-dren. The army dispatched him to a Pacific station, which turned outto be a disaster. He was sickened and secluded and couldn’t evenearn enough money to bring his family out west.

3. A grocery venue collapsed, and so did a plan to raise potatoes. Hissavings wasted away. He began to drink, and faced with theprospect of a court martial, he quit in disgrace. Poverty now staredhim in the face when he returned home.

4. He failed at farming, at bill collecting, and at real estate. He evenhawked firewood on the streets of St. Louis from his boxy wagon,hoping to impress the locals with his faded blue army overcoat. One Christmas, he was reduced to pawning his gold watch to buyfamily presents.

5. Eventually, he hit rock bottom and his father had to bail him out,making him a menial clerk in his leather store in Illinois. Grant’s olderbrother was his boss. By all accounts, everything Grant touched wasa failure.

C. Then the war came, and suddenly Grant found his voice.

1. George McClellan was much too busy to meet with him, and thearmy didn’t give him a post, but the governor did make him a colonelin a volunteer regiment—“the worst in Illinois.” Grant never lookedback. He became the hero at a little battle in Belmont, Missouri, thenat Fort Henry, then at a magnificent battle at Fort Donelson. He tri-umphed in the great battle at Vicksburg, which cut the Confederacyin two, and soon, he was made general in chief of all the Unionarmies—becoming a Northern hero in the process.

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2. He smartly reinvented himself along the way.

a. He trimmed his beard, gave up his pipe for a trademark cigar, andwhittled on sticks during battle. Still, all was not smooth sailing.

b. He would occasionally backslide and take to the bottle.

c. When his army was surprised at Shiloh and suffered fearful loss-es, Grant was labeled a “drunk” and branded an “incompetent.” Itwas said that he fed men heartlessly in the “sausage machine ofbattle.” When an influential Republican leader went to Lincoln andclamored for Grant’s head, Lincoln protested: “I can’t spare thisman; he fights!”

d. But when Grant again suffered frightful losses to Lee in theWilderness and at Cold Harbor, and a mortifying defeat at the Crater during the Petersburg siege, new calls again rose for his head.

e. It was said he was a “butcher.” Even Mary Lincoln said he carednot a wit for human life. And no less than Lincoln observed, “Ithink Grant has hardly a friend left, except myself,” adding, “what Iwant is generals who will fight battles and win victories.”

D. But Grant never lost sight of his goal, which was to crush the enemy. Ina thousand little ways it seemed as though Grant was fated to fight thiscivil war. In battle, what galled him the most was indecision.

1. “In war,” he once roared, “anything is better than indecision. Wemust decide. If I am wrong, we will soon find out and can do some-thing else.” He never whined or pled for reinforcements, or lapsedinto excuses.

2. Lincoln had been saddled with generals who wouldn’t fight, couldn’tfight, or failed to press the advantage when they did fight. Grant wasa breath of fresh air for the weary Union president. Even when Grantwas the idol of the hour in 1864, and the subject of numerous flatter-ing press profiles, Grant never let it go to his head.

3. Grant’s job was always to prosecute the war, and when he made uphis mind, he wouldn’t budge. Thus his famous line: “I will fight Lee ifit takes all summer.” Thus his maxim: “Whatever happened, therewill be no turning back.” But he suffered from anxiety. The signswere all there: the drinking, the migraine headaches, the sleepless-ness, and the physical illnesses.

4. And even for a man of Grant’s iron disposition, none of this couldhave been easy. Five other generals had already seen their fatesand their futures destroyed—McClellan twice—by the fierce generalRobert E. Lee. Grant himself had frightful losses in the Wildernesscampaign. He wept like a baby one night and had the horror of ColdHarbor, but somehow, the next morning, he always got up to facebattle. Now he would be receiving the surrender of no less thanRobert E. Lee.

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III. Contrasting Grant and Lee

A. The contrast between these generals couldn’t have been more profound.

1. Lee was tall and stately; Grant was stubby and rumpled.

2. Lee was fifty-eight, having lived most of his life. Grant was a mereforty-three.

3. Lee was a man of tradition and of the past, closely tied to theFounders, and Grant was a man of the future, a man of the capital-ists, Unionists, and speculators.

4. Lee disciplined his emotions. Grant repressed them—or drank.

5. Lee was a man of enormous passion, with a sublimely romantic quali-ty about him; Grant was a quintessential utilitarian. And Lee was notsimply the general in chief of the Southern armies, but he was alsothe man to whom Lincoln first turned to lead the Union armies.

6. Lee was directly descended from two signers of the Declaration ofIndependence and, by adoption, from George Washington himself.Robert E. Lee was, in effect, the sole scion of the founding father,and he was surrendering to U.S. Grant, the son of a tanner.

B. The actual setting for the surrender took place in a small town calledAppomattox. Appomattox had about a dozen clapboard houses, severalsmall stores, and a winding roadway. It was surrounded by small slop-ing hills. In these hills were men in the thousands, standing at raptattention for this dramatic piece of history to play out.

1. Lee was wearing a magnificent uniform with a gleaming sword by hisside and handsome yellow stitched gloves. Grant would arrive half anhour later, wearing a muddy private’s blouse—quintessentially Grant.

2. In the beginning, they didn’t talk about the war or the surrender; theybegan chatting about the old days, reminiscing. At one point, Grantmentioned that he remembered Lee from the Mexican War, whenLee visited the brigade Grant was in. Even then, Lee was a famoussoldier and Grant said, “I have always remembered your appear-ance, I think I should have recognized you anywhere.” “Yes,” saidLee. “I know I met you on that occasion, and all these times in battleI have often tried to recollect how you looked, but I have never beenable to recall a single feature.”

3. The conversation continued, until finally Lee, not Grant, said, “I sup-pose we should discuss the object of our meeting, the terms underwhich you would receive the surrender of my army.” “Very well then,”Grant said, in his plain-spoken speech.

III. Grant’s Finest Hour

A. If this was surely Lee’s finest day, so too it would be Grant’s. Grantwould do several quite important things in this meeting, and in doingso, he believed he was carrying out the wishes and spirit enunciated byLincoln in their meeting at City Point.

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1. First, he would allow the defeated rebels to keep their sidearms. Thismakes no sense tactically, and no sense strategically if Grant wereworried about the Southerners carrying out guerrilla warfare. ButGrant was trying to say loudly and clearly that the North honoredthese men and wanted them to become countrymen again.

2. Then, upon a personal plea from Lee himself, Grant allowed theSoutherners to keep their horses. Now this made no sense tactically,or no sense strategically, given that there was concern about guerril-la war, but once more, Grant was making a statement. Lee bright-ened. “This will be very gratifying and will do much toward conciliat-ing our people.”

3. Lee mentioned that he had a thousand prisoners he couldn’t feed,and for that matter, his men had no food either. Grant proposedsending 25,000 rations of food across the lines. “Was that enough?”he asked. “Plenty,” said Lee. “I assure you.”

B. The drama continued. Grant introduced Lee to everyone on his staff inthis small living room of the Wilmer McLean House, and Lee shookhands with every one of them. As he grasped Ely Parker’s hand,Grant’s military secretary, who was a Senaca Indian, Lee said, “I amglad to see one real American here,” and Parker is believed to haveresponded, “General, we are all Americans.”

C. The letters of surrender were exchanged, signed, and then Lee him-self emerged outside of the McLean House. He walked down onestep, then another step, then another. He balled his fist and pumped itinto his other hand once, then a second time, then a third time.

1. All the eyes of Grant’s officers and Grant’s men were upon him; youcould cut the tension with a knife. Lee looked left, then right, and asif drawing himself back from a daze, he called out in a half-tiredvoice, “Orderly, orderly.” Lee had barely slept in days, had beenmoving at breakneck speed, and had only eaten one biscuit thatday. He wanted his famous horse, Traveller, to be brought around.Lee mounted Traveller and, as he did, he let out a long sigh, almosta groan, and turned a bright crimson red in the face.

2. What happened next was one of the boldest strokes of the war.Unscripted and unplanned, Grant came out onto the porch, and, infront of all his officers and all his men, made direct eye contact withLee. Grant tipped his hat to salute Lee as an honored, if fallen, foe.Lee reciprocated.

3. Grant later explained that he “felt sad and depressed” at the downfallof a foe “who had fought so long and so valiantly, and had sufferedso much for a cause,” even if it was a cause that he believed wasone of the worst for which a people had fought.

4. One of Grant’s aides summed up the day perfectly: “This will live inhistory. Such a scene happens only once in centuries.”

5. The next day, Grant and Lee met again, while on horseback, andLee promised to do everything in his power to “pacify the country

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and bring the people back to the Union.” This was good news forGrant, for he knew that Lee’s fame eclipsed even his rank, and thatthe entire Confederacy would look to the slightest gesture, to everyword, every motion that Lee made, to decide what to do next.

D. If the spirit of Appomattox was codified on the ninth, and reinforcedbetween the two commanding generals on the tenth, it was thenenshrined in the memories of the fighting men on the twelfth—the dayof the formal surrender of Lee’s army. On this day, Lee’s men were nothanged, but saluted. They were not jailed, but honored. They were nothumiliated, but embraced.

1. Leading the Union to receive the surrender was JoshuaChamberlain, the fighting professor and a hero at Gettysburg. Hehad been wounded, and almost killed, twice.

2. Leading the Confederate surrender was John Gordon, one of Lee’shardest fighters, who had been shot through the face and woundedfour other times. It was a scene for all the ages.

3. As the surrender progressed, Chamberlain suddenly gave the orderfor Union soldiers to “carry arms” as a sign of deepest militaryrespect. A bugle call rang out.

4. At the sound of the machine-like snap of arms, Gordon wheeled hishorse gracefully, dropped his sword point in a salutation, andordered his men to answer in kind, “honor answering honor.”

E. No language can improve upon what was said: “On our part not asound of trumpet more, nor roll of a drum; not a cheer, nor word, norwhisper or vain glorying nor motion of man . . . but awed stillnessrather, and breathholding, as if it were the passing of the dead. Howcould we help falling on our knees, all of us together, and praying God to pity and forgive us all?”

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1. What were the major differences between Grant and Lee?

2. What actions did Grant take during Lee’s surrender to help to lay thegroundwork for bringing the South back into the Union?


Anderson, Nancy S., and Dawn Anderson. The Generals: Ulysses S. Grantand Robert E. Lee. New York: Knopf Publishing Group, 1988.

Chamberlain, Joshua Lawrence. The Passing of the Armies: An Account ofthe Final Campaign of the Army of the Potomac. Lincoln, NE: University ofNebraska Press, 1998.

Simpson, Brooks D. Let Us Have Peace: Ulysses S. Grant and the Politics ofWar and Reconstruction, 1861–1868. Chapel Hill, NC: University of NorthCarolina Press, 1991.

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Introduction

For all the grandeur and dignity of Appomattox, a scene for theages and one of the greatest moments in American history, itmust be remembered that Lee surrendered only his army.

III. The War Drags On

A. With only the Army of Northern Virginia out of action, there were stillthree Confederate armies in the field.

1. With over 175,000 men, the Confederates were prepared to keeptheir gun barrels hot to the bitter end.

2. There was still President Jefferson Davis, his government on therun, calling for guerrilla warfare. And this was not the first time that agovernment had been on the run. It happened in the War of 1812,and then again a number of times in the Revolutionary War.

3. Two major state capitals remained in Confederate hands, in Texasand Florida.

4. The situation was still quite volatile. How much longer would the warlast? One week? Three? In history, the euphoria and inevitability ofone day could dissolve into tragedy and disaster the next.

B. But on April 9, Lincoln felt he could finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.

1. Outside, in Washington, D.C., the city was far less restrained. After Appomattox, five hundred guns boomed throughout the city.There were lawn parties, bazaars, wild saloon gatherings, andtorchlight parades.

2. A crowd of some three thousand people made their way to the WhiteHouse, calling “Speech, speech!” Lincoln put them off, saying hewould give them a speech on Monday.

III. Lincoln Has “Never Felt Better”

A. On April 14, Lincoln awoke refreshed at 7 A.M. Lincoln felt so good thathe decided he and Mary would go that evening to see a play, a comedy,“Our American Cousin,” at Ford’s Theatre.

B. Meanwhile, powerful drama was simmering in his cabinet and in thecountry about what would come next when the war ended.

1. This would perhaps be Lincoln’s greatest challenge: subduing theConfederate forces while laying the groundwork for peace.

The Suggested Reading for this lecture is Jay Winik’s April 1865: The Month That Saved America, part 3, “April 15, 1865,” chapter 5, “The Unraveling.”

Lecture 8:April 14: Decapitation and

the Great Unraveling?

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a. Lincoln believed deeply that the rebels must be able to return totheir homes and see more than desolation and the “hated rule” ofthe North.

b. He believed they would accept citizenship in the Union again.

c. He believed there must be courts, law, and order—or societywould be broken up and the disbanded armies would turn into guerrillas.

d. He lectured his cabinet that there must be “no persecutions, nobloody work after the war is over, no hangings or killings of thesemen, not even the worst of them.”

2. But it was a huge, often rancorous debate. The endless feuds anddebates of reconstruction led to endless delays over postwar policyin his cabinet meetings.

3. Edwin Stanton, the War Secretary, wanted to combine Virginia andNorth Carolina into a single military department, and Lincoln stronglydisagreed, saying it would obliterate state boundaries; we must not“stultify” Virginia, he said, but we must “help her.” Once again,Lincoln was adamant that there would be no trials, no hangings, nofiring squads.

C. Lincoln was so busy that day that he barely had time for lunch. Hereturned to his office, where he had a never-ending stream of inter-views, petitioners, and papers to sign. As it happened, he also met withAndrew Johnson, his vice president—for only the second time since theday of his inaugural.

D. That afternoon, at 3 P.M., Lincoln broke free from the press of activitiesto take a romantic carriage ride with Mary.

E. Sometime after 6 P.M., he and Mary returned to the White House for anearly dinner. Mary had a headache and Lincoln was tired too, but hestressed the need to go to the theatre “to have a laugh.” After dinner,Lincoln went to the War Department to see if there was any news ofJohnston’s surrender. There was no news.

III. The Assassination

A. Delayed by last-minute visitors, Lincoln and Mary entered the presiden-tial carriage around 8:15 P.M. Lincoln’s guard for the evening, JohnParker, had already gone ahead. When the president arrived, he wasalready late, and the theater was jammed.

1. The audience rose to its feet at seeing Lincoln, and the orchestrapromptly played “Hail to the Chief.”

2. As the play continued, the Lincolns’ guard, John Parker, slipped offfrom his post in the hallway outside the state box; it is believed heexited for a quick drink. At 10:07, an official letter was delivered toLincoln by the White House footman. About five to six minutes later,around 10:14 to 10:15, there was a lone muffled sound. Lincoln’sarm jerked convulsively. For a single terrible instant, everyone froze.

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3. A man jumped onto the stage, immediately recognizable to every-one: it was John Wilkes Booth, the famous actor.

4. There was a shriek, at the top of a woman’s lungs: “The Presidentis shot!”

B. Thus began the choreographed decapitation of the Union governmentin Washington, D.C. No other attempt this bold had ever been carriedout, not before or since.

1. At the same time, 10:14 to 10:15,a second attack took place, at thehome of William Seward, justacross from the White House onLafayette Park.

a. It began with the innocent ringof the doorbell. A tall broad-shouldered man, with a hatpulled down over one eye,informed the servant that hehad medicine for SecretarySeward. This was a pretext.

The balcony Presidential Box at Ford’s Theatre as itappeared about a monthafter Lincoln’s assassination.

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b. En route to finding Secretary Seward, four people would bestabbed or attacked. And Seward himself would be stabbed, notonce, not twice, but five times with a large bowie knife.

2. Meanwhile, at the very same time, another grisly assassination wasabout to take place, at the Kirkwood House, just a few blocks away.The target was Vice President Andrew Johnson.

a. Quite by accident, Johnson had also been invited to the play atFord’s, but politely turned it down. He told a friend that he pre-ferred to have a quiet supper, read, and then turn in.

b. He did this not realizing that in the very floor above him was anoth-er deadly assassin, who at 10:15 planned to knock on his door,then plunge a bowie knife through his heart. But at the last second,the assassin got cold feet, and Johnson escaped unscathed.

c. Still, there would be a potential element of doubt cast aroundeven Johnson. Earlier that day, John Wilkes Booth left a shortnote for Johnson, saying: “Don’t wish to disturb you. Are you athome? J. Wilkes Booth.”

d. The note was intended to throw suspicion on Johnson. SinceJohnson would be in line to assume the presidential duties uponLincoln’s death, the note could be interpreted to mean thatJohnson was in league with the conspirators.

C. There is a great deal of turmoil and confusion surrounding thisevening. It was the first-ever assassination of the U.S. president inAmerica’s history.

1. People feared being murdered in their beds. People feared seeingtheir cities torched. In fact, at one point, the Chief Justice of theUnited States, Salmon Chase, would call it a night of horrors.

2. As word of the multiple attacks seeped out, the Northern capitol wasimmediately paralyzed by the series of vicious attacks. Within hours,drums were rolling, bugles sounded, and the cavalry plunged intothe city. Martial law was quickly declared. Sometime after midnight,Grant, who could have also been shot at Ford’s—Lincoln had invitedhim—was ordered to return to Washington to defend the city.

3. The New York Times wrote that evening that if this country had beenFrance, all of the country would have been in bloody revolution bythe next day.

4. Clearly, Booth’s plans to sow chaos had more than worked. The uglyseed of assassination appeared to be falling on fertile ground. In themeantime, all attention in the beleaguered Northern capitol hadturned to saving Abraham Lincoln—on whom so much depended.

1. What did Lincoln believe were the necessary conditions of peace?

2. What effect did the assassination attempts on the night of April 14 have onthe North?


Baker, Jean H. Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography. New York: W.W. Norton andCompany, 1989.

Freeman, Douglas Southall. Lee’s Lieutenants: A Study in Command. NewYork: Macmillan Library Reference, 1942–1944.

———. R.E. Lee: A Biography. 4 vols. New York: Simon Publications, 2001.

Williams, T. Harry. Lincoln and His Generals. New York: RandomHouse, 2000.

Woodworth, Steven. Jefferson Davis and His Generals: The Failure ofConfederate Command in the West. Lawrence, KS: University Press ofKansas, 1990.

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Introduction

The glow ofAppomattox wasquickly erased

by the attempt to decapitate theUnion government. With AbrahamLincoln’s life hanging by a thread,this is a good time to consider theman who is regarded as one of thenation’s two greatest presidents.

III. Lincoln the Icon

A. Lincoln’s greatness comesfrom many things: He endedslavery, saved the Union,and stitched the countrytogether toward war’s end.

B. Lincoln seems to rise aboveother presidents onto a differ-ent moral plane.

1. He was a riddle of quirksand eccentricities, but hisself-derogation was real.

2. He abounded with contra-dictions. He was a man ofgreat moral fiber who wasa shameless politician; aman of vast intellect whoscoffed at great works ofliterature or historybecause they were “tooheavy for an ordinary mindto digest,” a man of humble origins who blazed with ambition andnever quit.

3. More books have been written about Lincoln—a staggering seven thou-sand at one estimate—than about any other single American figure.

C. Neither history nor our love affair with Lincoln should obscure just howill-prepared he was for the job, or the many mistakes he made early on.

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The Suggested Reading for this lecture is Jay Winik’s April 1865: The Month That Saved America, part 3, “April 15, 1865,” chapter 5, “The Unraveling.”

Lecture 9:Abraham Lincoln:

On Whom So Much Depends

Abraham Lincoln(1809–1865)

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1. Before becoming president, he had not held office in over twodecades—and had never been more than an obscure one-term congressman.

2. Unlike a George Washington or an Andrew Jackson, he had virtuallyno military experience.

3. Unlike a Thomas Jefferson or a James Monroe, he had virtually nodiplomatic experience. He had never lived abroad. In fact, he hadnever even traveled abroad.

4. He had no executive experience, almost no formal education, nopowerful mentors, and had never overseen anything larger than atwo-man law office. He was risk averse, to boot.

5. And he was a man so prone to gloom that he once mourned, “Ilaugh because I cannot weep.”

6. Yet by some combination of design and fate, he would become this nation’s greatest war president.

III. Lincoln’s Presidency Was Never Easy

A. From the outset of the war, Lincoln, inexperienced and disorderly,found he had to address daunting matters for which prescriptions andprecedents scarcely existed.

1. Every executive agency, from the White House to the army, was inabsolute turmoil.

2. Cabinet members worked at cross-purposes—when they weren’tundercutting the president.

3. A military machine had to be built from scratch.

4. And there was the “Negro” problem, stalking and haunting Lincolnat every turn. Finally, Washington itself was a whirlwind of disarrayand confusion.

5. He made tough, controversial decisions. Indeed, the decision to goto war was the loneliest, most difficult of decisions.

B. On his first day on the job, in March of 1861, the newly elected presi-dent had already faced a military crisis: Fort Sumter was surrounded byRebel batteries, and supplies were running dangerously low. Lincolnprevailed on the best and the brightest in his cabinet for advice.

1. Legendary General Winfield Scott, the hero of the Mexican War anda towering fixture in Washington, counseled surrender of the fort—itwas, he said, of inconsequential military value.

2. Gideon Welles, Lincoln’s Naval Secretary, also favored giving it up.

3. So too did Lincoln’s own Secretary of State, William Seward.Echoing the sentiment of much of the country, he emphatically want-ed to evacuate: In fact, behind Lincoln’s back, Seward had alreadybrazenly assured Southerners that Sumter would be evacuated.

4. But Lincoln would soon rip back—no concessions. A supply fleetwould be dispatched to Sumter. Soon thereafter, Sumter fell. Lincolnshrewdly announced the Rebels had fired the first shot, “forcing” on

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him a fateful decision. And thus would commence a chain of eventsleading to a great war that would drag on for four bloody years andconsume some 620,000 lives.

C. Why didn’t Lincoln give up or give in?

1. At several points during the war, it looked as though theConfederacy could, or even would, win, or at least not lose.

2. The worst riots in American history, the four-day New York draftriots of 1863, raged after Gettysburg and left anywhere from 105 to one thousand dead, with black residents lynched and hung fromlampposts. There was no respite; storms of anti-war protests slicedthrough the Midwest.

3. Once he had finally appointed U.S. Grant, it was unclear whether thepublic would persevere with him—the Democrats were demanding animmediate cessation of hostilities (“after fours years of failure . . . bythe experiment of war,” they roared). As the appalling number ofUnion casualties rose in 1864, the North was still far from victory, and200,000 men had deserted the Federal army.

4. The toll on Lincoln’s psyche was brutal.

a. During the Battle of the Wilderness in May 1864, when Grant andLee squared off for the first time, Lincoln barely slept for four days,wandering the White House corridors (“I must have some relief fromthis terrible anxiety,” he muttered over and over, “or it will kill me”).

b. While Bill Sherman was stalled in the West, Grant suffered some52,000 casualties in those six weeks alone—nearly as many aswas lost in the entire Vietnam War. At Cold Harbor, he lost afrightful nine thousand men in one hour—three times as many ashad died in Pickett’s Charge the year before. Lincoln himselfdeclared the “heavens hung in black.”

c. But when Congress and even Mary Lincoln called for Grant’shead after this terrible carnage, Lincoln snapped back: “I can’tspare this man; he fights!”

III. Lincoln’s Complex Personality

A. While it is hard to appreciate in this day and age, Lincoln was as loathedin his time as he was loved. And the critics of Lincoln never let up.

B. When the war stalled, Lincoln was a man tough as nails. By the sum-mer of 1864, Lincoln understood that only the toughest measureswould save the Union. He embraced the concept of total war, an esca-latory measure that would have been unthinkable at the conflict’s out-set—and which the South itself rejected—and let loose General BillSherman. Sherman’s March to the Sea unleashed hundreds of miles ofdeath and destruction. The South got the message.

C. Lincoln’s heart was never hard.

1. Having waged total war, at war’s end it was he who spoke of a mag-nanimous peace to knit a badly divided country back together (“Withmalice toward none; with charity for all . . .”).

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2. It was he who stood up to the radical Republicans and those voices inhis own cabinet who wanted harshness and revenge, instead embrac-ing charity and compassion toward the defeated Confederates.

3. It was he who sketched the postwar vision to knit the country togeth-er in April 1865, thus hoping to spare America the grisly wake ofinternecine war.

D. In watching Lincoln evolve as president, one comes away with the sensethat he began to feel as if he had been elected as president, as part ofsome grander design—not just to end slavery, but to save the Union.

1. And then, for perhaps the first time in his life, he felt not the familiardrumbeat of ambition or of political satisfaction, but of destiny. Andwhen that happened, he was a rock.

2. Perhaps this even explains his curious, almost indifferent attitudetoward his own death. “I long ago made up my mind that if anybodywants to kill me, he will do it,” Lincoln remarked. And this too: “It isimportant that the people know I come among them without fear.” OnApril 14, as Lincoln readied himself to go to Ford’s Theater, he hadbeen told several times that the evening would be a particularly dan-gerous one; yet he refused to take along an extra guard.

IV. A Man of Destiny

In the end, the destiny that so compelled Lincoln was the Union—and the Nation.

A. He will always be remembered as freedom’s champion when it wascalled into question, but he must also be judged as the nation’s cham-pion in its darkest hour. He refused to quit, or to compromise, or to takethe easy political way out when it presented itself.

B. By war’s end, Lincoln had become achanged man, and most certainly achanged president. Operating fromthe presidential cocoon, he could nolonger escape the judgement of hiscountry—or of history. The recordsuggests he did not overly dwell onhis own legacy, but he was deeplyconscious of it for the country.

C. Never was that more apparent thanon the evening of April 14 and theearly morning hours of April 15, asLincoln fought his last, desperatebattle—to survive.

One of the last photographs of Lincoln, believed takenin February 1865 by Alexander Gardner (1821–1882).

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1. What were some of Lincoln’s most noticeable contradictions?

2. What major challenges did Lincoln face when he came into office?


Catton, Bruce, Terrible Swift Sword: The Centennial History of the AmericanCivil War. London: Phoenix Press, 2001.

Eisenschmil, Otto, and Ralph Newman. The Civil War: An American Iliad.New York: Grosset & Dunlap, Inc., 1956.

Lincoln, Abraham. The Fiery Trial: The Speeches and Writings of AbrahamLincoln. William E. Gienapp, ed. New York: Oxford University Press,USA, 2002.

Sandburg, Carl. Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and the War Years.New York: Galahad Books, 1993.

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Introduction

After a nearly successful attempt to decapitate the Uniongovernment, Americans saw just how crucial AbrahamLincoln was to the Union. The question was whether or not

it would all come undone.

III. Lincoln’s Final Hours

A. On April 14, the Union president was fighting for his life.

1. In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, Booth had leapt from thestate box, a difficult two-story leap, onto the stage. There he deliveredhis now infamous line—“Sic semper tyrannis” (thus always to tyrants).He hobbled to the backstage door—he broke his left shinbone fromthe leap—mounted his horse in the alleyway outside, and then gal-loped off into the night.

2. The theatre was in an uproar. A young doctor, Charles Leale,attended Lincoln. It looked bad; he could see the president’s breathwas getting shallow, weaker by the second. Leale began artificialrespiration to revive the president. Finally, Lincoln began breathingon his own, but the doctor felt this was only temporary, pronouncingsadly, “The wound is mortal. It is impossible to recover from.”

3. That didn’t stop the doctors from trying. Lincoln was taken across thestreet to a dingy rented room of a little row house—WilliamPeterson’s house. Two more doctors arrived, including Lincoln’s per-sonal physician, and the Surgeon General of the United States.

B. The scene at Lincoln’s bed was chaos.

1. Press bulletins went out every half hour on a web of telegraph wiresupdating the North on the president’s conditions.

2. A procession of government officials made their way into the dim littleroom, while the doctors continued to try everything at their disposal.

3. A crowd gathered outside as rain drummed on the roof and win-dows. Mary Lincoln alternated between bouts of weeping and quiet.With the president dying, and the government now at a virtual stand-still, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton took charge.

4. As the night wore on, Lincoln’s breath grew fainter and fainter, asMary Lincoln moaned uncontrollably: “Oh my God, have I given myhusband to die?” she shouted. “Love, live but one moment to speakto me once—and to our children.” But at 7:22 A.M., the nine-hourstruggle came to an end. Lincoln was dead.

The Suggested Reading for this lecture is Jay Winik’s April 1865: The Month That Saved America, part 3, “April 15, 1865,” chapter 6, “Will It All Come Undone?”

Lecture 10:Post-Assassination:

Would It Now All Come Undone?

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5. Silver dollars were placed on Lincoln’s eyes, and Secretary of WarEdwin Stanton raised his right arm and saluted the fallenCommander in Chief: “Now he belongs to the ages,” he pronounced.

III. The Aftermath

A. There were great questions that hung over the Union in those fatefulhours and fateful days ahead.

1. With Lincoln dead, Seward attacked (his life hung by a thread, andhe would live—barely), and Johnson a target, the North was in tur-moil over the possibility of a far-reaching Southern plot.

2. As Lincoln’s body was taken back to the White House, just five daysafter the giddy glow of Appomattox, it was the voices of revenge thatcould be heard the loudest. Everywhere there was talk of the streetsrunning red with Confederate blood.

3. Martial law was in effect, and all city and government functions, pub-lic and private, were hastily cancelled. And black was also ubiqui-tous, as were the telltale signs of mourning.

B. But all did not come to a standstill. It couldn’t. For all the grief and rage,it was still the tricky business of war that most mattered.

1. There were still two major capitals that remained in Rebel hands,Austin, Texas, and Tallahassee, Florida; and there were still threeConfederate armies that had to be subdued.

2. Union government was not just temporarily confused; for all intentsand purposes, it was headless.

C. There was a real possibility for a crisis of state on that evening and inthe days ahead. There was temptation for regency-style governmentand temptation for a cabinet government.

1. On this evening and in the difficulthours afterwards, Edwin Stanton,the Secretary of War, functioned aspresident, vice president, secretaryof war, secretary of state, and com-mander-in-chief. He was not elect-ed—in fact, Stanton had tenderedhis resignation just days earlier. For that matter, weeks earlier hehad suffered a nervous collapse—brusque, humorless, at times paranoid, deeply devoted toLincoln, Stanton became the U.S. government.

2. There was one other storm cloudhanging over the nation in those difficult hours. Who would becomethe president? Edwin M. Stanton

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a. The U.S. Constitution was riddled with vexing ambiguities andwas fraught with omissions.

b. As sorrow gripped the Union, there was the last haunting ques-tion: Would it all come undone?

D. A bit of history is revealing.

1. The Founders always intended that in the event of the death of thepresident, the vice president would temporarily act as president, andthere would be a special election to decide the permanent president.

2. They didn’t anticipate the naked ambition of a vice president half acentury later. The first succession test was when William HenryHarrison died of pneumonia on April 4, 1841. He had been presi-dent only one month. During this period, the cabinet, including thesilver-tongued Daniel Webster, then secretary of state, decided thatVice President John Tyler would become president (as opposed to“act” as president), but on the condition that Tyler would be a figure-head, and the cabinet would run the country. Washington was alivewith fierce speculation as to what would happen next.

3. Tyler, however, surprised everyone by announcing his intention notto be acting president but to become the president. Stunned byTyler’s vehemence, the cabinet backed down. Nonetheless, confusion reigned.

4. Tyler was determined and waged an energetic two-month cam-paign—in effect, a political campaign—to secure recognition as pres-ident. The campaign paid off, and by June 1, Tyler had secured therecognition of both houses in a special session of Congress. Still, thefight was not over, and as late as 1848 constitutional confusionremained, as did lingering action about the propriety of Tyler’sactions. Even the State Department sent its correspondence to himas “ex-vice president.”

5. But to a great extent, Tyler’s daring strike had, at least in the publicmind, successfully trumped constitutional provisions. So by the timethat Lincoln lay dying, tradition, not the Constitution, would apparent-ly dictate that Andrew Johnson would accede to the presidency.

III. Who Was Andrew Johnson?

A. Like Lincoln, Andrew Johnson was from humble origins, born inNorth Carolina.

1. Illiterate until the age of twenty-one, he had a mercurial and fast-ris-ing political career in Tennessee: governor, congressman, and theninfluential U.S. senator.

2. Where Lincoln was a steady voice of the emerging middle class,Johnson was an unabashed populist, one of the first politicians to practice class warfare.

3. A fierce Jacksonian democrat and self-proclaimed champion of thecommon man, his hatred of the ruling planter class was matchedonly by his deep love of the Union. When the war erupted, he was

the only senator from the South toremain loyal to the North, promptingLincoln in 1864 to make him his vicepresidential candidate. But unlikeLincoln, Johnson was a Democrat.

4. Unlike Lincoln, who radiated calmand reasoned eloquence in a crisis,Johnson was prone to bluster andhyperbole. And Johnson also drank,making a fool out of himself with arambling speech at the inaugurationfor Lincoln’s second term.

B. Official Washington despised him. TheSenate Republican Caucus sought toforce him to “resign.” And Lincolnthought so little of him that he did notspeak to him after the inaugurationuntil, of all days, April 14, when theyspoke for half an hour.

1. Yet, for all the doubts about what was to be done next, once Lincoln died, there was no talk of a regency or cabinet government,nor flirtation with a military dictatorship, tempting though this mayhave been.

2. The peaceful, orderly changing of the guard commenced withoutundue holdup, as though it were routine. And less than three hoursafter Lincoln’s death, his face grave, Johnson had been sworn in as president.

C. Yet unlike Lincoln, Johnson had his own plans for dealing with therebels, and every indication was that it would be harshly.

1. Twelve days earlier, he made a passionate speech in Washington,saying, “Treason is a crime—and crime must be punished.”

2. And also this: “Treason must be made infamous and traitors must beimpoverished,” by which he meant, their necks stretched at the endof a rope. This included Davis, Lee, and the rest of the Confederateleadership—a stark contrast to Lincoln’s hopes that the Southernleadership would quietly disappear. As Mary Chesnut, the Southerndiarist, wrote: “Yesterday these poor fellows were heroes. Todaythey are only rebels to be hung or shot at the Yankee’s pleasure.”

D. Yet while emotions in the North seesawed between violent extremes,and most of all, grief for the fallen president, this sentiment was not universally shared.

1. A small but highly influential core of radical Republicans were over-joyed by Johnson’s ascension to the presidency. Even SenatorSumner, a friend of Lincoln’s, saw in his murder the “judgement ofthe Lord” and believed providence had ordained Johnson.

Andrew Johnson(1808–1875)

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2. Calling Lincoln’s “known tenderness” toward the rebels “repugnant,”influential representative George Julian of the Joint Committee ofthe Conduct of War declared, “The feeling was universal that theascension of Johnson to the presidency would prove a Godsend to the country.”

3. Julian also called on Johnson to hang Davis—in the “name ofGod”—and Lee, and when that was done, not “to stop.” The nextday, on Easter Sunday, the new president met with Julian’s joint committee.

4. There, the Ohio senator summed up the feelings of most of themembers of the Joint Committee when he boasted, “Johnson, we have faith in you. By the Gods, there will be no trouble now inrunning the government.”

E. The government would have to run. The situation was incendiary, witheveryone in Washington facing enormous pressure.

1. There was the financial pressure of fighting a war that was costingthe North a staggering $4 million a day.

2. There was Jefferson Davis and his cabinet, who were still on therun, exhorting his people to carry out guerrilla war.

3. There were the concerns that guerrilla warfare might go on for years.

4. There was perhaps the most frightful question of all: would Lincoln’sdeath pump new life into the numerous pockets of resistance stillalive in the Confederacy?

5. Of all the Confederates in the field, one notorious rebel would havesomething in particular to say about this: Nathan Bedford Forrest.

1. What was the Founding Fathers’ intent for selecting a new president afterthe death of a president?

2. What challenges did the U.S. government face after Lincoln’s death?


Catton, Bruce. Terrible Swift Sword: The Centennial History of the AmericanCivil War. London: Phoenix Press, 2001.




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Introduction

The Union had to overcome a transition crisis in whichAndrew Johnson became the new president. But in view ofthe turmoil and chaos rippling through the North, and the

change of leadership, new concerns arose about this state of affairs pumpingnew life into the Confederacy. One source of those concerns was the contin-ued existence in the field of Nathan Bedford Forrest, whom admirers called“the wizard of the saddle.” He was widely regarded as the South’s most inno-vative and ruthless fighter. The great Union general Bill Sherman called him“the most remarkable man our Civil War produced on either side.” But he alsocalled him “that devil” or the “very devil” or simply “the devil,” and demandedthat Forrest be hunted down “if it costs ten thousand lives and bankrupts theU.S. Treasury.”

III. Nathan Bedford Forrest

A. Forrest was a bit of an enigma in the war. The son of an illiterate black-smith, and one of ten children, he hadvirtually no formal education, but whathe lacked in education he more thanmade up for with a steely drive andinstinctive entrepreneurship.

1. Through shrewd investments—andslave trading—he amassed a fortune he claimed was worth $1.5 million.

2. When the war came, Forrest enlistedas a private, assembling an entirebattalion out of his own pocket.

3. He began with no battlefield experi-ence or training, but by war’s end,he had become a lieutenant gener-al, the only man in either army to do so.

4. He quickly emerged as the war’smost dreaded cavalry commander,known for his fierce exploits andmiraculous escapes.

5. Four times he was wounded in bat-tle and survived. Twenty-nine times

The Suggested Reading for this lecture is Jay Winik’s April 1865: The Month That Saved America, part 3, “April 15, 1865,” chapter 6, “Will It All Come Undone?”

Lecture 11:The Volatile Ones:

Nathan Bedford Forrest and Bill Sherman

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Nathan Bedford Forrest(1821–1877)

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he had horses shot out from beneath him. Thirty times he personallykilled Federals in combat.

6. His temper was sharp, quick, and merciless. Once, a man in hiscommand challenged Forrest, then drew his gun and fired. Struck atpoint-blank range, a reeling Forrest stabbed his assailant with apenknife. The unlucky soldier stumbled across the street and laterdied; Forrest was back in the saddle thirteen days later.

7. Forrest’s killer instinct was matched only by his aggressiveness andability to win against long odds.

B. A master of the lightning raid, Forrest was invariably one step ahead ofthe pursuing Federals.

1. In July 1862, with a force of only 2,500 men, he was able to pindown an invading army of forty thousand.

2. Forrest, with his swashbuckling tactics, struck at times and places ofhis own choosing: his cavalry captured garrisons, destroyed rail-roads, took bridges and depots, and escaped before the Union knewwhat hit them.

3. Time and again, he outfought Union garrisons, while tearing up milesof railroads, or inflicting great casualties upon the enemy. His enemywas twice his size; it didn’t matter.

4. In one week in 1864, Forrest struck at Sherman’s supply lines with avengeance, capturing 2,300 Union soldiers and seizing eight hun-dred horses in just two weeks.

5. The colorful, hotheaded Forrest delighted in his exploits. He con-tributed his own warfighting maxim that would come to guide militarytheoreticians right up to the Iraq war in 2003: “I get there firstest withthe mostest.”

C. In 1864, Forrest was blamed for massacring in cold blood surrenderingblack Union soldiers at Fort Pillow in 1864.

1. The facts of the ghastly slaughter were in some doubt. What was notin doubt was that evidence of this cruelty further galvanized theNorth to stop him. They failed.

2. At Brice’s Crossroads in Mississippi, Forrest routed an eight thou-sand man Union force assembled by Bill Sherman.

3. For Sherman, this rout was too much. He declared that Forrest couldno longer be allowed to roam loose; so he diverted two full divisions,fifteen thousand men, to “follow Forrest to the death.”

D. But even for Forrest, by April 1865, the future was arriving with a grim vengeance.

1. His men were exhausted by months of hard riding and fighting.

2. He was also facing General James Wilson, a protegé of Grant’s, whohad assembled the largest cavalry ever put together in NorthAmerica—thirteen thousand battle-hardened men.

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3. The two clashed fiercely. After a series of intense skirmishes overforty-eight straight hours, Forrest suffered his first defeat of the war,at Selma on April 2, 1865.

4. For three days and nights he pushed his men, through rain andthunder, slaughtering a Union Cavalry detachment en route to the backwoods of Alabama. There, he would regroup and plot his next moves, and it was around this time that he learned ofLincoln’s assassination.

E. Driven by his single-minded pursuit of battle, he easily would havemade the adjustment to a prolonged guerrilla campaign—should heonly decide.

1. From the field in mid-April, Forrest looked like anything but a manwho was ready to quit.

2. But to a great extent, Forrest was operating in an information vacuum.

a. Unlike the North, where news immediately traveled over a web oftelegraph wires. The Confederacy, or much of it, was a wasteland.Thousands of miles of telegraph wires and railroad tracks hadbeen torn up by the Union.

b. Forrest did know Lincoln was dead, but he had conflicting reportsabout whether Lee had actually surrendered.

c. He also believed that Grant had lost some 100,000 men to deser-tion. As to taking to the hills, his strategy was to wait and decideas more information trickled in.

3. Meanwhile, others were looking to Forrest for a prolonged guerrilla campaign.

a. As the prominent Baltimore journalist William Glenn put it: “Forresthas genius, popularity and power. If his and Joe Johnston’s armyfall back to Texas . . . an army of 50,000 men with plenty of grassfor horses and mountain ranges for defense could work miracles.”

b. But before miracles could be worked, Forrest was waiting fordefinitive news of Lee and Grant.

III. William Tecumseh Sherman

A. If the South had its Nathan Bedford Forrest, the North had its Bill Sherman.

1. It was Sherman alone in this war who grasped the true meaning ofthe maelstrom of total war: that the enemy should be hit, and hithard, targeting not just opposing armies but the industrial potentialand population that lies at the heart of the enemy itself.

2. This entailed no more and no less than outright demoralization anddevastation of the enemy, if not the outright specter of extinction. It meant attacking not just brigades but villages, rebel armies, butalso rebel cities, creating not just outright death but long lines ofstarving refugees.

3. It was terror every bit as much aswarfare, “scorched-earth” policiesdesigned to bring the enemy to itsknees. This awesome strategy wasthen, and remains today, controver-sial and is often seen as violating all the rules of war. ButSherman was unapologetic.

B. Sherman was edgy and ill-temperedand cared little for social decorum. Hisclothes were rumpled and his mannerseven worse. But behind this facade wassheer iron. He talked rapidly, in a highvoice, about anything under the sun.He was filled with grand ideas, but wasalso meticulous in detail. He had aknack for being on the cutting edge. Hehad been a banker, an investment bro-ker, and a lawyer; he wrote one of thefirst official memorandums about theCalifornia gold rush. He was the fosterchild of a prominent U.S. senator,Thomas Ewing, and he married his foster sister. Among the guests athis wedding were President Taylor and the senatorial giants DanielWebster and Henry Clay.

C. Though he came from Ohio, Sherman loved the South. But more thanthat, he loved the Union.

1. He almost didn’t make it in the war, and unlike most other WestPointers, he didn’t fight in the Mexican War. He acquitted himselfwell at Bull Run, and even more so at Shiloh.

2. For the rest of the war, he was at Grant’s side in one manner oranother. When Grant became Commander-in-Chief, he madeSherman his Commander of Western Forces.

3. It was a wise choice by Grant. The greatest military turning point ofthe war was probably in 1864. Grant had been pummeled in battleafter battle in the Wilderness and had settled down to a maddeningsiege. The Northern Peace movement was at a high point, and itlooked as though McClellan could defeat Lincoln for the presidency.Sherman too looked as though he had stalled. “Why don’t Grant andSherman do something?” the people began to ask.

D. Sherman decided to ignore the enemy army altogether and insteadsavage the spirit of the South.

1. In a daring move, he abandoned his supply lines and led his sixty-twothousand men to Atlanta and from there to Savannah and the sea.

2. He said, “I can make the march and make Georgia howl. I will cut aswath to the sea and cut the Confederacy in two!”

William T. Sherman(1820–1891)

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3. His juggernaut of a war machine was unstoppable—and ruthless.When he took Atlanta on September 2, his soldiers torched every-thing of military value, and much that wasn’t of any military value.They ransacked the city and battered it beyond recognition. Longlines of innocent civilians fled the city; more than 1,500 noncombat-ants. When Sherman’s legions finally embarked toward the sea-coast, Atlanta lay behind a smoldering ruin.

4. He laid waste to a 285-mile corridor, leaving a cloud of destructionand plunder in his wake. In December, he sent a jaunty wire toLincoln: “I beg to present you a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah.”

5. Then he commenced on his most fearsome effort yet, his march toColumbia, South Carolina, 425 miles.

a. The destruction that he wrought was far more intense and com-prehensive than even in Georgia. He laid a path of ruin, hundredsof miles long; this was no longer war, but sheer vengeance.

b. The destruction of Columbia, South Carolina, the capitol of thestate, was near total.

E. Two weeks later, Sherman was in North Carolina; the looting and theburning ended—Sherman was looking forward to wrapping up the endof the war.

1. There were a number of sharp little clashes—at Averasboro andBentonville. The dilapidated Rebels fought bravely and Shermanwent out of his way to limit the conflict.

2. Because his own soldiers, lean, hardened men of the West, werethemselves exhausted. His men “dreaded”—to quote him—thethought of “chasing” Johnston’s army out west and in the deepSouth. They themselves were ready for “peace,” on almost anyterms. They were also sick of war.

3. Contrary to myth, Sherman had little taste for direct combat. It wouldbe almost impossible to see him dispatching his men as Lee did atPickett’s Charge at Gettysburg, or as Grant did at Cold Harbor. Healways preferred maneuver warfare.

F. Sherman himself was riddled with fears at this late stage in March.Then came April of 1865.

1. His latest morbid concern was of anarchy breaking out all over theland. Far more than the world knew, he knew the Union was broke.For all its glory, the mighty Northern armada was exhausted, and theSouth itself was a near wasteland, with much of it in peril of starving.

2. It was against this troubled backdrop that he feared that JoeJohnston would take his army of some 22,000 men into the moun-tains, “breaking his army up into small bands” and “prolong the warindefinitely.” This was what the Spaniards had done to Napoleon,and he had little stomach for it happening here. It is little wonder thathe could scarcely contain his delight when he received a commu-niqué from Joe Johnston on April 14, asking to meet with him to dis-cuss terms of “exterminating the existing war.”

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1. What were the characteristics of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s fighting style?

2. In what ways did Sherman embrace the concept of total war?



Connelly, Thomas, and Archer Jones. The Politics of Command: Factionsand Ideas in Confederate Strategy. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana StateUniversity Press, 1973.

Davis, William C. An Honorable Defeat: The Last Days of the ConfederateGovernment. New York: Harcourt, 2001.

Luz, E.B., and Barbara Long. The Civil War Day by Day: An Almanac1861–1865. New York: Da Capo Press, 1985.

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Introduction

With Lincoln’s assassination, the situation in the field wasstill extremely volatile. Three rebel armies remained active,with Joe Johnston being the principal general. The Union

was financially broke, and the Northern armies were weary of more war.Nathan Bedford Forrest, the great cavalryman, waited for word as to what to do next. Bill Sherman, who had cut a swath to the sea, had made theSouth tremble. And there was the new Union government, now deprived of Lincoln’s leadership.

III. Johnston and Sherman

A. On April 17, Bill Sherman and JoeJohnston met for the first time. UnlikeAppomattox, the two generals retiredinto the Bennett House, a small ram-shackle house belonging to a localfarmer. This was not a formal surrender,but soon, it would develop into an intri-cate dialogue that would last for a full tenand a half days.

B. The second day, Johnston, Breckinridge,and Sherman met. They all agreed thatslavery was dead.

1. Sherman grabbed a piece of paperand wrote out his terms for surrender.

2. The terms were anything but simple.But the upshot was that they offered abasis to end the war across the board,thereby preempting a guerrilla conflict.The terms, however, were conditional,subject to the approval of civilian authorities on both sides. As duskgathered, both Sherman and Johnston had left the Bennett Housenegotiations thinking that they had ended the war.

III. All Hell Breaks Loose

A. When the new president and the cabinet received the terms, AndrewJohnson was livid.

1. To Johnson, Sherman had overstepped his bounds; no military manhad the right to decide such matters.

The Suggested Reading for this lecture is Jay Winik’s April 1865: TheMonth That Saved America, part 3, “April 15, 1865,” chapter 7, “Surrender.”

Lecture 12:The Surrender Continues

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Joseph E. Johnston(1807–1891)

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2. Also to Johnson, the terms smacked of being too generous, looking asthough the war would end almost as though it had never been waged.

3. The cabinet was even more enraged.

a. Both Stanton and Attorney General James Speed feared thatSherman was preparing to march north and institute a military coup.

b. Speed worried that Sherman may have “immediate designs on thegovernment” and that he was “plotting to make himself a dictator.”

4. It was decided that Grant would undertake a secret mission to talk toSherman. Such was the tenor of these late April days that afterLincoln’s assassination the scent of conspiracy and turmoil that hadripped through Washington now shifted from the Confederacy atlarge to Sherman himself.

B. Grant left under the cover of darkness; it would take him two days tomeet up with Sherman, on April 24. Sherman was fuming, pacing theroom of his command post like a “caged lion.”

1. But Grant was just the man to handle Sherman. Grant handled thematter with a deft touch, and Sherman responded accordingly.

2. Sherman was one of the most prescient men in the entirety of thewar. When the war began and Lincoln called up enough men onlyfor a three-month skirmish, Sherman had wagged an angry finger,saying the war would go on for many years and cost many tens ofthousands of lives. For that, the press had called him crazy.

3. Though confident that the war was nearly over, Sherman still felt“sick” and “powerless” over the course of events after Lincoln’sassassination. Watching the disorderly events in the capitol, he won-dered who was there “to give order and shape to the now disjointedelements of the government.”

C. Under the strict orders of Andrew Johnson and Edwin Stanton, andunder the watchful eye of U.S. Grant, Sherman gave Johnston a bluntnew ultimatum.

1. Hostilities would resume in forty-eight hours unless Johnston surren-dered before that time on the same terms as were given to GeneralLee at Appomattox. In other words, Sherman had little choice but tobe poised for one last terrible march of death—if not for weeks andmonths of lingering pursuit of rebels who had taken to the steep,rugged mountains of Georgia and beyond.

2. Grant was taking no chances. Without having told Sherman, Granthad also ordered General Sheridan with his cavalry and a corps ofinfantry to move toward North Carolina “as soon as possible.”

III. For the Confederates, the Mix Was Equally Volatile

A. While Washington had promptly vetoed the Bennett House Agreement,Confederate President Jefferson Davis had actually approved it—largelybecause he anticipated that the North never would.

1. Cradling Sherman’s most recent demand, Johnston asked for furtherguidance. He wired back, “Have you instructions?” And back from

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the Confederate cabinet came words that Johnston had dreaded:“Retreat and fight on.”

2. Johnston was to take as many of his twenty-two to twenty-five thou-sand men and fall back to Georgia with his cavalry and as manyinfantry as possible. In short, what Lee had said “no” to atAppomattox, Davis was now ordering Johnston to make come topass: a guerrilla campaign.

3. There were still three battle-hardened Rebel armies: NathanBedford Forrest, Richard Taylor, and Kirby Smith in the West, alongwith Davis and Johnston. They controlled upwards of 175,000 men,still united by flickering national spirit.

4. Many citizens of the Confederate States of America had hardly givenup. As one Southern lady put it on April 16: “What is it that sustainsme? It is faith in the Country. Faith in the Cause, an earnest beliefthat eventually we will yet conquer!”

5. To be sure, they weren’t going to conquer at this late date, but thetinder was there, waiting a spark. The maddening cacophony of warcontinued, as small but deadly skirmishes took place—in Munford’sStation, Alabama; in Hendersonville, North Carolina; and in Kansas,by Fort Zarah.

B. Terrible questions hung over the nation.

1. Would the country devolve into bloodshed and chaos and furthercivil strife?

2. Would the country devolve into the French Revolution scenario,more civil war, more barbarism, hatred, and revenge?

IV. Robert E. Lee Steps on the Stage Once More

A. It is at this point that a handful of men tipped the balance toward peaceand reconciliation.

1. Robert E. Lee was, at this time, essentially stateless, a paroled pris-oner of war living in occupied territory. Beyond the heartache of thewar and the heartbreak of the defeat of his proud army, his ownfamilial possessions had been ransacked by the Union.

2. But Lee never revealed any bitterness. Still, he was depressed,sleeping late and often. The sight of the Con federate capital,burned and destroyed as it was, must have wrenched his soul.

3. The slightest word from Lee, even a veiled hint that could be mis-construed, could have done much to reignite Southern passions andbreathe new life into the Southern forces still at war. As one of Lee’scolonels once said, “You have only to blow the bugle.”

B. Resisting the temptation to call on the Confederacy to take advantageof the Union’s temporary disarray, Lee went in the other direction,toward peace.

1. Near month’s end, Lee sent a letter to Jefferson Davis. Lee hadalready sent a formal report of his final operations, losses, and surrender. Lee was no longer a general of anything; he had no

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responsibility to send another letter to Davis. But Lee, always akeen student of public opinion, wanted to shape the course ofevents even further. In his letter to Davis, he took dead aim atDavis’s proposed new “phase” of warfare, of guerrilla warfare. Leetold Davis it must not be fought, it probably couldn’t be won, and itshould not be waged.

2. Lee did something else remarkable. He gave an interview to aNorthern journalist, to Thomas Cook of the New York Herald. Leewanted the widest possible audience for his words.

a. Lee condemned the assassination of Lincoln, calling it the most“execrable” and “deplorable” of all measures.

b. He celebrated the end of slavery, saying that the best men of theSouth had long wanted to do away with this institution.

c. Days before, whenever Lee said “we” he meant the South; justdays before, whenever Lee said the country, he meant the“Confederacy.” And yet he was freely speaking as a citizen of theUnited States and calling on all other Southerners to becomegood citizens of the United States.

d. Lee would not become a citizen of the United States in the fiveyears left of his life, nor for another hundred years thereafter. Leewould also promise, and this too is important, “to make any sacri-fice or perform any honorable act that would tend toward therestoration of peace.”

V. Jefferson Davis

A. On the run, Jefferson Davis chose to ignore Lee’s words. But not sowith the Confederate generals remaining in the field.

1. Most prominent of these was Johnston, who on April 25 had beentold to retreat and continue the struggle. But Johnston wasn’t goingto Texas or Georgia or anywhere else. Ignoring his president’sorders, he instead followed Lee’s example and contacted Shermanto meet one more time.

2. On April 26, Sherman and Johnston met to conclude the surrender. Itmay have lacked the fanfare and pomp of Appomattox, but was notless dignified and magnanimous. Responding to Sherman’s gestures,Johnston told his men to “restore tranquility to our country.”

B. “Our country”: In bits and pieces this phrase was coming to mean Northand South, one and the same. The combined impact of Lee’s andJohnston’s surrenders was profound. As word spread, remaining com-manders followed suit as well.

1. General Richard Taylor surrendered to Edward Canby in Alabama.

2. Kirby Smith also surrendered.

3. John Mosby gave up the ghost as well.

4. And Nathan Bedford Forrest, upon hearing of Lee’s and Johnston’s actions, surrendered on much the same terms as had Lee and Johnston.

1. What steps did Robert E. Lee take to contribute to the movementtoward peace?

2. What role did Johnston play in avoiding the guerrilla war that JeffersonDavis was calling for?


Cooper, William J., Jr. Jefferson Davis, American. New York: KnopfPublishing Group, 2001.

Dodd, William E. Jefferson Davis. Lincoln, NE: University of NebraskaPress, 1997.

Sherman, William T. Memoirs of General William T. Sherman. New York: Da Capo Press, 1988.

Wyeth, John Alan. That Devil Forrest: Life of General Nathan BedfordForrest. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989.

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Introduction

One by one the remaining Confederate generals in the fieldsurrendered, following the lead of Robert E. Lee, and not ofJefferson Davis. Yet before true reconciliation could be

attained, two obstacles had to be removed: Davis was still on the run—andso was Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth.

III. Jefferson Davis: On the Run

A. Since the fall of Richmond, Davis’sskeletal government—twelve railroadcars, a government on wheels, hadbeen clanking from one makeshift capi-tal to the next: Danville, VA; Charlotte,NC; Abbeville, SC; and Irwinville, GA.At each step along the way, the Con -federate president had done everythingin his power to ignite the waningSouthern heart, even as he remainedthe last symbol of a dying Confederacy.

B. It was an odd role for Davis. When theSouth first seceded, he didn’t evenwant to be president—he wanted to bethe secretary of war.

C. Throughout his presidency, he was asickly man; he was frail, gaunt, andagitated, and he suffered from a neu-ralgia that would eventually render himblind in one eye.

1. As president, his executive manage-ment was poor; he could never reallydecide whether he wanted to be president or secretary of war, and inseeking to do both, it could be argued he did neither well.

2. Davis was either ill, short-tempered, or autocratic. He was also thin-skinned, feuding with governors, feuding with his cabinet members,feuding with his generals. And he was fatally unimaginative.

D. In the Confederacy’s darkest hours, he never gave up, not until thebitter end.

1. When he first learned about Lee’s surrender, it struck him like a blow.

The Suggested Reading for this lecture is Jay Winik’s April 1865:The Month That Saved America, part 4, “Late Spring, 1865,”chapter 8, “Reconciliation.”

Lecture 13:The Final Obstacles to Reconciliation

Jefferson Davis(1808–1889)

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2. By April 15, he had covered an astonishing 400 miles, and he wasmoving not by train but was escorted by a small cavalry band.

3. To Davis’s horror, he learned of Johnston’s insubordination and surrender on April 26. Yet he was still unwilling to give up the fight.He continued to move deeper south, pledging not to leave Con -federate soil as long as there were men willing to fight for the cause.

4. Yet on May 2, when he huddled with his military aides and cabinet,he believed he could somehow end the panic gripping the South,and that the people would once again rally. He gave it everything hehad, and even spoke eloquently. But at this stage, he displayedmore fervor than judgment, and it was too late.

5. His aides and cabinet all agreed with Lee. Any attempt to prolongthe conflict would be a “cruel injustice.” Davis was a thoroughlyshaken man. He muttered, “then all is lost.”

E. Yet Davis refused to quit. In his final flight, he was dignified. His dwin-dling procession crossed into Georgia. The Union had put a $100,000price tag on his head, accusing him falsely of complicity in Lincoln’sassassination. The search for Davis intensified.

F. On May 10, it happened. Amid talk of hanging and treason, JeffersonDavis was captured by Union cavalry, who taunted him mercilessly.Davis was treated like a common criminal, or a vulgar demagogue. Itwas also said, falsely, that he had tried to escape wearing women’sclothing. But what was not in doubt was that the last vestige of theConfederate government had ceased to exist.

III. John Wilkes Booth

A. But for it all to end, John Wilkes Booth needed to be captured.

1. Since Easter Sunday, April 16, an unprecedented manhunt had beenunderway for Booth and his accomplices. Every vessel in the Chesa -peake Bay, the Potomac River, and the Virginia Shores was scoured.A reward of $50,000 was put on Booth’s head; lesser amounts for his accomplices.

2. Soon the prisons were overflowing with hundreds of suspects andpotential conspirators. Booth’s accomplice, Lewis Powell (aka LewisPaine), was caught; as was George Atzerodt and a host of other tangential accomplices.

B. For days, Booth had been on the run and hiding. The night of theassassination, he had escaped across the Potomac.

1. For a time he stayed at Mary Surratt’s tavern—she was later hungas a result.

2. He made his way to Dr. Samuel Mudd’s house in Maryland, where aleg splint and crude crutches were fashioned for him. Within sixdays, Mudd would be arrested and Booth’s slit riding boot wouldbe found.

3. With an ever-growing number of Union troops combing the country-side and manhandling local residents, Booth was having troublehiding even in the midst of a notoriously pro-Southern population.

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4. On April 21, however, Booth and Herald got a break crossing thePotomac into Virginia. They sought refuge at the Richard Garretttobacco farm, which was so isolated that news of the assassinationhad not yet reached them. Booth began to plot his final escape toMexico—but his luck ran out on April 25.

5. A detachment of Union cavalry passed right by the Garrett farm. Theyeluded the Unionists still, but their anxious reaction deeply rattledtheir hosts. Richard Garrett told Booth and Herald that they were nolonger welcome. Booth persuaded Garrett to allow them to sleepthere one last night. But Garrett refused to allow them into the house;they would have to sleep in the tobacco barn.

6. Around midnight, Union troops got another tip, and the dragnetquickly closed in and surrounded the tobacco barn. Herald surren-dered, but Booth refused. Cradling his three pistols, Booth asked fora sporting chance to shoot it out. A Union officer twisted some hayinto a rope, lit it, and threw it into the back of the barn, which soonbegan to burn.

7. As Garrett’s barn went up in flames on April 26, Booth made a movetoward the barn door. A shot rang out. Booth pitched over face first.He was still breathing, but barely. In the half light that precedes dawn,Union soldiers dragged him away and placed him on the porch of theGarrett farmhouse. Soon, John Wilkes Booth was dead.

III. The End of the War

A. As long lines of refugees crept home, news of the war’s end spreadrapidly across the Union. In the South, it moved more slowly. How wouldthe country put itself back together again? These final days turned noton the issues of battle or war, but on politics and justice. Foremost wasthe question of healing. Could these two distant sides reconcile?

B. Even as the guns of war grew still, emotions still seethed.

C. The South had lost two-thirds of its assessed wealth—a staggering sta-tistic. By late April 1865, there were only faint echoes of the once lively,hot-blooded antebellum era. In every direction, there was a broad socialnumbing that would affect generations in the war’s aftermath.

D. By contrast, the picture in the North was more mixed. They had foughta great victory and won. The Union had been preserved. It was onething for the country to be kept together by force of arms, quite another,as Lincoln had so fervently recognized, to bind up its wounds.

E. Over 620,000 lay dead—one-twelfth of the North, and a staggeringone-fifth of the South. Yet somehow, America would not succumb tothe temptation of vengeance or guerrilla war. There would be none ofthe continuing bloodshed and turmoil that had afflicted so many othernations throughout history.

1. What did Johnston mean when he called Lincoln’s death a calamity for the South?

2. What were Jefferson Davis’s shortcomings as president?


Blackett, R.J.M. Thomas Morris Chester: Black Civil War Correspondent: HisDispatches from the Virginia Front. New York: De Capo Press, 1991.

Catton, Bruce. This Hallowed Ground: The Story of the Union Side of theCivil War. New York: Book Sales, 2002.

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Introduction

With the president assassinated, his killer apprehended, andthe war finally over, the healing process at long last began.

III. Mourning Lincoln

A. The healing process began first in the North, with Lincoln’s funeral.

1. On April 19, Lincoln’s casket spent its final hours lying in state in the East Room of the White House. Outside, the sun beamed, butinside, the White House was covered in black. Lincoln’s coffin restedamid a bed of flowers, with roses at his feet.

2. When the services began, six hundred people crowded into theroom. All of official Washington was there: President Johnson, thecabinet, the Supreme Court, leading senators, generals, and thediplomatic corps. At one end, General Grant sat alone, wearing ablack mourning crepe wound around his arm. In full view, he wept,and later said that this was the saddest day of his life.

3. With machine-like efficiency, the coffin was taken to a funeral pro-cession that wound its way up Pennsylvania Avenue. A riderlesshorse with Lincoln’s boots led the way, along with a detachment ofblack troops. The mourners trudged to the steady, muffled roll ofdrums, while battalions and regiments followed, then wounded sol-diers. And behind them, four thousand black citizens marched quietlyalong. In their wake, heavy artillery rumbled.

The Suggested Reading for this lecture is Jay Winik’s April 1865:The Month That Saved America, part 4, “Late Spring, 1865,”chapter 8, “Reconciliation,” and epilogue, “To Make a Nation.”

Lecture 14:What Happened to Make a Nation?

Part of Lincoln’s funeralprocession making its wayalong Pennsylvania Avenuefrom the White House tothe capitol building.

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4. The procession reached the Capitol, where Lincoln lay in the rotundabeneath a portrait of George Washington. For two days, thousandsof people filed through to pay their last respects.

5. The next day, April 21, a nine-car funeral train bore Lincoln from thecapital—it would make a fourteen-day journey back to Illinois, retrac-ing the exact route that the newly elected president had taken toWashington four years earlier.

a. All along the route, people gathered, watching in silence as thetrain rolled by.

b. In Philadelphia, mourners stretched a line three miles deep. InNew York City, the procession continued for four hours. One signread, “mankind has lost a friend and we a president.”

c. The procession continued: in Buffalo, then Cleveland, where tenthousand mourners braved a cold, steady rain. In Indianapolis, thetrain glided by bonfires. And then Chicago.

d. Then finally Springfield, Illinois, Lincoln’s home. During this wholeprocession, thousands of mourners brought flowers, lilacs, roses,lilies, blossoms, anything in bloom. Thus was born a newAmerican tradition: laying flowers at a funeral.

B. After mourning came pageantry—two days of national catharsisand unity.

1. On May 22, the emblems of mourning were taken down.

2. Washington had two days of the grand review of the armies of therepublic. Miles upon miles of the stars and stripes were everywhere,as the triumphant Union armies marched down PennsylvaniaAvenue from the Capitol—some 150,000 men all told.

a. The first day was dominated by the mighty Army of the Potomac,Grant’s army, the machine that halted Lee at Antietam, stymiedLee on day three at Gettysburg, chased him week after week inthe bloody Wilderness, and finally subdued him at Appomattox.

b. The next day was the turn for Sherman’s army—the men of theWest. Unlike Grant’s army, these men were lean, tall, and bony,with the rough, gaunt look of the West. These were the men who took Atlanta, marched to the sea, burned Columbia, andmade the South tremble. The crowd loved them. “Hurrah!” theyshouted. “Hurrah!”

Union dead at Gettysburg, July 5, 1863.

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III. What Now in the South?

A. Once-proud Confederates struggled to reintegrate themselves into theUnited States and to become “good citizens,” as Robert E. Lee hadurged. Too often uncelebrated through history, and at the time too littlenoticed, the process of reintegration began.

B. To be sure, though, the process proceeded awkwardly, in fits and starts.

C. Things were changing in America. Walt Whitman explained it this way:“Strange, is it not, that battle, martyrs, blood, even assassination shouldso condense a Nationality.” T. Morris Chester, the black correspondentfiling dispatches from the old Confederate capital, also observed thesechanges: “Strange as it may seem,” he noticed, “All classes of personsin Richmond are heartily rejoiced to be in the Old Union of a grand andgreat country, many of them rebels from the beginning.”

1. In truth, this was a subtle but important point to understand whathappened in April 1865. In a profound but real sense, a link of histo-ry had been destroyed. Regionalism would always be a factor inAmerican life, but destroyed was any serious thought of futuresecession. It used to be said before the war that the United States“are.” In the days after April 1865, it became the United States “is.”

2. Much hard work remained, but much had already been accom-plished. By war’s end, the states alone were no longer America, andAmerica was no longer simply states. Gone forever was talk of repli-cating other civilizations—a new Rome, or a new Athens, or even anew London.

D. However, there would be one area that would challenge the newnation—the question of emancipation. Treatment of the new black citi-zens in America would remain a problem in this country for a good hun-dred more years, if not longer. But there were important changes. Nolonger would blacks be sold like animals, or mothers ripped from chil-dren, husbands from wives, sister from brother. Blacks would be ableto choose where they lived, and what they did; how to educate theirchildren and themselves; where and whom one married, and instead ofbeing property, owning property. It was a great moment fervent withhope and possibilities.

E. But in time, the path to freedom would become a difficult road for manyblack Americans and others.

1. Postwar America would be marred with the Ku Klux Klan, horrific violence, and in the South, black codes nearly as restrictive as theantebellum laws governing free blacks before the war.

2. In the North, it wasn’t always much better. In the Northern states,poll taxes, literacy requirements, and property qualifications wouldrestrict black freedoms every bit as much as in the South.

3. Yet for all the repression, brutality, and violence, something else wasaccomplished in April 1865.

F. Is America still fighting the Civil War, with debates over the Confederateflag, states’ rights, reenactors, and all the rest?

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1. Today, differences are invariably resolved peacefully, through thepolitical process. Unlike other countries that have suffered from civilwar, there is no discussion of secession or breakup of the country.

2. Even if one looks at the aftermath of the Civil War, at the years ofrepression and violence often waged against blacks, it is noteworthythat this violence was not done with the goal of liberating the Southor creating a new country.

G. In the end, for all the changes and turmoil, the idea of America as anation became the most compelling idea for the country.

1. To be sure, political tastes come and go; political fashions change,and heated arguments are feverishly waged—about political candi-dates, political parties, policies, and government itself.

2. But on one idea there would continue to be unity: the idea of the nation.

3. Across the Potomac, the guns had fallen silent. The bittersweetprocess of rebuilding had begun.

III. Why Was America Unique?

A. How did America escape the cruel edicts of history? How did weescape the ongoing bloodshed and violence that wracks so much ofthe world in the horrific wake of civil war?

1. More than anything else, it came down to a handful of men who rose above the passions and hatreds of the day, above the calls for revenge and vengeance and the calls for guerrilla war and continuing secession.

2. It began with Abraham Lincoln, who sketched the vision at City Pointof a magnanimous peace. It was Lincoln who stressed the the nationmust become “brothers and countrymen again,” and that there mustbe no hangings, no bloody work. It was Lincoln who gave his magnifi-cent second inaugural in which he called for “malice toward none.”

3. After Lincoln, there were his two generals, U.S. Grant and BillSherman. Both of these generals were advocates of total war, tosavage the South, advocates of doing whatever it took to bring theSouth to its knees.

a. Yet it was Grant at Appomattox who brilliantly and generouslyhandled Robert E. Lee, and later in the month, when a courtthreatened to indict Lee for treason, it was Grant who stepped inand said it must not happen.

b. There was Sherman, who said, “War is hell and you cannot refineit,” who burned Columbia and cut a path of some six hundredmiles of death and destruction. But it was also Sherman whoalways said, “When this war is over, I will share with you my lastcracker,” and he did indeed, with his generosity toward JoeJohnston in their Bennett House negotiations.

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B. It sometimes takes two sides to create a lasting peace, a true healing,and fortunately, that is the case of what happened in the United States.

1. Ironically, paradoxically, the man who had so bedeviled AbrahamLincoln, Robert E. Lee, would turn out to be the most important part-ner in peace to Abraham Lincoln, even after his death.

2. The personal sacrifices were often great. In the end, AbrahamLincoln gave his life for this vision. And Robert E. Lee would only livefive short years of his life, brokenhearted, and he would not becomea citizen for the rest of his life, nor another hundred years thereafter.

3. In the end, April 1865 is the story of one month. April 1865 is thestory of how America went from being a loose confederation ofstates to becoming one nation. April 1865 is the story of character.April 1865 is the story of leadership. And in the end, April 1865 is thestory not just of war, but of peace.

The Eternal Light Peace Memorial stands on the site of the first day’s battles at the GettysburgNational Military Park, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Over 7,800 soldiers from both sides died in theseveral engagements that took place over a three-day period from July 1 to July 3, 1863.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated the memorial on July 3, 1938, the seventy-fifth anniver-sary of the battle. More than two thousand Union and Confederate veterans were on hand for theceremony. The monument has a perpetual flame with an inscription reading “Peace Eternal in aNation United.”

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1. What factors contributed most powerfully to the healing process of the nation?

2. What is implied by the phrases “the United States is” and “the UnitedStates are”?


Bayly, R. Marks, and Mark N. Schatz, eds. Between North and South: AMaryland Journalist Views the Civil War: The Narrative of William WilkinsGlenn, 1861–1869. New York: Associated University Presses, 1976.

McPherson, James. Battle Cry of Freedom. New York: Oxford UniversityPress, 1988.

Stern, Philip Van Doren. An End to Valor: The Last Days of the Civil War.New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1958.

Trudeau, Noah Andre. Out of the Storm: The End of the Civil War, April–June,1865. Louisiana State University Press, 1995.

United States Government Printing Office. War of Rebellion: Official Recordsof the Union and Confederate Armies. 128 vols. Reprint. Wilmington, NC:Broadfoot Publishing, 1985 (1880–1901).

Woodward, C. Vann. Mary Chesnut’s Civil War. Boston: Yale UniversityPress, 1981.

�Questions

Suggested Reading



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Suggested Reading for This Course:


Other Books of Interest:

Anderson, Nancy S., and Dawn Anderson. The Generals: Ulysses S. Grantand Robert E. Lee. New York: Knopf Publishing Group, 1988.

Baker, Jean H. Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography. New York: W.W. Norton andCompany, 1989.

Bayly, R. Marks, and Mark N. Schatz, eds. Between North and South: AMaryland Journalist Views the Civil War: The Narrative of William WilkinsGlenn, 1861–1869. New York: Associated University Presses, 1976.

Berkin, Carol. A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution. NewYork: Harcourt, 2002.

Blackett, R.J.M. Thomas Morris Chester: Black Civil War Correspondent: HisDispatches from the Virginia Front. New York: De Capo Press, 1991.

Boorstein, Daniel J. The Americans: The National Experience. New York:Vintage, 1965.

Castel, Albert, and Thomas Goodrich. Bloody Bill Anderson: The Short,Savage Life of a Civil War Guerrilla. Portland, OR: The Civil War Society.Portland House, 1997.


———. The Centennial History of the Civil War. 3 vols. New York:Doubleday, 1961–65.

———. Terrible Swift Sword: The Centennial History of the American CivilWar. London: Phoenix Press, 2001.

———. This Hallowed Ground: The Story of the Union Side of the Civil War.New York: Book Sales, 2002.

Chamberlain, Joshua Lawrence. The Passing of the Armies: An Account ofthe Final Campaign of the Army of the Potomac. Lincoln, NE: University ofNebraska Press, 1998.

Connelly, Thomas. The Marble Man: Robert E. Lee and His Image inAmerican Society. New York: Knopf, 1977.

Connelly, Thomas, and Archer Jones. The Politics of Command: Factionsand Ideas in Confederate Strategy. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana StateUniversity Press, 1973.

Cooper, William J., Jr. Jefferson Davis, American. New York: KnopfPublishing Group, 2001.

Davis, William C. An Honorable Defeat: The Last Days of the ConfederateGovernment. New York: Harcourt, 2001.

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Other Books of Interest (continued):

Davis, William C. Deep Waters of the Proud: The Imperiled Union, 1861–65.New York: Doubleday, 1982.

———. Stand in the Day of Battle: The Imperiled Union, 1861–65. New York:Doubleday, 1983.

Dodd, William E. Jefferson Davis. Lincoln, NE: University of NebraskaPress, 1997.

Donald, David Herbert. Lincoln. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.

Dowdy, Clifford. Lee’s Last Campaign: The Story of Lee and His MarchAgainst Grant, 1864. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1994.



Freeman, Douglas Southall. Lee’s Lieutenants: A Study in Command. NewYork: Macmillan Library Reference, 1942–1944.

———. R.E. Lee: A Biography. 4 vols. New York: Simon Publications, 2001.

Gallagher, Gary. The Confederate War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress, 1997.

Kirkland, Edward C. The Peacemakers of 1864. New York: Macmillan, 1927.

Lankford, Nelson D. Richmond Burning: The Last Days of the ConfederateCapital. New York: Penguin USA, 2003.

Lee, Robert E. Memoirs of Robert E. Lee. Ed. A.L. Long. Virginia: The Blueand Gray Press, 1983.


Luz, E.B., and Barbara Long. The Civil War Day by Day: An Almanac1861–1865. New York: Da Capo Press, 1985.

McPherson, James. Battle Cry of Freedom. New York: Oxford UniversityPress, 1988.

Murrin, John H. “A Roof Without Walls: The Dilemma of American NationalIdentity.” Beyond Confederation: Origins of the Constitution and AmericanNational Identity. Eds. Richard Beeman, Stephen Botein, and EdwardCarter II. University of North Carolina Press, 1987.

Oates, Stephen B. With Malice Toward None: A Life of Abraham Lincoln.New York: HarperCollinsPublishers, 1994.


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Other Books of Interest (continued):

Sears, Stephen W. To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign.New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2001.

Sherman, William T. Memoirs of General William T. Sherman. New York: Da Capo Press, 1988.

Simpson, Brooks D. Let Us Have Peace: Ulysses S. Grant and the Politics ofWar and Reconstruction, 1861–1868. Chapel Hill, NC: University of NorthCarolina Press, 1991.

Stern, Philip Van Doren. An End to Valor: The Last Days of the Civil War.New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1958.

Stiles, T.J. Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War. New York: KnopfPublishing Group, 2002.

Thomas, Emory. Robert E. Lee: A Biography. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997.

Trudeau, Noah Andre. Out of the Storm: The End of the Civil War, April–June,1865. Louisiana State University Press, 1995.

United States Government Printing Office. War of Rebellion: Official Recordsof the Union and Confederate Armies. 128 vols. Reprint. Wilmington, NC:Broadfoot Publishing, 1985 (1880–1901).

Wert, Jeffrey D. General James Longstreet: The Confederacy’s MostControversial Soldier. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994.

Williams, T. Harry. Lincoln and His Generals. New York: RandomHouse, 2000.

Woodward, C. Vann. Mary Chesnut’s Civil War. Boston: Yale UniversityPress, 1981.

Woodworth, Steven. Jefferson Davis and His Generals: The Failure ofConfederate Command in the West. Lawrence, KS: University Press ofKansas, 1990.

Wyeth, John Alan. That Devil Forrest: Life of General Nathan BedfordForrest. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989.

These books are available online through www.modernscholar.com or by calling Recorded Books at 1-800-636-3399.

RECORDED BOOKS

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Recorded Books also offers these other courses in American historyby renowned scholars H.W. Brands, Alan Dershowitz, David Painter, and Ellen Schrecker.

Cold War: On the Brink of ApocalypseProfessor David S. Painter, Georgetown University

The postwar world was marked by the fragile relationship of two superpowerswith opposing ideologies: the United States and the Soviet Union. For forty-fiveyears, these two superpowers would vie for supremacy in world politics. The ColdWar, defined by events such as the Cuban Missile Crisis, turmoil in the ThirdWorld, and the arms race, held the potential for an apocalyptic confrontation thatcould have spelled doom for the human race. Understanding the Cold War, withall of its far-reaching, global implications, is absolutely essential to our under-standing of the history of the second half of the twentieth century and beyond.

American Inquisition: The Era of McCarthyismProfessor Ellen Schrecker, Yeshiva University

During the early years of the Cold War, the anticommunist witch hunt that wenow call McCarthyism swept through American society. But McCarthyism wasmuch more than the career of the blustering senator from Wisconsin who gave ita name. It was the most widespread and longest-lasting episode of politicalrepression in American history. Dozens of men and women went to prison,thousands lost their jobs, and untold numbers of others saw what happened tothose people and refrained from expressing controversial or unpopular ideas.McCarthyism remains all too relevant today; if nothing else, it reminds us thatwe cannot take our basic freedoms for granted.

Fundamental Cases:The Twentieth-Century Courtroom Battles That Changed Our NationProfessor Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Law School

The courtroom trial has fascinated human beings from the beginning of record-ed history. Trials are theater, trials are history, and the great trials of the twentiethcentury and beyond provide a unique window into American history and thesense of America’s enduring commitment to law.

The Life and Times of Benjamin FranklinProfessor H.W. Brands, Texas A&M University

This course examines the life of Benjamin Franklin and his influence on bothAmerican and world history. From his early days as a printer’s apprentice to verynearly his last days, Benjamin Franklin’s thirst for knowledge and his desire toshare what he knew brought him into the forefront of a changing world. Hiscontributions through inventions, scientific investigation, and political thoughtstill echo over two hundred years after his passing.

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