Lincoln's Peace: The Struggle to End the American Civil War
What date does a war end? This may seem like a very straightforward question to answer for most wars, but as the author claims in the introduction to this intriguing book, it is not such a clear-cut answer for the American Civil War. The traditional end of the war with the surrender of General Robert E. Lee’s army at Appomattox on April 9, 1865, is not satisfactory to the author, so he examines the case for when the war ended from either a military, political, and legal point of view, which produces some befuddling results that make it clear there could be any number of dates to consider.
To build his thesis, the author begins by examining the visit of Abraham Lincoln to Richmond, Virgina, shortly after the surrender of Lee’s Army. Lincoln had several key objectives for bringing the war to a swift conclusion so he could begin to “bind up the nation’s wounds.” First, the cessation of hostilities, followed by the ending of slavery and the emancipation of the slaves, concluding with the reimposition of Federal authority in the south to bring a swift reconciliation and reconstruction. Unfortunately, Lincoln’s assassination shortly after Lee’s surrender ensured that his vision was imperfect and incomplete.
The author begins with examining the military end of the war. The traditional end of the active conflict is captured in most history books as April 9, 1865. But several Confederate armies remained in the field and even after Joe Johnston’s Army of Tennessee surrendered almost three weeks after Lee, there were still almost 100,000 Confederate troops in arms west of the Mississippi. More importantly, President Jefferson Davis did not concede defeat even after the surrender of the two major armies. It was not until May 10 that Davis was finally captured, ending any potential for a Confederate “government-in-exile” to be formed in Cuba or Mexico.
The final Confederate military units formally surrendered on June 23, 1865, almost three months after Appomattox.
The political end to the war was even more challenging to determine, and here the author spends a great deal more scrutiny. Lincoln’s successor Andrew Johnson was sympathetic to the south and no advocate for equal rights for the now freed slaves, and the political wrangling between Johnson and the Radical Republicans in Congress seeking the total remaking of Southern society to permanently undo the former Confederates from regaining political and economic power created a tense political situation. Although the 13th Amendment to the Constitution that ended slavery was passed fairly quickly, legally ending slavery, the 14th Amendment which gave the freedmen citizenship was not ratified until the end of Johnson’s term and the 15th Amendment which gave the freedmen the legal right to vote would not be ratified until his successor, Ulysses Grant took office. Since many Radical Republicans did not consider the war over until the freedmen gained full political recognition, they sought to keep the country on a legal and political wartime footing.
The political and legal wrangling over the dissolution of slavery and the remaking of the south is described by the author in great detail, as the Radical Republicans wanted to use the occupation of the south by the U.S. Army to ensure slavery was dead in fact as well as law, and to ensure that white southerners followed federal law and did not seek to rebuild a de facto Confederacy. This faction of the Republican Party, led within the Johnson Administration by Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, were eager to maintain a “state of war” even though the Confederate army and government had been effectively dissolved in order to maintain an occupation of the south under army control.
This was not merely an academic argument, as the author notes. Once the Johnson Administration legally declared the war over and the return of civil legal authority in the south, southerners immediately began reasserting their legal and political influence, attempting to limit the civil and voting rights of the freedmen and beginning the controversial era of Reconstruction. This at time rancorous debate eventually led to Johnson’s impeachment and impacted the long-term efforts to see Lincoln’s vision through.
As the volume ends Congress has passed the Reconstruction Act which would maintain some military control of the south through the Grant Administration until 1871 when the final southern Congressional candidates are seated. Like the war itself, the volume ends without a clear choice by the author for his preference of when the war ended, but it does offer a comprehensive look at the debate itself which still creates controversy among historians.