Lincoln's Peace: The Struggle to End the American Civil War

(Hardback)

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One historian's journey to find the end of the Civil War-and, along the way, to expand our understanding of the nature of war itself and how societies struggle to draw the line between war and peace One historian's journey to find the end of the Civil War-and, along the way, to expand our understanding of the nature of war itself and how societies struggle to draw the line between war and peace We set out on the James River, March 25, 1865, aboard the paddle steamboat River Queen. President Lincoln is on his way to General Grant's headquarters at City Point, Virginia, and he's decided he won't return to Washington until he's witnessed, or perhaps even orchestrated, the end of the Civil War. Now, it turns out, more than a century and a half later, historians are still searching for that end. Was it April 9, at Appomattox, as conventional wisdom holds, where Lee surrendered to Grant in Wilmer McLean's parlor Or was it ten weeks afterward, in Galveston, where a federal commander proclaimed Juneteenth the end of slavery Or perhaps in August of 1866, when President Andrew Johnson simply declared "the insurrection is at an end" That the answer was elusive was baffling even to a historian of the stature of Michael Vorenberg, whose work served as a key source of Steven Spielberg's Lincoln. Vorenberg was inspired to write this groundbreaking book, finding its title in the peace Lincoln hoped for but could not make before his assassination. A peace that required not one but many endings, as Vorenberg reveals in these pages, the most important of which came well more than a year after Lincoln's untimely death. To say how a war ends is to suggest how it should be remembered, and Vorenberg's search is not just for the Civil War's endpoint but for its true nature and legacy, so essential to the American identity. It's also a quest, in our age of "forever wars," to understand whether the United States's interminable conflicts of the current era have a precedent in the Civil War-and whether, in a sense, wars ever end at all, or merely wax and wane.

Reviews

Original, absorbing, and illuminating, Michael Vorenbergs Lincolns Peace does something remarkable: It makes us think about familiar questions in an entirely new and engaging way. A marvelous achievement. Jon Meacham, author of And There Was Light:Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle

"Everyone knows the Civil War ended with Robert E. Lees surrender at Appomattox. But as Michael Vorenberg shows in this fascinating and original narrative, the situation was actually much more complicated, and a full account of the wars end has all sorts of ramifications, legal, military, and racial. Vorenbergs account helps us understand what the war was all about and whether in some ways it is still being fought." Eric Foner, author of The Second Founding:How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution

"In this powerful and provocative book, Michael Vorenberg vividly dramatizeshow America was 'caught between a state of war and a state of peace' after Appomattox. With careful attention to legal and political debates, and to the themes of insurgency, occupation, conquest, and freedom, Vorenberg traces the prolonged national struggle to end the Civil Warand asks us to contemplate why our myths of a definitive peace persist." Elizabeth R. Varon, University of Virginia, author of Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South

"In a bracing challenge to the received wisdom that Americas Civil War ended with Lees surrender at Appomattox, Lincolns Peace sheds a brilliant light on the liminal space between what was no longer outright war nor yet a realized peace. Vorenbergs sparkling narrative tells of ongoing conflict, violence, legal disputation, international imbroglios, andabove allcontested freedom. In sum, a masterly and original work." Richard Carwardine, author of Righteous Strife: How Warring Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln's Union

"A provocative and disquieting counter-narrative to the long-held and widespread assumption that the Civil War ended with the Appomattox Surrender. Rather, the author argues, the often-bloody aftermath known as Reconstruction was a continuation of violent conflict, and thus war, albeit of a different kind. It was waged not only in states of the former Confederacy but also across the West. Drawing on an impressive range of sources and interweaving military, racial, legal, and political dynamics, Vorenbergs arresting narrative will provide readers with much food for thought." Joan Waugh,author of U.S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth

"Vorenberg leads us on an often surprising journey through the twilight time between Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House and the elusive end of hostilities between North and South, long after the Civil War was traditionally thought to have ended. In this fast-unfolding account, he presents the nation's leaders in compelling close focus as they struggle to find their way through a labyrinth of political, legal, and military ambiguities, while hopes for a clear-cut peace evaporate and the shape of a new postwar America comes painfully into being." Fergus M. Bordewich, author of Klan War

"Lincolns Peace is the finest account of how the Civil War endedyet didnt really endthat I have ever read. In a compelling, wide-ranging, fast-flowing, narrative Michael Vorenberg first takes the reader to the supposedly final battles, negotiations, surrenders and skirmishes that ought to have concluded the most violent war of insurrection in American history; he then describes the sad mess that followedassassination, pardons, dropped treason trials, escapes from justice and disputed versions of guilt and responsibility that make the work a must-read for all of us today." Nigel Hamilton, author of Lincoln vs Davis: The War of the Presidents

"In Lincoln's Peace, Michael Vorenberg untangles the seemingly simple question of when did the Civil War end to re-examine what the Civil War was, what it meant, where it actually happened, and why it still affects our lives and politics today. Through beautifully told vignettes, carefully reasoned analysis of legal arguments, and sensitive readings of cultural struggles over the Civil War, Vorenberg writes of a Civil War as big as the country and as meaningful today as it was then. In the process he also leads us to re-examine what we knowor think we knowabout wars, about endings, and about the resonance of the Civil War today. A signal and eloquent achievement and a terrific read." Gregory P. Downs, author of After Appomattox

"Lincolns Peace is the book weve been waiting for: a probing, twisting exploration of that least understood element of the Civil Warits ending. Vorenberg achieves the highest goal of a historian, convincing readers to rethink history they thought they knew, with the page-turning prose of a good story and the incisive queries of a great study. Parsing the hazy boundaries between war and peace, slavery and freedom, Lincolns Peace offers readers a new way to see the past and the present." Jon Grinspan,Curator of Political History at the Smithsonians National Museum of American History

Long after Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant in April 1865, Americans continued to ask themselves whether the Civil War was truly over. In this thoroughly surprising and beautifully written narrative, Michael Vorenberg takes us on a journey through multiple surrenders and declarations of peace, ongoing guerilla warfare, and the unceasing fight for Black freedom. In an age of forever wars, Lincolns Peace tells a story as timely as it is thought-provoking. Martha Hodes, author of Mourning Lincoln

This book was hard to put down. The writing is graceful and the characters are riveting.But there is more. Lincolns Peace upends our understanding of the Civil War by asking a deceptively straight-forward question:Did the Civil War end That framing shifts the focus from war to peace and provides fresh insights into one of the most well-covered topics in the historical literature.The implications are profound, not just for our understanding of the Civil War, but also for a host of issues today. Laura F. Edwards,Class of 1921 Bicentennial Professor in the History of American Law and Liberty in the History Department, Princeton University

"Michael Vorenberg's Lincoln's Peace fundamentally changes the way we think about the Civil War's chronology, geography, and meaning. Through clear vision and beautiful prose, Vorenberg suggests that the conflict had no neat ending, that it lingered long past Robert E. Lee's formal surrender at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865, that it raged in the trans-Mississippi West for years afterward, and that it continues to shape the American experience today. This is an essential book by one of our greatest historians." Ari Kelman, author of A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling Over the Memory of Sand Creek

From the pen of one of the eras foremost historians comes a rich and nuanced exploration of the days, weeks, months, and even years that brought the American Civil War to a close. Peeling back the gauzy veils of memory and mythmaking, Vorenberg takes the reader on a captivating journey to find the wars enda journey as unexpected for those who lived it as for the reader. Caroline E. Janney, author of Ends of War: The Unfinished Fight of Lees Army after Appomattox

Author Bio

MICHAEL VORENBERG is the author of Final Freedom- The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment, which was a finalist for the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize and was used as the basis for the screenplay of Stephen Spielberg's 2012 film, Lincoln. He is also the author of The Emancipation Proclamation- A Brief History with Documents, as well as a number of essays on legal and constitutional history. His writings have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, Politico, and the Washington Post. He teaches at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.