October 1, 2024
Historian Vorenberg (Brown Univ.; Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment) searches for the Civil War's end point, considering important moments such as Lee's surrender at Appomattox, the declaration of the end of slavery in Galveston, and more, while also contemplating the nature of war and its legacy. Prepub Alert.
Copyright 2024 Library Journal
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Starred review from February 1, 2025
A bold book challenges what we think we know about how and when the Civil War really ended. Anyone who has paid remote attention in a civics class knows that the amicable April 9, 1865, meeting between Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee at Appomattox ended the American Civil War. Not so, argues distinguished Brown University historian Vorenberg, who refreshingly admits his own culpability in perpetuating the myth that Appomattox concluded the Civil War and examines in this fascinating book when exactly--or whether--the just peace that Abraham Lincoln desired came about. Vorenberg does not merely analyze Lincoln's attempts to forge and outline peace and examine the many candidates for the military and legal "last" battles of war that were fought well after Lincoln's assassination, deep into the disastrous presidency of Andrew Johnson and beyond. He reevaluates the concept of founding myths such as the fixed end of the Civil War emblematic in George P.A. Healy's paintingThe Peacemakers (1868), which is on the book's cover. "The painting shows storm clouds giving way to sunshine," Vorenberg writes. "Nothing in the painting suggests the reality of months of warring that followed the historic meeting." The author contends that casting a critical eye on such founding myths is an important aspect of rethinking the notion of American exceptionalism. Along this line, the book concludes with a thought-provoking comparison to the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Vorenberg exhibits scholarship of the first order. The history is vividly written and thoroughly researched. His reasoned questioning, skepticism, and analysis of accepted tropes and conclusions about the Civil War will prove meaningful to those who study the philosophy and psychology of war, peace, and American culture and identity. A brilliant work and a vital contribution to the canon.
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February 1, 2025
The Civil War is one of the most written about and analyzed events in American history. The meaning of the war and the consequences of all that followed continue to be contested. In Lincoln's Peace, historian Vorenberg argues that we cannot even say for certain when the war ended. He contends that conventional wisdom assigning the end of the war to Lee's surrender at Appomattox is deeply flawed. Not only were there later Confederate surrenders, both army and naval, but there was also no formal civilian surrender, and the U.S. government wavered on whether or not the war was truly over as circumstances changed. Finally, the question of when the war ended is linked to the question of what the war was about, not just when armies in the field stopped fighting. Vorenberg tells this story deftly, managing a number of related narratives involving dozens of people in the years when the Lost Cause myth had not yet become the dominant Civil War and Reconstruction story. This fine book ably challenges many untested assumptions about the Civil War.
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