Download Appomattox: Victory, Defeat, and Freedom at the End of the Civil War AudioBook Free
Lee's surrender to Give at Appomattox Court House evokes a highly gratifying image in the favorite head - it was, many imagine, an instant that transcended politics, an instant of healing, an instant of patriotism untainted by ideology. But as Elizabeth Varon uncovers in this vividly narrated record, this rosy image conceals a seething issue over precisely what the surrender intended and the type of country would emerge from warfare. The combatants in that issue included the iconic Lee and Give, nevertheless they also included a solid of characters previously overlooked, who helped bring their own knowledge of the war's triggers, consequences, and so this means. In Appomattox, Varon deftly catches the situations swirling around that well remembered - however, not well understood - instant when the Civil Conflict ended. She expertly depicts the ultimate fights in Virginia, when Grant's soldiers ornamented Lee's half-starved army, the getting together with of the generals at the McLean House, and the surprised reaction as news of the surrender spread like an electric fee throughout the nation. But as Varon shows, the ink had hardly dried out before both attributes launched a bitter issue over the meaning of the warfare. For Give, and for some in the North, the Union win was one of right over incorrect, a vindication of free world; for most African Us citizens, the surrender marked the dawn of flexibility itself. Lee, on the other hand, assumed that the Union win was one of might over right: The vast impersonal Northern warfare machine experienced worn down a valorous and unbowed South. Lee was focused on peace, but determined, too, to the restoration of the South's political power within the Union and the perpetuation of white supremacy. Lee's eyesight of the warfare resonated broadly among Confederates and conventional northerners, and motivated Southern level of resistance to reconstruction. Did America's best days lie in the past or in the foreseeable future? For Lee, it was the past, the age of the founding technology. For Give, it was the near future, represented by Northern moral and material progress. They kept, in the long run, two other views of the route of the united states - and of the meaning of the warfare that had evolved that country permanently.
