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U.S. Civil War – Lincoln’s Peace – Michael Vorenberg
172 Plays1 month ago
Ep 053 – Nonfiction. On what date did the U.S. #CivilWar end? Most would say April 9, 1865, when Lee surrendered at Appomattox. But historian Michael Vorenberg argues that may not be the case in his new book “Lincoln’s Peace: The Struggle to End the American Civil War."
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Transcript
Is America on the brink of a second civil war?
00:00:00
Speaker
let me Let me just ask you, you know do you think America is inching closer to a second civil war? it It is a perfectly reasonable question. It's question I think a lot of people are asking themselves now.
00:00:12
Speaker
um I don't think if there is to be a civil war, um i don't think it's going to look anything like the civil war that occurred in the 1860s. I really don't.
00:00:24
Speaker
um Obviously, we're a long period past that. But why do I say that? Well, I think that ah what you can what it's harder to group people by section in the same way, right?
Deceptive political maps and sectional divides
00:00:44
Speaker
You look at a map of politics in the last political election or the political election before that, and we talk about red states, blue states, and it looks like, oh, gee, look, there's a sectional divide. But it's very deceptive, as I'm sure you know.
00:00:57
Speaker
Because pick one of those states, right, that's red. And it turns out, well, they're only red by a couple percentage points. Pick a state that's blue. And it, just by a few points, could have gone the other way.
00:01:08
Speaker
So the map that we have in our head, that electoral map, if you will, ah from... whether it's 2024 or 2020, is deceptive in that way. Because we look at that and then we look at the map of the Civil War, where that which is a sectional map where we say, oh, those states were with the Confederacy, those states were worth the Union.
00:01:30
Speaker
Oh, dear. Look at us now. It kind of looks like then. it's go to But it doesn't. It just isn't. that There's absolute division and polarization. I don't deny that.
00:01:40
Speaker
But it doesn't map neatly onto sections the way that the, and and that's going to just in a territorial way, it's going to make it basically impossible to have a war that looks like that war did.
Introduction of guest Michael Vorenberg
00:02:01
Speaker
Hi, everyone. This is A.J. Woodhams, host of the War Books podcast, where I interview today's best authors writing about war-related topics. Today, i am extremely excited to have on the show Michael Vorenberg for his new book, Lincoln's Peace, The Struggle to End the American Civil War.
00:02:22
Speaker
Michael Vorenberg is a professor of history at Brown University. He is the author of Final Freedom, the Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the 13th Amendment, which was a finalist for the Lincoln Prize and a key source for Steven Spielberg's 2012 film, Lincoln, which I loved.
00:02:37
Speaker
and He is also the author of the Emancipation Proclamation, a brief history with documents, as well as a number of essays on slavery, emancipation, and the U.S. Constitution. His writings have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, Politico, and the Washington Post.
00:02:52
Speaker
um Mike, how are you doing today? I'm doing well, AJ. How are you? i'm I'm excellent. Thanks for joining me. and Like a lot of other Americans, the Civil War was was my my first love, I feel like, with that with war literature and learning about war. And um you here in America, we all grow up learning about all these battles and these these names and these people, um for better of for worse, which you know we might get into some of these names later. We will get into some of these names later in the show.
00:03:21
Speaker
and But always good to have somebody talking about the ah Civil War on, let alone a distinguished scholar it like yourself. Well, thank you for having me on. And I really appreciate it and happy to talk about the book and about the Civil War and about whatever else we end up leading into, which I'm sure will will probably stray a little bit from the Civil War, which is also good.
Multiple endings of the Civil War
00:03:44
Speaker
Sure. Absolutely. Yeah, hopefully. um I do have ah i have a lot of questions. Hopefully we'll get to them. But um first, a question I like to start off with asking everybody, if you could just tell us, what is your book about?
00:03:59
Speaker
ah The book is about the many endings of the Civil War. And if you notice, I use the word plural endings as opposed to a single ending. And maybe it's best if I explain how I got into this book.
00:04:13
Speaker
I, like many people, grew up as an American school kid. I read history textbooks that always talked about the Civil War and had the end of the war. And there's almost always an image there of Lee surrendering ah to Grant at Appomattox.
00:04:30
Speaker
And that's the end of the war. And it's a visual ending. It's a very visual ending. It's a picture. um You mentioned Spielberg's 2012 film, Lincoln. There's a scene in that film, it's one of the few, where Lincoln isn't in it, where Lee surrenders to Grant. So it's such an important and such a memorable, iconic moment in American history. It's it's sort of irresistible.
00:04:52
Speaker
And it was irresistible, I think, for Spielberg when he made the film. i was doing research on a different book at the National Archives. And I called up a box, and the wrong box came.
00:05:05
Speaker
That's sort of how this begins. and And the wrong box turned out to be a box. It was the letter E instead of the letter C. i had nothing to do while waiting for the right box. So i started going through the box and the and there's this topic in the box that says end of civil war.
00:05:23
Speaker
And it's a thick file. And I thought, how could that possibly be a topic and a thick file? We all know that the war ended right at Appomattox with this great surrender. And so I started going through it.
00:05:35
Speaker
And what it was is a assistant secretary of war in the 1890s had written this massive report because he had been tasked to find what is actually the actual ending, the the legal ending.
00:05:46
Speaker
This was important for a number of legalistic reasons, like what kind of a pension do we pay and some other things. And in this report was just an incredible assortment of facts that I knew some, I didn't know many and put all together,
00:06:01
Speaker
they told a story of a war that begins to end at Appomattox, but only begins to end. And then has a series of other endings that turn out to be false endings, restarts, other endings, and finally a a declaration by a president, President Johnson, that the war is over, you know as if you can sort of declare war to be non-existent, even if the fighting continues.
00:06:28
Speaker
Seeing all this laid out for me, The kernel of this idea for a book was seeded in my brain, although I didn't get around to actually taking on it taking it on as a book for about five or so years.
00:06:41
Speaker
And that's what this book is about. It's about really the ways in which there are these multiple endings and why that matters, why it matters, how we think about the when of the of the ending of the Civil War and why it matters, and then why the when necessarily ties into the where.
00:07:00
Speaker
because they both get into these issues of what is the Civil War? How do you define it by time, beginning, end? How do you define it by place?
00:07:12
Speaker
if it's Is it all in Virginia in the East? No, it's in other places too. And it involves places in the Far West. It involves the borderlands of Mexico. It involves ah the ocean. So these are all things I had to grapple with in the book. And I grapple with in the book as I try to find the ending.
00:07:30
Speaker
or endings of the American Civil War. Well, if somebody, and now I know yeah this is question that you basically say is unanswerable, but I'm going to ask it anyway. ah Somebody comes up to you and says, you know Professor Vorenberg, what date did the US Civil War end?
00:07:48
Speaker
What answer would you give? Yeah. April 9, 1865 is the surrender of Robert E. Lee to Ulysses Grant. And I would say, that's the end of the war, but it's complicated, which is the classic, right?
00:08:07
Speaker
Historian thing to say, and it's complicated. And then I would hope that the person who asked me the question would say, what do you mean it's complicated? And then I would give an answer sort of like I just gave to you about what the book is about, right?
00:08:22
Speaker
ah But one of the parts of the answer that I really would say, I'm i'm being a little bit flippant. But truthfully, I would say to the person, if you must have an end date, it's this is a very good end date, Appomattox.
00:08:40
Speaker
um But then I would say, why must you have an end date? Why is it that ah any person, regardless of whether they're a historian or not,
00:08:53
Speaker
Maybe it's not a U.S. war. Maybe it's another war. Why might there be this yearning to to to have in their mind a discernible moment or day or place where the war ends?
00:09:12
Speaker
Right. And Appomattox, of course, serves that kind of function perfectly. And I'm I'm OK with that. I'm fine with that. I've written this book that explains why Appomattox isn't really the ending.
00:09:25
Speaker
But I have to tell you, I teach the Civil War and Reconstruction, and I'm gonna continue, because I can't help myself, to use words like post-Appomattox or after Appomattox as a shorthand for after the war.
00:09:40
Speaker
um So yes, that's the end date I would give. And then I would say, but it's also not the end And I know that's terribly frustrating, but no that's the way I operate.
00:09:50
Speaker
But you know, it it is it is so interesting because like you just said, like it's a very kind of like... and Well, I'm paraphrasing here a little bit, but <unk> in some sense, it's convenient um to say that um the surrender at Appomattox was the the end of the U.S. Civil War, um especially when it's, you know, I'm thinking about like in the context of like teaching an American school, teaching the Civil War to American children.
00:10:18
Speaker
And it is kind of this like this, it has a feeling of this like struggle of good over evil, right? And then evil was was vanquished on this day at this time. And it it kind of buttons up um very neatly.
00:10:33
Speaker
But it's very problematic. I'm not sure that you grew up in southern Alabama that you'd
Appomattox as the Civil War's end
00:10:38
Speaker
have this game. You're right. Let me... Let me correct my, let me, let me add some context. I grew up in Indiana, Northern Indiana, um where this was the history taught to me.
00:10:48
Speaker
But you are, you're right. I forget that there is a whole part of this country that, that learned a different history. Yeah. and But I mean, well, you know, talk, actually talk about that. Like, what what would you say, like, from, from the Southern perspective, um would, would a Southerner say that like the clean end date would be the surrender at Appomattox?
00:11:08
Speaker
I think they would. I do think they would they would. They might not be happy about it. and and And they might see it as a problematic ending because how do you reconcile the hero, Robert E. Lee, who is still, of course, one of the greatest heroes of the Confederacy and of Confederate memory and therefore of Southern white memory.
00:11:30
Speaker
How do you reconcile a hero surrendering? Well, there are ways to do that, of course. And Very much the best way to do that is through what we call the lost cause narrative and to say,
00:11:43
Speaker
In his surrender, he was being noble. but He recognized that the war could not be won, and this was the noble way to end it. so But that doesn't mean they're happy about it. But they then recognize it as as an ending, as a kind of necessary ending.
00:11:57
Speaker
um And they tie it. I'm not saying the they in this question is a sort of amorphous And I'm thinking about lost cause movements, maybe today, but even more so 100 years ago or so.
00:12:09
Speaker
So that's that's how that's how often they would do it. But they would still, I think, locate it in Appomattox. Yeah. And, um of course, today you might find people saying, oh, no, the war is not over.
00:12:23
Speaker
i And when I was working on the book and say, I would be asked, what are you working on? um I'm working on a book. about the end of the Civil War and somebody might say, oh, did it did it end?
00:12:35
Speaker
Is it over? And they were joking, of course, and it did end. I mean, it really did have an ending. It's hard to find the ending. Yes, there are struggles today. There's polarization. They're not entirely sectional. it's not all North South, that's for sure.
00:12:49
Speaker
Whatever polarization today is not the same war. But yeah, that war is over. And I think actually a lot of people are still going to point to Appomattox. And something earlier you said about how history teachers teach.
00:13:02
Speaker
I don't fault them for this. I taught middle school history ah brit ah before I went to graduate school and high school history. One of the reasons why history is such a great subject is we have an expectation of stories.
00:13:16
Speaker
What do we expect of stories, right? We expect stories to have a beginning, middle and end. Not all do, but we expect that. And so certain episodes in history, like a war, we expect to have a narrative structure, beginning, middle and end. And so it's perfectly natural.
00:13:32
Speaker
And then we force our students, unfortunately, to learn these dates. What is the ah start date? the The end date, right? and And then those dates stick. And so that's that's just been the way history has been taught for a long time.
00:13:48
Speaker
Well, i want to I want to, towards the end of this ah conversation, I want to come back to how things are taught. um But ah I want to start off before we get... um ah too carried away with those types of conversations with just a little bit of history and some context um for our listeners out there.
00:14:06
Speaker
um Could you just give us like briefly the lead up to Lee's surrender at Appomattox? What was going on at the time? um ah Some of the events that led up to to that surrender and just situate us in the the history of of of this time period where your book is taking place.
00:14:25
Speaker
Sure. Sure. i will I'll give an overview, but i'll I'm going to have to leave some things out. of course. And I'll explain what I mean as I as i give the overview.
00:14:37
Speaker
So let me return us to the spring of 1865. of eighteen sixty five And in the spring of 1865, the war has been going on for four years.
00:14:51
Speaker
And at that moment, in the spring of 1865,
00:14:56
Speaker
Things are not going well for the Confederacy. There has been a sustained siege, I'll call it, on two key places in Virginia that are key for the Confederacy. One is the Confederate capital of Richmond.
00:15:15
Speaker
And equally, if not more important, is the city of Petersburg, Virginia, which is the railroad hub and therefore the sort of key supply spot. And Petersburg has been under siege for a very long time with a number of attacks that have been repelled and so forth.
00:15:33
Speaker
It becomes ah clear to Ulysses Grant, who's the Lieutenant General and in command of the US Army of Armed Forces, that It seems that the Confederacy may be close to falling. That is to say that these two cities are close to falling.
00:15:56
Speaker
Grant's headquarters are in see City Point, Virginia, which is on the coast, downriver from the James, ah from Richmond. And he sends word to Lincoln that maybe you would like to visit.
00:16:12
Speaker
And there's and sort of an unspoken understanding that if Lincoln visits, he might actually get to see these cities fall. Lincoln ah takes Grant up on the invitation.
00:16:26
Speaker
He leaves Washington, D.C. It'll be the longest time that Lincoln ever leaves Washington, D.C. He's gone for two weeks and he goes to City Point. And I argue in the beginning the book that he goes believing that he's going to witness the end of the war and he's actually going to orchestrate some kind of template, if you will, of of how things will work going forward to make the piece.
00:16:48
Speaker
um So Lincoln's on the scene in City Point. And he is there in late March, and he's meeting with Grant. He meets with Sherman. They actually all meet together. and And then he has a few other meetings with Grant.
00:17:02
Speaker
Richmond falls on April 3rd. So this is just a few days after Lincoln shows up. And when Richmond falls, that's obviously a turning point, that's the capital.
00:17:14
Speaker
Jefferson Davis, just before the Union troops come in, he and the Confederate cabinet get on a rail car and head into the interior of Virginia.
00:17:25
Speaker
And Davis refuses to suggest that the Confederate government is gone. He says the Confederacy continues to exist. ah The government's on a rail car and the Confederacy is still doing just fine.
00:17:38
Speaker
In fact, it's better than ever because now the army doesn't have to waste its time defending Richmond. ah and And so the army can just focus on combating u s troops. Petersburg also falls.
00:17:50
Speaker
And so Lincoln will actually end up touring the battleground of Petersburg and tour Richmond. All right. What is... Where's Robert Lee Lee in all of this? So Lee Lee's main activity has been to defend Richmond and Petersburg. Now they're gone.
00:18:05
Speaker
So Lee starts to march west from Richmond. If I had a map, it might be easier, but try to imagine Richmond and and now just go do west. And you're following um the Appomattox River upriver toward the mountains of Appalachia, of ah you know the the Appalachian Mountains of of ah Virginia.
00:18:29
Speaker
And what Lee's plan is, is to get his troops into the mountains. And if he can do that, maybe he can somehow join up with an even bigger army, which is Joe Johnston's army in North Carolina.
00:18:46
Speaker
ah You may ask me about jet that army as well. Okay. in the In the marching eastward, Lee's army or elements of Lee's army has a series of engagements with US troops.
00:19:00
Speaker
So that's the history I'm not going to talk about now. That's that's a military history of a series of battles and skirmishes that Lee's having to fight you know as as he's moving his troops. it's It's not a retreat.
00:19:13
Speaker
Right. It is it's a it's a motion with the rear end action ah going on with his forces. um However, when he gets to the site of Appomattox Courthouse, that's the name of the town.
00:19:26
Speaker
It's the full name is Appomattox Courthouse. ah For a variety of reasons, he gets boxed in by the U.S. troops and it doesn't look like he's going to make it to the mountains.
00:19:38
Speaker
There's one last push ah to try to break through the lines. It fails. And that's when Lee starts sending messages to ah Grant saying, can we meet? And so there's this kind of preface to the surrender.
00:19:54
Speaker
And then they meet on April 9, 1865 in Wilmer McLean's house in Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia. But really, um where and and I guess I always knew this, but it it struck me.
Lincoln's post-surrender influence and vision
00:20:09
Speaker
um In your book, lincoln but the time between when Robert E. Lee surrenders and Lincoln's assassination is only like a week, 10 days maybe. and Yeah. So you know the book is is lincoln the the title of the book is Lincoln's um talk talk about Talk about why this is Lincoln's piece you know, he he really only had several days after even surrendered to to get um this piece together.
00:20:42
Speaker
Yeah, let me first take us through that chronology a little bit, right? So I mentioned that Lee ah surrenders on April 9th, but I also mentioned that Lincoln was near the scene before then and that he toward Richmond, for example.
00:21:01
Speaker
So that happens on April 4th. Okay, so between April 4th and April 8th, which is, as you say, a very short time, but it's five days.
00:21:15
Speaker
What is Lincoln doing during this period? And he's doing a lot of things. He's talking to commanders, but he's also talking to Virginia civilians, including a lot of leaders. And he's having conversations with to inform himself about what might happen next in terms of peace.
00:21:34
Speaker
Among other conversations, he speaks to a couple leaders about the possibility of Virginia convening its legislature as it is, which is a Confederate legislature. and having that legislature declare a reversal, if you will, that is to declare themselves no longer seceded, that they've rejected the Confederacy and that they're unionists. That's an example of what Lincoln is playing with. He he's not he doesn't necessarily have a plan. It's like so many the other things Lincoln does. he's He's experimenting with different kinds of things and trying to figure out where to land on on an actual plan.
00:22:12
Speaker
And I just gave that example of the Virginia legislature, partly because that ends up being a bad move. that That ends up being rejected by his cabinet, who says, no, you can't really go that direction.
00:22:25
Speaker
ah Not the whole cabinet, but the key players, William Henry Seward and and Secretary of State, and especially Edwin Stanton, Secretary of War. Okay. Lincoln...
00:22:37
Speaker
ah for various reasons, leaves Virginia ah on April 8th. And he arrives in Washington, D.C.
00:22:52
Speaker
And only upon arriving on April ninth um does he start to catch wind that there's been this surrender where he just left? Okay, so now there's a surrender.
00:23:04
Speaker
He missed it, right? He left Virginia too early. and ah And so now, as you say, he's not going to be alive much longer. We know that. He doesn't know that. But so he, on April 9th, he gives a quick impromptu speech about Lee's surrender.
00:23:19
Speaker
And then he gives a speech which becomes his last speech. He doesn't know it's his last speech a few days later, but that's a much more sustained and planned speech. But even in that speech, he says, I'll speak more later about what is to come.
00:23:33
Speaker
Right. And so whatever Lincoln's piece was to be, it was in the process of forming in his own head, and in practice.
00:23:45
Speaker
And then, of course, he's assassinated. So the title, Lincoln's Peace, is a bit of a deceit by me, because ah first of all, as you say, he dies before there's peace.
00:23:59
Speaker
Second, I don't think he has ah a very clear sense of what peace looked like. He has very strong ideas about certain things, and a lot of those ideas come out in his final speech.
00:24:12
Speaker
But one last thing I'll say is that in those two speeches I mentioned, the impromptu one he gives after the surrender, he learns about the surrender and a crowd of celebratory people come to the White House and he comes and gives an impromptu speech.
00:24:26
Speaker
And then the the speech he gives that's a real address later, He never says the war is over. He doesn't speak those words. He never gives any kind of declaration, proclamation that the war is over.
00:24:39
Speaker
He acknowledges that this is a momentous event, the surrender of Lee, and he congratulates the troops. But he knows very well that there are Confederate troops still in the field, that there are Confederate legislatures of states still active, that there's a massive territory under Confederate control.
00:25:00
Speaker
And so he never declares the war over. So even that most basic idea ah something you might think a president would do, he understands very well that this is going to be a process.
00:25:13
Speaker
And he fully expects to be the leader of the process. And he's going to figure out as he goes exactly what that process is. And so, of course, it's all cut short. Yeah. And it should be noted too, that after the the years after Appomattox for a year or two, things weren't exactly peaceful.
00:25:31
Speaker
um You know, you point out there is a lot of conflict still going on, still raging. um One thing about, you know, one thing that is interesting, famously known about Lincoln is, you know, malice towards none.
00:25:43
Speaker
Um, this kind of bloodless piece that, that he envisioned. Uh, why was he so committed to that? Why was he so committed to not wanting, um, to, uh, to punish a lot of the, um, the rebels, but also too, I'm curious the people around him in your book. It actually sounds like there were a lot of people around him who weren't on board with that, who really did want retribution.
00:26:05
Speaker
um talk a little bit about that. Yes. Uh, And had Lincoln lived, I think that tension between his view and the views of others may have been something that would have been visible. And I i really don't know exactly how it would have been resolved.
00:26:25
Speaker
But to go back, you mentioned with malice toward none. That's a phrase from, that's the last phrase really of of the second inaugural that he gives in March. And so that's on March 4th.
00:26:36
Speaker
And again, he doesn't know that the wars, that Lee's going to surrender, that these endpoints are coming, but he knows, he knows that they they could be coming. And he's got that on the mind when he says it.
00:26:48
Speaker
Why? Well, he is very worried, as many people are worried, about how to end a war. That even if the major armies surrender, right, what then is going to happen?
00:27:02
Speaker
And you've got at least two different types of problems, really three. One problem is Confederates who don't want to surrender, even if the leaders do. And a second problem is Northerners who are vengeful, understandably vengeful, and who may act in an aggressive manner to their foes.
00:27:26
Speaker
After all, they blame Northerners, the South for the war, and Vengeance, therefore, can be expected by those who blame them. Part of the second inaugural is talking about who is responsible for the war and trying to defuse those Northerners who hold the South fully responsible and to say, in many ways, we're all responsible because of the institution of slavery that we allow to thrive. And that brings me to the third point, which is that Lincoln firmly believes that slavery must be destroyed.
00:28:02
Speaker
He has helped make sure that the resolution for the 13th Amendment, what becomes the 13th Amendment, has gotten through Congress. But it's out to the states for ratification. It is not ratified by the time he's dead.
00:28:15
Speaker
But he also knows that eradicating slavery, it's going to take more than just an amendment to the Constitution. It's going to take force. And so this, too, is going to take force in conjunction with negotiation, right, that it's going to and this is his skill, is negotiation.
00:28:33
Speaker
Negotiating with former Confederates, with white people, so that they can play a hand and play a role in emancipation, and also working with African Americans to make sure that they are integrated into the body politic as they should be, knowing that simply declaring slavery over or having an amendment that does that is not enough. He knows these things.
00:28:57
Speaker
They take work, they take patience, they take strategy. And vengeful actions can delay those things, he believes. He's worried about vengeful actions that can delay that because then you get a recalcitrant or southern white population that isn't willing to work with you.
00:29:14
Speaker
And so he's worried about that. and And I think those are all factors as to why he does this. But as to others, as you mentioned, who are more vengeful, yes, they exist. And and Here, I think it's really important to add to to remember that when Lincoln is assassinated, the spirit of vengeance never has been stronger.
00:29:31
Speaker
Whatever vengeful feelings people had, now they're increased tenfold because of the assassination of Lincoln, which, yes, it's done by a lone assassin, but not really. It's a conspiracy. It really is a conspiracy of a number of people.
00:29:46
Speaker
And people actually assume, naturally, that the Confederacy is behind it. Maybe Jeff Davis himself is behind it. Jeff Davis wasn't behind it. But it's one more reason for these people to despise the the Confederates.
00:30:00
Speaker
And it's going to stand in the way. And so then you get someone like Secretary of War Stanton and the Judge Advocate General, Joseph Holt, who's working hand in hand with Stanton.
00:30:12
Speaker
They are puruing pursuing the assassins. They are absolutely convinced that this is a deeper plot that involves many Confederates and they're going to root it out and they're going to take vengeance on these people.
00:30:23
Speaker
And Lincoln's successor is Andrew Johnson, who comes in and early on is saying that there will be vengeance against them, uh, that traitors will be punished.
00:30:34
Speaker
And people like Stanton, uh, and others who are vengeful, they think Andrew Johnson is their guy. they They think he is, he's, he's the president they want much more than Lincoln at that moment. Right. that moment impreachful I mean, there's a horrific irony in this that that, of course, Johnson turns out to be not just,
00:30:55
Speaker
magnanimous, but idiotically ah magnanimous in terms of giving power so quickly and easily back to former Confederates. And of course, he turns out to be um so deeply racist and have nothing invested at all in in the idea of ah black people being integrated into the American body politic.
00:31:15
Speaker
I do want to, you might hate this as a historian, but I do want to um play some alternate history, perhaps. um Let's say that the thinking um for Lincoln and in the union leadership was that all of the the Confederate leaders should be executed.
00:31:35
Speaker
And that they did maybe execute Jefferson Davis. um Or, i don't know, might maybe too complicated to throw in generals and military leaders like Robert E. Lee.
00:31:46
Speaker
But let's say there was just like a large scale execution of all these Confederate leaders. How do you think that would have affected things, in your opinion? It's hard to say. i think ah i think if there was a large scale execution of these people That memory of that would never have gone away.
00:32:04
Speaker
ah Here, I thought about that question a lot and other historians have thought about it a lot. And it's a really great question. Yeah, it's counterfactual to say, well, let's talk about what happens, but I still think it's extremely relevant.
00:32:19
Speaker
And of course, it's not counterfactual when you ask the question of other wars. When you look at other wars and and you see, let's say the end of World War II, and you can rather rather easily look at photographs of perpetrators, as they would be called, right being hanged.
00:32:36
Speaker
um In Italy, in Germany, right you have Nuremberg trials, but they often lead to hangings. Although I will say, right those are also teachable lessons, right because there wasn't widespread execution of the highest of all the highest leaders.
00:32:58
Speaker
they were very delicate, right, in the trial the perpetrator. People were hanged, but they were very cognizant of the possible kind consequences. So if there was widespread hanging of Jeff Davis and the Confederate cabinet, yeah, I think there would have been deeply entrenched hatred on all sides.
00:33:18
Speaker
And ah so I don't think it was, ah it would not have led to much good. think I don't think it was going to happen.
00:33:30
Speaker
Let us remember that Jefferson Davis ah was actually captured. That's also part of the book. So he wasn't captured for about a month after Appomattox. um he's He's on the run and that's part of the book. And it's one of the great stories of the capture of Jefferson Davis.
00:33:44
Speaker
I won't go into too much detail, but he's captured on May 10th. And so they've got him, right? So they've got him and they've got him in prison finally at Fort Monroe in Virginia.
00:33:56
Speaker
And And now, right, the opportunity is there to hang him. And I just told you that Andrew Johnson has said, you know, punishment to traitors and other people saying traitors. It turns out that actually getting a process to put Davis on trial and to hang him the way that these people want to.
00:34:15
Speaker
is incredibly difficult. It's politically a disaster to do so. And they recognize it right away. So um to your counterfactual, I would say to you, AJ, well, tell me what that looks like, right?
00:34:28
Speaker
oh Does that look like ah just rounding up people and hanging them? Or would you, AJ, would you like to see some trials first, right? I hope that you might say, well, I'd like there to be some trials.
00:34:42
Speaker
Well, are they going to be real trials or they just going to be show trials? Well, they there should be some kind of reality to them, right? ah And so once you have real trials, then you've got a problem.
00:34:53
Speaker
Among other things, what's going to happen? Here's what's going to happen. Jefferson Davis is going to get on the stand and say why secession is legal and why all he did was lead a nation in an absolutely legal move to secede.
00:35:08
Speaker
And what's going to happen is a courtroom battle over the legality of secession.
Aftermath of Appomattox: Slavery and Confederate leaders
00:35:13
Speaker
Do you want that to happen in 1865 when the war is supposed to be over and people are supposed to be going home? And like the thing was supposed to be decided by war and now we're going to fight it out in court.
00:35:22
Speaker
This this is a huge problem. And so I say back to you, AJ, you know, what do you envision in terms of these hangings? Because it's not so easy right to just hang. It is easy in the mind to envision people hanging.
00:35:35
Speaker
But the question is, how do you get them from the moment of capture to their head in the noose? And it's actually, in America, we like to think of ourselves as a nation of laws, right? Not of men, as they say.
00:35:47
Speaker
So if law is required to get that person into the noose, it's going to be pretty tough. Yeah, it's you're absolutely right. And it's... ah Much easier to say, and it was much easier to say, um to just hang people. You know, hang Jeff Davis was like, ah ah as you point out, was a very popular slogan for for quite a while. But that actually means that that's a very kind of complicated um and nasty, long, um ripping the bandaid off type process.
00:36:17
Speaker
So you're, you're right. Like, like it is um very complicated, and but then too, you know, um as you, as you alluded to, you know, it there, there is, know, maybe there's, there's a sense of, of lost justice perhaps um especially when you think about slavery and and the evils of slavery.
00:36:39
Speaker
Yeah. let actually let's Let's talk about slavery in and um ah African Americans towards the end of the war, because I thought you had a lot of really interesting things to say about African American volunteers in the army, which I was surprised to read about.
00:36:57
Speaker
But um let's talk about ah slavery. So after the surrender at Appomattox, you point out several times, and know the you know it's it's hard to know when slavery actually really ended, um and much like it's hard to know when the war ended.
00:37:13
Speaker
um But what what is the, I guess, the institution of slavery at the surrender at Appomattox? What's that like? in And how does that get navigated in the coming years?
00:37:25
Speaker
Sure. So at the moment of Appomattox in April 9, 1865, the 13th Amendment has passed Congress and is headed to the state's ratification. A number of states have ratified it.
00:37:39
Speaker
But um it won't be ratified till dis December. And actually, there are states, including ah some northern states, that have voted against it or have refused to vote for it.
00:37:50
Speaker
And then there's the whole question of whether the how or if and how the southern states get to vote for it or not. But that's that's all legal. That's all legal question. Right. Meanwhile, on the ground, what's been happening for many years is that African-Americans have been becoming free.
00:38:08
Speaker
and they've been coming free through their own actions, leaving plantations or wherever, joining Unionist armies or simply creating their own lives in various places. And there's been the Emancipation Proclamation, which came in 1863 and basically said, wherever the army goes, ah that place now is a place where slavery doesn't exist.
00:38:31
Speaker
It exempts a few places, but that's effectively what the war is. And I guess I'll say, Lastly, Lincoln has made it very clear well before Appomattox.
00:38:45
Speaker
He has said that the end of the war must include a renunciation of slavery as an institution by all the Southern states and by all former slave owners, slave masters, right?
00:38:57
Speaker
So that's part of it. That's a key piece of the 1864 presidential election that Lincoln sticks by. And in his very last speech, he says,
00:39:08
Speaker
that he hopes for ah ah righteous and speedy peace. The speedy peace we get, right? What does he mean by righteous? There's no question he means emancipation, right? He means a righteous peace, a peace where the causes that have been fought for, which are not just union, but also the end of slavery are achieved.
00:39:29
Speaker
um So what's the state of slavery? It's in the process of being... um eradicated as an institution which requires law and it also requires force.
00:39:41
Speaker
And it's the force piece that's really challenging. And that's what's been going on. Armies have have been involved in the eradication and many of these armies include black regiments. So they have been part of this process of making sure that masters are declare their slaves free and then abide by the dictates of freedom.
00:40:07
Speaker
And this is what's going on in the summer of 1865 into the fall in Biaram. The U.S. Army is still, it's the regular army, but also still has a large, large number of volunteers, although they're mustering out at a very fast rate.
00:40:19
Speaker
These ah armed troops are in the South, and the main thing they're doing in the South ah is they're going around and making sure that emancipation is carried out.
00:40:32
Speaker
The holiday that's celebrated as Juneteenth, and we're coming up on that in June, this coming June, June 19th, that is a moment that acknowledges that move, because what happens on June 19th, 1865, is that a union general, U.S. general, comes into Galveston, Texas, reads the Emancipation Proclamation, gives his own proclamation,
00:40:58
Speaker
declaring people free. That's all well and good, but then you need troops on the ground in Texas, just if I could focus on Texas here, to make sure that slavery is eradicated in Texas. Declaration isn't enough.
00:41:10
Speaker
That's going to take years. It's going to take years before actual the practice of enslavement of black people is eradicated. and and You do talk about how there is, there theres still is enslavement going on in Texas, you know, after. absolutely.
00:41:27
Speaker
Yes. and And if not legally, um you know, in practice, it's still happening. I mean, Texas is a massive state and the interior Texas slavery is is still going on. And it's going on with both sides knowing that it's legally over, right?
00:41:42
Speaker
So the master and and the and the former enslaved person know that slavery is over. but But if there's no army, right if there's no force there to make it happen, what then is going to happen? You need legal officials and you need armies. And so the black troops that are there in Texas, they're they're you know they're involved in this process among white troops as well.
00:42:02
Speaker
On the other hand, many of the black troops, and know I think you were sort of hinting at this as i as you mentioned black troops in Texas, um They also, of course, like many troops, they're ready to go home.
00:42:15
Speaker
ah they They've heard that the war is over and they enlisted to fight the war. And now the war is over. They assume not only that the war is over, but that emancipation is achieved and that they are free.
00:42:28
Speaker
And not just free, mind you, but they are full American citizens. um Therefore, it's with great surprise that they learn, many of these black soldiers, a couple of things. One, they can't go home.
00:42:39
Speaker
that they're still under contract to serve because their service contract said that they have to serve ah either for three years or till the end of the war. And the three years are not up.
00:42:51
Speaker
And though Appomattox has occurred, the War Department says, oh, guess what? ah The war actually isn't over for your for your purposes. um And Second, not only do they have to continue serving, but when the time does come to muster out, this is a very revealing moment um in Texas.
00:43:13
Speaker
Soldiers, when they muster out from the United States Army, are allowed to purchase their service weapons, and they are able to do so, and it's generally a good deal that you get if you purchase your service weapon.
00:43:28
Speaker
um The order goes out that in Texas, the The black U.S. troops are not allowed to purchase, who are mustering out, are not allowed to purchase their service weapons.
00:43:40
Speaker
But the white ones can. And this is, you know, ah the reason given is that the white civilians, the southern white civilians, are very worried about black armed men in their communities. And that certainly is a big reason.
00:43:55
Speaker
But I would say that fear extends well beyond the ah the white civilians of the south and extent of Texas to other white civilians in the south. And I would say it extends to the north as well. That there is this concern, ah deep concern about what happens to armed black men when they muster out.
00:44:14
Speaker
There's no reason for this concern. The real concern, of course, is what is is the armed white Southern civilians. They turn out to be, of course, the problem. But this tells us so much about the fragility of emancipation on the ground, right?
00:44:29
Speaker
and And how it actually is going to take work ah to make it happen. A larger topic I'll just mention is that When we ask ourselves to think about when slavery ends, um that's a very broad question. We might think about Juneteenth. We might think about the ratification of the 13th Amendment. We might say, oh, that's really, you know, we might think about the modern civil rights movement, whatever.
00:44:54
Speaker
But if we think about Juneteenth or the ratification of the 13th Amendment, I'll just point out that that those events are typically taught as things that happen outside of the Civil War. They're not Civil War events, right?
00:45:07
Speaker
But in fact, they are. i mean, they they happen when the war is still going on. The war is legally over until August 1866. sixty six But even more important, right, if this war from the Union perspective and the Union did win, the Union says that this is a war not just about to preserve the preserving the Union, but emancipating slavery, ending slavery.
00:45:34
Speaker
Lincoln has made that clear. Maybe the war didn't begin that way. but it became that way by the end. It is that way. Lincoln says it's that way in the second inaugural. If that is the case, why don't we have end dates in our heads for the war that line up with the end of slavery?
00:45:56
Speaker
That's a question that's there in the beginning of the book, and and i want essentially hanging over us all as any of us, including myself. Think about the end of war. hangs over me now still. As I said, I'm still going to use Appomattox as a marker for the end of war.
00:46:12
Speaker
But you know, when Lee and and and Grant spoke in the parlor of of McLean's house, they didn't talk about slavery. They didn't talk about emancipation. It didn't come up. There were armed black troops out there. There were u s there were regiments of U.S. black troops out nearby that were part of the U.S. Army.
00:46:33
Speaker
And there were also many um black civilians who had been impressed in the Lee's Army who arguably were legally still enslaved and that would end up going back to the South as enslaved people.
00:46:45
Speaker
So this is an open issue, and it's not discussed in the parlor of McLean's House. Yeah, you're 100% right. And I had this thought um when I was reading your book, and and I'm curious to hear what what you think about this.
00:46:59
Speaker
and But I had this thought, just thinking about what you werere just talking about, like, when was the date of when did the Civil War end? And, you know, we think at Appomattox. And you you you wrote at one point, you had a line.
00:47:11
Speaker
Now, i I understand, and you gave some more context that this was maybe a little bit more for practical purposes. But After Appomattox, the number of African-American volunteers in the the army goes from one-fifth to a half.
00:47:26
Speaker
um So a half of, am I am i remembering that correctly? if If I wrote it, then let's just say it's true. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but but well i i wouldn't I would have made sure to get it right. So I'm not sure if that's right. Because it also depends on what date you pick. sure ah That probably would have been fairly late.
00:47:44
Speaker
in the summer that that moment came. But what's, I'll let you finish your question, but just to explain to people what's going on, the army's mustering out. the The whole volunteer forces are mustering out very quickly.
00:47:56
Speaker
And it just happens for a variety of reasons. It's not all racism, but racism does end up playing a a part um that white troops are mustering out at at a higher rate than black troops. That's why the, as you say, the fractions end up looking like you described them.
00:48:11
Speaker
And a thought that that came to my mind As often now we're you know when we think about history and how it's it's taught in our schools, and I think it's fair to say that right now, maybe we're at a point in American history where we're we're starting to look back on whose history have we been teaching?
African-American role in Civil War history
00:48:29
Speaker
And has that been predominantly the history of white people in this country? And I had a thought when when I read that, that the war now after Appomattox with such a large amount of African-American volunteers, this is a, this is now a war where half of the, the troops fighting this, this, you know battle against you know good against evil, I guess, from the Northern perspective. um But half the troops are African-American. So this isn't, this no longer is just, you know, um the, the history of white people fighting the war, you know, thinking about, know,
00:49:04
Speaker
how we're we're taught our history, if it's just the history of white America that we learn in our schools, it's a generalization, but, you know, if that's predominantly the history, you know, is it more convenient than for the war to end at Appomattox before these large numbers of African-American troops are actually fighting the battles of the Civil War?
00:49:25
Speaker
yeah That's a thought I had. I'm not sure if you have any thoughts about that. Oh, I think about these things a lot. I think a lot of people think about these things. I also think our schools, our books have done a much better job, right? Than they did, let's say a hundred years ago at making the story of the civil war, not just a white story. um I took in the book, I talk about how in 1965 is the centennial.
00:49:54
Speaker
um nineteen sixty five is the centennial um of ah the Appomattox surrender. And there's a big
00:50:07
Speaker
ah commemorative ceremony that happens at Appomattox. And the most famous Civil War historian of the day, Bruce Catton, gives a a speech there. And that's 1965. And he his speech is very, it's a white war. I mean, and and this is about,
00:50:25
Speaker
a perfect sort of reconciliation. And there's stories in my book, but you can find them elsewhere, that meanwhile, you know where's the Black memory of the war? It exists, certainly among African-American communities, um but a lot of Black people in Appomattox itself were you know living rough lives and We're being you know told this really isn't about you.
00:50:48
Speaker
So we've come a long way from 1965, I would say, and I think teachers have a lot to do with that and and they they continue to do do good work. So I'll say that first. um by By contrast, just if you go to 2015, which is the 150th anniversary, and and again, there's a commemorative ceremony at Appomattox,
00:51:08
Speaker
and they are the And I write about this, too. The National Park Service um really did some pretty remarkable things. And it's also true if you go to Appomattox today and go to the park site.
00:51:19
Speaker
they've really They made... really great strides and in doing the kind of work you're talking about of making sure this isn't just a white American history. And it, because it isn't.
00:51:31
Speaker
Yeah. In terms of the fighting ah that's going on, it's, it is tricky, right? Because it, these are not large pitched battles we're talking about. These, that what it really is best described as is a kind of insurgency and anti-insurgency.
00:51:47
Speaker
That's the best way to think about what's happening in the South um after, let's say, during the summer of 1865 and afterwards. And as we know from other wars, right, insurgencies don't translate easily into things you can mark on a timeline and on a map, right? there They happen quickly. They happen simultaneously. They're short-lived.
00:52:12
Speaker
However, they can be very lethal and, and, and, there can be horrific violence in these insurgencies. And there was.
Post-war violence and modern implications
00:52:20
Speaker
And you're absolutely right that a lot of these insurgencies on the anti-insurgencies, first of all, the insurgencies themselves are often white supremacist in nature.
00:52:30
Speaker
They're aimed at black civilians. And then the anti-insurgent troops um are often black troops, not always. I don't want to overstate the the presence of black troops in the army. I think we ought want to be careful. A lot of the black troops that are in the army in the end of the summer they are expecting to muster out fairly quickly, and and many do.
00:52:49
Speaker
And you are still then left with a regular army, the the professional army. And that army is does have ah certainly a a black presence that's greater. and It's going to get even bigger. and And you're going to get you know the legendary Buffalo soldiers, for example, ah and that happened after the the war.
00:53:09
Speaker
But in the anti-insurgency, let me just tell this story, which I think is emblematic. Black troops are really playing a key role at keeping the peace in these areas of the South and making sure that insurgencies either don't happen or if they do happen, that they're put down.
00:53:25
Speaker
And a place where this is happening that's a good example where might might be, but let's focus on Memphis, Tennessee. And Memphis is occupied ah by US troops. And by the spring of 1866, the key regiment,
00:53:40
Speaker
the key regiment ah regiments that that occupy Memphis are black regiments. These are black U.S. troops. The white insurgents in Memphis know the day that the black troops are supposed to muster out in Memphis.
00:53:57
Speaker
And it is absolutely no coincidence that it is exactly the moment after the black troops in Memphis muster out, right, and and they are no longer there, that you get the incredible insurgent violence that is called at the time, the Memphis riots, but is of it properly called and now historians tend to call the Memphis massacre, which is a ah massacre of black civilians in Memphis.
00:54:30
Speaker
And that just shows you, right, this, the the need for force, and not just any kind of force, but this is a force where black Americans are playing a key role, take that force away.
00:54:41
Speaker
and Insurgency occurs. That's the nature of the war that's being fought now. It's a different kind of war. But for modern middle ah military historians, that what I'm describing should sound very familiar, right?
00:54:54
Speaker
The transition from organized armies fighting into insurgency. that's That's a common story. And the story is not so different. Well, um I want to ah transition to current events um now that we're at the end. and um But I want to talk about just maybe civil war in general.
00:55:15
Speaker
um you know my So when i got I got your book and I was telling my wife, and this is actually a mischaracterization of your book, but I was like, oh yeah, I'm going be interviewing an author who wrote a book about how Lincoln successfully negotiated a peaceful end of the Civil War. And my wife, I'm not actually i'm not so i'm not ah such a political guy myself. My wife is maybe more political.
00:55:38
Speaker
And she's like she's like, oh, good. In times like these, we're going to need that. Yeah. ah and and That ah kind of got me thinking for this interview when it comes to civil wars in general.
00:55:52
Speaker
um let me Let me just ask you, you know do you think America is inching closer to a second civil war? ah Well, I love the story you tell, which is that this is a story about Lincoln negotiating a peace.
00:56:11
Speaker
And I suppose I might be and will be accused of deceitfulness. Right. By the cover ah of the book has Lincoln on it. Right. And it has the words Lincoln piece. So um you might very well think and it says the struggle to end the Civil War. So like, oh, yeah, it was tough to end the Civil War, but it ended.
00:56:32
Speaker
And Lincoln was there, right? And so that's, I guess it is a little deceitful of me to draw people in and then say, guess what? You know, Lincoln isn't going to live to see the end.
00:56:43
Speaker
And furthermore, the end doesn't come when you think it does. And furthermore, even more complicated, there's many endings. And okay. So um i I appreciate your willingness to interpret the cover that way. And and I take full responsibility.
00:56:59
Speaker
if if i If I'm selling people a bad bill of goods. No, no, no, no, not a bad bill of goods at all. We should make clear what they're getting when they buy the book. Uh, but to your point about, are we on the, uh, precipice of a, of a civil war, which is a question, it's a, it is a perfectly reasonable question.
Modern civil war vs. 1860s Civil War
00:57:16
Speaker
It's a question I think a lot of people are asking themselves now.
00:57:20
Speaker
Um, I don't think if there is to be a civil war, um, I don't think it's going to look anything like the civil war that occurred in the 1860s. I really don't.
00:57:31
Speaker
Um, Obviously, we're a long period past that. But why do I say that? Well, I think that ah what you can what it's harder to group people by section in the same way, right?
00:57:51
Speaker
You look at a map of politics in the last political election or the political election before that, and we talk about red states, blue states, and it looks like, oh, gee, look, there's a sectional divide. But it's very deceptive, as I'm sure you know, because pick one of those states, right, that's red.
00:58:07
Speaker
And it turns out, well, they're only red by a couple percentage points. Pick a state that's blue and it just by a few points could have gone the other way. So the map that we have in our head, that electoral map, if you will, ah from whether it's 2024 or 2020, is deceptive in that way. Because we look at that and then we look at the map of the Civil War, where that which is a sectional map where we say, oh, those states were at the Confederacy.
00:58:35
Speaker
Those states were at the Union. Oh, dear. Look at us now. It kind of looks like then. it's gonna But it doesn't. It just isn't. There is absolute division and polarization.
00:58:46
Speaker
I don't deny that. But it doesn't map neatly onto sections the way that the... and And that's going to... just in a territorial way, it's gonna make it basically impossible to have a war that looks like that war did.
00:59:00
Speaker
So what we get instead is something that I would call more like a cold civil war, ah as opposed to a hot civil war. And what had in the 1860s was a hot civil war.
00:59:11
Speaker
And so what we have now is a cold civil war, an idling civil war, civil war of ideologies, a civil war of language, a civil war of passion, of emotion. of a civil war of competing realities, really, absolutely competing realities.
00:59:26
Speaker
um And by the way, I think if you go back to the American Civil War of the 1860s, they also, that's a war of competing realities. I think there were very different visions of not only what America was about, but literally what was going on in America.
00:59:40
Speaker
You had groups of people who had very different ideas of what Lincoln's election meant. You had an entire group of people in the South who believed Lincoln's election meant We are now in a moment of tyranny, right?
00:59:53
Speaker
And a group of people who didn't believe that to be the case. Those are competing realities. we have The difference was, of course, that war became hot and hundreds of thousands of people died.
01:00:06
Speaker
What we have now is more of a cold war. I don't mean to play down the the significance of the war because it cold wars can get hot, but but if it gets hot, it looks different, right? And I don't know what that looks like.
01:00:17
Speaker
um We got a little taste of what it looks like on January 6th, 2021, right? and and Excuse me. ah Yeah, 2021, January 6th. A small taste there and also look at some of the state capitals on the same day.
01:00:30
Speaker
so Could that expand? I don't know. I taught my Civil War course this past fall at Brown University, and I felt it incumbent upon myself before I started teaching. I better go watch that movie called Civil War that came out in the spring.
01:00:45
Speaker
That movie's terrifying. What'd you say? That movie was terrifying. Honestly, to me, one of the scariest movies I've ever seen. So how can you not ask the question, right? Are we on the precipice of a Civil War? I mean,
01:00:59
Speaker
I knew that that movie was coming a year before it came. And I thought, Oh, this, this, this is probably going to be a flop, you know? And I was completely wrong. That, that movie did very well and in the box office and I watched it. Um, I don't want to, I'm not a film critic. I mean, I certainly was, it was entertaining, but let's just remember what it was called. It was called civil war.
01:01:20
Speaker
And it was, it and so like the idea that this is the abstract, you can't say that if you have a movie like this, that's out there that you can now go and watch. Um, But that that war depicted, obviously, is is a very different war than then the Civil War of the 1860s.
01:01:35
Speaker
We're not there yet. And I don't know if we will be there. i hope Of course, I hope, and I'm sure you hope, AJ, that we don't get there. But we are in something of a Cold War. And we know from experience in Cold Wars that they can go on for a long time.
01:01:47
Speaker
And they take on different shapes, forms, ah adversaries. And they're wars of different sorts. They're not necessarily wars between armies, but between these different things I mentioned.
01:01:58
Speaker
Well, thank you for that. Thank you for that answer. and We'll put, hopefully that gives some of our listeners some peace. and ah Well, um last question here. um Well, first, thank you so much for your time. And um we honestly, all these topics, i could I could spend a whole episode. Texas itself, I could talk to you about for ah for a very long time.
01:02:21
Speaker
um But I'll wrap it up here. And my um my last question to you is, what do you hope that readers take away from this story?
Embracing complexity in Civil War history
01:02:31
Speaker
I hope readers take away ah ah the the idea that the American Civil War is always worthy of more study and that it's always more complicated than you think.
01:02:47
Speaker
And if you take something that seems so obvious and so well known, we all know it, right? We all know that there was this ending at Appomattox and you press on it, that it gets complicated. And that the complexity is not a problem.
01:03:01
Speaker
The complexity opens up better understandings that inform us not only about the past, but also about the present. And so that this journey that I took in researching and writing the book is a journey worth taking for anyone.
01:03:20
Speaker
And I guess in a larger sense, what's true, what I just said about the end of the Civil War is true for probably just about any moment in history.
01:03:31
Speaker
And since this is a podcast about military history, I'm sure it's true for any war. Press on a key moment of a war that you know whether it's a famous battle, maybe it's the beginning of a war, maybe it's the end.
01:03:46
Speaker
And you will find a story there that's more complicated than is typically told. And in the complexity is not just interesting tidbits of knowledge, but I assure the listeners, there are deeper meanings and deeper stories there with the kinds of larger questions that are intellectual questions, ideological questions, even moral questions.
01:04:12
Speaker
And this is what history can do for us. So I've given a very big answer at the end, but on the, again, I take us back to the smaller answer, which is that we rethink endings of wars generally, but certainly that we rethink the ending of the civil war and what it means simply to rethink the ending.
01:04:30
Speaker
That's great. Well, um Mike, if if people want to ah stay in touch with your work, maybe they want to follow you on social media, um how can they stay in touch with what you're doing? ah I do have a website.
01:04:44
Speaker
I've got a website that's michaelvorenberg.com. it's it's very It's kind of rough right now. It's in it's in the process of getting better. It will never be fancy. I promise you that. But there are things there that talk about where I'm talking, where I'm giving talks, how to reach me and things like that.
01:05:01
Speaker
And and ah so you can reach me through that there's email. I am on, um, uh, Facebook, uh,
01:05:14
Speaker
I guess I am on X and also on Blue Sky, ah although I have to say i have limited time in the day to vote to social media because I also good for you to teach courses here. That's a good thing.
01:05:28
Speaker
So I exist there. So if it takes me a little while to respond, please don't take it personally to any of your listeners out there. um My own family is waiting for emails from me i know believe i I'll do the best I can. But I love talking to people. i love hearing from people. And especially if they read the book and have questions or want to talk about it, I'm happy to talk about it. If they want to tell me I got something wrong, definitely.
01:05:54
Speaker
I'm all ears. So this has been great to talk to you and always enjoyable to talk to someone who's engaged with history like you are. So I appreciate it. Thank you.
01:06:05
Speaker
Well, ah Michael Vorenberg, Lincoln's piece, The Struggle to End the American Civil War. um Go buy a copy, go check it out from your library. um What a ir relevant and interesting story you tell here.
01:06:17
Speaker
And ah Mike, thank you again for joining me on the show. Thank you for having me, Adrian. Really appreciate it.