Lee and Grant at Appomattox

Lee and Grant at Appomattox PDF Author: MacKinlay Kantor
Publisher: Sterling Publishing Company
ISBN: 9781402751240
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 148

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Book Description
From a Pulitzer Prize winner comes the story of an unforgettable moment in American history: the historic meeting between General Robert E. Lee and General Ulysses S. Grant that ended the Civil War. MacKinlay Kantor captures all the emotions and the details of those few days: the aristocratic Lee’s feeling of resignation; Grant’s crippling headaches; and Lee’s request--which Grant generously allowed--to permit his soldiers to keep their horses so they could plant crops for food.

Lee and Grant at Appomattox

Lee and Grant at Appomattox PDF Author: MacKinlay Kantor
Publisher: Sterling Publishing Company
ISBN: 9781402751240
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 148

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Book Description
From a Pulitzer Prize winner comes the story of an unforgettable moment in American history: the historic meeting between General Robert E. Lee and General Ulysses S. Grant that ended the Civil War. MacKinlay Kantor captures all the emotions and the details of those few days: the aristocratic Lee’s feeling of resignation; Grant’s crippling headaches; and Lee’s request--which Grant generously allowed--to permit his soldiers to keep their horses so they could plant crops for food.

Ends of War

Ends of War PDF Author: Caroline E. Janney
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469663384
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
The Army of Northern Virginia's chaotic dispersal began even before Lee and Grant met at Appomattox Court House. As the Confederates had pushed west at a relentless pace for nearly a week, thousands of wounded and exhausted men fell out of the ranks. When word spread that Lee planned to surrender, most remaining troops stacked their arms and accepted paroles allowing them to return home, even as they lamented the loss of their country and cause. But others broke south and west, hoping to continue the fight. Fearing a guerrilla war, Grant extended the generous Appomattox terms to every rebel who would surrender himself. Provost marshals fanned out across Virginia and beyond, seeking nearly 18,000 of Lee's men who had yet to surrender. But the shock of Lincoln's assassination led Northern authorities to see threats of new rebellion in every rail depot and harbor where Confederates gathered for transport, even among those already paroled. While Federal troops struggled to keep order and sustain a fragile peace, their newly surrendered adversaries seethed with anger and confusion at the sight of Union troops occupying their towns and former slaves celebrating freedom. In this dramatic new history of the weeks and months after Appomattox, Caroline E. Janney reveals that Lee's surrender was less an ending than the start of an interregnum marked by military and political uncertainty, legal and logistical confusion, and continued outbursts of violence. Janney takes readers from the deliberations of government and military authorities to the ground-level experiences of common soldiers. Ultimately, what unfolds is the messy birth narrative of the Lost Cause, laying the groundwork for the defiant resilience of rebellion in the years that followed.

Appomattox

Appomattox PDF Author: Elizabeth R. Varon
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199347921
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
Winner, Library of Virginia Literary Award for Nonfiction Winner, Eugene Feit Award in Civil War Studies, New York Military Affairs Symposium Winner of the Dan and Marilyn Laney Prize of the Austin Civil War Round Table Finalist, Jefferson Davis Award of the Museum of the Confederacy Best Books of 2014, Civil War Monitor 6 Civil War Books to Read Now, Diane Rehm Show, NPR Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox Court House evokes a highly gratifying image in the popular mind -- it was, many believe, a moment that transcended politics, a moment of healing, a moment of patriotism untainted by ideology. But as Elizabeth Varon reveals in this vividly narrated history, this rosy image conceals a seething debate over precisely what the surrender meant and what kind of nation would emerge from war. The combatants in that debate included the iconic Lee and Grant, but they also included a cast of characters previously overlooked, who brought their own understanding of the war's causes, consequences, and meaning. In Appomattox, Varon deftly captures the events swirling around that well remembered-but not well understood-moment when the Civil War ended. She expertly depicts the final battles in Virginia, when Grant's troops surrounded Lee's half-starved army, the meeting of the generals at the McLean House, and the shocked reaction as news of the surrender spread like an electric charge throughout the nation. But as Varon shows, the ink had hardly dried before both sides launched a bitter debate over the meaning of the war and the nation's future. For Grant, and for most in the North, the Union victory was one of right over wrong, a vindication of free society; for many African Americans, the surrender marked the dawn of freedom itself. Lee, in contrast, believed that the Union victory was one of might over right: the vast impersonal Northern war machine had worn down a valorous and unbowed South. Lee was committed to peace, but committed, too, to the restoration of the South's political power within the Union and the perpetuation of white supremacy. These two competing visions of the war's end paved the way not only for Southern resistance to reconstruction but also our ongoing debates on the Civil War, 150 years later. Did America's best days lie in the past or in the future? For Lee, it was the past, the era of the founding generation. For Grant, it was the future, represented by Northern moral and material progress. They held, in the end, two opposite views of the direction of the country-and of the meaning of the war that had changed that country forever.

After Appomattox

After Appomattox PDF Author: Gregory P. Downs
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674241622
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
“Original and revelatory.” —David Blight, author of Frederick Douglass Avery O. Craven Award Finalist A Civil War Memory/Civil War Monitor Best Book of the Year In April 1865, Robert E. Lee wrote to Ulysses S. Grant asking for peace. Peace was beyond his authority to negotiate, Grant replied, but surrender terms he would discuss. The distinction proved prophetic. After Appomattox reveals that the Civil War did not end with Confederate capitulation in 1865. Instead, a second phase of the war began which lasted until 1871—not the project euphemistically called Reconstruction, but a state of genuine belligerence whose mission was to shape the peace. Using its war powers, the U.S. Army oversaw an ambitious occupation, stationing tens of thousands of troops in outposts across the defeated South. This groundbreaking history shows that the purpose of the occupation was to crush slavery in the face of fierce and violent resistance, but there were limits to its effectiveness: the occupying army never really managed to remake the South. “The United States Army has been far too neglected as a player—a force—in the history of Reconstruction... Downs wants his work to speak to the present, and indeed it should.” —David W. Blight, The Atlantic “Striking... Downs chronicles...a military occupation that was indispensable to the uprooting of slavery.” —Boston Globe “Downs makes the case that the final end to slavery, and the establishment of basic civil and voting rights for all Americans, was ‘born in the face of bayonets.’ ...A remarkable, necessary book.” —Slate

A Place Called Appomattox

A Place Called Appomattox PDF Author: William Marvel
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 0807860832
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description
Although Appomattox Court House is one of the most symbolically charged places in America, it was an ordinary tobacco-growing village both before and after an accident of fate brought the armies of Lee and Grant together there. It is that Appomattox--the typical small Confederate community--that William Marvel portrays in this deeply researched, compelling study. He tells the story of the Civil War from the perspective of those who inhabited one of the conflict's most famous sites. The village sprang into existence just as Texas became a state and reached its peak not long before Lee and Grant met there. The postwar decline of the village mirrored that of the rural South as a whole, and Appomattox served as the focal point for both Lost Cause myth-making and reconciliation reveries. Marvel draws on original documents, diaries, and letters composed as the war unfolded to produce a clear and credible portrait of everyday life in this town, as well as examining the galvanizing events of April 1865. He also scrutinizes Appomattox the national symbol, exposing and explaining some of the cherished myths surrounding the surrender there.

Petersburg to Appomattox

Petersburg to Appomattox PDF Author: Caroline E. Janney
Publisher: Military Campaigns of the Civi
ISBN: 9781469640761
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
The last days of fighting in the Civil War's eastern theater have been wrapped in mythology since the moment of Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox Court House. War veterans and generations of historians alike have focused on the seemingly inevitable defeat of the Confederacy after Lee's flight from Petersburg and recalled the generous surrender terms set forth by Grant, thought to facilitate peace and to establish the groundwork for sectional reconciliation. But this volume of essays by leading scholars of the Civil War era offers a fresh and nuanced view of the eastern war's closing chapter. Assessing events from the siege of Petersburg to the immediate aftermath of Lee's surrender, Petersburg to Appomattox blends military, social, cultural, and political history to reassess the ways in which the war ended and examines anew the meanings attached to one of the Civil War's most significant sites, Appomattox. Contributors are Peter S. Carmichael, William W. Bergen, Susannah J. Ural, Wayne Wei-Siang Hsieh, William C. Davis, Keith Bohannon, Caroline E. Janney, Stephen Cushman, and Elizabeth R. Varon.

Lee's Aide-de-Camp

Lee's Aide-de-Camp PDF Author: Charles Marshall
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803282629
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
Charles Marshall was appointed aide-de-camp to Robert E. Lee on 21 March 1862, and from then until the surrender, he stood at the general?s side. A military secretary, he compiled a remarkable, intimate account of the day-to-day wartime experience of the Confederacy?s most celebrated--and enigmatic--military figure. Marshall?s papers are of three sorts: those intended for a projected life of Lee, those intended for an account of the campaign at Gettysburg, and notes on events of the war. Collected here, these papers provide a unique firsthand look at Lee?s generalship?from the most complete account ever given of the fateful orders issued to Jeb Stuart at Gettysburg, to the only testimony from a Southern witness of the scene in McLean?s house at Appomattox. Marshall?s commentary addresses some of the war?s more intriguing questions: Whose idea was it to fight the second Manassas? What caused Jackson?s delays in the Battles of the Seven Days? Who devised the flank march around Hooker at Chancellorsville? This book?s insights into Robert E. Lee and his military strategy and its close-up report on the Confederacy?s war qualify it as an indispensable part of America?s historical record.

Judgment at Appomattox

Judgment at Appomattox PDF Author: Ralph Peters
Publisher: Forge Books
ISBN: 1466884029
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 447

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Book Description
The ferocious final weeks of the Civil War come alive in Judgment at Appomattox, the final novel of New York Times bestselling author Ralph Peters's breathtaking, Boyd Award-winning series A great war nears its end. Robert E. Lee makes a desperate, dramatic gamble. It fails. Ulysses S. Grant moves. Veteran armies clash around Petersburg, Virginia, as Grant seeks to surround Lee and Lee makes a skillful withdrawal in the night. Richmond falls. Each day brings new combat and more casualties, as Lee’s exhausted, hungry troops race to preserve the Confederacy. But Grant does not intend to let Lee escape... In one of the most thrilling episodes in American history, heroes North and South, John Brown Gordon and Phillip Sheridan, James Longstreet and Francis Channing Barlow, battle each other across southern Virginia as the armies converge on a sleepy country court house. Written with the literary flair and historical accuracy readers expect from Ralph Peters, Judgment at Appomattox takes us through the Civil War’s last grim interludes of combat as flags fall and hearts break. Capping the author’s acclaimed five-novel cycle on the war in the East, this “dramatized history” pays homage to all the soldiers who fought, from an Irish-immigrant private wearing gray, to the “boy generals” who mastered modern war. This is a grand climax to a great, prize-winning series that honors—and reveals—America's past. Battle Hymn Cycle Cain at Gettysburg Hell or Richmond Valley of the Shadow The Damned of Petersburg Judgment at Appomattox At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

U.S. Civil War Battle by Battle

U.S. Civil War Battle by Battle PDF Author: Iain MacGregor
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472850092
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 134

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Book Description
'Just the thing for US Civil War buffs: snappily written, informative and entertaining. A cracking read.' Saul David, bestselling author and historian This attractively packaged gift book offers a highly illustrated introduction to some of the U.S. Civil War's most famous and important battles, from the Battle of Fort Sumter in 1861 to the Battle of Appomatox Court House in 1865. The U.S. Civil War was the most cataclysmic military struggle of the late 19th century, and in four bloody years of fighting from 1861 to 1865 over 620,000 American soldiers and sailors lost their lives in more than 8,000 battles, engagements and skirmishes. U.S. Civil War Battle by Battle tells the story of 30 of the most significant of these battles. These include some of the most famous clashes, such as the battles of Gettysburg and Fredericksburg, which resonate through American military history, but also the less well known, such as the battles of Brandy Station and Cedar Creek. This highly illustrated introduction, packed full of colour artwork, covers every theatre of the war and details infantry, cavalry, artillery and seaborne units from both the Union and the Confederate forces to give a true sense of the scale of the War between the States.

Lee's Last Retreat

Lee's Last Retreat PDF Author: William Marvel
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 9780807857038
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
Few events in Civil War history have generated such deliberate mythmaking as the retreat that ended at Appomattox. As the popular imagination would have it, Robert E. Lee's tattered, starving, but devoted troops found themselves hopelessly surrounded thro