End, Beginning, and Transition: April 1865
As several Civil War bloggers noted yesterday, April 9 marks the day when Robert E. Lee agreed to Ulysses S. Grant’s terms for the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia at Wilmer McLean’s home in Appomattox Court House, Virginia. I want to spend some time reflecting on the events of that month, because I think that to do so challenges us to confront the traditional bifurcation of war and peace, or civil war and reconstruction, as well as to highlight the gulf between some students of the Civil War and some students of Reconstruction. Mark and I coedited a volume addressing some of these very questions when we examined war termination in The Collapse of the Confederacy (University of Nebraska Press, 2001); it’s interesting to wrap together the essays Mark, Steve, and I did in that volume and see how they play off each other.
Among the reflections I came across yesterday, one particularly moved me to respond. In “Rantings of a Civil War Historian,” Eric Wittenberg writes:
“Abraham Lincoln had intended to let the South up easy, and had Lincoln not been assassinated, the face of Reconstruction would have been very different indeed. The fact that Lincoln was assassinated by a Confederate sympathizer gave the Radical Republicans an excuse to impose harsh terms upon the South instead of following Lincoln’s plan.”
I often agree with Eric, and there are other parts of his posts where I am in vigorous agreement, including his assessment of Jay Winik’s April 1865, which offers little new that had not been argued before and omits much that could be of some help. Here I dissent.
First, what did Lincoln intend to do? We don’t know. Oh, sure, he liked the terms Grant issued at Appomattox, and in fact had set the table for those terms during his conference with Grant and Sherman aboard the River Queen in late March 1865. But on April 11, in his last public address, Lincoln openly broached the notion of limited suffrage from African Americans in the South . . . and most former Confederates would not have seen such a step as letting them up easy. To be sure, Lincoln did not want treason trials and the like, but he intended that white Southerners would have to end slavery as well as surrender their dreams of independence, terms Confederate representatives had rejected only months before. Lincoln himself admitted that with the ending of the war (with Lee’s surrender that was now plainly in sight) that he would have to reconsider his wartime reconstruction proposals: such was the key issue in the April 14 cabinet meeting, which proved to be Lincoln’s last. We can speculate on what Lincoln was going to do, but other than offering well-considered guesses, we can’t go too far, because Lincoln himself was not sure what he was going to do. I’ve argued that the people who confidently predict what Lincoln would have done tell us at least as much about themselves as about Lincoln.
Second, the most important impact of Lincoln’s assassination was that Andrew Johnson became president. One can indeed argue that Reconstruction might have been very different under Lincoln than under Johnson, largely because the two men were so different. Would Abraham Lincoln have called Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner traitors? Would Lincoln have treated Frederick Douglass like dirt? Would Lincoln have “swung around the circle,”during the 1866 off-year election campaign, comparing himself to Jesus Christ? Would Lincoln have vetoed the Civil Rights Bill of 1866 and the Freedmen’s Bureau Act of early 1866? Would Lincoln have tolerated anti-black white supremacist terrorism? Would Lincoln have issued race-baiting veto messages? Would Lincoln have shamed black veterans upon their return from the front? Just to raise these questions is to remind us of the sort of fellow Andrew Johnson was. And yet Eric focuses on the Radical Republicans, and says that Lincoln’s death allowed them to impose a harsh peace upon the South.
I disagree. First, the programs Johnson opposed in 1866 were framed by moderate Republicans. Radicals saw the Civil Rights Act, the first Freedmen’s Bureau Bill of 1866, and the Fourteenth Amendment as half-way measures, not coming close to the plans offered by Stevens and Sumner. Johnson (and the white South) opposed those measures. What made “radical” Reconstruction possible was how many white Southerners and Johnson himself acted in the years 1865-1867; there would have been no “military” Reconstruction had white Southerners followed the policy set forth in 1866. Indeed, many white Southerners complained under Johnson’s lenient policy of 1865, and sought to circumvent it when possible. To blame the Radical Republicans for this is simply wrong. Second, the Radicals only reluctantly accepted the premises of the Reconstruction Acts of 1867, which called for the fairly rapid restoration of civil government in ten former Confederate states (by ratifying the Fourteenth Amendment, Tennessee won exclusion from that legislation). Radicals did not want the rapid restoration of civil government because they believed that the resulting regimes would rest upon shaky foundations, and, as it turned out, they were right. Whatever one wants to make of the Radicals’ motives, the policies of 1866 and 1867 were but tepid versions of what they wanted.
The events of April 1865 did not end the Civil War: they marked a point of transition in a larger struggle that one could argue stretched back to the 1850s and even 1840s, and that continued on into the 1870s and perhaps even longer. Kevin Levin’s on the right track here in his comment on the events of April 1865. I’d make the point even stronger, in that Lee’s famed General order No. 9, issued on this date in 1865, is one of the first expressions of the Lost Cause Myth: although the men of the Army of Northern Virginia had displayed “unsurpassed courage and fortitude,” they had been “compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources.” The romance of the meeting at the McLean home and the events at Surrender Triangle need revisiting, for not all was settled.
The events of Reconstruction offer us something to reflect upon in today’s world; for that to happen, however, we must first understand them on their own terms, and it has been a signal failing of Reconstruction scholarship that it has failed to make a significant dent in mainstream understandings of that contested era. Nor is that something that we historians of the Civil War ought to leave to other historians (and thereby embrace this false dichotomy): for Reconstruction had much to do with determining what the Civil War achieved and what it means.
Kevin wrote:
Brooks, — Excellent post. I do want to take issue with your comment that Lee’s General Order No. 9 “is one of the first expressions of the Lost Cause Myth.” While I agree that ex-Confederates such as Jubal Early exxagerated the balance sheet it seems to me that we can make sense of Lee’s order as a legitimate and realistic assessment of the situation. Gary Gallagher has argued that it is important to distinguish between those aspects of the Lost Cause that were rooted in fantasy and other aspects which at least approach a legitimate assessment. After all Lee was not aware of a Lost Cause myth at Appomattox and it is a stretch to assume that he intended to start one in April 1865. Thanks again for an excellent read.
Posted on 10-Apr-06 at 5:11 pm | Permalink
Will Kene wrote:
Another excellent posting. I think Eric was espousing a mythology that surrounds Lincoln and Reconstruction. I hear it stated quite frequently that if only Lincoln had lived, Reconstruction would have been rosy and the postwar animosity of the south would have been avoided. There also seems to be regular references to ‘Radical Republicans’ as the source of all problems. I dont get it. If Lincoln had lived, we would have been spared Andrew Johnson, which would be a blessing in itself, but we would not have been spared the actions of white southerners in contesting the political outcome of the war.
Posted on 10-Apr-06 at 6:18 pm | Permalink
Will Kene wrote:
Contrary to Kevin, I don’t think it is a stretch to assume that Lee intended to start a myth on April 1865. Lee was force to admit failure and so he put down on paper a reason for that failure.
By stating “compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources,” he is declaring that the failure had nothing to do with leadership or will, but was simply a matter of disparity in resources.
Posted on 10-Apr-06 at 6:23 pm | Permalink
Kevin wrote:
O.K. Will, but if you are going to say it is not a stretch than there should be an argument along for the ride. Lee’s words may reasonably be interpreted as covering his reputation for future generations, but that doesn’t necessarily imply any intention to engage in myth-making.
Posted on 10-Apr-06 at 7:11 pm | Permalink
Brooks Simpson wrote:
Hi, Kevin. In light of what Lee was thinking at the time, as well as his later interest
in writing a history of the ANV that would have followed the same line of argument about
numbers, etc., I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to see GO #9 as an early expression
of the LCM. Gary’s point has validity, but my response would be that some of the pieces of
LCM have some validity, but the purposes to which those pieces are put are far more
problematic. Lee espoused the argument before Early did.
Posted on 10-Apr-06 at 8:07 pm | Permalink
Marc Ferguson wrote:
Great post. I am struck by Will Kene’s comment that had Lincoln lived, “we would have been spared Andrew Johnson… but we would not have been spared the actions of white southerners in contesting the political outcome of the war.” I have wondered if Johnson’s presence in the White House, and his apparent readiness to allow white southerners to reimpose the slave-system under another name, created the expectation that there would be no significant social reconstruction. If Lincoln had lived, perhaps expectations of a return to ante-bellum social and political circumstances would not have been so high. Is it possible that without the raising and then dashing of such hopes, the history of Reconstruction, would have been less violent.
Posted on 10-Apr-06 at 8:52 pm | Permalink
Cash wrote:
Great post, Brooks. Reconstruction is a topic most people never really read about. In high school history classes, it often falls through the cracks. They never get to it at the end of the Civil War and they skip over it when it comes to events after the Civil War. Most Civil War buffs ignore it because it has no movement of armies, strategies of generals, and tales of bravery and honor. As a result, most of us only know mythology and false claims, ceding the field to those who have an agenda to pursue other than an understanding of the history.
Posted on 11-Apr-06 at 2:14 pm | Permalink
Bob Fugate wrote:
As a humble reader of you guys, I ask whether we can’t all agree that
Lee actually was “compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and
resources” in the Appomattox Campaign. Whether or not the same line of
reasoning figured later into LCM doctrine, it seems literally true
and accurate for Lee to have written it in April 1865. Enjoying this
blog a lot.
Posted on 15-Apr-06 at 6:34 pm | Permalink
elementaryhistoryteacher wrote:
I find it sad if the Civil War and Reconstruction falls through the cracks in high school as cash states. It is taught at the fourth and fifth grade where I am at. I agree with your comment that the events of April, 1865 did not end the Civil War but only marked a transition. I teach my students that their text may state
Reconstruction ended in 1877 with the removal of troops, however, the effects of April, 1865 and
Reconstruction continued through the signing of the Civil Rights Act and beyond.
Posted on 15-Apr-06 at 8:18 pm | Permalink
Mark G. wrote:
Bob: It was accurate as of April 9, 1865. It would not have been six days previously. As William Marvel points out in Lee’s Last Retreat: The Flight to Appomattox, “On the night of April 3 more than 50,000 soldiers remained at least nominally under Lee’s immediate control. That represented a larger army than he had carried into Maryland in 1862, and it slightly exceeded the number of sound men he had brought back from Pennsylvania in 1863.” (p. 41). No doubt Lee was in a bad fix, but it was so in part because of Fort Stedman and Five Forks, and would become greatly worse thanks to the debacle at Sayler’s Creek on April 6.
If one examines the Carolinas campaign (as I did in my essay for The Collapse of the Confederacy), one finds that Confederate forces came nowhere near to capitalizing on their remaining military strength and position. In short, Union forces fought very well in February – April 1865, while the Confederates made significant strategic, operational, and tactical mistakes. The Lost Cause myth asks us to overlook this. For the most part, it has succeeded.
Posted on 15-Apr-06 at 8:20 pm | Permalink
larissa wrote:
I have to do a stupid report on the civil war and this really helped me. Thanks!
Posted on 06-Jun-07 at 11:22 pm | Permalink