I've read too many books and forgotten to post my impressions, even to keep a list of those I've read or listened to in the car while commuting back and forth to work at Athens Drive High. I don't want that bad habit to continue, so, even though I have not finished this book, I want to let someone know just how impressed I've been already with what portion I've read. Jay Winik's April 1865: The Month that Saved America (2001), simply put, and extremely understated, is an eye-opener.
While there have been many very good books written on the Civil War, several of those recently, most of them are simply the re-telling of old stories with occasional fresh insights or new primary sources - diary, letter, etc. - here and there. Winik's work, however, for enlightening the reader to new perspectives and considerations alone, deserves to be placed alonside that of Stephen Budiansky's The Bloody Shirt: Terror After Appomattox. What The Bloody Shirt did for Reconstruction, April 1865 does for the Civil War. If one has not read The Bloody Shirt, one does not know the truth about Reconstruction, and if one is without April 1865, then he is missing the significance of the Civil War, and most hugely, the significance of Lee's decision to surrender. I will say that, and I've only read about a third of Winik so far, mostly from the last half of the book. I have, however, already learned so much from what I've read so far, that I feel confident the rest of the book will prove me true.
What I mean is Lee's decision to call an end to the fighting and his decision not to perpetuate the struggle through a call for all-out guerrilla warfare. On the morning of April 9th, 1865, the day Lee would surrender to Grant, the Confederate General John Gordon, starting at 5 a.m., had already led his men in a desperately furious and heroic, but futile, attempt to break out from the surrounding Union forces. I would like to quote from Winik:
What I mean is Lee's decision to call an end to the fighting and his decision not to perpetuate the struggle through a call for all-out guerrilla warfare. On the morning of April 9th, 1865, the day Lee would surrender to Grant, the Confederate General John Gordon, starting at 5 a.m., had already led his men in a desperately furious and heroic, but futile, attempt to break out from the surrounding Union forces. I would like to quote from Winik:
Three hours later, around 8 A.M., a courier from Gordon hastily carried the apocalyptic message to Lee, "I have fought
my corps to a frazzle," he wrote. "And I fear I can do nothing..." Thus the ominous choice was finally set before Lee:
surrender or throw his life on one last murderous fight - Lincoln's feared Armegeddon. Lee summoned General
Longstreet, who brought Mahone and Lee's chief of artillery, the twenty-nine-year-old brigadier general, E. Porter
Alexander. All were expecting a council of war. Instead, the discussion turned to surrender. When a moment of
vacillation came and an opening occurred, Alexander, one of the most talented and innovative men in Lee's command,
took it. Pleading with his chief not to give up, Alexander saw another recourse: a third option.
"You don't care for military glory or fame," he protested, "but we are proud of your name and the record of this army. We
want to leave it to our children... a little more blood more or less now makes no difference." Instead, Alexander
suggested, a Confederate trump card, in fact, the specter most dreaded by Lincoln, Grant, and Sherman: that the men
take to the woods, evaporate into the hills, and become guerrillas. "Two thirds would get away," Alexander contended.
"We would be like rabbits or partridges in the bushes," he said, " and they could not scatter to follow us." ... Alexander
was already prepared to take to the bush rather than surrender - and so, he later indicated, were countless other men.
In fact, that very morning after Gordon's breakout failed, some cavalry had already slipped away; two elite artillery units
had destroyed their gun carriages and headed toward the hills; and hundreds more infantry had vanished into the empty,
largely unsettled countryside.
At that very moment, in fact, the rest of Lee's men were looking to their commanding general for a signal, to tell them
what he wanted them to do.
Robert E. Lee paused, weighing his answer, the question of guerrilla warfare ricocheting around in his brain. No less
than for Davis, the momentous step of surrender was anathema to him. Here, surely, was seduction. And in this fateful
moment, while he considered his response - both what he would decide and what he would reject - the aging general
would alter the course of the nation's history for all time. It would constitute perhaps Lee's finest moment ever. (145-47)
Winik follows with an excellent consideration and history of guerrilla warfare, including the Confederate John Hunt Morgan, who "was killed in 1864, but this hardly ended the North's woes. By 1865, partisans swarmed across the Confederacy like locusts in ancient Egypt" (158). Then, however, Winik chills readers with the rest of his history and consideration of guerrilla warfare: "But if ever there was a question about the Confederacy's ability to wage guerrilla war in April 1865, or the likely consequences of such a nationwide conflict, it was answered by the mere mention of one word: Missouri." This is how I had run into Winik in the first place: doing research on Missouri bushwackers of the Civil War era. The author describes in detail the likes of William Clarke Quantrill, his successor "Bloody Bill" Anderson, and other cutthroats who used the political issues of the day to wreac havoc on some Union soldiers but mostly pro-Union civilians throughout Missouri and Kansas. For sure, Kansas "jayhawkers" were every bit as cruel as their Missouri counterparts; both groups operated for the most part outside of their regular relative military's jurisdiction, writing their own agendas, carrying out their own raids, and operating according to their own lawless codes. Winik clearly lays out the potential prospect of endless rapine and terror that would be the rule of the day if the Confederacy as a whole embraced guerrilla tactics. Fortunately for the nation, Lee said no, and General Joe Johnston, two weeks later, would defy President Jefferson's direct order to continue the struggle as guerrillas; he too would surrender, to Sherman at Durham Station, NC on April 26, 1865. The remaining Confederate generals would all follow suit (except Joe Shelby, who fled to Mexico, then returned to Missouri in 1867 to farm). For sure, individual outlaws and their gangs remained defiant, or usually turned outlaw and simply exploited their 'unreconstructed" status as a cover-up for their crimes, e.g., Frank and Jesse James, but large-scale guerrilla war was avoided, thanks to Lee, and Johnston, and the other Confederate military leaders. Able to discern defeat and the larger good of accepting it, they triumphed over the political blather of Confederate romantics who would have seen the entire South and rest of the country ruined rather than capitulate. Unfortunately, many of their descendants would remain too proud to learn from their ancestors and thus they perpetuated the false doctrine of white supremacy while continuing to subjugate and enslave in new ways the freedmen. We as a nation, all of us, are still paying for that abuse today.
my corps to a frazzle," he wrote. "And I fear I can do nothing..." Thus the ominous choice was finally set before Lee:
surrender or throw his life on one last murderous fight - Lincoln's feared Armegeddon. Lee summoned General
Longstreet, who brought Mahone and Lee's chief of artillery, the twenty-nine-year-old brigadier general, E. Porter
Alexander. All were expecting a council of war. Instead, the discussion turned to surrender. When a moment of
vacillation came and an opening occurred, Alexander, one of the most talented and innovative men in Lee's command,
took it. Pleading with his chief not to give up, Alexander saw another recourse: a third option.
"You don't care for military glory or fame," he protested, "but we are proud of your name and the record of this army. We
want to leave it to our children... a little more blood more or less now makes no difference." Instead, Alexander
suggested, a Confederate trump card, in fact, the specter most dreaded by Lincoln, Grant, and Sherman: that the men
take to the woods, evaporate into the hills, and become guerrillas. "Two thirds would get away," Alexander contended.
"We would be like rabbits or partridges in the bushes," he said, " and they could not scatter to follow us." ... Alexander
was already prepared to take to the bush rather than surrender - and so, he later indicated, were countless other men.
In fact, that very morning after Gordon's breakout failed, some cavalry had already slipped away; two elite artillery units
had destroyed their gun carriages and headed toward the hills; and hundreds more infantry had vanished into the empty,
largely unsettled countryside.
At that very moment, in fact, the rest of Lee's men were looking to their commanding general for a signal, to tell them
what he wanted them to do.
Robert E. Lee paused, weighing his answer, the question of guerrilla warfare ricocheting around in his brain. No less
than for Davis, the momentous step of surrender was anathema to him. Here, surely, was seduction. And in this fateful
moment, while he considered his response - both what he would decide and what he would reject - the aging general
would alter the course of the nation's history for all time. It would constitute perhaps Lee's finest moment ever. (145-47)
Winik follows with an excellent consideration and history of guerrilla warfare, including the Confederate John Hunt Morgan, who "was killed in 1864, but this hardly ended the North's woes. By 1865, partisans swarmed across the Confederacy like locusts in ancient Egypt" (158). Then, however, Winik chills readers with the rest of his history and consideration of guerrilla warfare: "But if ever there was a question about the Confederacy's ability to wage guerrilla war in April 1865, or the likely consequences of such a nationwide conflict, it was answered by the mere mention of one word: Missouri." This is how I had run into Winik in the first place: doing research on Missouri bushwackers of the Civil War era. The author describes in detail the likes of William Clarke Quantrill, his successor "Bloody Bill" Anderson, and other cutthroats who used the political issues of the day to wreac havoc on some Union soldiers but mostly pro-Union civilians throughout Missouri and Kansas. For sure, Kansas "jayhawkers" were every bit as cruel as their Missouri counterparts; both groups operated for the most part outside of their regular relative military's jurisdiction, writing their own agendas, carrying out their own raids, and operating according to their own lawless codes. Winik clearly lays out the potential prospect of endless rapine and terror that would be the rule of the day if the Confederacy as a whole embraced guerrilla tactics. Fortunately for the nation, Lee said no, and General Joe Johnston, two weeks later, would defy President Jefferson's direct order to continue the struggle as guerrillas; he too would surrender, to Sherman at Durham Station, NC on April 26, 1865. The remaining Confederate generals would all follow suit (except Joe Shelby, who fled to Mexico, then returned to Missouri in 1867 to farm). For sure, individual outlaws and their gangs remained defiant, or usually turned outlaw and simply exploited their 'unreconstructed" status as a cover-up for their crimes, e.g., Frank and Jesse James, but large-scale guerrilla war was avoided, thanks to Lee, and Johnston, and the other Confederate military leaders. Able to discern defeat and the larger good of accepting it, they triumphed over the political blather of Confederate romantics who would have seen the entire South and rest of the country ruined rather than capitulate. Unfortunately, many of their descendants would remain too proud to learn from their ancestors and thus they perpetuated the false doctrine of white supremacy while continuing to subjugate and enslave in new ways the freedmen. We as a nation, all of us, are still paying for that abuse today.