← History As It Happens
History As It Happens
Appomattox
00:58:48
When did the Civil War end? April 1865? August 1866? April 1877? Historian Michael Vorenberg delves into why each of these dates, among others, might be considered the final chapter of the bloodiest war ever fought on American soil. April 9 is the...
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- [00:01]
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- [00:28]
Host
This is history as it happens, and the date is April 9, 1865. The American Civil War ended, or so we might remember it that way on this 160th anniversary of Appomattox. In the opening paragraph of his new book, Lincoln's the Struggle to End the American Civil War, Brown University historian Michael Vorinberg writes, On April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, Ulysses S. Grant, Lieutenant General in command of all U.S. armies, accepted the surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee and his army of Northern Virginia. The next day, the New York Herald, the most widely circulated newspaper in the United States, blared out on the front page the end the Civil War was over. Vornberg goes on to say, an end to the Civil War did not come in Lincoln's lifetime. So when did it come? The answer is this, he says. It's complicated. It's complicated as historians classic response to any question about the past and the reason why they risk being throttled every time they try to answer a seemingly simple question posed by an impatient audience. But when it comes to finding the end of the Civil War, writes Vornberg, the answer really is complicated. Well, no one can argue that Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox on April 9, 1865, the date we most commonly associate with the war's ending. On the 150th anniversary 10 years ago, C Span broadcast a live reenactment of the proceedings General Grant's arrival and General Lee's departure from the McLean House.
- [02:12]
Michael Vorenberg
About 1:30 on the afternoon of April 9, 1865, Ulysses Grant and a small entourage of officers arrived here at the McLean house.
- [02:23]
Host
But as you'll learn in Vornberg's book, Fighting continued. Small battles were fought into May and violence terroristic violence aimed at the newly freed African Americans made the political work of reconstructing the Union all the more urgent. To consolidate the battlefield achievements of the Union army to uphold the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments. This process played out for the next century. President Lyndon Johnson invoked this history in his We Shall Overcome speech to Congress, March 15, 1965.
- [02:56]
Lyndon Johnson
It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life. Their cause must be our cause too, because it's not just Negroes, but really, it's all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.
- [03:35]
Host
Now. The Civil War did end. It was not a forever war, but the political and racial conflict at the heart of the Second Founding persisted. And to this day, there are people who embrace the myth of the Lost Cause, the way you interpret the outcome of the Civil War, when and where it ended, why it was fought, and why it took so long, generations and much more spilled blood to fulfill the promises written into the Constitution after the war for a more perfect Union without legal discrimination, the way we think about all these issues matters a great deal today. 160 years is not a long period of time.
- [04:13]
Lyndon Johnson
At times, history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last Week in Selma, Alabama.
- [04:42]
Host
Michael Vornberg specializes in 19th century US history at Brown University. He focuses on the Civil War, emancipation law, and the US Constitution. And he is the author of the aforementioned Lincoln's the Struggle to End the American Civil War. Our Conversation Next History is defined by.
- [05:01]
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- [05:30]
Host
Welcome to the podcast.
- [05:31]
Michael Vorenberg
Well, thank you for having me. I look forward to the conversation. Appreciate being on the show.
- [05:37]
Host
Congrats on your book. Nothing like an anniversary to concentrate our minds on a subject. But you know, we don't need an anniversary as an excuse to discuss the Civil War. It is always relevant. But maybe the anniversary is wrong. April 9 isn't the end of the Civil War. What's wrong with saying that?
- [05:57]
Michael Vorenberg
Well, it is the anniversary of Robert E. Lee surrendering to Ulysses Grant. I don't think anyone could question that. If one had to pick one moment to stand in for the end of the Civil War. That's about as good a moment as any, I would say. And that is the way we think of it. The war was not technically over on April 9. And even if you think about armies still being in the field or Confederates who had not surrendered, that was still the case. Nonetheless, Lee himself and his army were the sort of emblem of the Confederacy, and for them to surrender was a very big deal. And so the next day, the New York Herald says the end. And then there are celebrations in cities across the North. That sounds a lot like an ending to me. But no, it's true. In my book, I argue that there were actually many other endings to come beyond April 9, and the legal end won't come for another 16 months, but that's the legal end. But in terms of an ending of armies, yes, Appomattox still works better than any.
- [07:01]
Host
And you point to these different wars in your book. Military war, political, cultural, maybe even metaphysical. You know, I am often saying that wars don't end, they migrate to our minds. Although I don't want to take that cliche too far. This war did end all wars. And you take up this question in the book, all wars eventually do come to an end. There really is no such thing as a forever war. But, you know, when I look back on this, as I was saying, it doesn't really matter much to me now, although maybe you would disagree whether the war ended on April 9. Open up your book on the opening pages. A really nice map. I love it when history books come with maps. April 26, surrender of Joe Johnston in Durham Station, North Carolina. April 16, a Battle of Columbus in Columbus, Georgia. I never even heard of that one before. Capture of Jefferson Davis. May 10, 1865, surrender of Richard Taylor in Citronelle, Alabama. May 4, 1865, surrender of Edmund Kirby Smith, Galveston, Texas. June 2, 1865. And then a Battle of Palmito Ranch in Palmito Ranch, Texas, way down the border of Mexico that took place in the middle of May of 1865. Don't worry, Michael, I'm not going to read the entire book here. And then July 1st, Joe Shelby crosses into Mexico. Was this the continuation of the war or these were mopping up operations instead?
- [08:28]
Michael Vorenberg
It depends on whether you're talking about the vantage point of the moment in, let's say May or June of 1865, or the vantage point of the two of us sitting here today. I think sitting here today, you and I look back and we say, yeah, that's a mopping up operation. And it is, because we know military operations came to an end and that the Confederacy really did come to an end fairly quickly. However, at the time, there was a sense that the Confederacy could hold out for some time. I think after Appomattox, the idea that the Confederacy would get its own nation, would get recognition by the United States as its own nation and by other countries, I think after Appomattox, the chances of that are close to nils. However, the idea would be, and this is true of lots of wars, that if you can hold out long enough, your point of negotiation, what you can negotiate for is better the more you can demoralize the north by having a force that's still in the field. And that was always kind of a Confederate strategy, which is, if you can demoralize the north one way or the other, demoralize the federal government, you can negotiate better terms.
- [09:37]
Host
That's a political point, though. That's a political war. And after the election of 1864 and Lincoln wins, what is the point of fighting on after that? Talking about Robert E. Lee, the most overrated general in American history. Go ahead. Yes.
- [09:53]
Michael Vorenberg
What's the point of fighting on? Well, there are those who simply don't want to give up, period. Let me go back to something you said, which is a kind of metaphysical. The war of the mind. That's actually not such a small thing. Right.
- [10:04]
Host
So that's a big thing. That's what I'm most interested in. Go ahead.
- [10:08]
Michael Vorenberg
I mean, there's a famous quote, one of the officers at Appomattox, one of the Confederate officers, who says to his counterpart, another US Officer, something like, you know, you may have won the day and we have surrendered, but you will never subdue us. Right. You will never subdue us. And of course, that idea is so integral to the idea of the Lost Cause, the idea of the unreconstructed confederate that still hangs around. So that I think speaks to the idea of the metaphysical. Right, which, yeah, we'll surrender, but you can't beat us. Is that political? That's cultural. Right. That's this idea of like, I'm not going to surrender. I may take the oath as if I'm surrendering, but you're not going to subdue us. And I would argue that some of these so called skirmishes, which are skirmishes are better thought of as insurgencies. Right. So when we talk about the 21st century attacks, invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan by us. Right. Okay. A moment comes in May of 2003 where President Bush says combat operations are.
- [11:11]
Lyndon Johnson
Over and we will stand with the new leaders of Iraq as they establish a government of, by and for the Iraqi people.
- [11:25]
Michael Vorenberg
And now there's a war of occupation. Okay, is the war over? You know, I don't think most of us would say the war was over, but it's a different kind of war, and it's what we then are dealing with for eight years is insurgencies. Insurgencies are serious. I mean, insurgencies, people die. Insurgencies are people clearly who haven't surrendered, have not been subdued on the ground at the time. To the civilians around these places where there are insurgencies, they look like war. And during Reconstruction, or if you want to say whatever you want to call post Appomattox, period, we have got paramilitary action by white supremacists who are committing massacres of black people and certain white unionists on the ground. That doesn't seem quite like mopping up. Mopping up doesn't seem to do justice to that kind of violence. To me.
- [12:14]
Host
The major war, the major fighting ended in 1865, but the conflict persisted in the minds of the Confederates, who, as you say, did not really want to give up the fight. And then they subscribed to this myth that they weren't really defeated. There's a lot here. There's a lot to untangle here. Let's go back to Robert E. Lee in Appomattox. He surrenders because he wants to avoid being defeated, which never happened. Of course, Lee never defeated Grant either. But Lee is surrendering because he's nearly surrounded and outnumbered five or six to one at this point, right?
- [12:46]
Michael Vorenberg
And he has no chance. He's surrounded. And with every passing hour, more reinforcements are coming into the Union lines, making the possibility of some kind of breakout absolutely impossible. So they could fight, but they will lose? If you see it that way, yes. However, the theory here, the. The phrase unconditional surrender is the phrase we get, and that's what Grant is famous for. Even earlier in 1863, when Vicksburg surrenders, I do think it's worth talking about. Was Lee's surrender truly unconditional? Because there's this back and forth of messaging, back and forth, and Lee doesn't agree to surrender until basically he knows things like there will be a decent treatment of the troops, right? A truly unconditional surrender means I surrender. Do with us what you will. And if that means trials for treason, execution, so be it. That Lee had assurances that that kind of thing wasn't going to happen, and so it isn't quite formally a conditional surrender, but knowing that he would be well treated by Grant, and he did know this Grant had made this clear in the messaging, helps him Surrender and.
- [14:02]
Host
This issue of whether the south could have fought on to what end they would never defeat the North. It's been pointed out that the north could have continued to lose battle after battle after battle, that the south was losing a war of attrition. It would never prevail in because the north just had. Not to subscribe to any lost cause mythology here, but the north did have superior numbers. I mean, that goes into the Southern myth making. Right. We weren't really beaten. We just surrendered to greater numbers. I mean, that's kind of saying we lost because we lost, you know.
- [14:31]
Michael Vorenberg
Yes. And that is part of the lost cause, which is that we never had a chance, really, which makes it a noble cause in this weird kind of upended way.
- [14:40]
Host
Yeah, it's backwards.
- [14:41]
Michael Vorenberg
It's a noble cause because we always had the odds stacked against us, but we fought anyway. One interpretation of such action would be to say, well, that's insane. But another interpretation says that's noble and honorable. If the cause is so great that you're willing to fight for it, even though the odds are against you, that's a great cause. And by the way, the American Revolution, you could say, was the same kind of war. And the Confederates did say it was the same kind of war. The odds were incredibly against the patriots, the revolutionaries, and indeed all things looked like were going to lose and they should have lost. And maybe, but for the French, they would have lost, but they kept on fighting. That makes the revolutionaries noble and heroic in our minds. So if you say the Confederates were kind of like that, then you're saying, yeah, they too. And that was, you know, the Lost Cause has that element to it. The difference is cause of the Confederacy has elements to it that are very different from the cause of the American Revolution.
- [15:40]
Host
Of course. Yeah, that was a coping mechanism as well, the Lost Cause myth, because they had to whitewash slavery. If your cause, if the reason you're fighting brought ruin upon your country, as they call it, brought disaster upon the south, upended the political order, led to the Northern occupation, if you will, of the Southern states for years afterward, well, then you have to do some myth making to figure out a way to cope with all this. It's not unlike the way the German people conceptualize the end of World War I or the stab in the back mythology. The Germans had been lied to by the generals leading the war effort at that point. Hindenburg and Ludendorff, they were defeated on the battlefield. But because the Allies never entered Germany, this myth was allowed to gain steam that they were Stabbed in the back by Jews and communists or whoever, you know, peaceniks back home. I don't want to digress about the First World War here, but, you know, James McPherson in the conclusion of his great book Battle Cry of Freedom, brings up this idea of being able to fight a guerrilla war. As Kissinger said, Guerril, win by not losing. And this has happened in other contexts. North Vietnam continuing its fight against the much more powerful United States of America. But I don't know. I think that comparison is lacking.
- [16:56]
Michael Vorenberg
I think it's meaningful. Right. That Battle Cry of Freedom is written roughly 10 years or published a little bit more than 10 years, maybe closer to 12, 14 years after the withdrawal of Vietnam. Vietnam is a really interesting moment. And it's also. We're in an anniversary year, right? April 1975, last US troops withdrawn from Saigon. I'm a child of the 1970s, really, and, and that couldn't help but influence me as I thought about things in this book. One of the things you just said, quoting Kissinger, is that you don't have to win necessarily. You just don't lose. If you want your own nation, which is what the Confederacy wanted at the beginning, you have to win.
- [17:38]
Host
That's right.
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Michael Vorenberg
But if you take an approach of let's let the war drag on, you don't necessarily win your separate nation. But maybe, right, maybe certain states can get to hold on to slavery. Maybe you secure certain guarantees that are clear that there will be no trials of officers. Because remember, when Lee surrenders, there is absolutely the open possibility that officers could be tried for treason. Jefferson Davis, by all expectation, if he was to be captured, and he was captured, was to be tried for treason. So you can negotiate things that are actually a big deal. You could negotiate, for example, some kind of payout for destruction done by the Union army to the Confederacy. You could negotiate basically face saving aspects. And more important than face saving aspects, you could theoretically negotiate, if not the lifetime extension of slavery, some type of extension of slavery that the Southern white slave owners would get to hold on to slavery longer. These are not small things to negotiate.
- [18:45]
Host
They tried that right at Hampton Roads in March of 1865.
- [18:48]
Michael Vorenberg
Exactly. And according to Alexander Stevens, who I don't believe, but his account of Hampton Road, Stevens was the vice President of the Confederacy, says that Abraham Lincoln said at that meeting, well, the 13th Amendment. Well, he didn't call the 13th, but the amendment is just passed to abolish slavery. And if you, Alexander Stevens, go back to Georgia, your home state, get Georgia to ratify it you can ratify it. This is a Stevens account. You can ratify it, but you can have it done gradually. You can have emancipation done gradually, let's say over five, 10 years. And that's going to be okay. This is what Lincoln says. This is what Stevens has. Lincoln's saying. I don't think Lincoln said it but in fact if the Confederacy could hold out long enough, then maybe some type of gradual abolition is possible. And is holding out possible? Well, I'll just say a few things on that. First of all, Jefferson Davis believed it absolutely was possible. Now you could say Davis was deluded and you wouldn't necessarily be wrong, but Davis was very clear that he didn't want Joe Johnston to surrender. When the surrender of Joe Johnston in Bennett Place, which is near Raleigh, North Carolina, in Durham, it's closer to Durham. There's actually a two stage process. There's the first surrender agreement which gets disapproved of by the Union government. And then the second, second surrender looks a lot like the, very much like the Appomattox surrender in the agreement. And Davis says no, don't accept it. And Johnson defies his President and accepts the surrender. Davis believed that, you know, no surrender was the way to go. So that's kind of serious because Johnston's army was bigger than Lee's at that point. Johnson's army was probably close, closer to 30,000, Lee's closer to 20,000. Meanwhile, there's 50,000 Confederate troops west of the Mississippi. They're not well organized and they're not in the kind of fighting force that's going to win the Confederacy. But they could keep the war going for a long time. The idea of again not losing or at least holding out, let's say holding out is very much, you know, if you think about what Vietnam did in the early 70s, that's, that's not a crazy strategy.
- [20:51]
Host
The Southerners led by Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis, who said victory was, was in the offing after the loss of Richmond. Right. In your book you talk about a newspaper op ed or a letter he wrote that was printed in major Southern newspapers saying don't worry about the fact that we lost Richmond to the Union. We now actually free the army of Northern Virginia from having to defend our capital and they can link up with Johnston and in North Carolina or somewhere and head to the mountains and fight a guerrilla war. I mean, this was his idea of holding out.
- [21:22]
Michael Vorenberg
And that's exactly right. So Richmond, the sequence here, it all happens rather quickly. Richmond Falls on April 3rd. So we know that Appomattox surrender is going to come on April 9, less than a week later. But if we just stop on April 3rd, 4th, let's say, and Davis and the Confederate Cabinet have left Richmond, they're on the run. But that's when Davis will issue this statement, which, as I write and as you mentioned, is published across the South. Looking at it today, it looks crazy, but at the moment, you know, Davis's thought isn't quite as insane as we might think. But the idea is, yeah, we now have all this manpower that's at our disposal because we don't have to guard, guard Richmond and Petersburg and use those troops to prevent those cities from falling, because those cities have fallen. So now, yeah, you've got this army. And again, Lee hasn't surrendered. So if Lee's army can join up with Johnston's and you get one massive army that can basically roam the south and attack the US army, it doesn't have to fight a guerrilla warfare. It doesn't have to go into the mountains. It can fight them in open ground. And all it has to do is hold out. He actually says that the army has never been in a sort of stronger position than it is now.
- [22:34]
Host
Even after four years and all the losses and all the destruction to life, limb, property, the economy in the south, et cetera. We know the whole idea about holding out. Historian Jim Oaks. He argues that after Gettysburg, the military defeat of the south was inevitable and that the political stuff was inevitable after the election of 1864, Lincoln winning because the victories in 1864 lifted his political chances, he wins the election and that's it. There's no way the south is going to get to keep slavery in a Southern Confederacy after that point.
- [23:08]
Michael Vorenberg
I think with these kinds of statements, whether it's the Civil War or any war, I think it's incumbent on the historian to define victory. I think Jim Oakes is a fantastic historian, and I agree with what he's saying because I think I know what he means by victory. Victory for the Confederacy at the outset of the war means the securing of a separate nation, that is a Confederate nation that gets recognized by the US and other nations. Right? That's what they set out to do. That's what for them the war is about. If we define victory in precisely those terms, then I'm fine with Jim Oaks statement, which is to say after Gettysburg and Vicksburg falls, which happens all around the same time, the chances of an independent Confederate nation are basically slim, if not nil. So that's true. But of Course, what happens during wars is that the definitions of victory change. That can change in either direction. This is actually a really interesting sort of military diplomatic point for any sort of war, which is, what is the definition of victory? Who gets to define victory? And then how and why does that definition change over time?
- [24:20]
Host
And then why does the war last as long as it does? You know, I want to get back to the Vietnam comparison and some more metaphysical points and how the south may have lost the war, but they didn't give up on their idea. Right. I mean, it's hard to kill an idea. No, they weren't gonna get slavery back, but they fought like hell against black freedom, black civil rights, black voting rights. But the actual fighting in the physical, on the battlefield. Some Confederates did go to Mexico, right. With the idea of returning to the United States at some point in the future and trying to resurrect the Confederacy.
- [24:52]
Michael Vorenberg
Yeah. First, I just wanna challenge you a little bit by when you say, well, they weren't gonna get slavery back. There are a number of quotations in my book and also in Eric Foner's book on Reconstruction and other really important. The subject, which has people saying things like, hey, if we can just basically go along with the political situation here and do the minimum that's asked of us in terms of reconstructing our Southern states, we'll basically be given. These are white former Confederate leaders talking. We'll basically be given the autonomy we need to effectively establish a labor system that is pretty much the same as the old. We might call it something besides slavery, but this is what they thought, and the Union government knows this. That's why it's so important to force Reconstruction, to have Reconstruction imposed by the army so that you can't have slavery rerouted in the south or stay rooted in the south under some other name. Now, your question about the Confederados, or just generally speaking, Confederates who leave, that's an interesting phenomenon too, actually. It begins before the surrenders of the spring of 1865, if you think about this, right? Any group in a war, they're always making bets. The bets are, you know, is my side going to win? And if it starts to look bad, like my side is going to lose, what do you do? Do you keep fighting? Well, yeah, you keep fighting, and that might make you a noble lost cause kind of person, but you might leave. You might say, well, let's. Let's do what we can to get out and save what we can. So there are Confederates who start migrating to Mexico in 1863, 64 as that early 64. Their cause, those Confederados, I would argue, is simply to hold on to everything they can. They're worried about all their property being lost. They might be worried about being tried for treason. So they're seeking to re establish their homes in Mexico. So then when we look at the continuing stream of Southern whites into Mexico after Appomattox, let's say that's a continuation of the same. There's a lot of people going into Mexico who want to hold on to their life, and they're also going to Brazil. And Brazil is the more logical place to go for some and also to some extent to Cuba. Cuba and Brazil are the logical place to go because Cuba and Brazil, slavery is still legal. There are these Confederates who go to Brazil. They establish communities in Brazil. Those communities still, that you can find them now claim themselves descended from the Confederacy. They still celebrate Robert E. Lee's birthday. That's a much more serious journey, of course, to go down to Sao Paulo and Rio. These communities are more towards the interior. But Mexico, though, Mexico is an easier thing. Obviously, Mexico has abolished slavery. Mexico abolished slavery years before the Civil War. And so the idea of re establishing slavery there is going to be tough. Except I'll say this and then I'll wrap this part up. So Napoleon iii, who is the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, who Americans call Louis Napoleon, he has basically put his troops in Mexico and installed an emperor of Mexico. So actually, from 62, 1862 through 1865 and beyond, Mexico is mostly controlled by the French troops and the puppet emperor Maximilian, who's from Austria. Napoleon really would have had no problem, I think, with slavery sort of existing in some form in Mexico. So the idea that you might be able to take your slaves across the southern border is not crazy. And then there are those extreme Confederates who believe that they're going to make alliances with Napoleon troops, create an army that then storms back across the Rio Grande into Texas and wages war again. You know, asking how many Confederados are, it's really hard to come up with an absolute number. I think we're only talking really. I mean, how many Confederados really thought they were going to organize an army, resurrect the war? I can't believe there'd be more than a thousand. And many of them will end up coming back to the US once they realize that they're safe again. I cannot stress enough that the possibility, if you're a Confederate of being tried for treason or some other crime, being imprisoned or Executed looms over you. We know today that that didn't happen in any kind of mass scale. They really didn't know that. And so going to Mexico makes a lot of sense. Kirby Smith, General Kirby Smith doesn't show up to the surrender on June 2nd because he is afraid he's going to be arrested and hanged ultimately. So although he's there to arrange the surrender, when the day comes, he's on his way to Mexico and he's going to meet up with Joe Shelby and Joe Shelby's Iron Brigade on the way and those guys will cross the Rio Grande. And Kirby Smith, I would argue, is doing this because he's worried about execution. He's. If you want to call him a coward, that's fine. I guess that probably fits.
- [29:53]
Host
How long did that fear endure? Up until the Amnesty act of 1872?
- [29:58]
Michael Vorenberg
No, I think the fear goes away prominently after Appomattox. So after Appomattox, when it's clear that Lee is not going to be tried for treason, that is to say that the high officers. And then Johnston's going to surrender by the end of April and it's clear that Johnston are not going to be tried for treason. You do have the political leaders in prison. Alexander Stevens is imprisoned in Boston Harbor. Davis is captured in May and imprisoned in Fort Monroe. So there is a question there that lingers, I would say, till the end of 1865. But it really does boil down to. To Davis. I think by the end of 65, there's some question of trying people. But I would say to my mind, reading the newspapers of the time, most people really aren't too worried about it. By, let's say, early 66, there are radical Republicans who are making noise about punishing traitors and so forth. But most of this is entirely focused on Jeff Davis and the desire to execute him and have him stand in for the whole Confederacy, be tried and executed. So I think for ordinary officers and certainly enlisted people in the Confederacy, I don't think that fear lingered much beyond the summer of 1865.
- [31:17]
Host
A point about slavery where I said they weren't going to get slavery back. You're right. That wasn't an automatic end of 1865. The 13th amendment is ratified, but even there, Right. It took the US Congress and the US Military to intervene to prevent the reimposition of some kind of terrible labor regime. Right. We get the Reconstruction Acts of 1865, 67, because President Andrew Johnson was doing a terrible job of it.
- [31:42]
Michael Vorenberg
Right. The Reconstruction act does a number of things. It Imposes a military structure upon the South. It makes occupation systematic. What's going on at the same time is that Congress is taking the steps that will lead to impeachment, Most important of which is this Tenure of Office act, which is important because it means that Johnson, President Johnson, can't fire Stanton. The reason why, if you put this all together, as I do in the book, it's basically Congress taking charge of the army under the Constitution, the president's commander in chief, through these series of measures, the Reconstruction act, the Tenure of Office act, and then ultimately the move to impeach Johnson. Congress is saying, we are now in charge of the Army. That's crucial because the army is what we need to enforce the Reconstruction program that we've laid out. This is a reaction to Johnson, but it's also an acknowledgment that this is what need be done. This is what has to be done to make emancipation real. By emancipation, I don't just mean the absence of legal chattel slavery, but the idea of emancipation, whereby the formerly enslaved and black people generally will be persons before the law of equal status to white citizens. That's what the Civil Rights act of 1866 says, and that's what needs to happen through military intervention.
- [33:17]
Host
Andrew Johnson, arguably the worst president in American history. But impeaching him because he wanted to fire his own cabinet secretary seemed like a stretch. There should have been a better reason to get rid of him because he was a terrible president and a terrible person. The Tenure of Office act seems like a strange law to me.
- [33:37]
Michael Vorenberg
Well, look, I think everyone knew then, and we certainly know now, that they wanted to get rid of him because of politics. His politics was all wrong when he first came in, by the way, the Republicans thought that he was great. They thought he was going to be tougher on the Confederates than Lincoln had been. And for certain Republicans, they thought this was a good move. But obviously by the end of 1865, and certainly by the early 1866, he's fully exposed. And I'm not sure even Johnson knew that he was going in this direction, but he certainly had arrived there by early 66, which is to say, allow the former Confederates to control the states of the South, Furthermore, allow them to impose the kind of restrictions on suffrage, whatever they want, and other restrictions as well, on freedom. They had to ratify the 13th Amendment. Johnson was clear on that. But that was a kind of baseline, and Johnson was fine. If states wanted to basically impose apprenticeship systems that were the same as slavery, if they wanted to create debt Slavery, they could do that.
- [34:43]
Host
You know, I want to get back to the Vietnam thing. I have a point on the tip of my tongue, as well as some of these other more metaphysical matters, or just the Reconstruction era and how the way Reconstruction ended influences our perspective on the ending of the Civil War. But since we're on the topic of Andrew Johnson, he's important for the main question that you're trying to answer in your new book, when did the Civil War end? I did not know this. In 1866, President Johnson declares the Civil War is over. August of 1866. There was an earlier one, I believe in April of 66, but that exempted Texas. But by August, Texas, the insurrection paramilitaries whoever was still fighting there. And there was a lot of violence. I don't mean to make light of it. He says, now it's all over. Now the war is over. But you make this point in the book. Whether we pick April of 1865, August of 66, or maybe April 11, 1877, the last clash, you write, between federal troops and state rights paramilitary forces in South Carolina. Each of these dates has a purpose behind it for why we pick it.
- [35:50]
Michael Vorenberg
Right. And which of those dates do you pick? And I argue that whatever date you pick then makes a definition of the war that is your own. So if we pick Appomattox, that's fine. Then we lean towards a definition of war that's a war defined by battles between organized armies. And so when the organized armies come to an agreement, a surrender, then the war is over. Now, it's true that there were other armies that had not surrendered after Appomattox, but I do think it's fair to argue that those. Once Lee surrenders, probably it's inevitable that the other armies will surrender. But anyway, back to the point. Then you're defining the wars about armies. If you want a legal, political definition, then you look at political leaders and lawmakers, and there, as you say, the legal end of the war. And by the way, I didn't know it either when I began. I knew about this proclamation that Johnson issues in April and then August of 66. And as you said, April 66, he says the war is over everywhere but Texas. And then in August, he says it's over everywhere. August 20, 1866, he says the insurrection is at an end. That's part of the proclamation that turns out, for reasons I go into in the book, to be the legal end of the Civil War. The Supreme Court even affirms that date as the end. I didn't know that. I didn't know that it was legal.
- [37:16]
Host
And Republicans said, you're full of it, President Johnson, because there's still violence.
- [37:21]
Michael Vorenberg
Exactly. So that's the end of the war for Andrew Johnson as the president. And it turns out, if you want to say the Supreme Court too, well, Congress is a player. So what does Congress call the end of the war? And Congress says defines the war in a way that is all about Congress. Namely, the war is over when the last of the seceded states have sent their representatives and senators to Congress and we, Congress, admit them. When does that happen? And that is finished by February of 1871. So that's another endpoint. And if you choose that endpoint, then you're basically seeing the war through the eyes of Congress and saying, well, that's fine. Congress funds the war. Congress571 is controlling the war because of the Reconstruction act of 1867. So that's reasonable, I guess. But notice that none of these definitions directly are about slavery. That's where we might come back to the 13th Amendment. You know, the war isn't declared. Well, first of all, it's not declared formally, period. But in terms of what the war is about from the Union side, it's all about putting the Union back together and Reconstruction, making sure the states are back into their. What Lincoln called their practical relations with the Union.
- [38:35]
Host
But not just any Union.
- [38:37]
Michael Vorenberg
That's right. It had to be a Union where slavery was abolished. And that's what I was saying is that by 1865 you've tacked on to that emancipation. So the war is about the destruction of slavery. Lincoln says that in his second inaugural. Now you say, well, if the war is about attaining the cause and the cause of the victor is not just reunion but emancipation, then the end date we should look for is an end date that somehow has to do with emancipation. Now, is that Juneteenth, which is now a federal holiday? Is it December then? You can pick 6th or the 18th, depending on when you say the 13th amendment is ratified. That might make sense then. We tend not to look at those dates as the end dates of war, but in many ways they would make sense. Which date you choose necessarily implicates a certain definition of the war.
- [39:30]
Host
So about Vietnam, because your book and McPherson and conversations I've been having the last 72 hours about this issue. Preparing for the show, I've been thinking about the Vietnam comparison, you know, as it pertains to the south in April of 1865, surrendering, even though they could have fought on hoping for some kind of political miracle, a Hail Mary. If we just last long enough, the north will grow war weary and they will accede to some of our demands or they will compromise with us. So North Vietnam in that war. I think one big difference is what happened on the battlefield in Vietnam was almost irrelevant to the outcome of the war, which was a political outcome, a political war in the United States, in Washington, among the American people. The Johnson administration, then the Nixon administration could not sustain political support for keeping American forces in Vietnam forever because it would have taken forever. I'm speaking metaphorically here, to convince the Vietnamese that any foreign occupying army was a legitimate force in their country. The Vietnamese had fought the Japanese after 1945, then the French up until Dinh Bien Phu, and then the Americans there for their national liberation. It was the North Vietnamese who were waiting out the United States. And again, what happened on the battlefield was almost irrelevant. The body count was completely one sided. Millions of Vietnamese died in the process of fighting the French than the Americans.
- [40:58]
Michael Vorenberg
Well, let me put it back on you and say you just described a scenario which I'm perfectly in agreement with. So if we say that the Southern white leadership, those who had led the south into the war for the sake of the Confederacy, if their goal ultimately is the withdrawal of U.S. troops, let's say you wear down the will to occupy in the north, so you wear down the will to occupy in the north until troops are withdrawn. That's a pretty similar scenario, isn't it, to what you just described? I'm not saying we should treat. 1877 is the year we basically say when the last US troops are withdrawn. Is that the end of the war? Getting away from that issue, but back to the way you framed it, which I like, if you wanted to say it the same way, if we hold out long enough in the south, demoralization in the north or other sorts of political strains. Not just demoralization, other political objectives, other reasons why Northerners are saying, you know, occupation is not the priority it used to be, and their troops are pulled out and then what happens? Well, the south, the Southern white leaders, what do they call it? Redemption. Redemption, which is a way of saying victory. Right. They get the south back that they had. I might argue that what you've just described for Vietnam isn't that different. If you look at it that way. I may be.
- [42:26]
Host
No, no, I agree. Actually, I was about to interject.
- [42:29]
Michael Vorenberg
I think it's hugely different because of the achievement of emancipation and reconstruction. So I really don't want to play that out too much. But from a certain perspective of white supremacist leadership, strictly in terms of occupying troops, there's a similarity.
- [42:43]
Host
And who knows how long it would have taken, how many more years or decades of Union military occupation in the south to preserve black civil rights and voting rights and the reconstructed Union. Ultimately, the south does get their redemption and all the Republican governments collapse within a short period of time. Right.
- [43:02]
Michael Vorenberg
And what, what do you need? You need what, you know, Eric Foner calls a second Reconstruction, and others have called it the same thing too. Again, this is a huge counterfactual that was never going to happen. But if instead you have mass occup occupation of the south, that never goes away. You don't need a second Reconstruction. It's just one long occupation and Reconstruction. But the will to do that, or, you know, not just will, it's politics going on in the north, will obviously not be there.
- [43:31]
Host
So 1877 is a hugely important date in all of this. Right?
- [43:35]
Michael Vorenberg
Historians argue about this. The most well known book on Reconstruction that's come out recently is Manisha Sinha, Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic. But even before her book came out, I think a lot of historians were saying, look, you can't end it in 1877 because among other things, there are still black Americans who have a lot of political control in the states. They're voting. There are really important reforms that are happening after 1877. And if you say all is lost in 1877, that is just not true. True. The achievements of Black Americans after 1877 are significant in all sorts of ways. You have blacks who are now being educated like never before and achieving economic status and cultural status. And that is a problem with painting 1877 as a kind of absolute victory of redemption because it then wipes away that really important history of African American history after 1877.
- [44:37]
Host
Yeah, these dates, they help us conceptualize periods of time. But history isn't just a bunch of events. It's a number of unfolding processes, right, that take place over many years and decades. And for those who are listening, who may not be entirely familiar with what I'm referring to here, the Compromise of 1877. This is from the gilderlearman.org website about American history. At a meeting In February of 1877, Democratic leaders accepted Hayes election in exchange for Republican promises to withdraw federal troops from the south, provide federal funding for internal improvements in the south, and name a prominent southerner to the President's cabinet. When the federal troops were withdrawn The Republican governments in Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina collapsed, bringing reconstruction to a formal end. Under the Compromise of 1877, the national government could no longer intervene in state affairs. This permitted the imposition of racial segregation and the disenfranchisement of black voters. But disenfranchisement doesn't happen really until 1890. Right. The Redeemer government at the earliest.
- [45:40]
Michael Vorenberg
Yeah.
- [45:40]
Host
The Redeemer governments, as bad as they may have been, did not disenfranchise blacks. That starts in 1890. Right. Until the early 1900s. Right.
- [45:49]
Michael Vorenberg
Formal legal disfranchisement doesn't happen until the 1890s. But intimidation disfranchisement has been going on well before 1870.
- [45:57]
Host
Yeah. This terrorism often through these years with the KKK.
- [46:00]
Michael Vorenberg
Right. Yeah, the KKK is right. So it's really important to remember, right. That paramilitary activity is mostly focused on keeping black voters from voting, as well as white unionists, but especially black voters from voting. That's why you find KKK activity most active around election time or leading up to election time. But anyway, yeah, it's true that formal disfranchisement through things like poll taxes, literacy tests, those kinds of things, those aren't going to come till a couple decades later. In the meantime, many black people are still voting. In Virginia, you have a short lived but really important biracial coalition called the Readjuster Government. There are things happening on the ground that give the lie to the idea that this was the formal end. As you just read the formal end of Reconstruction, I think a lot of historians would push back against that notion. And by the way, just so your listeners know, if you think elections are messy now, like the election of 2020 or the election of 2000, you should look at the election of 1876. I don't know. I mean, if there's one that's messier, this one was so messy, they created a 15 person commission that had to be perfectly bipartisan. So seven Democrats, seven Republicans, one independent. And this commission was charged with looking at the returns from all the disputed states and figuring all this out. And it took a month. Meanwhile, there's a behind the scenes dealing going on. Those who are interested in sort of dysfunctional elections. There's no better dysfunctional election than this one.
- [47:34]
Host
And I mentioned 1890 as well. That is when Mississippi held a new Constitutional convention. The process of Jim Crow legislation continues through 1908. That is when Georgia amended its Constitution. By then, every state of the former Confederacy moved to disenfranchise legally African Americans. So 1865. Now we're all the way up to 1908. And this brings us to the last topic or topics. So many layers to each of these issues. The last ones I want to discuss with you here. There was this period between 1870 and 1877. African Americans are in Congress, they're in the Senate. Fourteen black men served in the House of Representatives between 1869 and 1877. Six were lieutenant governors at the state level. Six hundred blacks served in Southern state legislature. So it wasn't like the war ends and then immediate the reimposition of all this awful stuff that we associate, really should associate with later on. We did have this flourishing of real democracy in the south for the first time. But because of how that was upended and destroyed, doesn't that influence the way we look back on 1865?
- [48:45]
Michael Vorenberg
It can. Now I return to Appomattox, but I ask people not to think about the nitty gritty of what actually happened in the meeting in the McLean House of Appomattox, but rather think of just the image, literally the paintings that are done, the images that are in textbooks still today, right, of the meeting between Lee and Grant. I think that that symbolism, that image that, at least for me as a school kid growing up, was absolutely blaz onto my head, into my brain of these two gentlemen, one looking rather scruffy, that's Grant, and the other looking rather noble, that's Lee essentially shaking hands, for all intents and purposes, coming to an agreement. That symbolism, it's not true, obviously, but forgetting about that, it's not true that that's not exactly what happened. It's true in our minds. And what that means, if that's how we remember the end, is that the war ends with an agreement, right? With an agreement, which means the Southern white way of doing things and looking things, doesn't just go away. They remain a kind of player in this. That Appomattox moment can overshadow the history that you just told. That is the history where actually black people have greater power than former Confederates in all the Southern states for a period of time. Not just power necessarily in office holding, as you say. Office holding is certainly a great way to have power, but also power in terms of voting. Black turnout is greater than white turnout in these years, so they are exercising political power in a greater way than the former Confederates. That is true. That's just true. So it. It's hard to reconcile that with an image of a white man, Lee, being acknowledged as a leader in a scene in a house, the McLean house, where there are no black people present. This despite the fact that there were armed black US troops in Union regiments outside the house who had played a really important role in the war. Not just those regiments, but black troops generally. They're left out of the picture, literally left out of the picture that I'm thinking of as a kid that I wouldn't have seen in a textbook. But they belong in the picture. I'm not the first to say this 10 years ago, or I think it was 10 years ago. Yeah. Elizabeth Varron has a wonderful book called Appomattox and she makes this point too about black freedom being there at that moment. But it's not in the picture. It's just not in the picture.
- [51:27]
Host
You know, it's funny, after the 2020 period of Black Lives Matter protests and the murder of George Floyd, there was a notion out there, I don't know how much this took hold in society. I think it did. I saw it a lot on social media. But this idea though, that nothing has changed one long continuum of white supremacy and racial discrimination in our country. And that's not true. We of course have our problems and there still is racism, as I mentioned before. You can't kill an idea yet after all this. And thanks for hanging in there. Michael Vornbergen, your first time on the show. Mike, my questions tend to turn into mazes, word mazes here. April 9th is not etched in our heads insofar that Americans are paying attention to history at all and can name the years. The Civil War was even fought, 1945. That has special significance in our minds. World War II is so important it led to the American century. July 4th, 1776. You know, everyone understands the significance of that. For some reason. April nine doesn't hold a place in our minds. Maybe this will be my last question to you. Why do you think that is? Maybe you've already answered it in our hour long conversation here.
- [52:39]
Michael Vorenberg
I haven't thought in those comparative terms. I think April 9th does hold a place in our minds still. I think it holds a really important place in the minds of many Americans in ideas of American exceptionalism. And I'll explain what I mean. This is a civil war. It's America's only civil war. I would rather not compare it to something like the Revolution or World War II. I can if you wish, but for the moment, if you will let me, I'd like for people to think about other civil wars in other places. Right. Civil wars, more than other types of wars, tend to drag on and drag on and are bloody and horrible and are usually, after they're done, filled with reprisals, executions, et cetera, et cetera. This Civil War so goes the story comes to a clean ending, and that is so important for notions of American exceptionalism that Americans, even in the worst type of war, a Civil War, the bloodiest war in American history, can end it in this fairly peaceful, gentlemanly way. That's an incredibly compelling myth. And I quote some historians in my book early on in the prologue and in the epilogue to my book Lincoln's Piece, one of whom is Alan Nevins, who says it so clearly. He says that in European civil wars, those civil wars are disastrous in their endings. But America's Civil War, which could have been disastrous, isn't why? Because of American character and the nature of how Americans are and were. So I think that there's something about that that people do want to hold on to at the time, and I think they still want to hold on to it in a way. There's a big national park at Appomattox Courthouse. It's not easy to get to. It's in southern Virginia. But it's doing just fine. And I think that people want to go there. So I think there's something about that. And by the way, you know, July 4th, 1776, not the end of the war, by no one's definition is that the end of the war. But you're right. The surrender on the aircraft carrier in 45 would be the end of the war in Japan. And that does have a certain significance in the idea of, like, okay, this is the beginning of the American century, but then you got to deal with things like the peace talks and everything else. But I want to come back just to this notion of thinking about an American exceptionalist mythology and how powerful that is when we're dealing with America's only Civil War.
- [55:22]
Host
I stand corrected. But, you know, and among the stack of books I have here, including yours, is a smaller volume by James McPherson, this mighty scourge. And in it he has a chapter about how the losers of the Civil War wrote the history books, quite literally about this. And because of the pervasiveness and the dominance of the Lost Cause myth, slavery, secession in slavery was whitewashed out of the story. Because of that, the wrong version of history held forth for a century after 1865, until historians started to overturn that narrative. Maybe it happened before that. I'm not an expert on the historiography, but I guess my last remark is it is hard to Overstate how deleterious to our understanding of the Civil War. The Lost Cause myth was, extends beyond the Lost Cause.
- [56:13]
Michael Vorenberg
It's not just that the losers write the history, because it's not. It's often Northerners who are writing the history, but it's Northerners who basically, they aren't necessarily pro Confederate, but what they are is they are anti radical Republican. That's the key. Right. So they really think that the more radical Republicans were vindictive. They were awful. And part of what made them awful is they believed in black equality. And these are not just Southern Lost causers, These are Northern white historians who regarded Black people in 1865, as they look back in history, as unfit for freedom and enfranchisement. That is a view of history that infects the history books for generations. And it's coming obviously from the Lost Cause in the South. But I want to be clear, it's also coming from Northern historians at will. Its epicenter is Columbia University and the Dunning School, so called. I would just point this out that it is the way history gets told and the stakes are extraordinarily high, and thus the stakes are high to untell the history.
- [57:26]
Host
People can read Eric Foner's introduction to his book Reconstruction for a brief history of the Dunning School. They should also, and I would also.
- [57:35]
Michael Vorenberg
And I would, I would say couple that with reading the last chapter of Du Bois. W.E.B. du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America, where it's. The chapter is called the Propaganda of History. You know, Eric Foner is very much, I think, inspired by Du Bois. I know he was in writing the book. And the Propaganda of History, it tells it all. What is Du Bois do? He quotes a number of historians of his day and earlier who make this. These claims about the failure of Reconstruction make obviously racist claims about black people and about how the Republican program was wrong from the outset. Yeah. So that I would argue. Yeah. If you read those. That chapter from Du Bois and the beginning of Eric Foner, you certainly get the broad outlines of the history historians have been pushing against for generations. And maybe we'll continue to have to push against for generations going forward.
- [58:30]
Host
And I'm not bashful about assigning reading. They can also add Lincoln's Peace by Michael Vorenberg for a fresh interpretation of the end of the American Civil War. Congrats on the book.
- [58:42]
Michael Vorenberg
Thank you very much, Martin. And thank you again for having me on the show. And I appreciate your really thoughtful questions. I think they've gotten me thinking about these issues in much more broader and really interesting terms. So thank you.
- [59:18]
Host
On the next episode of history as it Happens. The story of Turkish democracy, of Turkish electoral politics since the end of the First World War is both troubling and fascinating. But now Turkey may be on the verge of becoming an autocracy, an autocracy in NATO. That's next as we report history as it happens. New episodes every Tuesday and Friday. My newsletter every Friday. Sign up@historyadshithappens.com.