LINCOLN'S PEACE

A bold book challenges what we think we know about how and when the Civil War really ended.

Anyone who has paid remote attention in a civics class knows that the amicable April 9, 1865, meeting between Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee at Appomattox ended the American Civil War. Not so, argues distinguished Brown University historian Vorenberg, who refreshingly admits his own culpability in perpetuating the myth that Appomattox concluded the Civil War and examines in this fascinating book when exactly—or whether—the just peace that Abraham Lincoln desired came about. Vorenberg does not merely analyze Lincoln’s attempts to forge and outline peace and examine the many candidates for the military and legal “last” battles of war that were fought well after Lincoln’s assassination, deep into the disastrous presidency of Andrew Johnson and beyond. He reevaluates the concept of founding myths such as the fixed end of the Civil War emblematic in George P.A. Healy’s painting The Peacemakers (1868), which is on the book’s cover. “The painting shows storm clouds giving way to sunshine,” Vorenberg writes. “Nothing in the painting suggests the reality of months of warring that followed the historic meeting.” The author contends that casting a critical eye on such founding myths is an important aspect of rethinking the notion of American exceptionalism. Along this line, the book concludes with a thought-provoking comparison to the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Vorenberg exhibits scholarship of the first order. The history is vividly written and thoroughly researched. His reasoned questioning, skepticism, and analysis of accepted tropes and conclusions about the Civil War will prove meaningful to those who study the philosophy and psychology of war, peace, and American culture and identity.

A brilliant work and a vital contribution to the canon.