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After Appomattox: Military Occupation and the Ends of War
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About After Appomattox: Military Occupation And The Ends
Product Description “Original and revelatory.”―David Blight, author of Frederick DouglassAvery O. Craven Award FinalistA Civil War Memory/Civil War Monitor Best Book of the YearIn 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 Review “Downs persuasively argues that a long and persistent ‘occupation’ occurred for at least three years, and perhaps as long as six years, after the end of actual hostilities in spring, 1865. Downs also demonstrates that, although a massive demobilization of Union troops occurred in 1865–66, 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 “[Downs] makes a persuasive…case that virtually none of the achievements of Reconstruction―there were more than is generally supposed―could have taken place without the use or at least the threat of military force. He challenges the view that defeated Confederates in 1865 were ready to acquiesce in whatever reorganization the federal government imposed on them, including the bestowal of civil rights on blacks… Downs rightly regards the appalling white-on-black violence of the late 1860s and early 1870s as systemic terrorism… In Downs’s telling, Reconstruction was also one of the finest hours of the U.S. Army.” ― Fergus M. Bordewich , Wall Street Journal “In After Appomattox, 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.’ Put simply, the military occupation created democracy as we know it. Downs’ book couldn’t come at a more opportune time, as American forces once again face the difficult question of how long, and to what ends, an occupying army must stay in conquered territory. After more than a decade of fighting abroad, we may be too war-weary to see that military occupations are sometimes a good, even necessary thing… The brilliance of Downs’ argument is that he steals the central complaint of the apologists, yet reverses the conclusion: The federal government was overzealous―and that was a good thing. Congress had to impose martial law in order for blacks to gain basic freedoms. If military officers sometimes vacated racist local laws, if they removed ruthless sheriffs and judges, if they tried white supremacists in unfair military tribunals―all of which they did―they did so for necessary ends. Equality would come to the South no other way… Downs has produced a remarkable, necessary book.” ― Eric Herschthal , Slate “In a striking new book, After Appomattox, hi
