A successful civil war. - Review - book review

Public Interest, Summer, 2001 by Lee Bockhorn

VISIT a large chain bookstore in almost any American city, and you will find half the shelves in the U.S. History section (sometimes more) groaning under the weight of books about the American Civil War--row upon row of volumes by Bruce Catton, Shelby Foote, James McPherson, and many other distinguished authors. Given this surfeit of offerings, do we really need any more Civil War books? Actually, yes, as Jay Winik amply demonstrates in his thought-provoking book, April 1865: The Month That Saved America. [ ]

As I read this book, I thought of "The American Revolution as a Successful Revolution," an essay Irving Kristol wrote 25 years ago on the occasion of America's bicentennial. Unlike other modern revolutions (the French and Russian, especially), he noted, the American Revolution did not devour its own children; it did not aim to end poverty or establish an earthly utopia, and thus did not end with the inevitable bitter recriminations about "the revolution betrayed." Instead, it established a republic based on the rule of law and limited constitutional government; even more astonishing, the leaders that created this new political order went on to serve in its highest offices and die peacefully in their own beds (Alexander Hamilton excepted). In a certain sense, Kristol claimed, the Revolution was too successful for our own good, because we are now ignorant of just how difficult, even improbable, the Founders' accomplishment was, and of how much the perpetuation of their creation still depends upon our efforts.

In the spirit of Kristol's essay, one might title Winik's book The American Civil War as a Successful Civil War, because our Civil War was also a historical exception. As a former foreign policy adviser, Winik has witnessed first-hand civil wars in Cambodia, the former Yugoslavia, Nicaragua, and El

Salvador: "Far too many civil wars," he notes, "end quite badly, and beget a vicious circle of more civil war and more violence, death, and instability." Thus the American Civil War's successful outcome--the nation reunited, the scourge of slavery ended--blinds us to the very real possibility that the Confederacy might have triumphed, or at the least, prolonged the conflict long enough to prevent the North from achieving total victory or emancipation. For some reason, we escaped this fate, emerging from our own civil war as a stronger, more unified country. By offering a new, fuller account of how the war ended, Winik attempts in April 1865 to show why America was so fortunate. In so doing, he offers a much-needed meditation on the role of contingency in history and the importance of statesmanship, but along the way he overlooks how the success of the American Revolution made the unique result of our Civil War possible.

THE first task of any historian, of course, is to get the facts right: who, what, when, where, how. But the superior historian goes beyond this, forcing us to see afresh the events and persons we thought we already knew. One way to do this is to remind us of the role of chance in human affairs--to show how easily things might have been different.

Most of us, dimly remembering our grade-school textbooks, believe the Civil War ended neatly on April 9, 1865, when Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Ulysses Grant at Appomattox Courthouse. And with nearly a century and a half of hindsight, we see the North's victory as inevitable, given the North's enormous advantage in industrial capacity (crucial in what was the first truly modern war), and the greater justice of its cause. But as Winik demonstrates convincingly, the successful end of the American Civil War was neither simple nor inevitable: "What emerges from the panorama of April 1865 is that the whole of our national history could have been altered but for a few decisions, a quirk of fate, a sudden shift in luck."

One such key decision was the South's rejection in April 1865 of the guerrilla warfare option. In this scenario, favored by Jefferson Davis, the Confederate army would break up into small groups, taking refuge in the forests and hills of the South to launch surprise attacks against massed Union forces in large cities. As an adjunct strategy, the South had already allowed "bushwacking" by several groups, led by notorious raiders like John Mosby. In a concise overview of the history of such warfare, Winik explains how the South could have demoralized the occupying Union armies by fighting a low-level war of attrition, until an exhausted North lost the will to impose unity on the country.

Chance also played a role in the dynamic events of April. One such "quirk of fate" is the bureaucratic mix-up that hastened Lee's eventual defeat. After the fall of Richmond, Lee headed west toward Amelia, where his sleep-deprived and starving army was supposed to find boxcars full of food. But when they finally arrived at Amelia, they found boxcars filled not with food but with 200 crates of ammunition. In the North, as Winik reminds us, Abraham Lincoln's assassination was part of a larger plot to assassinate the entire leadership of the Northern government, including Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward. But Johnson's designated assassin, George Atzerodt, got cold feet and spent the evening getting drunk, while Seward survived a brutal stabbing attack. What chaos might have ensued if John Wilkes Booth had succeeded in his plot to decapitate the Union government?