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After Appomattox: Military Occupation and the Ends of War
On April 8, 1865, after four years of civil war, General Robert E. Lee wrote to General Ulysses S. Grant asking for peace. Peace was beyond his authority to negotiate, Grant replied, but surrender terms he would discuss. As Gregory Downs reveals in this gripping history of post Civil War America, Grant s distinction proved prophetic, for peace would elude the South for years after Lee s surrender at Appomattox.
"After Appomattox" argues that the war did not end with Confederate capitulation in 1865. Instead, a second phase commenced which lasted until 1871 not the project euphemistically called Reconstruction but a state of genuine belligerency whose mission was to shape the terms of peace. Using its war powers, the U.S. Army oversaw an ambitious occupation, stationing tens of thousands of troops in hundreds of outposts across the defeated South. This groundbreaking study of the post-surrender occupation makes clear that its purpose was to crush slavery and to create meaningful civil and political rights for freed people in the face of rebels bold resistance.
But reliance on military occupation posed its own dilemmas. In areas beyond Army control, the Ku Klux Klan and other violent insurgencies created near-anarchy. Voters in the North also could not stomach an expensive and demoralizing occupation. Under those pressures, by 1871, the Civil War came to its legal end. The wartime after Appomattox disrupted planter power and established important rights, but the dawn of legal peacetime heralded the return of rebel power, not a sustainable peace."
"After Appomattox" argues that the war did not end with Confederate capitulation in 1865. Instead, a second phase commenced which lasted until 1871 not the project euphemistically called Reconstruction but a state of genuine belligerency whose mission was to shape the terms of peace. Using its war powers, the U.S. Army oversaw an ambitious occupation, stationing tens of thousands of troops in hundreds of outposts across the defeated South. This groundbreaking study of the post-surrender occupation makes clear that its purpose was to crush slavery and to create meaningful civil and political rights for freed people in the face of rebels bold resistance.
But reliance on military occupation posed its own dilemmas. In areas beyond Army control, the Ku Klux Klan and other violent insurgencies created near-anarchy. Voters in the North also could not stomach an expensive and demoralizing occupation. Under those pressures, by 1871, the Civil War came to its legal end. The wartime after Appomattox disrupted planter power and established important rights, but the dawn of legal peacetime heralded the return of rebel power, not a sustainable peace."
352 pages, Hardcover
First published April 9, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
July 24, 2024
This is a most interesting, new approach to viewing Reconstruction. Downs emphasizes the importance of the military at the time and how without it, Reconstruction could never have accomplished what it did. While acknowledging the disappointment of its aftermath, we are made fully aware of the challenges that reuniting the country after the Civil War brought. The argument has often been made that if Johnson had acted more aggressively when the South was laid low, that it would have acquiesced and peace attained much sooner. Downs rejects this idea, he believed that they would have played a waiting game and behaved as they did.
It is commonly held that Appomattox marked the end of the war but the author reminds the reader that it was not until 1871, with the readmission of all of the Confederate states that the war ended and that that was an accepted fact at the time. Further, it was the Republican Party that argued for military enforcement of the peace and the conditions of peace that played the most important role in achieving whatever peace was reached and without it, legislation without enforcement was not possible in the South.
This book explores this period of time in a manner not really viewed previously. It provides a deeper understanding of the challenges that the country faced and is an important addition to the understanding of our history. As such, I highly recommend this book.
It is commonly held that Appomattox marked the end of the war but the author reminds the reader that it was not until 1871, with the readmission of all of the Confederate states that the war ended and that that was an accepted fact at the time. Further, it was the Republican Party that argued for military enforcement of the peace and the conditions of peace that played the most important role in achieving whatever peace was reached and without it, legislation without enforcement was not possible in the South.
This book explores this period of time in a manner not really viewed previously. It provides a deeper understanding of the challenges that the country faced and is an important addition to the understanding of our history. As such, I highly recommend this book.
July 18, 2025
Many people likely understand by now that the Civil War did not come to a definitive end once Lee surrendered at Appomattox. Michael Vorenberg seemed to treat this like it would come as a revelation to readers in his comprehensive, but flawed, recent book Lincoln's Peace: The Struggle to End the American Civil War, which was thoughtful but weighted down by its insistence on trying to pinpoint exactly when the war came to an end, before reaching the weak conclusion that maybe it never really ended at all.
So I was pleasantly surprised when I picked up this book, not quite knowing what to expect from it, only to find that Downs tackled this very topic a decade earlier, and did so much more intelligently, gracefully and effectively.
Unlike Vorenberg, Downs does not concern himself with semantics as to when the war ended. Instead, he explains how declaring the war over had far greater meaning than simply marking a date on the calendar for posterity’s sake. Prematurely declaring peace would have required the federal government to give up significant war powers that were necessary to begin the process of Reconstruction. Without those war powers, the country could have been locked into a state of status quo post bellum at the time of Lee’s surrender, when slavery had not yet been abolished, freedom was not enshrined in the Constitution, and no prerequisites for rejoining the Union could be imposed on the southern states.
Therefore, as the Union “did not intend to give up its war powers simply because the fighting had stopped,” Downs considers it a given, and not a matter for pedantic dissection and discussion, that the end of active combat did not mark the end of the war. “The continuation of wartime gave the national government the necessary authority to suppress the rebellion, consolidate its forces, and fashion effective civil rights” by occupying the south in a way “that would have been illegal in peacetime,” he writes. In short, “the government could protect freedpeople or it could return to peacetime, but it could not do both.”
So the state of war went on.
Throughout the book, Downs offers a surprisingly nuanced view of Andrew Johnson’s role in all of this. He continually acknowledges Johnson’s racism, perhaps as a way to avoid seeming too lenient on him, but he also gives him some credit for managing some aspects of Reconstruction, at least early on. “Although President Andrew Johnson eventually became a powerful obstacle to remaking the South, his protection of military rule, his support for army-led emancipation, and his requirement that new states end slavery and pass the Thirteenth Amendment were crucial for the legal abolition of slavery,” he observes.
The ensuing clash between Johnson and congressional Republicans is not portrayed as a simplistic good-vs.-evil conflict between a benevolent Congress and a racist, erratic Southern-sympathizing president, but as a power struggle over which branch of government controlled the war powers. “Johnson's determination to keep Congress away from war powers fueled his increasingly open racism,” Downs writes, which seemed to set off a downward spiral of Johnson obstructing Reconstruction simply to undermine Congress, almost out of spite more than due to any particular convictions.
That said, Downs also points out the dubiousness of Johnson's impeachment, a political move stemming from Congress’ efforts “to protect occupation,” in which it “had altered the basic structure of government and stripped the presidency of its normal powers.” Yet Downs also concludes that impeachment did ultimately serve a good purpose, in buying time for Reconstruction to proceed while a chastened Johnson largely refrained from interfering. It’s an interesting and almost retrograde argument that, while convincing, is closer to the Profiles in Courage view that impeachment was unjustified, than to the more modern viewpoint from the likes of Brenda Wineapple’s The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation that, justified or not, Johnson simply deserved it.
In the end, while everything from an uncooperative president to Southern intransigence complicated Reconstruction, Downs concludes that extending the state of war, and therefore the government’s war powers, was far better than the alternative would have been. “By insisting that peace had not yet dawned, Congress and black and white loyalists had changed the Constitution” with the Reconstruction Amendments, which likely would never have happened had peace been declared prematurely. Lincoln waged the Civil War in order to preserve the Union. After the fighting, Congressional Republicans maintained a state of war in order to reshape that Union.
So both this book and the one that followed it a decade later deal with the same time period and many of the same issues about why the war did not end at Appomattox. But while Vorenberg’s book focuses on the “when,” this book focuses on the “why.” And it’s a much better book because of it.
So I was pleasantly surprised when I picked up this book, not quite knowing what to expect from it, only to find that Downs tackled this very topic a decade earlier, and did so much more intelligently, gracefully and effectively.
Unlike Vorenberg, Downs does not concern himself with semantics as to when the war ended. Instead, he explains how declaring the war over had far greater meaning than simply marking a date on the calendar for posterity’s sake. Prematurely declaring peace would have required the federal government to give up significant war powers that were necessary to begin the process of Reconstruction. Without those war powers, the country could have been locked into a state of status quo post bellum at the time of Lee’s surrender, when slavery had not yet been abolished, freedom was not enshrined in the Constitution, and no prerequisites for rejoining the Union could be imposed on the southern states.
Therefore, as the Union “did not intend to give up its war powers simply because the fighting had stopped,” Downs considers it a given, and not a matter for pedantic dissection and discussion, that the end of active combat did not mark the end of the war. “The continuation of wartime gave the national government the necessary authority to suppress the rebellion, consolidate its forces, and fashion effective civil rights” by occupying the south in a way “that would have been illegal in peacetime,” he writes. In short, “the government could protect freedpeople or it could return to peacetime, but it could not do both.”
So the state of war went on.
Throughout the book, Downs offers a surprisingly nuanced view of Andrew Johnson’s role in all of this. He continually acknowledges Johnson’s racism, perhaps as a way to avoid seeming too lenient on him, but he also gives him some credit for managing some aspects of Reconstruction, at least early on. “Although President Andrew Johnson eventually became a powerful obstacle to remaking the South, his protection of military rule, his support for army-led emancipation, and his requirement that new states end slavery and pass the Thirteenth Amendment were crucial for the legal abolition of slavery,” he observes.
The ensuing clash between Johnson and congressional Republicans is not portrayed as a simplistic good-vs.-evil conflict between a benevolent Congress and a racist, erratic Southern-sympathizing president, but as a power struggle over which branch of government controlled the war powers. “Johnson's determination to keep Congress away from war powers fueled his increasingly open racism,” Downs writes, which seemed to set off a downward spiral of Johnson obstructing Reconstruction simply to undermine Congress, almost out of spite more than due to any particular convictions.
That said, Downs also points out the dubiousness of Johnson's impeachment, a political move stemming from Congress’ efforts “to protect occupation,” in which it “had altered the basic structure of government and stripped the presidency of its normal powers.” Yet Downs also concludes that impeachment did ultimately serve a good purpose, in buying time for Reconstruction to proceed while a chastened Johnson largely refrained from interfering. It’s an interesting and almost retrograde argument that, while convincing, is closer to the Profiles in Courage view that impeachment was unjustified, than to the more modern viewpoint from the likes of Brenda Wineapple’s The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation that, justified or not, Johnson simply deserved it.
In the end, while everything from an uncooperative president to Southern intransigence complicated Reconstruction, Downs concludes that extending the state of war, and therefore the government’s war powers, was far better than the alternative would have been. “By insisting that peace had not yet dawned, Congress and black and white loyalists had changed the Constitution” with the Reconstruction Amendments, which likely would never have happened had peace been declared prematurely. Lincoln waged the Civil War in order to preserve the Union. After the fighting, Congressional Republicans maintained a state of war in order to reshape that Union.
So both this book and the one that followed it a decade later deal with the same time period and many of the same issues about why the war did not end at Appomattox. But while Vorenberg’s book focuses on the “when,” this book focuses on the “why.” And it’s a much better book because of it.
February 9, 2024
The thesis that military coercion is the only tool to enforce democracy and liberation rings so scary to me, thanks Gregory Downs I will be having nightmares about this
December 17, 2016
A trivia question for you. When did the American Civil War end? If you answered April 9, 1865, with the surrender of Robert E. Lee to Ulysses S. Grant, you'd be wrong. You may know that fighting continued for a little longer before other Confederate armies elsewhere in the U.S. surrendered. But did you know that the war didn't officially end until peace was declared on February 1, 1871? Yup, 1871. Almost SIX YEARS after what most of us think of as the end of the Civil War.
That's what we learn from historian Gregory Downs in this book that tracks the political and logistical reasons for not officially ending the war sooner. The main reason - the South was still a pretty violent place. In fact, one estimate holds that 50,000 freed people were murdered between emancipation and 1877. 50,000! Martial law was used to keep the toll from being even higher.
At times, the book drags a bit when getting into the nitty gritty political infighting between both parties as well as with President Andrew Johnson. Overall, though, it's worth reading if you want to know all you can about this period in history.
That's what we learn from historian Gregory Downs in this book that tracks the political and logistical reasons for not officially ending the war sooner. The main reason - the South was still a pretty violent place. In fact, one estimate holds that 50,000 freed people were murdered between emancipation and 1877. 50,000! Martial law was used to keep the toll from being even higher.
At times, the book drags a bit when getting into the nitty gritty political infighting between both parties as well as with President Andrew Johnson. Overall, though, it's worth reading if you want to know all you can about this period in history.
December 31, 2021
Gregory Downs’ After Appomattox was written to shed light on the US government’s “extraconstitutional” military occupation of the American South (Downs 246). Downs takes the reader through the ten years after The Battle of Appomattox Court House. Gregory Downs shows the reader that the demarcation of the Civil War and Reconstruction Era is not clear cut as past historiographies have made it seem. Downs situates the Civil War did not entirely end with Confederate General Lee’s surrender to Union General Grant but that the war ended when all the US troops had been recalled from throughout the US.
The Civil War split the country apart, and military occupation tried to make it whole again. The government regulated rebellious geographic areas and treated the individuals living there like foreigners (Downs 22). Gregory Down starts off the book by showing how the military occupation tried to piece the USA back together again. Military rule throughout the United States might be a difficult concept for modern readers. Downs tries simplifying it for the reader. The slow ending of the Civil War seems like a new idea for this period of history in the historiography.
The peeks throughout After Appomattox at the black experience during this period were the book's most intriguing parts. Downs gives the stat that 2.75 million slaves were scattered across the Confederacy as the Civil War ended (Downs 41-42). The number is staggering. Imagining trying to rebuild a broken society with these numbers. It is hard for readers to wrap their heads around. Downs has powerful words for the institution of slavery. He says, “the persistence of slavery reminds us of slavery’s resilience…Slavery would not simply die; it would have to be killed” (Downs 42). The persistence of slavery in the minds of Southerners proved that military intervention was needed for African Americans during this time.
The idea of reconstructing a country is a curious one. I am not very familiar with immediate post-Civil War US history. The years between the Civil War and World War I in American history are hazy to me at best. I would have liked to see more about free people’s experiences and how they survived in the South from their perspective and not a top-down one. I would have wanted to learn more about occupation duty in the South. One reviewer I read and agreed with said, “Readers hoping to learn more about occupation duty in the South will encounter a few teasing details…but little else” (Adams, Journal of the Civil War Era). I will acknowledge that was not what the book was focusing on, but it would have been an excellent addition.
The Civil War split the country apart, and military occupation tried to make it whole again. The government regulated rebellious geographic areas and treated the individuals living there like foreigners (Downs 22). Gregory Down starts off the book by showing how the military occupation tried to piece the USA back together again. Military rule throughout the United States might be a difficult concept for modern readers. Downs tries simplifying it for the reader. The slow ending of the Civil War seems like a new idea for this period of history in the historiography.
The peeks throughout After Appomattox at the black experience during this period were the book's most intriguing parts. Downs gives the stat that 2.75 million slaves were scattered across the Confederacy as the Civil War ended (Downs 41-42). The number is staggering. Imagining trying to rebuild a broken society with these numbers. It is hard for readers to wrap their heads around. Downs has powerful words for the institution of slavery. He says, “the persistence of slavery reminds us of slavery’s resilience…Slavery would not simply die; it would have to be killed” (Downs 42). The persistence of slavery in the minds of Southerners proved that military intervention was needed for African Americans during this time.
The idea of reconstructing a country is a curious one. I am not very familiar with immediate post-Civil War US history. The years between the Civil War and World War I in American history are hazy to me at best. I would have liked to see more about free people’s experiences and how they survived in the South from their perspective and not a top-down one. I would have wanted to learn more about occupation duty in the South. One reviewer I read and agreed with said, “Readers hoping to learn more about occupation duty in the South will encounter a few teasing details…but little else” (Adams, Journal of the Civil War Era). I will acknowledge that was not what the book was focusing on, but it would have been an excellent addition.
March 7, 2024
Incredible Book.
The narrative for reconstruction I grew up with was: If only Lincoln had lived and we threw it all away when Hayes surrendered to white racist southerners and took a deal to remove the military in exchange of electoral votes.
That is not wrong. It just ignores years of work and thousands of people black, white, northern and southern, who had to figure out what it really meant to end slavery and make hundreds of thousands of people into citizens. It ignores the real questions that those legislators and advocates had to ask:
What does it even mean to be a citizen?
Is it just voting?
being able to serve on a jury?
the right to define safe labor contracts?
recourse to protection from the law?
Can we protect civil liberties by overriding civil liberties?
Can the vote alone protect black men (it was always just going to be men no matter how hard the women spoke up) and their families or is the ballot only as strong as the bullets that protect that right?
The Civil War army was almost completely volunteer soldiers and when Lee surrendered most wanted to go home. The Federal Gov't wanted to stop bleeding money but Radical Republicans and even Andrew Johnson knew the war wasn't over that last April of the "fighting war"
This book walks you through the legislative fights as Congress wrestles with how to bring traitor states back into The Union. In simple, clear language it shows the extreme violence white southern terrorists used to try and shape the world into a version that ignored the 4 years of bloody fighting that had ripped The Nation in two.
The voices and actions of black men and women who petitioned, organized, and fought for their place in that world are as vibrant and stark as those white southerners who tried to bring back slavery in all but name.
It is easy to see how Reconstruction did not work but it is foolish to ignore the victories that did occur. The same goes for evaluating the cost of using force to protect freedom and liberty
If you are at all interested in U.S history this is a necessary book to read.
The narrative for reconstruction I grew up with was: If only Lincoln had lived and we threw it all away when Hayes surrendered to white racist southerners and took a deal to remove the military in exchange of electoral votes.
That is not wrong. It just ignores years of work and thousands of people black, white, northern and southern, who had to figure out what it really meant to end slavery and make hundreds of thousands of people into citizens. It ignores the real questions that those legislators and advocates had to ask:
What does it even mean to be a citizen?
Is it just voting?
being able to serve on a jury?
the right to define safe labor contracts?
recourse to protection from the law?
Can we protect civil liberties by overriding civil liberties?
Can the vote alone protect black men (it was always just going to be men no matter how hard the women spoke up) and their families or is the ballot only as strong as the bullets that protect that right?
The Civil War army was almost completely volunteer soldiers and when Lee surrendered most wanted to go home. The Federal Gov't wanted to stop bleeding money but Radical Republicans and even Andrew Johnson knew the war wasn't over that last April of the "fighting war"
This book walks you through the legislative fights as Congress wrestles with how to bring traitor states back into The Union. In simple, clear language it shows the extreme violence white southern terrorists used to try and shape the world into a version that ignored the 4 years of bloody fighting that had ripped The Nation in two.
The voices and actions of black men and women who petitioned, organized, and fought for their place in that world are as vibrant and stark as those white southerners who tried to bring back slavery in all but name.
It is easy to see how Reconstruction did not work but it is foolish to ignore the victories that did occur. The same goes for evaluating the cost of using force to protect freedom and liberty
If you are at all interested in U.S history this is a necessary book to read.
November 15, 2022
This is excellent scholarship. Downs offers a slight correction to the traditional narrative of Reconstruction, urging readers to remember that the extension of "war powers" were significant to the postwar era. The main crux of the argument is to retort the oft-misunderstood or mischaracterized understanding that Reconstruction was a "failure" due to leadership not wanting it to be successful or not committing enough resources to it. Downs argues convincingly that it was southern opposition, mostly via paramilitary organizations as well as formal political processes, that sought to hinder occupation and ultimately work against the rights of freedpeople and reintegration of southern states into the Union.
The book is really well written. The evidence is overwhelming in Downs' argument. As someone who has studied the 19th century in depth, I was surprised how much of this felt "fresh" and new. It was a retelling of some familiar material, but Downs did so with a thoughtful style that directed the reader through the complex process of the end of the battlefield part of the war and into the "war powers" era that lasted for nearly a decade. This retelling, with familiar names like Andrew Johnson, Oliver Howard, and Ulysses Grant, bumps into lesser known names from the pockets of resistance throughout the South.
It's a worthy read, full of several helpful anecdotes that flavor the scholarly argument. I would certainly recommend this book for a class on Civil War and Reconstruction at the upper division level. I would use it if teaching a graduate course on the topic as well. The book should be a new staple on 19th century US comprehensive exam lists for the foreseeable future.
The book is really well written. The evidence is overwhelming in Downs' argument. As someone who has studied the 19th century in depth, I was surprised how much of this felt "fresh" and new. It was a retelling of some familiar material, but Downs did so with a thoughtful style that directed the reader through the complex process of the end of the battlefield part of the war and into the "war powers" era that lasted for nearly a decade. This retelling, with familiar names like Andrew Johnson, Oliver Howard, and Ulysses Grant, bumps into lesser known names from the pockets of resistance throughout the South.
It's a worthy read, full of several helpful anecdotes that flavor the scholarly argument. I would certainly recommend this book for a class on Civil War and Reconstruction at the upper division level. I would use it if teaching a graduate course on the topic as well. The book should be a new staple on 19th century US comprehensive exam lists for the foreseeable future.
January 17, 2023
It seems we had a perfect example of the pitfalls of military occupation, yet we ignored that lesson when it came to the wars we would enter in the mid to late 20th century. Especially since, a hundred years later, the South is still trying, and often succeeding, in denying some of its citizens the right to vote.
While the placing of arm forces in the South after the Civil War was not Reconstruction, its presence there allowed the advancement of the ex-slaves’ rights. Once that force was withdrawn, those advancements disappeared almost completely.
Downs gives a in-depth and compelling look at what the North attempted to do after the guns had fallen silent. They would rely on war powers in a desperate attempt to bring a stable government to a violent nation. How well it succeeded, and how much it failed, is still being debated.
While the placing of arm forces in the South after the Civil War was not Reconstruction, its presence there allowed the advancement of the ex-slaves’ rights. Once that force was withdrawn, those advancements disappeared almost completely.
Downs gives a in-depth and compelling look at what the North attempted to do after the guns had fallen silent. They would rely on war powers in a desperate attempt to bring a stable government to a violent nation. How well it succeeded, and how much it failed, is still being debated.
January 15, 2022
This book deals with a fascinating topic that is normally ignored in accounts of the Civil War. Essentially, the author’s argument is that the “war,” if not the armed conflict, did not end in spring 1865, but continues until at least 1871 with the seating of the final Southern congressional delegation. I’d never come across this interpretation of the reconstruction era before, and learned a great deal about Congress’ continued use of wartime powers to enforce its vision (contradictory though it may sometimes have been) of Reconstruction. I did find the middle third of the book difficult to follow at times, as the time periods referenced seemed to jump back and forth between late 1865 and early 1866 without explanation, but overall the book was easy to follow and very informative.
May 6, 2023
The American Civil War did not end at Appomattox Courthouse. It could be argued that it is still ongoing. This well-researched, well-documented book details the struggle to restore order in the South and protect the newly freedmen. It has many maps showing troop strength throughout the country during this period and explains the overwhelming struggle to remain in control despite diminishing numbers and widespread violence and intimidation. The struggle between the military and the politicians is also presented well. I would have liked more about the impeachment proceedings and plan to read more about that aspect.
September 14, 2018
A compelling perspective on the Civil War and Reconstruction. The war ended 6 years after the fighting ended. While at war the US government used extra-constitutional mechanisms to suppress resistance and ensure freedmen’s rights, to mixed success. Blacks had always been part of southern society, but after the war whites objected violently to the prospect of blacks being equal participants in that society.
April 29, 2020
Picked this book up due to David Blight quote on cover. Also paperback helps.
Enjoyed the history, need to learn more about 1865-1914 America. This is good primer on 1865-1871 and the role of the Army. Lot of good info and analysis.
Sidenote: I am a City College grad student and in the acknowledgments, he lists all the CUNY professors. So that was nice to see.
Enjoyed the history, need to learn more about 1865-1914 America. This is good primer on 1865-1871 and the role of the Army. Lot of good info and analysis.
Sidenote: I am a City College grad student and in the acknowledgments, he lists all the CUNY professors. So that was nice to see.
December 2, 2020
Argues that the civil war continued until 1871, as Congress continued to utilize its war powers to remake the south and ensure black civil rights. Very well written - the meditations on the relationship between coercion and rights, and the recognition that black civil rights, though fledgling in the era after reconstruction, were only advanced by the bayonet, is particularly moving and harrowing.
June 4, 2021
A really interesting argument for the “long civil war” lasting until 1871. Looks at Reconstruction era military policy in a fresh light and draws parallels in the conclusion to 2000s war on terrorism policies. Leaves me struggling with the question of if extra constitutional military actual are the only way for government to change minds, even if these are also flawed.
December 15, 2025
Thoughtful, nuanced book. Great picture of the role the military played in reconstruction, and the debates that ensued. Last chapter does well to link the history to our current debates over the role of force in democracy
March 15, 2024
Reading this gave me a new appreciation of how difficult life must have been for residents in the post-war South, both freedpeople and whites, as they adapted to life in a new world.
October 15, 2024
From the first page, I learned so much more about the time right after the surrender at Appomattox that I was hooked. What a great researched book!
April 19, 2025
Read for comps. My favorite Reconstruction book thus far.
May 31, 2015
Academic historians these days tend to look down on political and military history, which are seen as usually too nationalistic or uncritical. Gregory Downs shows his readers that military and political history can be quite thorough, and not just rehash old national myths. Downs shows the centrality of the military to Reconstruction. Although it seems illogical to us in 2015, martial law – the suspension of peacetime law – in the South during Reconstruction was necessary to achieve racial justice in the ex-Confederacy. The Union occupation, although it dealt with constant funding cuts, dwindling troop numbers, and constant attacks from former Confederates, somehow managed to secure voting and civil rights for freedmen and born-free African Americans. Downs hits many of the same points as Eric Foner's Reconstruction and Steven Hahn's A Nation Under Our Feet; all of these authors emphasize the positive achievements of Reconstruction, while still acknowledging the enormous obstacles the Union army faced in rebuilding the South. But Downs goes further in clarifying the role of the military, as well as the mechanics of Congressional dealmaking, shifting views on national reunion, and the surprisingly complex actions of President Andrew Johnson, who ultimately turned out to be a stubborn racist, yet early on assisted the Union military occupation. The new dataset tracking troop movements in the South, represented in a series of illustrations in the book and through GIS diagrams on an accompanying website, is Downs's most distinctive primary source. The Congressional chapters are a bit dry, but overall this is a compelling book that shows, oddly enough, that freedom once came from the barrels of Yankee guns. The Civil War did not end in 1865.
November 1, 2015
Excellent look at Republican efforts to prolong "war powers" (and, effectively, the Civil War itself) until civil rights for freedpeople had been secured across the post-war South. Most importantly, Downs illustrates how the application (or threat thereof) of coercive force was absolutely necessary in order to enforce the "revolutionary" radical legislation passed in the halls of Congress during the Reconstruction era -- and how, in fact, all government depends upon the potential of coercive force for its ability to govern anything at all. Republicans meant to kill slavery dead and prevent anything resembling the institution from arising from its ashes. In order to successfully pull this off, they utilized the coercive power of a slowly disintegrating occupation force to enforce martial law and protect the freedpeople of the South until "guarantees" of slavery's extinction could be ostensibly achieved through the 14th and 15th Amendments. This is a great blend of military and political history, as well as an insightful look at potentially more positive outcomes of military occupation which contrast sharply with the outcomes of military occupations in our own lifetime. It also suggests that the American Civil War did not "legally" end until 1871; a claim likely to be contested by many, just as it was then.
September 12, 2015
I would not recommend this book to a casual reader of history. It's...unusual. Having read it as an assigned book for discussion for a class, I am grateful that I had an opportunity to discuss the book in an academic setting. The conclusion - that the Civil War did not end in 1865 but rather continued until 1871 when "war powers" were essentially ended - is incredibly interesting and a new idea to me. Reading the book, I would have assumed this was a fact of history that I just never truly learned. In discussions, I realize that this isn't so much accepted "fact" as an interpretation of something that was not fully accepted even within its own time. Yes, war powers continued until 1871 - but many disagreed that the war itself continued.
I personally found the book to be a bit confusing, time frames repeated from one chapter to the next with slightly different angles on the events. (Specifically chapter 7 to chapter 8.) However, the concepts are incredibly interesting and unique - and the conclusion of the book is really quite compelling.
I personally found the book to be a bit confusing, time frames repeated from one chapter to the next with slightly different angles on the events. (Specifically chapter 7 to chapter 8.) However, the concepts are incredibly interesting and unique - and the conclusion of the book is really quite compelling.
June 3, 2015
It should be a truism that the war did not end at Appomattox. Even after having read Foner and other histories of Reconstruction, the particular ways in which wartime and military rule continued really hadn't sunk in. I'm used to, for instance, thinking of ex parte Milligan as largely irrelevant, as it came after the end of the fighting and the use of military commissions in the Northern states. Yet with the continuance of military commissions in the ex-Confederate states, the case does have import. I would highly recommend this to anyone interested in the Civil War beyond the most basic military facts.
June 22, 2015
Expansive, meticulous research drives this book, which persuasively argues that the Radical Republicans extended the Civil War to quell the lingering rebellion, protect the rights of freedmen, and signal to the South they meant business. Effective while occupation was going on, Reconstruction ended as the Union forces withdrew from the South, state by state, leaving behind a whole mess of problems that are still with us.
January 25, 2017
Mr. Downs book is a sweeping, detailed account of reconstruction from Lee's surrender ( which did not end the war) to the 1880's. I learned a lot and was not bogged down by either dry writing, boring statistics that added nothing to the narrative, or opinionated asides. The conclusion juxtaposes Southern reconstruction of the 19th century with contemporary uses of the military with logical and informative thinking. A must read for anyone interested in this period and subject.
March 21, 2016
Didn't finish this but what I read was interesting. Basic argument: Post-Civil War Reconstruction would have required much longer and broader military occupation by U.S. army in order to succeed.
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