Volume 53, Number 19 · November 30, 2006
The Great Betrayal
By James M. McPherson
Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War
by Nicholas Lemann
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 257 pp., $24.00
In his formal acceptance of the Republican Party's presidential nomination in 1868, General Ulysses S. Grant concluded with four words that struck a deep chord with voters: 'Let us have peace.'[1] For more than twenty years the country had been racked by conflict over slavery and its aftermath: fistfights in Congress, the clubbing to insensibility of an antislavery Massachusetts senator by a proslavery South Carolina congressman on the floor of the Senate, a small civil war between proslavery and antislavery settlers in Kansas Territory in which hundreds were killed, and John Brown's Harpers Ferry raid, a failed effort to foment a slave uprising, had all foreshadowed the huge Civil War in which more than 620,000 Americans were killed. In the three years since that war ceased, a new political battle between president and Congress had culminated in the impeachment of Andrew Johnson and his escape from conviction by a single vote. General Grant had hoped that his generous surrender terms at Appomattox on April 9, 1865, would bring the bloodletting to an end. But the nation soon learned that the cessation of active war did not necessarily mean the inauguration of peace.
Review, 3427 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |