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Living History
Author and Civil War scholar Winik in N.H. to recall ‘the month that saved America'
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Business New Haven
1/7/2002
By: Michael C. Bingham
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Author and Yale-trained historian Jay Winik returned to New Haven December 14 to discuss his national bestseller, April 1865: The Month That Saved America. The event was presented by Business New Haven and the New Haven Colony Historical Society, where Winik's lecture took place before a full house of about 150 listeners.
Published by Harper Collins ($32.50, 480 pps.), Winik's volume, which reached No. 6 on the New York Times non-fiction bestseller list and for a time was a No. 1 selection among all new books on the online bookseller Amazon.com, details the cataclysmic events of the 30 days during which the Confederacy collapsed and President Abraham Lincoln was slain by an unrepentant John Wilkes Booth.
Critics have observed that Winik's book assumes new relevance following the September 11 attacks, which resulted in the largest loss of life in the U.S. due to military action since the Battle of Antietam (September 17, 1862), the single bloodiest day of the Civil War, during which nearly 23,000 Union and Confederate soldiers were killed or wounded in a space of 12 hours.
By 1865, as Union armies roamed freely throughout a resource- and manpower-starved Confederacy, “The very survival of the United States was in doubt,” said Winik. “How wars end is just as important as how and why they begin.”
Winik emphasized the fragility of the American Union during its first 89 years. When the War of 1812 began, for instance, the New England states actively flirted with secession. In the years leading up to the War Between the States, California, New Jersey and even New York City explored exiting the Union. “Many Americans believed the U.S. would break up into three or four republics,” said Winik.
By the spring of 1865, so desperate were Jefferson Davis and other Confederate leaders that they took the previously unthinkable step of arming slaves to stem the Union tide. Winik said this tactic “amounted almost to a Confederate emancipation.” He added that Gen. Robert E. Lee, who commanded the Army of Northern Virginia, was prepared to go “a step further - to integrate the [CSA] troops more than the Union ever did. On slavery [policy], by April 1985, the [two warring] nations were never closer” in their treatment of African-Americans, said Winik.
What most eased the transition from war to peace, Winik said, was the wisdom and forbearance of leaders on both sides. In late March 1865, as conventional combat was clearly drawing to a close, President Lincoln announced a policy of no revenge against the erstwhile rebels - there would be “no hangings,” he proclaimed, in contrast to the bloodbath that had accompanied the French revolution 75 years before and horrified the civilized world. As it happened, such magnanimity did not spare the 16th President his life.
At Appomatox, Winik says, the two nations' highest military leaders rose to statesmanlike stature. “Lee's finest hour came not in war, but in peace,” said Winik, who credits the general with dissuading Davis from continuing a guerrilla war from Southern hills and valleys. Likewise, he says, was it the finest hour of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, who made the wise (though at the time highly controversial) decision to permit rebel soldiers to keep their sidearms and horses. Greeting Lee at the Appomatox courthouse, Grant tipped his cap to Lee “to honor his fallen foe,” Winik said, “thereby setting a tone for peace and reconciliation.”
Following the surrender, Winik recounts, Lee proclaimed that, “I surrendered as much to Abraham Lincoln's goodness as I did to General Grant's armies.” And thus was a fragile Union restored so that it might grow to greatness.
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