Book Review: April 1865, The Month That Saved America
Author: Jay Winik
Even those with a cursory knowledge of American history are likely to be aware of the surrender at Appomattox by Robert E. Lee to Ulysses S. Grant and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth five days later in 1865. The events of that spring range from the truly noble to the utterly heartbreaking. It is a story worth repeating and Jay Winik does so ably in his prize-winning book April, 1865: the Month That Saved America as he explores the last weeks of the American Civil War.

Winik’s book begins the day of Lincoln’s Second Inauguration in March of 1865. Lincoln is exhausted, sometimes devastated by deep depression, and horrified by the continuing carnage of the war. He is convinced that peace would best be attained by a lenient stance towards the South following the conflict. At a conference with his commanders on March 24, he outlines his post war plans, “Let them all go, officers and all. I want submission, and no more bloodshed. I want no one punished; treat them liberally all around.”

Robert E. Lee commands the Confederate forces in Virginia. When his lines are broken by Grant’s army at Petersburg, he is forced to abandon Richmond. He and his troops begin a desperate attempt to unite with the Confederate army in North Carolina. Lee’s men are vastly outnumbered, and so hungry that some are literally eating the bark off trees.

Lee bears special attention. Directly descended from two signers of the Declaration of Independence, he is also the son of a storied general of the American Revolution. During the war with Mexico, he is commended three times for bravery and described by General Winfield Scott as “the best soldier I ever saw in the field”. He is effective as superintendent of West Point from 1852 to 1855 and leads the U.S. Calvary against the Comanches. Lee also commands the forces who subdue John Brown in 1859.

Offered leadership of the U.S. Army in 1861, Lee instead resigns his commission and follows Virginia into the Confederacy. Major victories are won by Lee after he takes charge of the eastern Southern army in 1862. His tactical skill makes the Army of Northern Virginia a formidable foe. Second Manassas, Fredericksburg, and Chancelloresville are among Lee’s many masterpieces of planning, execution, and daring.

Ulysses S Grant is also a graduate of West Point who shows bravery in the Mexican war. He and Lee are similar in little else. The same year Lee is offered command of the Union army, Grant is clerking in this father’s leather store in Illinois. Grant’s drinking results in his forced resignation from the peace time army. After failing at farming and business, he appears beaten at age 39.

The war provides Grant with a second chance. Winning the first major Northern victories, he becomes a force in the western theatre by capturing Fort Henry and Fort Donelson. He conducts a prolonged campaign and conquers Vicksburg, a key Southern stronghold on the Mississippi River in 1863. Under Grant’s leadership, Union troops break out of besieged Chattanooga the same year, setting the stage for the invasion of Georgia.

Grant takes command of the entire Union army in 1864 and decides to make his headquarters with the Army of the Potomac and go after Lee. The two armies clash violently at the Wilderness and Spotsylvania. At Cold Harbor, Grant throws wave after wave of troops against Lee’s lines. The Union suffers 7000 casualties at Cold Harbor in several hours.

Unlike previous Union generals, Grant keeps moving forward against Lee. He is called a “butcher” because he takes repeated advantage of his superior troop strength and attacks again and again, regardless of the Union casualties. His losses can be replaced; Lee’s cannot. Wink describes him “as little more than a seasoned broker calculating the Wall Street markets.”

When his lines at Petersburg collapse after a nine month siege, Lee’s final defeat is almost certain. He has lost Richmond and Grant has won the bloody numbers game.

After exchanging several remarkable notes, the two meet at Wilmer McLean’s home in Appomattox on April 9 for Lee’s surrender. Lee arrives early and is immaculately dressed. Thinking that he might become a prisoner, he wants to “present a good appearance”. Grant comes in a threadbare uniform, but is gracious in victory. His terms are simple and lenient. At Lee’s request, he instructs his officers to allow Confederate soldiers to keep any horse that they personally own. He also provides rations to his starving enemy and prevents any insensitive display of celebration by his victorious troops. “The Confederates were now our prisoners,” Grant said later, “and we did not want to exult over their downfall.”

John Wilkes Booth, a popular stage actor, is the youngest son of a noted acting family. He is also a lover of slavery and the South. Booth assembles a motley group of conspirators and initially plans to kidnap Lincoln and exchange him for captured Confederate prisoners. This imbecilic plot goes nowhere due to both lack of opportunity and its absurd logistics.
Booth is enraged when he attends Lincoln’s White House speech on April 11 and hears Lincoln “suggest” giving limited voting rights to African Americans. Booth wants Lincoln dead. ”By, God I’ll put him through,” he hisses to a companion and also angrily predicts, “That is the last speech he will ever make.”

In what becomes known as ‘The Night of Horrors,” Booth and his “band of misfits” try to eliminate the executive branch in Washington, DC on April 14. Booth fires a bullet into the back of Lincoln’s head as he attends Ford’s theatre. One of Booth’s men stabs Secretary of State Seward and four others at Seward’s nearby home. A planned murder of the Vice President is preempted by a case of nerves in a third potential assassin.

The cowardly crimes are a disaster for the collapsing government of Jefferson Davis and cries for vengeance against the South multiply. Most modern historians rule out any connection between Lincoln’s murder and the Confederate leadership: Union officials in 1865 assume it. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton describes “a plot laid in Richmond before the capture of that city” in a telegram. Any chance for rapid reconciliation disappears.
April, 1865 tells all this and much more. This important work educates as it visits a compelling period in our nation’s past. Along with Lincoln, Lee, Grant, Davis, and Booth, this book profiles Thomas Jefferson, John Tyler, George McClellan, William T. Sherman, Joseph Johnston, Nathan Bedford Forrest, Andrew Johnson, and others who had an effect on that era.

The book’s only weakness is evidenced by its subtitle. Suggesting that Lee’s rejection of guerilla warfare, Grant’s magnanimous actions at Appomattox, and other happenings of that spring “saved America” is stretching it a bit.  Although it’s true that the pace of all these events is probably unmatched in American history, Winik elevates them to an unrealistic level.

Because the historian’s narrative is so powerful, he can be forgiven this bout of hyperbole. April, 1865 might be overly dramatic, but the reality of that frenzied month in that tumultuous year was even more so.

Review by Brad Thomas (October, 2009)