I.Warming up

1. Discussion

(1) Please make a list of the names of people and places in the essay and put them into historical context.

(2)Was Lee’s decision to surrender easy? Why or why not?

(3)What was Lincoln’s vision for the end of the Civil War?

(4)How do you interpret Lee’s and Grant’s different ways of attiring at the Appomattox House?

(5)Against what a background did the Bennett House Surrender take place?

(6)Why did the Bennett House Surrender conclude the same way as the Appomattox Surrender?

2. Check-on-review

II. Background

1. Author

Jay Winik

• Senior scholar of history and public policy in the School of Public Affairs, University of Maryland

• Leading historian of the American Civil War

2. A quiz on the civil war

(1) The combatants in the Civil War were the Union (northern states) against the Confederacy (southern states). True or False?

(2) This war had many causes. What do the historians believe to be the primary?
A. Political turmoil
B. Secession
C. Slavery issues
D. States’ rights

(3) The North and the South quarreled in the Congress over whether the newly-acquired states in the west should be admitted into the union as free states or slave states. True or False?

(4) The North and the South were much different in its people, customs and way of life. True or False?

(5) Neither side was really prepared for war. The North had a small army and the South had none. True or False?

(6) The war would see about 75,000 orphans losing their fathers. Therefore, memory of the war has lasted for generations. True or False?

III. Text analysis

1. Theme

Questions for thinking

(1) In what ways was the ending of the American Civil War unique in the human history of civil wars?

(2) According to the author, was such an ending inevitable or not? Why or why not?

(3) According to the text, what contributed to such a unique ending?

2.Structure

3. Detailed Analysis

Part I: Discussion

(1) What is the common concern in the study of wars?

(2) What is the author’s research topic/purpose?

(3) Why does the author choose such a topic?

(4) What kind of historic outlook does the author have?

inevitability vs. chance events

(5) What kind of approach does the author adopt?

(6) What should be the right approach toward history?

(7) What is the academic writing like? (para. 1)

• research topic (what)

• rationale for the topic (why)

• approach (how)

Part II (A): Discussion

(1) What was the fateful choice facing Robert Lee?

(2) What were Lee’s concerns?

• Lee raised the dreaded concept of surrender, and he said, “What will the country think?” (para.4)

• And Wise looked over at Lee, and he said, “Country? My God, man, you are the country to these men.” (para.5)

(3) Did Lee and Wise mean the same thing by “the country”? Why or why not?

(4) What if Lee shared Wise’s understanding?

(5) How were the different understandings significant to the ending of the Civil War?

Part II (B): Discussion

(1) What did Lincoln fear?

• Guerrilla warfare

• A final bloody Armageddon

(2) What was Lincoln’s vision?

• No hangings or bloody work

• But surrender with dignity and grace

→ Abraham Lincoln visits City Point, VA

“Let them surrender and go home, they will not take up arms again. Let them all go, officers and all, let them have their horses to plow with, and, if you like, their guns to shoot crows with. Treat them liberally… I say, give them the most liberal and honorable terms.”

——Abraham Lincoln (City Point, Virginia, on board River Queen, March 28, 1865)

Part II (C): Discussion

(1) How was the Appomattox surrender “far richer”?

• Uncertainty of Lee’s fate: another defeated general?

• Outcries for punishment and vengeance

• What if Grant, who has a reputation as “Unconditional Surrender,” did not carry out Lincoln’s vision?

• Thousands of men standing at rapt attention

And he should have been nervous because, throughout history, as he knew all too well, defeated generals and revolutionaries and traitors were typically beheaded, or they were hanged, or they were imprisoned or, like General Napoleon, they were exiled.”

(2) Who were these generals and revolutionaries? Give some names!

(3) Why so?

→ Typically, people believe that the ending of the war decides who is right!

(4) What are the terms for surrender?

The Army of Northern Virginia: paroled

Soldiers: take home their horses or mules

(5) Officers: allowed to keep their sidearms (Lee spared from the humiliation of a Lee’s and Grant’s different ways of attiring, deliberate or not? classic surrender of his sword)

Part III (A): Volatile situation after Appomattox

(1) Confederate armies still fighting in the field

(2) Jefferson Davis calling for guerrilla warfare Senator

• President of the Confederacy

• Advocate of guerrilla warfare

• Captured and imprisoned on May 10, 1865

• Failed business man

• Author: The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government

(3) Mary Lee’s urge for continued fighting Robert Lee’s wife

Great-granddaughter of Martha Washington

→ What might the Confederacy mean to Mary Lee and to many other confederates?

(4) Assassination of Lincoln—decapitation!

• April 14, 1865, Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C.

• Assassin: John Wilkes Booth

• Part of a larger conspiracy for continued fighting

(5) Union government in crisis

What was the crisis?

President assassinated

Vice-president incapable and unpopular

Temptations for regency, cabinet government and military coup

Generals suspected and later warned

Part III (B): Discussion

(1) How did Sherman behave differently in handling the Bennett House Surrender? How to account for the change?

(2) How did Sherman and the Washington circles interpret Sherman’s generous terms to Confederates?

• Sherman

Carrying out Lincoln’s vision

• The Washington circles (the Union Cabinet)

1) A conspiracy to bride Confederate officers with very generous terms

2) A Napoleonic coup under way

3) Grant sent to talk to Sherman

IV. Reinforcement:

1.Reconsider the ending of the American Civil War

(1) What lessons shall we learn from the unique ending of the American Civil War?

(2) How do you understand “War does not decide who is right but who is left.”?

2.Reconsider our historic outlook

(1) Where do you stand in the old debate “Is it the times that produce their heroes, or the heroes who usher in the times?

(2) How do you understand “the richness of history”?