Read This

This is probably the best and most important thing you can read on Appomattox, what happened there and what it means, amidst all that’s been published over the last week. It’s a Times oped by historian Gregory P. Downs which builds on and in some ways summarizes his recent book on the subject. The gist is that the war did not end at Appomattox. It continued in an intensive military occupation that lasted another five years and in widespread terrorist and paramilitary violence directed largely at newly emancipated free black men and women, in a pitched societal battle to enforce or turn back the results of the Civil War. This is a case where history and deceiving fable reach down into the present day. Read it.