Ends of War: The Unfinished Fight of Lee's Army After Appomattox

The Army of Northern Virginia's chaotic dispersal began even before Lee and Grant met at Appomattox Court House. As the Confederates had pushed west at a relentless pace for nearly a week, thousands of wounded and exhausted men fell out of the ranks. When word spread that Lee planned to surrender, most remaining troops stacked their arms and accepted paroles allowing them to return home, even as they lamented the loss of their country and cause. But others broke south and west, hoping to continue the fight. Fearing a guerrilla war, Grant extended the generous Appomattox terms to every rebel who would surrender himself. Provost marshals fanned out across Virginia and beyond, seeking nearly 18,000 of Lee's men who had yet to surrender. But the shock of Lincoln's assassination led Northern authorities to see threats of new rebellion in every rail depot and harbor where Confederates gathered for transport, even among those already paroled. While Federal troops struggled to keep order and sustain a fragile peace, their newly surrendered adversaries seethed with anger and confusion at the sight of Union troops occupying their towns and former slaves celebrating freedom. Caroline E. Janney reveals that Lee's surrender was less an ending than the start of an interregnum marked by military and political uncertainty, legal and logistical confusion, and continued outbursts of violence.

About the Author :
Caroline E. Janney is the John L. Nau III Professor in the History of the American Civil War and director of the John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History at the University of Virginia. Ed Cunningham is an award-winning voice actor and teacher living in Los Angeles with his wife and two daughters. He voices for Volvo, Amazon, Discovery Channel, Curiosity Stream, Sub Zero Wolf, SoCal Edison, COX Business, and many other companies, and performs voice-over for television, including HBO's Ballers, ESPN's The Bronx is Burning, CBS's The Good Wife, and major motion pictures like Lone Survivor, The Purge, Independence Day: Resurgence, White House Down, and Alpha. He also voices video game characters for Call of Duty, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon, Tony Hawk, Star Wars, Fire Emblem, Soul Caliber, and dozens of other titles. Ed received his BA in English literature from Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina, and his MFA in Acting from Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois. For many years, he worked as a professional theater actor in Chicago, performing in over forty productions-including Marc Antony in Julius Caesar at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, Orpheus/Ceyx/and others in the original Tony Award-winning production of Metamorphoses at Lookingglass Theatre, and Marco in A View From the Bridge at The Raven Theatre, for which he won a Joseph Jefferson Citation for Best Supporting Actor. As a voice actor, Ed's radio campaign for Earl of Sandwich, in which he plays an eighteenth-century English Herald, won an Addy Award in 2018, and his Ameritech radio spot in which he plays a beat poet, won him a Silver Microphone Award in 1998. On screen, Ed stars in dozens of independent films, including Design, selected for the 2002 Sundance Film Festival.