April 1865: The Month That Saved America

Historian Jay Winik argues that April 1865 was the most decisive month in the life of the United States, a period when the nation could have fractured permanently but instead held together thanks to the choices of a handful of leaders on both sides of the Civil War. Winik contends that the country's survival was never inevitable and that how the war ended mattered as much as how it was fought.

The book opens with a prelude using Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, his mountaintop estate in Virginia, as a symbol of America's unresolved contradictions. By 1865, the house sat in ruins, claimed by two competing owners, one Northern and one Southern. Winik traces Jefferson's paradoxes to argue that the United States was, from its founding, an artificial and fragile entity. The word "nation" appears nowhere in the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. Winik surveys secessionist threats from the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794 through South Carolina's nullification crisis of the 1830s, contending that the Southern bid for independence in 1861 was part of a recurring American tradition. By the Civil War's final month, whether America could survive as a nation remained an open question.

The narrative opens on March 4, 1865. In Washington, President Abraham Lincoln delivered his second inaugural address, calling for reconciliation. He was exhausted and worried about how the war would end. That same day, Confederate General Robert E. Lee rode into Richmond to confer with Confederate President Jefferson Davis about abandoning the capital and joining General Joe Johnston's army in North Carolina. Lee's army, besieged at Petersburg, Virginia, numbered fewer than 35,000 present for duty against an estimated 150,000 under Union General Ulysses S. Grant.

Winik devotes attention to the Confederacy's internal debate over arming and emancipating slaves. Lee broke his public silence in February 1865, declaring that slaves would make "efficient soldiers" and that those who served "should be freed." On March 13, the Confederate Congress narrowly passed a bill to enlist Black soldiers, and Davis issued an order conferring on recruits "the rights of a freedman." By late March, Black Confederate troops were drilling in Richmond's Capitol Square.

Lincoln arrived at City Point, Grant's headquarters, to confer with Grant, General William Tecumseh Sherman, and Admiral David Dixon Porter. Lincoln articulated what Winik calls the River Queen Doctrine: generous terms for the South, no prosecutions, and liberal treatment. His overriding fear was that Lee would dissolve his army into guerrilla bands, prolonging the war indefinitely.

Events accelerated in early April. The Battle of Five Forks on April 1 shattered Lee's right flank, and Grant launched a massive assault along the Petersburg line on April 2. Lee telegraphed Davis to evacuate Richmond. The capital descended into chaos as fires and explosions devastated the city. Union troops, including the all-Black Twenty-fifth Corps, entered Richmond on April 3. The next day, Lincoln walked nearly two miles through the smoldering capital, accompanied by only 10 sailors, as freed Black people followed him. He sat in Davis's chair barely 40 hours after Davis had left it.

Lee's retreat westward became a race against starvation. At Amelia Court House on April 4, he discovered that supply trains contained only ammunition, not food. On April 6, the Battle of Sayler's Creek cost him up to 8,000 men. Grant initiated surrender correspondence on April 7. On Palm Sunday, April 9, Lee's last breakout attempt revealed a wall of Union infantry blocking his path, with two more corps closing from behind. Brigadier General E. Porter Alexander urged Lee to disperse the army into guerrilla bands.

Winik provides an extensive analysis of guerrilla warfare's history and viability, arguing that the South had the terrain, veterans, and civilian support to sustain prolonged resistance. But Lee rejected the option on moral grounds, reasoning that guerrilla war would devastate Virginia and the country for generations. He told Alexander they must consider the effect on "the country as a whole." Winik presents this decision as Lee's greatest contribution to peace.

Winik profiles Grant as Lee's opposite: A man who had failed repeatedly in civilian life, Grant was utilitarian where Lee was stately. At Appomattox Court House on the afternoon of April 9, Grant offered generous terms. Officers and men would be paroled, and soldiers who owned horses could take them for spring planting. Lee responded that the terms would "do much toward conciliating our people." Grant provided 25,000 rations for the starving Confederates and ordered his troops to stop firing celebratory salutes. On April 12, the formal surrender ceremony featured a spontaneous mutual salute between the two armies.

Five days later, on Good Friday, April 14, the fragile progress toward reconciliation was thrown into jeopardy. At approximately 10:13 PM, actor John Wilkes Booth entered the presidential box at Ford's Theatre and fired a single shot into Lincoln's head. Simultaneously, Booth's co-conspirator Lewis Powell forced his way into Secretary of State William Seward's home and stabbed him repeatedly. A third planned assassination of Vice President Andrew Johnson by co-conspirator George Atzerodt failed when Atzerodt lost his nerve. Lincoln was carried to the Peterson House across the street, where he died at 7:22 AM on April 15.

Winik traces Lincoln's evolution from a cautious politician to the president who issued the Emancipation Proclamation and reframed the war through the Gettysburg Address as a struggle for national survival. The author argues that Lincoln's death constituted the greatest test American democracy had ever faced. Johnson was sworn in at 10 AM and declared that treason must be punished. Sherman met Johnston in North Carolina on April 17 and, fearing guerrilla anarchy, drafted a sweeping peace agreement that exceeded the Appomattox terms. Washington rejected the terms; Secretary of War Edwin Stanton accused Sherman of plotting a military coup, and Grant was dispatched to handle the situation.

Davis, still fleeing southward, ordered Johnston to fight on. Johnston disobeyed, concluding that further resistance would be "the greatest of crimes," and surrendered on April 26 on terms matching Lee's. From Richmond, Lee condemned Lincoln's assassination, welcomed the end of slavery, and wrote to Davis that partisan warfare offered no prospect of independence. Other commanders followed. Nathan Bedford Forrest, the Confederacy's feared cavalry commander, laid down his arms and counseled his men to become good citizens. Cherokee Brigadier General Stand Watie became the last Confederate general to surrender on June 23, 1865. Davis was captured in Georgia on May 10, and Booth was shot and killed in a Virginia tobacco barn on April 26.

Winik surveys the emotional aftermath: the South's devastation, Lincoln's 14-day funeral train journey to Springfield, Illinois, and the Grand Review of the Armies, the Union victory parade in which 150,000 troops marched down Pennsylvania Avenue. The book closes with a scene at St. Paul's Church in Richmond, where a Black man unexpectedly advanced to the communion rail before the white congregants. After a tense silence, Lee rose and knelt beside him. The other communicants slowly followed.

In the epilogue, Winik argues that April 1865 marked the moment the United States shifted from a loose collection of states to a true nation. Before the war, Americans spoke of "the United States" as a plural noun; afterward, it became singular. While acknowledging the painful failures of Reconstruction, Winik contends that Lee's rejection of guerrilla warfare, Grant's magnanimity at Appomattox, and Lincoln's vision of reconciliation prevented the catastrophic outcomes that have befallen other nations torn by civil war.