Spring 2003. The U.S. President gives a speech with a banner behind him reading "Mission Accomplished." Six years later, with a new President in charge, the U.S. still has troops engaged in warfare in Iraq. How do we define war and how do we know when it is over? The question was valid in the nineteenth century and it is still valid today.

Michael Vorenberg's Lincoln's Peace is a study of history that resonates in today's world as well. The book is a detailed analysis of the end of the Civil War - when did it occur (if indeed it has ever fully ended) and how do we define that? So many possible ways to assess this and so many different claims to that end. I'm not sure Vorenberg ever definitively answers this. But this is a well studied and well thought out book that looks at the Civil War (and the larger issues it raises) in depth.

The title is perhaps a bit misleading as Lincoln is little more than a bit player in this book (or as much as he could ever be a bit player when talking about the Civil War). Rather, it goes into great depth beyond his final few months in office and into the following few years. But it is a unique and interesting study that is well worth the time invested in reading it.

When did the Civil War end? No really, when? Come on, pick an event, a day, a time. When was the war officially over and when did the peace officially begin? There has to have been an end, right? So when was it? Huh? When? Got a date in mind? Good.

You’re wrong!

There's a lot about this book that I liked. But just one thing bugged me throughout, as somewhat flippantly illustrated above.

I'll begin on the plus side, in saying that this is a very thoughtful, informative book that’s sure to get excellent reviews, and in many ways, rightly so. The narrative consists of a thorough history of what you might consider the postwar, pre-Reconstruction era - a complicated period of time when the fighting was all but over, but the process of keeping the peace was just beginning.

Framed in that way, I think this could have been a far better book: "Winning the war was hard. Winning the peace was harder." Instead, the book is framed around the question of “when did the war really end? Was it here? Or here? Or here? Or here?” In that sense, I think the book gets a little too hung up on its thesis, which states that one can’t really pinpoint the exact end of the war, despite many people’s attempts, then and now, to do so.

The lengthy preface could almost serve as a standalone essay in its own right, since it asks and answers Vorenberg’s central question - concluding that there was no clear end to the Civil War, or any war really. If you think about it for more than a moment, that answer is pretty self-evident.

But as the narrative unfolds, it asks about every key event - Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, Johnston’s surrender in North Carolina, Juneteenth, the ratification of the 13th Amendment, and so on - “was this when the war officially ended?” The answer, of course, is no. And the preface has already told us that, so do we need to keep considering the question?

It may seem like a very nitpicky thing to harp on. But the book’s framing, to me, distracted from its content, which is otherwise excellent. In many ways, this is the book that I thought "Appomattox: Victory, Defeat, and Freedom at the End of the Civil War" should have been when I read it a few weeks ago. That book, published a dozen years ago, considered the meaning of the Appomattox surrender and what kind of nation would emerge as a result. But that book does as Vorenberg does not, in declaring Appomattox to be the moment the war ended, and it skims over a lot that happened between the war and the peace.

In Vorenberg’s telling, Appomattox was more like the beginning of the end. Lincoln didn’t declare victory, Jefferson Davis refused to concede defeat, so the war went on, and Vorenberg meticulously describes every subsequent event that happened - everything mentioned above, along with the surrender of the last organized Confederate forces in Texas, the proposed pursuit of Confederate stragglers who crossed the border into Mexico, lingering guerrilla activity, the trials of the Lincoln assassination conspirators, the debates over what to do with imprisoned Confederate political leaders, and an excellent chapter describing the CSS Shenandoah, whose crew continued attacking U.S. ships in the Pacific during the summer of 1865, unaware the Confederacy had already fallen.

Throughout, though, Vorenberg continually, almost obsessively, ponders whether each event could be considered the war’s official “end,” and explains why it cannot, long after he’s already established that to be the case. He even ventures into the more theoretical, considering whether a state of war persisted as long as slavery, or racism, or the Lost Cause, or the Frontier Wars against Native Americans, still existed.

Ultimately, the debate over when and whether the war ended turns into a lawyerly one, when it comes to deciding things like whether to try Confederate captives in military or civilian courts, and when and how to officially begin the process of Reconstruction. By the time Andrew Johnson issued a proclamation in August 1866 officially declaring the war over, he’s described as having “little patience left for technical arguments about the state of war or non-war.”

That may be the only time I’ve agreed with Andrew Johnson about anything.

This book to me was like a work of art with an unsightly frame - if the frame complements the artwork, then it shouldn’t be noticed and shouldn’t distract. Instead, the frame here just seemed somehow misplaced, and was impossible to ignore when trying to focus on the otherwise excellent work itself. It’s still a worthy read and a well-written, well-researched history of an often-overlooked time. But the idea that the war did not come to a clean and clear end could have been summarized in a sentence. In the end, the book’s descriptions about what did happen, turn out to be far more interesting than its attempts to describe what didn’t.

Thoroughly researched, and filled with little known facts, this book meets the low bar of teaching history buffs something new. I learned many new things here, hence the four stars.

What I did not get completely past, was the question of what point the book is trying to make, and is that point worthy of such a long book? That one I struggled with, as even the most casual lover of history acknowledges the Civil War didn’t end in 1865 with Lee and Grant.

Whether looking at the fact that more battles were fought after April of 1865, or the turmoil in the government after the Lincoln assassination, or racist laws and brutal treatment of former slaves, I think most people know the Civil War was ongoing for some time.

I really enjoyed reading this book, it had that historical element that I was hoping for and thought it did a great job in bringing this time-period to life. I enjoyed the idea of Lincoln and the end of the Civil War. Michael Vorenberg wrote this well and was glad I got to read this.

Thank you, Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage and Anchor, for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

I just finished Lincoln’s Peace: The Struggle to End the American Civil War, by Michael Vorenberg.

This book will be published on March 18, 2025.

This is a very interesting book that shows that it is uncertain exactly the Civil War ended. The book examines the events after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox and continues over the next few years. It was very well researched and even history buffs will find a lot in the book that they didn’t already know.

The “Juneteenth” chapter was, by far, the best of the book. The book showed the realities of how emancipation took place and how, for weeks, sometimes months, after Lee’s surrender, freedoms was far from reality for many slaves. And, in at least the case of Kentucky, for many slaves, they didn’t get freedom until the next year when the Freedman’s Bureau started to operate in the state.

I give this book an A.

Goodreads and NetGalley require grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, an A equates to 5 stars. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).

This review has been posted at NetGalley, Goodreads and Mr. Book’s Book Reviews

I finished reading this on December 24, 2024.