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Epilogue H swallowing the elephant toward the new south We could not remain at home unless we took the oath. This we had made up our minds to do, so in we went and swallowed the elephant. —Edgar Tschi√el, July 8, 1865 T he Federals opened a coordinated attack on Petersburg from all directions in the early morning of April 2, and Lee retreated to avoid complete destruction. With the loss of Petersburg , Richmond lay undefended. Confederates frantically packaged o≈cial papers and supplies and shipped them south. With the government stored in crates on a freight train, Lee’s army remained the last active presence of the Confederate state. His troops had little energy left to fight. Creed Davis recorded the retreat as the procession of an already beaten army. ‘‘Richmond is certainly evacuated and our army is in full retreat, whither no one knows, sickness, hunger, and privation of every kind has completely demoralized the army—or rather the handfull of men left Genl Lee.’’∞ John Walters issued a similarly solemn assessment, noting, ‘‘I fear that the last day for the Army of Northern Virginia is near at hand.’’≤ On April 3, the U.S. Army seized control of Richmond.≥ Abraham Lincoln arrived in person the following day, greeted by thousands of cheering African Americans. Their control of the public space in the capital of a nation devoted to maintaining slavery signaled the end of the Confederacy in a way as profound as Lee’s surrender several days later. Lee’s Confederates marched west, seeking rations and escape from the Union army. They found neither. On April 6 a Union force caught a portion of Lee’s army. The resulting battle at Saylor’s Creek produced 7,000 Confederate casualties. The army also deteriorated from the unauthorized exit of men. Beginning with the fall of Richmond, soldiers departed at a rapid rate. Several thousand men, mostly Virginians and North Carolinians, took opportunities along the retreat to leave the army and return home. Just as they had at the war’s start, these soldiers acted on their enlistment as a contract with the state; the imminent defeat of the army ended their service. As Lee’s army moved west away from Richmond, soldiers abandoned it in direct proportion to the proximity of their homes. Virginians lived the closest and 190 H epilogue they left the army in the highest numbers.∂ On April 9 Union cavalry and infantry blocked the main body of Lee’s army at Appomattox. Lee accepted the surrender terms o√ered by Grant, ending the war in Virginia. Confederates pursued independence from the North through four years of war. Like secession, independence was not an end in itself, or even a justification for acting, but rather a means to secure for southerners the autonomy to create a society of their own design. Confederates desired political freedom, protection of slavery, and economic autonomy. The men who became soldiers remained as broadly committed to accomplishing these objectives as the civilians they left at home. Unfortunately for southerners , their pursuit of independence through the war undermined many of these goals. The cumulative impact of war policies designed by Confederate leaders eroded the reasons for which Confederates sought independence. The centralizing measures undertaken by the Richmond government, beginning with the draft and extending through impressment, the tax-in-kind, and price schedules, generated skepticism about the extent of political freedom southerners would possess under the new system. Complaints about the policies and behavior of the central government began in 1861 and continued through the war’s end. The Union’s hard war and the opportunities o√ered to enslaved southerners to emancipate themselves initiated the destruction of slavery that Confederates resisted until Appomattox and beyond. Likewise, the destruction of Virginia’s physical infrastructure—its bridges, railroads, factories, and fields—generated enormous hardships for all Virginians. From a historical perspective, the contradictions and inconsistencies of the Confederate experience seem obvious. Hindsight also makes it impossible to ignore the tremendous destructive power that the North brought to bear in its e√ort to win the war. This knowledge makes it di≈cult to understand why white southerners fought the war. Popular treatments of this topic, with their relentless focus on abstractions like courage, honor, and state rights, only serve to complicate the task. In addition, a sympathetic analysis of people who fought to perpetuate racial slavery is a tall order. Yet these challenges are precisely why we have so much...

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