Thanks for the input, which I appreciate. One thing I am not is an expert on Reconstruction, so I welcome the input.

Eric

I think your point is well-taken. You may well be right about Lincoln not accepting Sherman’s terms.

Eric

What do we call this? Happy surrender day?

It’s well that old west pointers made the peace in 1865. The conservative, Club Hudson gentlemen could call on old cameraderie and a sense of national purpose to try to dig themselves out of the political quagmire – to the extent that soldiers might be permitted to do so.

Sherman went off the deep end. I don’t think a live Lincoln could have accepted the terms WTS signed up to. (Think of David Hunter meeting Johnston and Breckenridge. No one would have gotten out of that meeting alive. )

Not much enamored of Winik’s book. I just don’t see the average southern gentleman millionaire signing up to spend his life in a shed in the forest teaching the young to hate yankees and bushwacking postmen for pension checks. That’s just not what Club Ruling Class went to war for.

The process of healing… I’m surprised Levin isn’t here already doing a social history number on ya. That healing bit is KY jelly for the grim next 100 years of reconstruction, reactionism, and racism that we don’t talk about in public because it upsets the children and spoils the diner 🙂 .