"In this masterful work, Caroline E. Janney begins with a deceptively simple question: how did the Army of Northern Virginia disband? Janney slows down the pace of the events after Appomattox to reveal it less as a decisive end and more as the commencement of a chaotic interregnum marked by profound military and political uncertainty, legal and logistical confusion, and continued outbursts of violence. Janney blends analysis of large-scale political,...

"The Civil War did not end at Appomattox Court House. Nor did it end at the surrenders that followed in North Carolina, Texas, and Indian Country. The Civil War dragged on for at least five years after Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant in April 1865. In the first large-scale examination of the post-Civil War occupation, this book offers a rethinking of Reconstruction, the end of the Civil War, and the United States' history of occupation....