Reconstructing, Reimagining: 1865–1900 219A History of American Literature, Second Edition. Richard Gray.
© 2012 Richard Gray. Published 2012 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.Rebuilding a Nation
On April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee met General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox
Court House, a country crossroads in the forest, and handed over his sword. It
was one of the great symbolic moments of American history. Within a few weeks,
everyone else had surrendered; and by July the Civil War was over. It was and remains
the bloodiest war in American history, both in absolute numbers and in the
proportion of casualties to the population. About 360,000 Union soldiers and
260,000 Confederates had died on the battlefield or in military hospitals. Slavery was
abolished, a Freedman’s Bureau had been organized to assist the former slaves, and
the Union was restored. The war left an indelible stain on the American consciousness.
Even European countries, at this time, had no war to compare with this one.
Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812 with a Grand Army of 600,000, cobbled together
from the allies of France. It was the largest army assembled in the West up to that
time, but it would have been insufficient for the Civil War. The total number of
enlistments on the Northern side was 2,778,304, of whom 2,489,836 were whites,
178,975 were African-Americans, and 3,530 were Native Americans. The figure is
slightly misleading, since men sometimes enlisted several times. But the general
consensus is that no less than two million served on the Union side. And Confederate
enlistments have been calculated at between 750,000 and 1,223,890. It was the closest
thing the world had yet seen to a total war, with more American soldiers lost than
the total number killed in the two world wars, Korea, and Vietnam. In the South, it
left what one traveler in 1875 described as “a dead civilisation and a broken-down
system” and what another, ten years earlier, claimed was “enough woe and want and
ruin and savagery” “to satisfy the most insatiate heart,” “enough of sure humiliation
and bitter overthrow” “to appease the desire of the most vengeful spirit.” In the3
Reconstructing the Past,
Reimagining the Future
The Development of American
Literature, 1865–1900
GGray_c03.indd 219ray_c 03 .indd 219 8 8/1/2011 7:54:17 AM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 54 : 17 AM