Out of the Storm: The End of the Civil War, April-June 1865 - Hardcover

Trudeau, Noah Andre

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316853283 ISBN 13: 9780316853286

Publisher: Little Brown & Co, 1994

Synopsis

Out of the Storm is a moving and dramatic account of the final months of the American Civil War. In the spring of 1865, after four years of devastating conflict, the North and South had their final reckoning. For the men and women whose fierce determination to preserve their way of life had sustained the Confederacy, it was a time to confront the bitter truth that all was lost. For Abraham Lincoln, standing at the threshold of a long-awaited triumph, it was both a time to reconcile the cost of what had been won and a time to move forward, to rebuild the nation and heal its grievous wounds.
Although most Civil War histories close with Lee's surrender at Appomattox, it took three more months to end this bloodiest of all American wars. These final months of struggle and change are explored in vivid detail in Out of the Storm. There are the final military campaigns of the war: Grant's pursuit of Lee; Sherman's death embrace with Johnston's army in North Carolina; and Wilson's relentless sweep through central Alabama and Georgia. There are compelling accounts of the tragic sinking of the steamboat Sultana (America's worst maritime disaster); the tremendous munitions explosion that leveled a large section of Mobile; the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the hunt for his killer; and the pursuit and capture of Jefferson Davis. Offering viewpoints of both North and South, Noah Andre Trudeau follows the domino-like collapse of the Confederacy, presenting poignant stories of individual courage and honor amid irrevocable chaos and change.
This defining moment in the history of the United States has received surprisingly little study; it was a period of transition from a society at war with itself to a restored peace. Drawing upon an impressive body of personal reminiscences, memoirs, and previously unpublished material, Out of the Storm is a rich and memorable portrait of the last months of conflict.
With this third volume, Trudeau completes his celebrated Civil War trilogy. Bloody Roads South, which won the prestigious Fletcher Pratt Award, recounted the fierce battle of Grant and Lee in Virginia in the spring of 1864. The Last Citadel was the first full-length treatment of the siege of Petersburg, Virginia. Now, Out of the Storm presents the final act of this profound epic in our history.

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews:

National Public Radio producer Trudeau (The Last Citadel, 1991; Bloody Roads South, 1989), completing a fine trilogy of works about the Civil War, recounts the turbulent collapse of the Confederacy in the months following Lee's surrender at Appomattox Courthouse. ``General readers are so taken with the simple drama of Appomattox,'' Trudeau writes in his preface, ``that many continue to believe that the Civil War ended with that incident.'' Nothing could be farther from the truth, according to Trudeau: At the time of Lee's surrender, Confederate armies were still in the field in North Carolina, Alabama, and the trans-Mississippi, and it was far from obvious to the leaders of the North that the Confederacy would not continue to fight, even though the Richmond government had fled after the collapse of Lee's army. Trudeau reports events great and small in this three-month period in 1865 that transformed America: the final clashes and the surrender of the remaining Confederate armies, Lincoln's assassination, the capture of Jefferson Davis, the sinking of the steamboat Sultana in the Mississippi (heading north with over 1,500 former Union prisoners on board), and the tragic May 25 magazine explosion in Mobile, Alabama. The last actual battle between Union and Confederate forces was a skirmish at Palmito Ranch, Texas, on May 13; although it was not a resounding Union victory, the combatants themselves recognized that it represented the end of the war. Finally, Trudeau writes about the triumphant march of the Union armies in Washington on May 23, and the setting of the stage for Reconstruction. Superb and important--another ground-breaking achievement in research and narration for Trudeau, covering a period not often examined in depth by Civil War historians. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

In this concluding volume of a trilogy, Trudeau ( Bloody Roads South ; The Last Citadel ) relies on firsthand accounts to tell the compelling story of the Confederacy's death throes. Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox on April 9, 1865, marked only the beginning of the end: the Civil War had gone on too long to end in a single stroke. Confederate government was still intact, and large Confederate forces remained in the field. While Union cavalry ravaged northern Alabama, Union infantry stormed the fortress of Mobile. Men continued to die in obscure skirmishes from Texas to South Carolina. Trudeau's richly textured presentation never loses focus in depicting the complex course of events from the final days of the Army of Northern Virginia, through the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, to the growing recognition in the South and the North that the great national tragedy was finally over. This is a major contribution to the field.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Little Brown & Co
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0316853283
• ISBN 13: 9780316853286
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 470