Winik's theory is that the foresight and actions of a few powerful men saved the United States from a longer and more damaging Civil War.
My thoughts
The historical "what if" game this book plays is both intriguing and infuriating.
Winik knows what he's talking about. He has a background in national security and foreign affairs, and he's witnessed the aftereffects of some of the most brutal 20th-century civil wars. Civil wars generally don't end as cleanly as ours did. Although we still grapple with the legacy of slavery in this country, the reunification was a success. There was no guerrilla warfare. This was a possibility I'd never considered before. Winik's strength is his ability to ratchet up the tension as he considers the options before each of the major players in the Civil War. Will Lee surrender? Will Grant offer good terms? Will the politicians in Washington honor those terms? Winik manages to draw out the suspense surrounding events that happened almost 150 years ago.
On shakier ground is Winik's argument that the Union's reaction to Lincoln's assassination was a miracle of near-biblical proportions. This portion of the book starts out strong, with a thrilling description of the night John Wilkes Booth barged in to the president's theater box and shot Lincoln. But there are too many ifs here. What if ... Vice President Andrew Johnson's would-be assassin hadn't gotten cold feet at the last moment? What if ... Lincoln's cabinet had refused to turn over power to the detested Johnson?
The book itself is well written and a solid read. Detailed biographies of everyone from Thomas Jefferson to Jefferson Davis take up a good chunk of the book's nearly 500 pages. It's discombobulating to be plopped in late-18th-century Monticello when you're under the impression that you should be at Appomattox in, well, April 1865. But it works because the historical context is critical to understanding why the Civil War ended the way it did and how the Union endured. Winik's succinct biography of Thomas Jefferson is probably the best I've read. It does a tremendous job reasoning the contradictions in his brilliant mind (for example, Jefferson recognized the cruelty and injustice of slavery ... yet he owned slaves [and fathered children with at least one of them, but that's a story for another book that I still haven't read yet]).
Winik also lets his subjects speak for themselves. He quotes liberally from speeches, letters, and other contemporary sources. Lincoln was an ingenious speechwriter. Never has a politician said so much with so few words (I'm thinking of the Gettysburg Address but also his second Inaugural).
Bottom line
Fascinating and informative. Definitely recommended.
Fine print
April 1865: The Month That Saved America, by Jay Winik
Genre: History
Photo from Goodreads
I borrowed a battered copy of this book from my library; it's (understandably) been in circulation a lot.
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