Gregory P. Downs is Professor of History at the University of California, Davis, and has received the university’s Distinguished Scholarly Public Service Award. He co-wrote the National Park Service’s theme study on the Reconstruction and helped create an interactive digital history of the U.S. Army’s occupation of the South. He is the author of Declarations of Dependence: The Long Reconstruction of Popular Politics in the South, 1861–1908.
Downs persuasively argues that a long and persistent ‘occupation’
occurred for at least three years, and perhaps as long as six
years, after the end of actual hostilities in spring, 1865. Downs
also demonstrates that, although a massive demobilization of Union
troops occurred in 1865–66, the United States Army has been far too
neglected as a player—a force—in the history of Reconstruction…
Downs wants his work to speak to the present, and indeed it
should.
*The Atlantic*
[Downs] makes a persuasive…case that virtually none of the
achievements of Reconstruction—there were more than is generally
supposed—could have taken place without the use or at least the
threat of military force. He challenges the view that defeated
Confederates in 1865 were ready to acquiesce in whatever
reorganization the federal government imposed on them, including
the bestowal of civil rights on blacks… Downs rightly regards the
appalling white-on-black violence of the late 1860s and early 1870s
as systemic terrorism… In Downs’s telling, Reconstruction was also
one of the finest hours of the U.S. Army.
*Wall Street Journal*
In After Appomattox, Downs makes the case that the final end to
slavery, and the establishment of basic civil and voting rights for
all Americans, was ‘born in the face of bayonets.’ Put simply, the
military occupation created democracy as we know it. Downs’ book
couldn’t come at a more opportune time, as American forces once
again face the difficult question of how long, and to what ends, an
occupying army must stay in conquered territory. After more than a
decade of fighting abroad, we may be too war-weary to see that
military occupations are sometimes a good, even necessary thing…
The brilliance of Downs’ argument is that he steals the central
complaint of the apologists, yet reverses the conclusion: The
federal government was overzealous—and that was a good thing.
Congress had to impose martial law in order for blacks to gain
basic freedoms. If military officers sometimes vacated racist local
laws, if they removed ruthless sheriffs and judges, if they tried
white supremacists in unfair military tribunals—all of which they
did—they did so for necessary ends. Equality would come to the
South no other way… Downs has produced a remarkable, necessary
book.
*Slate*
In a striking new book, After Appomattox, historian Gregory Downs
chronicles the years of military occupation that followed Lee’s
surrender to Grant in 1865—a military occupation that was
indispensable to the uprooting of slavery and the political
empowerment of freed slaves. In the face of Southern white
supremacist hostility, it was only the continuing presence of
federal troops in the South that could break up remaining pockets
of rebellion, establish the right of blacks to vote and seek
election, void discriminatory laws, and unilaterally remove
disloyal or racist sheriffs and judges from office.
*Boston Globe*
Downs resets our sights on the military occupation that did occur,
and he argues for its centrality in helping to fashion whatever
gains African-Americans managed to achieve. In talking about
military occupation, numbers matter, and his research has fixed
them with a precision previously lacking… After Appomattox is a
timely, important book that casts new light on the meaning of
occupation during Reconstruction, and raises challenging questions
about the relationship between military power and civil rights in
today’s climate of never-ending war.
*Chronicle of Higher Education*
Downs has written an important book challenging assumptions about
the post–Civil War era and the ways in which historians define
‘wartime’ and ‘peacetime.’ He contends that Lee’s surrender at
Appomattox did not bring peace, but rather a second phase of war—an
insurgency and war of occupation that did not ‘end’ until 1871.
Downs problematizes the idea of ‘reconstruction.’ Whatever
accomplishments came in that era—civil rights, a national
definition of citizenship—came as a result of military force rather
than deliberative politics. Challenging scholars who argue that too
few Union troops for a meaningful occupation remained in the
postwar South, Downs demonstrates through impressive research that
there was actually a significant military presence, both
numerically and geographically. But even this presence had its
limits, and outside the pale, terrorists and violence plagued the
South. By framing the period as an occupation and insurgency, the
author has done much to reveal the violent, contested, and
contingent nature of the post–Civil War US. Required reading for
scholars of the Civil War era.
*Choice*
Downs examines Reconstruction as primarily a military operation. In
order to secure civil rights for freed slaves, Northern republicans
had to rely on additional constitutional war powers. From a legal
standpoint, the Civil War did not end with the surrender of
Confederate armies but lasted until 1871 when Georgia’s senator was
seated. While many opponents of Reconstruction were motivated by
racism, others were compelled by a fear of unchecked military
power. How to approach Reconstruction even divided radical
Republicans. Downs convincingly argues that the U.S. government
should have expanded and extended the use of war powers in the
South in order to secure justice and freedom for freed slaves… This
work will appeal to general readers as well as specialists
interested in a fresh understanding of Reconstruction.
*Library Journal*
After Appomattox demonstrates how a long and ambitious military
occupation aimed to secure freedom for the newly emancipated in the
violent, lawless, and chaotic South. Original and revelatory, it
has tremendous potential to change our understanding of American
Reconstruction.
*David W. Blight, author of American Oracle: The Civil War in
the Civil Rights Era*
Moving brilliantly between the lived experience of the Civil War’s
forgotten final six years and the fierce legal debates in
Washington, After Appomattox is the definitive work on a great
paradox of American democracy: the post–Civil War expansion of
rights arose out of and depended upon the awesome powers of the
wartime state. Downs masterfully reveals how controversies over war
powers shaped the course of American freedom. A fundamental
rethinking of what we can now call America’s Ten Years’ War.
*John Fabian Witt, author of Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in
American History*
Downs demonstrates that the end of the Civil War marked the
beginning of another war: the violent struggle for the rights of
African Americans that resulted from military occupation of the
South and political battles in Washington. After Appomattox is a
landmark account of the death throes of slavery and the stormy rise
of Reconstruction.
*David S. Reynolds, author of John Brown, Abolitionist and
Walt Whitman’s America*
![]() |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
![]() |