Lee's Last Retreat: The Flight to Appomattox (Civil War America) Paperback – February 27, 2006

The beginning of William Marvel’s recounting of one of the last major military campaigns of the Civil War held promise. It was well-written and insightful, even providing a sort of global context for the war. I was all in.It went south from there. In fairness to the author, it can be difficult for even the best writer to help the reader understand the fit of all the puzzle pieces of a series of military engagements that involve several units on either side of the conflict. However, Marvel’s jumbled story, compounded by the scarcity of information on the few maps he did provide (at least in the Kindle version) simply doesn’t pass muster.The book was not without its successes. Marvel gets us inside the psyche of the Confederate soldier as their dream of an independent country crumbled in April, 1865. The hope: that Robert E. Lee could get his army, finally dislodged from their capital city of Richmond and neighboring Petersburg, safely into North Carolina to hook up with General Joseph Johnston so that the combined force could continue the struggle. Starving, chased down, outmanned, outgunned, and pushed far beyond their endurance, many thousands fought bravely to the very end; while others dropped out of formation and simply went home. Those who continued to march and to fight, sustained by a dream.Marvel brings the character and competence of some of the more famous generals to light: On the Union side, the arrogance of Sheridan and Custer (though the story of Custer’s battlefield capture of an old West Point friend who fought for the Confederacy hints at a different side of Custer). Ulysses S. Grant is portrayed as a man who could compartmentalize his military instinct to go for the jugular with a heart that was not unkind. On the Confederate side, General John Gordon’s reputation as a fierce and effective warrior is enhanced.And, Marvel pulls his words together well enough at the end to give us an insightful and interesting account of all the significant events surrounding Lee’s surrender of his Army of Northern Virginia to Grant, at Appomattox Court House. Say what you will of the Confederate cause, but as a military action, Lee’s Last Retreat is a story that deserves to be told.But it was a frustrating read. Maps that showed us the positions and paths taken by the various armies, divisions and battalions would have bridged much of the difficulty but even then, the writing itself would still have been a distraction. Marvel’s habit of referring to military units by only the names of their (often less well-known) commanders, often led to confusion over whether the units wore blue or gray. Marvel often employed vague, puzzling euphemisms to describe various military maneuvers and actions. And, he did not effectively inform us of the significance or scope of many of the violent encounters between the armies until later in the narrative.Once I finished Marvel’s effort, I opened U.S. Grant’s memoir to read his version of the chase from Petersburg and Richmond, to Appomattox. While I found the facts as Grant presented them to be significantly in agreement with Marvel’s version, I was surprised with the emotional reaction I had to Grant’s much more compact story. I was moved. Grant’s inclusion of all the correspondence between himself and Lee which led to the surrender, and his first hand retelling of his meetings with Lee at and around the little village of Appomattox Court House, told straight and without literary style, was a good debrief after getting through Revel’s tortured prose.

William Marvel is well known for books of Civil War history challenging conventional wisdom, such as his very sympathetic biography of Ambrose Burnside. In "Lee's Last Retreat" Marvel's target is the hazy romanticism of the Lost Cause version of Appomattox wherein a band of peerless heroes gracefully surrender their arms only because they faced with a numberless horde of enemies led by the plodding, remorseless U.S. Grant. Marvel successfully demonstrates, in my opinion, that in fact Lee's army at the start of the affair was much larger than popularly supposed -- more than 70,000 men available to him -- and that Lee's army was plainly outmaneuvered and outmarched over the next week, its morale collapsing disastrously as thousands of soldiers deserted its ranks (Marvel includes an interesting discussion of how the records show that the soldiers of the Army of Northern Virginia were more likely to desert the closer to their own homes they were). Marvel also devotes substantial space to discussing why Lee fatally delayed for an entire day at Amelia Court House, permitting Grant to catch up to him; the usual claim that Lee was waiting for supplies is rejected in favor of an explanation that the failure to erect a needed pontoon bridge over the Appomattox River was the primary reason. And there is an interesting discussion of the final surrender ceremonies. Our traditional view has been largely shaped by the writings of two remarkable men -- Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and John B. Gordon, both fine warriors and both men unable to resist romanticizing and expanding their own roles in post-war writings; Marvel's version is that mutual salutes exchanged by the two sides never happened and that Gordon tried desperately in violation of the agreed conditions to avoid making a public surrender.I am certain that there are many who will disagree with some of Marvel's conclusions. Sometimes the old, romantic myths are difficult to shed. But if a reader is looking for a good, fast-paced narrative about the final campaign between Lee and Grant, then this book will fill the bill.

This book has been hyped as a myth busting history of Lee's retreat to Appomattox. As such I feared that it would be a bashing of Lee and the Southern viewpoint of the war. Instead Marvel has written a very even-handed account of this story that has become an epic of American history. "Lee's Last Retreat" is a fast paced book retelling Lee's retreat and Grant's relentless pursuit. Unlike so many recent Civil War books, Marvel does not get lost in the details nor does he make his book too long. He tells the story in 199 pages including 23 pages of photographs. To use a term seldom used to describe works of nonfiction, this is a real page turner. That is not to say that this is a "light" work. The author spices his account with a lot of detail from diaries and letters. His research and documentation is first-rate. For those wanting more he includes @40 pages of appendices and an order of battle. This is Marvel's second work on Appomattox and he is very familiar with the material. His other book was "A Place Called Appomattox". Marvel does not hesitate to state his opinion and I found his insights fair and refreshing. I found myself laughing at some of his characterizations. For example, on page 87, he refers to George Custer as "the insufferably arrogant Custer." He spares neither Rebels nor Yankees where it is deserved. "Lee's Last Retreat" adds to the excellent reputation that Marvel earned with his book on Andersonville. Add this book to your library.

Buy from this wonderful book. Well worth it.