Publisher Description
As the Confederacy steadily crumbled under the Union army’s relentless hammering, dramatic developments in early 1865 brought the bloody war to a swift climax and denouement. Their Last Full Measure relates these thrilling events, which followed one another like falling dominoes—from Fort Fisher’s capture to the burning of South Carolina’s capital to the fall of Petersburg and Richmond and, ultimately, to Lee’s surrender at Appomattox and Lincoln’s assassination.
Acclaimed historian Joseph Wheelan braids the disparate events into a compelling, fast-paced account of powerful armies; civil and military leaders, both flawed and splendid; and ordinary people, black and white, struggling to survive the war’s wreckage in Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas.
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“First-rate study of the often overlooked closing months of the Civil War, which, though the impending end was visible, saw some of the fiercest fighting of the conflict…The author capably traces the closing military campaign in Virginia, with Robert E. Lee’s fast-dwindling army encircled by a vastly superior Union force, and he examines the lesser-known theaters that remained, including pockets of resistance in the Deep South and Texas…Particularly interesting are Wheelan’s occasional forays into speculation: what might have happened had Lee fought a strictly defensive war? Is there any way the South might have prevailed? Wheelan has combed entire libraries to make this thoroughly readable, lucid survey. Well-practiced buffs will welcome the book, but novices can approach it without much background knowledge, too.”
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Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
