Caroline Janney will be the guest speaker for the January 25 meeting of the Civil War Round Table of Washington DC. See Zoom link at bottom of this page.

An End or A Beginning: Lee's Army after Appomattox

The Round Table meeting will start at 6:30. Janney's lecture should commence around 7:00 PM.

About the Topic:

Appomattox has long served to mark the end of the American Civil War. Yet closely examining the spring and summer of 1865, reveals a far more contentious, uncertain, ambiguous, and lengthy ending to the American Civil War than previously understood. It underscores the complexity of decisions made by the U.S. army, civilian authorities, and soldiers from Lee’s army as well as the unintended consequences of those decisions. 

Rather than serving as a clear ending to the conflict, the surrender of Confederate forces brought into stark relief many of the legal, social, and political questions that had plagued the war from the beginning. Most importantly, what followed the surrender would offer the first real test of how a democracy might end a civil war.

About the Speaker:

Caroline E. Janney is the John L. Nau III Professor of the American Civil War and Director of the John L. Nau Center for Civil War History at the University of Virginia. A graduate of the University of Virginia, she worked as a historian for the National Park Service and taught at Purdue University before returning to Virginia in 2018.

An active public lecturer, Dr. Janney has given presentations at locations across the globe. She is a speaker with the Organization of American Historians’ Distinguished Lectureship program and has appeared in numerous television programs including the History Channel’s Grant and Lincoln. She serves as a co-editor of the University of North Carolina Press’s Civil War America Series and is the past president of the Society of Civil War Historians.

Dr. Janney has published seven books, including Remembering the Civil War: Reunion and the Limits of Reconciliation (2013) and Ends of War: The Fight of Lee’s Army after Appomattox, winner of the 2022 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize.

Meeting URL: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/73777333091?pwd=V05ZQm9iSDlLSHcvSk4zYTJuMGpidz09

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