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The Beginning and the End: The Story of Civil War Surrenders. – Dayton E. Pryor. Months before Fort Sumter was attacked, even before the Confederacy was formed, 56 U. S. forts, arsenals and ships were seized by the first states to secede, and one-seventh of the U. S. Army was surrendered to the militia in Texas. The dramatic story of these events, largely ignored in Civil War histories, also describes the Confederacy's other war preparations. It relates how, without guidance from the floundering Buchanan administration, a decisive army lieutenant saved Fort Pickens at Pensacola, while a naval commodore was court-martialed for not resisting the seizure of the navy yard there, and how other junior officers protected the two forts at the Keys. The second part of the book explains why, following the final campaigns of March 1865, Southern surrenders continued for several months after Appomattox. In absorbing detail, it relates the background of Johnston's surrender on April 26 in North Carolina, Taylor's in Alabama on May 4, Jones's in Florida on May 10—the same day that Davis was captured—and Kirby-Smith's, west of the Mississippi, on May 26. The book concludes with the surrender of Indian Territory tribes, the release of prisoners of war, and the firing of the last shot in Aleutian waters on June 28. 2001/2002, c438 pp, illus., maps, bibl., index |
