According to William Marvel, this tale is a tissue of untruths that sprang from the imaginations of Lost Cause historians and Northern and Southern generals well practiced in the art of fabricating popular legend. Marvel offers the first history of the Appomattox campaign written primarily from contemporary source material, with a skeptical eye toward memoirs published well after the events they purport to describe.

Marvel shows that during the final week of the war in Virginia, Lee's troops were more numerous and far less faithful to their cause than has been suggested. Lee himself made mistakes in this campaign, and defeat wrung from him an unusual display of faultfinding. Finally, Marvel proves accounts of the congenial intermingling of the armies at Appomattox to be shamelessly overblown and the renowned exchange of salutes to be apocryphal.

After nine months in the trenches of Petersburg it is no wonder that Lee's men were beaten down. A late uncle of mine fought in the trenches during WW I and his stories of the trenches made it clear to me just how awful trench warfare is. Finally the tenacious Grant turned Lee's flank at Five Forks and the Confederate Chieftain knew the game was up. Marvel takes up his story with the evacuation of Petersburg and Richmond and tells the story of the miserable conditions faced by both armies in the days that followed. Lee made mistakes and Marvel has the courage to point them out. Still one has to wonder if Lee could have gotten his army to North Carolina even if he had conducted a flawless retreat. As the author points out, the Yankees could smell a final victory and the chance to at last go home. They were therefore much more inclined to accept a lack of rations and forced marches than were the Confederates. A few more days of hardship could send the men in blue home while all the boys in gray could look forward to was a Yankee prison.

I really have to wonder if Lee really wanted to make it to North Carolina. Marvel fails here to delve into the talks Lee had held with Secretary of War John C. Breckinridge long before Petersburg fell. Breckinridge realized the war was lost and had been discussing surrender with Lee, who seemed to agree with the hero of New Market. I suspect that Lee really did want to get to the Army of Tennessee but was not willing to cause many more deaths in what he had to know was a long shot.

Marvel does go to great lengths to point out that Walter Taylor's estimates of troop strength were distorted and that the Union had fewer men than Taylor said and the Confederates had more. On the other hand the Union troops were on a high while the Confederates had just lost Richmond and moral was extremely low. Marvel points out that the difference in real and Taylor's estimated troop strengths might have been made up for by this difference in moral. In fact, the Confederates almost to the end were more than willing to fight and when they turned on their pursuers and sent up the Rebel yell the Union troops usually reacted by falling back. Even after Lee surrendered many of his veterans vowed to fight on after they were exchanged. Marvel does nothing to cast aspersions on these brave men and in fact points out that many Confederates refused to be surrendered and fled the scene to fight again. It is true that the author points out the large number of desertions that accompanied the retreat but he also excuses most of them. For example, he points out that a large group had just been exchanged and had returned from Union prisons and would rather just walk away from the army than return to those prisons. The reader will find that some of Marvel's harshest criticism is reserved for Phil Sheridan and George Custer and their fanatical drive for unearned glory and Joshua L. Chamberlain's ego.

The one really glaring problem with this book is the maps or rather the lack thereof. There are a few maps but not nearly enough and what maps there are could have been made much more useful by actually showing troop movements on them. It is fairly hard to follow the armies across Virginia without good maps; I don't care how well the author tells the story. I think maybe he assume the reader is as familiar with the area as he is. Marvel does argue that the Confederates had a better chance of making the link with Johnston than has been accepted fact, but he backs up his argument. His argument that sheer wealth and numbers in the overall war did not overwhelm the South however is just silly fortunately that argument only comes up at the end of the book. Other than that though I found this to be a highly readable, well-researched, intelligent and fair book.

Targeting mainly the versions of the Confederate surrender rendered in later post-war years by John B. Gordon and Joshua Chamberlain, Marvel proves that these accounts are largely ficticious and laiden with numerous self aggrandizing points. Marvel systematically shows that the Confederate retreat from Petersburg and the subsequent chase by the Union forces was a desperate action bent on consolidating Southern forces in North Carolina and (hopefully) extending the struggle. The final surrender at Appomattox then, under Marvel's pen, is an anti-climactic action by an exhausted army and leader.

Using in depth narrative and many first-person accounts and diary/journal entries, Marvel recreates the military atmosphere prevelant during the early April 1865 timeframe when the Confederate rebellion reached it's conclusion. The end of the Petersburg siege starts the book and Marvel discusses in detail the actions taken by R.E. Lee's forces to escape from this front and the capital at Richmond to march West towards Amelia Courthouse. Many rearguard battles ensue as the escape route gets very complex with many Confederate divisions and brigades involved. The first myth is dissolved when Marvel refutes the long-held opinion that this escape was essentially doomed by the lack of Confederate provisions at Amelia Courthouse. Marvel shows us that Lee's inability to coordinate troop movements from this hamlet were much more restrictive than the lack of food and is very convincing in his analysis of this argument.

The Confederate plans for troop consolidation at Farmville are overlayed with the multi-pronged Union pursuit and Marvel presents a compelling account of the "race" westward. The seminal battle at Sailor's Creek is analyzed and shown to be the epoch that finally demoralizes the rebellion. Confederate infantry movement and subsequent Union pursuit ultimately end at Appomattox Courthouse and Marvel discusses the details that lead Lee to ask for surrender terms and for U.S. Grant to agree. The soldier actions following the surrender meeting between Grant and Lee at the Wilmer McLean house (the height of the Gordon and Chamberlain accounts) are given short shrift in Marvel's look...this implies that the mythical emotional surrender cerimonies were largely fabrications.

For criticisms, the major problem with this book is the lack of maps...Marvel discusses in detail virtually all of the military actions from Petersburg to Appomattox and the maps that he uses show no troop movements or battle fronts at all. Because this story encompasses many complex maneuvers, the narrative subsequently becomes very limited in terms of following the action due to paucity of maps and the reading quality suffers severely. Another criticism (though not as critical as the map critique) is the fact that although we understand where and when troops move, we don't necessarily get a true feeling of desperation on the part of the Confederate forces. The frustration and hopelesness of the military actions must have been palpable at this point but Marvel continues with the narrative like this was a discussion of Antietam or Fredericksburg...not the end of the war. This point, if expanded, would also have led greatly to improved reading quality and ultimately leaves the Civil War reader no other recourse than to wait for the final Gordon Rhea book in his excellent analysis of this period of the war to (hopefully) get this perspective.

Revisionist history is sometimes a dangerous undertaking. Many pantheons in history die hard and much criticism is levied at writers that try to change the accepted story. William Marvel, then, is to be commended for his courageous attempt at righting the wrong long assumed in the surrender of the Confederate forces at Appomattox Courthouse. Lacking some key components that would make this a stellar work, he succeeds nontheless in presenting a comprehensive and important account concerning the end of the Civil War in the East and I would recommend that all interested readers of this conflict attempt this work.

There is a lot of literature written about the Civil War and most of it is excellent historical fiction, but there is an honest attempt to write the truth about the final days of "Lee's Last Retreat." This book has a goal in mind and it is to tell what happened in the last week of the Civil War from Spring 1865 and on into the final week Monday, April 3 to Sunday, April 9, 1865.

This book has limited the scope to mainly just the final seven days of the war as Grant is chasing and closing ranks around Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia. The final day at Appomattox Court House, the day the Grant accepts Lee's total surrender.

The truth is that Lee made at least one fatal mistake during his last campaign, and his subordinates were guilty of errors and omissions for which another commanding general would have been held responsible. For all the ultimate good it might have done him, Lee could actually have escaped alone the line of the Danville railroad had the administrative framework of his army not disintegrated, and with it the morale of his men. Had his engineers not failed to provide a pontoon bridge for the escape of the Richmond column, or had they warned him of that failure, he might have avoided the final delay at Amelia Court House. These and other errors of omission could have swayed, if corrected, the final out come of the war and a much different result.

The book has a rapid paced narrative that brings to light the final week in the campaign of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia the finest army to be ever assembled and fight on American soil. This book is full of actual accounts, letters, diaries and other contemporary documents. This is a welcome addition to your library for this time period.

There is a lot of literature written about the Civil War and most of it is excellent historical fiction, but there is an honest attempt to write the truth about the final days of "Lee's Last Retreat." This book has a goal in mind and it is to tell what happened in the last week of the Civil War from Spring 1865 and on into the final week Monday, April 3 to Sunday, April 9, 1865.

This book has limited the scope to mainly just the final seven days of the war as Grant is chasing and closing ranks around Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia. The final day at Appomattox Court House, the day the Grant accepts Lee's total surrender.

The truth is that Lee made at least one fatal mistake during his last campaign, and his subordinates were guilty of errors and omissions for which another commanding general would have been held responsible. For all the ultimate good it might have done him, Lee could actually have escaped alone the line of the Danville railroad had the administrative framework of his army not disintegrated, and with it the morale of his men. Had his engineers not failed to provide a pontoon bridge for the escape of the Richmond column, or had they warned him of that failure, he might have avoided the final delay at Amelia Court House. These and other errors of omission could have swayed, if corrected, the final out come of the war and a much different result.

The book has a rapid paced narrative that brings to light the final week in the campaign of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia the finest army to be ever assembled and fight on American soil. This book is full of actual accounts, letters, diaries and other contemporary documents. This is a welcome addition to your library for this time period.