Lee's Last Retreat

by William Marvel

"Few events in Civil War history have generated such deliberate mythmaking as the retreat that ended at Appomattox. As the popular imagination would have it, Robert E. Lee's tattered, starving, but devoted troops found themselves hopelessly surrounded through no fault of their beloved commander, who surrendered them rather than sacrifice their lives. Victors and vanquished met at Appomattox in a surrender ceremony marked by a spirit of mutual regard, with the erstwhile opponents exchanging snappy salutes as the Confederates marched in to stack their weapons.". "According to William Marvel, this tale is a tissue of untruths that sprang from the imaginations of Lost Cause historians and some participating generals well practiced in the art of fabricating popular legends. In Lee's Last Retreat, 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 d