S. C. Gwynne. Hymns of the Republic. Scribner, 2019.

Subtitled The Final Year of the American Civil War, Hymns of the Republic delivers terrific storytelling of a terrific story.

The story begins with the standoff between Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac. Ulysses Grant is about to be put in charge of not only the Army of the Potomac but of all the armies of the United States. He will be on the third American Lieutenant General (three stars) in history, the others being George Washington and Mexican War leader Winfield Scott.

We read about some of the most brutal fighting ever seen in the country in such battles as the Wilderness and Spotsylvania. We are reminded how General Benjamin Butler was likely less than a day away from taking the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, but, as so often happened with Union generals, he hesitated.

While the book focuses on the Virginia campaigns, we get a lot of what was happening in the West and South as well. We follow Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley and Sherman in Tennessee and Georgia. There is a chapter on John Mosby.

Gwynne especially notes certain things which changed the way the war was waged. Both sides were concerned about their supply lines. Indeed, Lee finally surrendered after the Union army cut off the last railroad line he could use for supplies and reinforcements.

But both Sherman and Sheridan did something different. They were given orders to forage. They realized that if they could keep on challenging their opponents, they could worry less about what was going on behind the lines.

In the Virginia theater of the war in its last year, there were two signs that things were going to be different. After the Battle of the Wilderness in May 1864, the Army of the Potomac did not retreat. They headed south around Lee’s lines till the next battle. For once, then, the soldiers had hope. Grant, their new commander, was going to fight.

Both sides were learning in this last year that frontal attacks were usually failures because the defending side had learned to dig in. We are talking about elaborate fortifications, not mere foxholes. This was really the beginning of trench warfare.

The second sign, then, came almost a year after the first. Outside of Appomattox in April 1865, some Union troops were ordered to make a frontal assault against some rebel earthworks. Based on past experience, the soldiers thought this was going to be a suicide mission. This time, though, it was different. There were hardly any Southern soldiers left. In spite of the elaborate defense construction, they were easily routed. The Northern soldiers realized that the fighting must be coming to an end. It was.

A major factor throughout the year 1864 was the presidential election in the North. Gwynne does a good job of describing the political ins and outs. Salmon P. Chase, Lincoln’s Treasury Secretary, really did not like Lincoln. There was a movement to nominate him in Lincoln’s place. Gwynne tells how that fell through. Lincoln’s Democratic opponent in the general election, General George McClelland, might have succeeded if he had not already alienated so many people.

Hymns of the Republic notes what the author calls the “Lee Paradox: the more the Confederate army prolonged the war, the more the Confederacy was destroyed.” (252) Once Lee surrendered, nearly all the Confederate army leaders who remained on the loose saw that continuing the fight would be futile. That is, all but one Mexican War veteran and West Point grad.

According to Gwynne, Confederate President Jefferson Davis remained remarkably stubborn. Even when his government was reduced to a few boxcars on an escaping train, he refused any settlement that did not include two countries. In spite of ultimate Northern leniency, like many other ex-Confderates Davis would be unapologetic till the day he died.

Gwynne is especially moving as he describes Lincoln in April 1865. After Lee surrendered and Joe Johnston was seeking peace terms, even Nathan B. Forrest was losing battles. Lincoln for the first time time in years appeared happy or, at the very least, relieved. Then he is shot and killed by a disgruntled racist.

One personality Gwynne gives a lot of credit to is Clara Barton. She used her political connections to make the army hospitals more sanitary and more conducive to helping soldiers recover. We are reminded that, as the war was ending, she was instrumental in obtaining and organizing records of those missing and determining who died in military prison camps, notably Andersonville.

Hymns of the Republic attempts to rehabilitate the reputation of John S. Mosby, a Virginia guerilla fighter often lumped in with outlaw renegades like William Quantrill. It notes that unlike some of the others, Mosby held an army commission and generally adhered to the rules of war. His irregulars were quick to surprise, and they disappeared just as quickly. But once Sheridan began his concentrated efforts to slow down the agricultural and industrial output of the Shenandoah Valley, even Mosby was limited.

Gwynne suspects that the oft-told story of the Union soldiers under Joshua Chamberlain saluting rebel soldiers turning in their weapons did not really happen. While he admits that both Chamberlain and Confederate General Gibbons tell the story in their memoirs, both men, he believes, were prone to exaggeration, and there is no other corroboration.

The stories contained in Hymns of the Republic have to some extent been told before. Clearly, April 1865: The Month that Saved America goes into more detail about Lincoln’s assassination and political maneuverings. As noted, Gwynne discusses the role of Clara Barton more than most works that are not biographies of the Red Cross founder. Still, this book most nearly parallels the well-known works of Bruce Catton. Gwynne writes well. He is at least as good of a storyteller as Catton. Catton focuses more on the military situations, while Gwynne brings in the politics and personalities more. Which is better? One could do little better than to read both.