Gregory Downs’ <i>After Appomattox</i> was written to shed light on the US government’s “extraconstitutional” military occupation of the American South (Downs 246). Downs takes the reader through the ten years after The Battle of Appomattox Court House. Gregory Downs shows the reader that the demarcation of the Civil War and Reconstruction Era is not clear cut as past historiographies have made it seem. Downs situates the Civil War did not entirely end with Confederate General Lee’s surrender to Union General Grant but that the war ended when all the US troops had been recalled from throughout the US.  

The Civil War split the country apart, and military occupation tried to make it whole again. The government regulated rebellious geographic areas and treated the individuals living there like foreigners (Downs 22). Gregory Down starts off the book by showing how the military occupation tried to piece the USA back together again. Military rule throughout the United States might be a difficult concept for modern readers. Downs tries simplifying it for the reader. The slow ending of the Civil War seems like a new idea for this period of history in the historiography.   

The peeks throughout After Appomattox at the black experience during this period were the book's most intriguing parts. Downs gives the stat that 2.75 million slaves were scattered across the Confederacy as the Civil War ended (Downs 41-42). The number is staggering. Imagining trying to rebuild a broken society with these numbers. It is hard for readers to wrap their heads around. Downs has powerful words for the institution of slavery. He says, “the persistence of slavery reminds us of slavery’s resilience…Slavery would not simply die; it would have to be killed” (Downs 42). The persistence of slavery in the minds of Southerners proved that military intervention was needed for African Americans during this time. 

The idea of reconstructing a country is a curious one. I am not very familiar with immediate post-Civil War US history. The years between the Civil War and World War I in American history are hazy to me at best. I would have liked to see more about free people’s experiences and how they survived in the South from their perspective and not a top-down one. I would have wanted to learn more about occupation duty in the South. One reviewer I read and agreed with said, “Readers hoping to learn more about occupation duty in the South will encounter a few teasing details…but little else” (Adams, Journal of the Civil War Era). I will acknowledge that was not what the book was focusing on, but it would have been an excellent addition.