2) The publisher’s blurb says the book looks at “the conflicting social, political, and cultural meanings” of surrender. That must have presented a pretty tangled landscape for you to sort through. What was that challenge like?
Surrender was a loaded term in the nineteenth century, much as it is today. It had connotations of cowardice and weakness. In the 1850s, both abolitionists and fire-eaters said they would never surrender their values. Yet, military officials understood surrender as a part of civilized warfare. They believed that war should be fought according to rules. One of those rules was that you should accept the surrender of an enemy and treat prisoners with dignity.
In tracing the different ways in which Americans talked about surrender, I was struck by how often modern political leaders claim that Americans never surrender. President Kennedy said so during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Every major and minor politician since then has uttered something similar, including Nixon, Reagan, George W. Bush, Obama, McCain, and Trump. Obviously, these are men who agree on very little, but they all subscribe to the idea that Americans never surrender. Yet, people from the Civil War era had a more nuanced and complex relationship with the idea of surrender. They understood that surrender was often the best option available.
3) You say roughly one in four soldiers surrendered at some point during the conflict. Did that affect attitudes about having to surrender over time?
Surrendering was once of the most common shared experiences soldiers had. By the end of the war, most soldiers on both sides had some experience with surrender, either surrendering themselves or accepting the surrender of an enemy.
For the most part, Civil War soldiers didn’t stigmatize surrender. Whether they were surrendered by their commanding officer or chose to surrender on the battlefield, they understood that surrender was preferable to dying needlessly in combat. Soldiers who surrendered on the battlefield—throwing down their weapons and raising their arms—were rarely accused of cowardice. Indeed, the soldiers most likely to surrender were often the bravest ones in their regiment. They were the first to advance and the last to retreat. That’s how they ended up close enough to the enemy to surrender. When they were paroled and exchanged, many of these men were promoted, an indication that surrender didn’t tarnish their reputation.