Department of History

2025-2026 Ryland Lecture

“Lincoln’s Peace: Searching for the End of the American Civil War”

Tuesday, Sept. 30, 5:30-6:30pm | Queally Center, Breed Pavilion B

On April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House, Ulysses S. Grant accepted Robert E. Lee’s surrender. Celebrated at the time and later on as the final act of the Civil War, was the surrender really the end?  Confederate armies remained active for another two months. Even after those surrenders, was the war over? What about the fighting that continued with guerrillas, or with Native peoples, many of whom had aligned with the Confederacy? And how does the end of slavery fit into the story? So long as slavery persisted, which it did long after the Confederate surrenders, could the Civil War, which was a war against slavery, be deemed concluded? This lecture explores lingering questions about when and how the war ended, uncovering a prolonged struggle that thwarted efforts to achieve a lasting and just peace in the United States.

Michael Vorenberg is Professor of History at Brown University. His book Lincoln’s Peace, released in March 2025, was named one of the “top ten books to read in 2025” by the Los Angeles Times, and received coverage from the New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal, and MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” show. His earlier books include Final Freedom: The Civil War the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment, which was a major source for Steven Spielberg’s 2012 film Lincoln. At Brown University, he teaches courses on the Civil War and Reconstruction as well as Legal and Constitutional History. He also was a member of the university’s pioneering Slavery and Justice Committee.