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AN END TO VALOR by Philip Van Doren Stern

AN END TO VALOR

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Pub Date: April 14th, 1958
Publisher: Houghton, Mifflin

In this volume on the Civil War, Mr. Stern begins this record with Lincoln's second inauguration, when Sheridan had already completed his devastation of the Shenandoah Valley and when the thirteenth amendment had already become effective. Drawing extensively on documents, letters, and accounts of soldiers in the field, he devotes considerable time to the battles preceding Richmond, particularly the engagement at Five Forks which has been called the ""Waterloo of the Confederacy"" and which broke Lee's hold on Petersburg and Richmond. Through Appomattox, the assassination of the president (on which event the author has written previously) to that crucial aftermath which hardly seemed worth the price of death, destruction and despair, scenes, men and events are vividly described. And if the telling gives to the principals, especially Grant, more than is their due, the effort is, nevertheless, contrived in intimate confrontation and a sense of immediacy.