Push to Appomattox is the story of the “national push” of Ulysses S. Grant in the final year of the American Civil War, encompassing battles fought across the continental USA and related political and social events during the simultaneous advance of Union armies under Grant’s central command from March 1864 to April 1865.
In the course of this narrative, situated within an historically-accurate timeframe, historical characters come into the story including presidents Lincoln and Davis, and commanders like Grant, Lee, Sherman, Sheridan, and Early. These characters are examined not only for their military decisions, but also for their attitudes to the work of destruction that they are obliged by duty to perform and the related psychological toll this work places upon them. Frederick Douglass and Thaddeus Stevens are also characters, and the wives of Lincoln and Davis (Mary and Varina, respectively).
In addition to these historical characters, this novel features two fictional families, the Derr’s and the Stone’s,—with soldiers on opposite sides of the conflict,—”related” through one man, Elias Derr, who in subsequent marriages, has fathered children on both sides. Out of this across-the-war family dynamic come “non-kin cousins” who are romantically involved, interaction with slaves on the Southern side of the family, and war-related role changes for women (the Southern woman is a combat nurse, which the South permitted; the Northern woman is an abolitionist). There is also an educated slave named Terner Ross, who in the chaos of Southern defeat attempts to begin a new life as leader of his fellow former slaves and a newly free man.
All military details in this novel are accurate as to dates, order of battle, units involved, and battle dynamics in such major engagements as The Wilderness, Cold Harbor, and the attack on Atlanta. The novel has an extensive “Acknowledgements” section listing all resources used for the novel.
The novel has seven thematic threads: (1) conception and execution of Grant’s “national push;” (2) acceptance of “total war;” (3) changing status of women; (4) changing status of blacks; (5) confederal versus federal concepts of government; (6) division versus reconciliation; and (7) pacifist perspective (“total rejection of war”).
PUSH TO APPOMATTOX provides a panoramic depiction of America at this time of national division preceding the realization westward of America’s “great experiment in democracy..