Elizabeth R. Varon's guest appearances

Elizabeth R. Varon

Virginia Historical Society Podcasts

Civil War at 150

Alan Taylor

Lawrence Jackson

James Madison

Douglas Brinkley

Woodrow Wilson

Robert E. Lee

Cokie Roberts

Jeremy Black

Patrick Henry

Louis Brandeis

Mike Gorman

John Brown

John Grady

Edward Lee

Franklin D. Roosevelt

OwlTail

Fulton Chauncey

On June 5, Elizabeth Varon delivered the Hazel and Fulton Chauncey Lecture entitled "Lee at Appomattox." Robert E. Lee's surrender to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House evokes a highly gratifying image in the popular mind—it was, many believe, a moment that transcended politics, a moment of healing, a moment of patriotism untainted by ideology. But as Elizabeth Varon reveals in her latest book, this rosy image conceals a seething debate over precisely what the surrender meant and what kind of nation would emerge from war. In Appomattox, she deftly captures the events swirling around that well remembered—but not well understood—moment when the Civil War ended. Did America's best days lie in the past or in the future? For Lee, it was the past, the era of the founding generation. For Grant, it was the future, represented by northern moral and material progress. They held, in the end, two opposite views of the direction of the country—and of the meaning of the war that had changed the country forever.

Lee at Appomattox by Elizabeth R. Varon (Hazel and Fulton Chauncey Lecture)

Carl R. Weinberg talks with Elizabeth R. Varon, professor of history at the University of Virginia, about the role of women in the origins of the Civil War. She also is the author of "Gender History and the Origins of the Civil War" in the April 2011 issue of the OAH Magazine of History. Recorded in March 2011.