appomattox in this view creates a misleading impression that grant and lee fashioned an agreement and wilmer mclean's parlor that ended fighting and opened the door to reunion and reconciliation. it's too neat. it's too simple. and i will say very strongly can no serious person dispute the necessity of placing the civil war within a spacious 19th century contest, specifically any attempt to grasp the centrality of the war to the larger history of the united states. you have to place it in a much broader context. to engage with its long-term racial and constitutional and social consequences. would argue against that, no one who is serious. many of the profound questions with which the civil war they aren grappled -- still present with this in some the, as we move through second decade of the 21st century. debates about central versus state authority, about the difficulty of ordering a biracial and multiracial society in a way that is fair for everybody about the challenges of a military occupation, we can think of that in relation to reason wars in the middle east. all of these things have very easy c