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If the American Civil War ended the way most civil wars end General Robert E. Lee and other high-ranking Confederate officers would have been hanged for treason, other lower level members of Confederate army sent to prison, and the residents of the Confederacy supporting states would have lost their rights indefinitely.

Jay Winik’s April 1865 is a fascination exploration into why the American Civil War did not end in this way: no one in the Confederate Army was executed or sent to prison, nor were the Confederacy states disenfranchised. To the contrary, the terms of surrender were generous: all the Confederate Army had to do was to surrender their weapons and go home. It’s interesting to read about how some Confederate Generals were preparing to resort to guerilla warfare and keep fighting. Fortunately, General Lee was able to convince them to surrender.

We will probably never know for sure what would’ve happened if the Confederate Army continued fighting—predictions seem to suggest that the Union would have eventually crushed the Confederate Army by force, though this could have taken years to complete. It is fair to assume that had this scenario occurred, instead of the peaceful surrender at Appomattox, the Union would probably have not been nearly as generous to a defeated Confederate Army as it was in 1865.