Hello Dr. Silkenat, thanks for doing this. As a researcher on desertion and defection during another American conflict, the Vietnam War, I’m very interested to hear about the process of defection during the American Civil War. Defection ostensibly involves surrender followed by integration - how did this process look during the Civil War?

Something that is always fascinating to me is the parole system and its mechanics. How widely was it respected prior to its break-down midway through the war, and how effective was enforcement of it by the opposing sides, lacking the kind of modern tools we would have to check identity?

i.e. if a soldier gave his parole and went home, how likely would it be that he is back in the ranks fighting? How much did that depend on North v. South in respecting it? And if captured a second time, what was the chance it would be recognized he violated his parole?

Were soldiers (from either side) who surrendered treated poorly when they returned home? Did that change as the war progressed?

Thank you very much for this fascinating AMA. I'm wondering, how did concepts like 'Southern Honour' play into some of the big surrenders during the civil war? It doesn't sound like their was any real kind of emphasis on a death before dishonour kind of thing. Was honour something the combatants considered?

Hi! Thanks for being here and answering our questions. Speaking of which, and this might be a gimme, but how did the South's policies influence the attitudes of black Union soldiers and civilians regarding surrender?

Hi David!

Former student here - was surrender in the conflict defined by the fact that it was a civil war as opposed to war against another country/external enemy? Is how surrender worked in the ACW comparable to other civil wars elsewhere?

Hi David! Love your work (and you are a great Twitter follow!). Quick question: how did policies around wounded soldiers and medical personnel during surrenders change over the course of the Civil War?

Have you gotten any hate mail yet from disgruntled white supremacists?

Hi Professor, thanks for doing this! I always thought that the ACW was an especially difficult war to surrender or be a POW in due to my impression of disease and starvation in confederate-managed prisons and the execution of black soldiers. I’m not well educated on the topic though, so how did conditions compare to the expected standards at the time? If they were as bad as I thought, why did relatively so many soldiers surrender anyway?

Hi Dr. Silkenat,

My question is, was surrender in the Civil War notably different than previous wars? As in, did surrender in the War of 1812 differ in specific ways from surrender in the Civil War?

Hello Dr. Silkenat! You mentioned elsewhere that surrendering soldiers were often treated as heroes when they returned home. Was surrender as a whole seen as a noble act during the Civil War? What was the popular view of soldiers who had surrendered, both in the Union and Confederacy?

How did wartime surrender compare to peacetime occupation during Reconstruction? Did honor culture change in the former CSA after the war? This armchair historian is curious.

Do you know if there is any recorded evidence of someone surrendering to a family member? Maybe a solider surrendered to a unit that included his brother or cousin fighting for the other side?

Hi Dr. Silkenat,

I know your book is primarily about surrendering. But I was wondering what your take on deserting during the conflict is. Whether surrendering or deserting, a soldier is giving up on their duties. Yet as the war progressed I've read that both sides got progressively harsher on handling deserters. How much of a difference did you find in deserter's treatment by comrades, commanders, enemies, and those at home compared to soldiers who were captured in other ways? Do you personally think the discrepancy in treatment makes sense?

Presuming that your focus is on land combat, but did you know whether the experience of surrender was different when serving in either the US or CS navy?

Hi Professor,

I hope to study History at Edinburgh next year so this is very cool but regardless my question is: why do you think that America has shifted away from seeing surrender as a net positive or honorable thing? Is there an effect on surrenders when conflict is domestic versus abroad (ie Revolutionary War vs Korea etc) or would any affect therein just be attributed to the times?

How did surrendering work on Sherman's march? Where there any and if so how was it handled behind the Confederate lines? On a side note, how do you view Sherman's march in general?

Could you comment how the thrust of your book was applied to the most western theaters of the civil war? Like Carson's campaign against the Navajo.

A long time ago a teacher of mine mentioned a phenomenon that happened in certain PoW camps where prisoners would form gangs to secure resources from the other inmates for themselves. Did this happen and if it did, how extensive was it? Who would they typically target?

Thanks so much for doing this!

I’m curious if the nature and frequency of surrender changed throughout the war as word got out about conditions inside prison camps. For example, would soldiers in 1864 have been more reluctant to surrender than in 1862 knowing some of the details of what was in store for them inside some of the more notorious camps?

If I may ask a second question, were mass surrenders organized affairs lead by officers or were they generally more haphazard in nature?

Thanks again, I look forward to reading your book (just bought it on Amazon).

I'm a history nerd but I have a questin why is the south so proud of the Confederates even when they surrendered would it have been different if total victory was achieved?

Hello Dr. Silkenat,

i have just one short question: Would Soldiers that normaly lived in the South and fought for the Union and vice versa treated different when they got captured?

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Thanks for all the interesting answers!

Thanks for doing this AMA!

Is there any correlation between surrender and membership/support for the KKK or similar neo-Confederate resistance groups (for instance, are people who did not surrender more likely to join the KKK?)?

And more broadly, can we classify the KKK as a neo-Confederate insurgency movement, and if so, how might that complicate our understanding of the finality/conclusiveness of the act of surrendering?

Are we still fighting this war as a nation? Like did we just go from a hot war to a cold war? Also, how different were Andrew Johnson's reconciliation policies from the Reconstruction Lincoln envisaged? Do we know what Lincoln had in mind for the decade after the war to rebuild the country?

Why do you think the American Civil war continues to connect with the imaginations of historians through out the world and isn't localized to just America?

A question I've had on my mind for a long time is the following.

What were the southern peace objectives if they won besides independence and a legal slave trade?

Were they looking to claim certain territories or states? Deporting free blacks in the north back to the south?