Beginning with the fall of Richmond and Lee"s surrender at Appomattox, After the Thunder examines in detail the aftermath of the Civil War, following the lives of the leaders in the conflict as they found their way home from the battlefield to forge a new future from their war-ravaged past. Wilmer Jones profiles fourteen figures, revealing in intimate detail the characters who shaped the postwar Union while Americans on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line faced the hardships of Reconstruction.