This odd work with an odd title (The Rialto in Richmond: The Money War Between the States & Other Mysteries of the Civil War) has just a little to say about "the money war" and just slightly more to say about Confederate continuity of operations (or "COOP" in modern fedspeak).
We note that the fall of Richmond did not end the war, nor did the later capture of Jeff Davis, nor did the various captures or surrenders of CSA cabinet members after Davis was taken, nor did the Confederate victory in the battle of Palmito Ranch in May 1865 which turned out to be the last battle of the war. The war ended when Kirby Smith decided, rather idiosyncratically, to surrender his undefeated army and well provisioned territory in June, 1865.
Had the elements of a rump Confederate government reached Smith's department before then, one wonders about the result.
Interesting to consider the attitude of Joe Johnston, his subordinates, and Jefferson Davis during McClellan's first advance on Richmond. Recall the incredulity with which modern historians (largely Northern and Lincoln-centric) consider Johnston's apparently planless, successive retreats toward his capital. There, too, are Davis's horseback visits to the front with never a "stand and fight" order to Johnston. The capital is at stake but he sticks to his principle of non-interference with the commander.
Judged through the prism of Lincoln's dread of losing Washington, the Confederate attitude during the Johnston's movements before McClellan seems almost nonchalant.
Hey, we relocated from Montgomery to Richmond, we can relocate right back to Montgomery.
Perhaps, considering this implied difference, we could infer a real difference in the importance each side ascribed to the potential loss of its capital. This, together with consideration of the actual way the war ended, makes nonsense of the idea that McClellan could wind up the war with a capture of Richmond.
Of course, as Civil War readers, we deal with a lot of nonsense.
As the fixation on Richmond as war-ending talisman waned, the Union attempted a headlines war in which a series of bad news reporting for the enemy was expected to collapse resistance. This seems to have been an act of projection. By the same token, enough positive press in the North, both hither and yon, east west north or south, in any theatre at all and in any sequence at all would somehow bolster the Northern cause.
Yet, the North, and today's historians so sympathetic to northern Republicans, never learned their lessons despite the many defeats on both sides. Catastrophes mounted for the USA and CSA but the war continued. Headlines didn't matter.
Atlanta? The claim that news of the fall of Atlanta clinched the 1864 election is just such a claim and needs a much closer look.
How the war ended remains a big and open question. Appomattox is not the answer.
To return to Farrell's Rialto, he started the book, got caught up in the research and various speculations, and at some point realized the work was not finished. He published it anyway, then wrote a separate, second volume (not reviewed here), which may or may not finish what was started. If you have a solid, book-buying fan base, you can get away with that kind of reader abuse.
An item of interest here is Farrell's reporting around the seals of the Confederacy and their disappearance. Their purpose and potential are not discussed, however. Another interesting topic was the amount of gold and foreign currency carried off by the fleeing government, which would have enabled continued payment of foreign debts and thereby validate the viability of the rump Confederacy.
Once we have a better understanding of the facts around the end of the Confederacy, we can begin to analyze what the correct Northern strategies should have been.