Battle Cry of Freedom : Historia Wojny Secesyjnej

The Oxford History of the United States #6

by James M. McPherson

Filled with fresh interpretations and information, puncturing old myths and challenging new ones, Battle Cry of Freedom will unquestionably become the standard one-volume history of the Civil War.

James McPherson's fast-paced narrative fully integrates the political, social, and military events that crowded the two decades from the outbreak of one war in Mexico to the ending of another at Appomattox. Packed with drama and analytical insight, the book vividly recounts the momentous episodes that preceded the Civil War--the Dred Scott decision, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry--and then moves into a masterful chronicle of the war itself--the battles, the strategic maneuvering on both sides, the politics, and the personalities. Particularly notable are McPherson's new views on such matters as the slavery expansion issue in the 1850s, the origins of the Republican Party, the causes of secession, internal dissent and anti-war opposition in the North and the South, and the reasons for the Union's victory.

The book's title refers to the sentiments that informed both the Northern and Southern views of the conflict: the South seceded in the name of that freedom of self-determination and self-government for which their fathers had fought in 1776, while the North stood fast in defense of the Union founded by those fathers as the bulwark of American liberty. Eventually, the North had to grapple with the underlying cause of the war--slavery--and adopt a policy of emancipation as a second war aim. This "new birth of freedom," as Lincoln called it, constitutes the proudest legacy of America's bloodiest conflict.

This authoritative volume makes sense of that vast and confusing "second American Revolution" we call the Civil War, a war that transformed a nation and expanded our heritage of liberty.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Civil War, American History, American Civil War, War, Military History

828 pages, Hardcover

First published February 25, 1988

About the author

James M. McPherson, Ph.D. (Johns Hopkins University, 1963; B.A., Gustavus Adolphus College (St. Peter, Minnesota), 1958) is an American Civil War historian, and the George Henry Davis '86 Professor Emeritus of United States History at Princeton University. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Battle Cry of Freedom, his most famous book. He was the president of the American Historical Association in 2003, and is a member of the editorial board of Encyclopædia Britannica.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Both sides of the American Civil War professed to be fighting for freedom. The South, said Jefferson Davis in 1863, was ‘forced to take up arms to vindicate the political rights, the freedom, equality, and State sovereignty which were the heritage purchased by the blood of our revolutionary sires.’ But if the Confederacy succeeded in this endeavor, insisted Abraham Lincoln, it would destroy the Union ‘conceived in Liberty” by those revolutionary sires as ‘the last, best hope’ for the preservation of republican freedoms in the world. ‘We must settle this question now,’ said Lincoln in 1861, ‘whether in a free government the minority have the right to break up the government whenever they choose.’ Northern publicists ridiculed the Confederacy’s claim to fight for freedom. ‘Their motto,’ declared poet and editor William Cullen Bryant, ‘is not liberty, but slavery.’ But the North did not at first fight to free the slaves. ‘I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with slavery in the States where it exists,’ said Lincoln early in the conflict…Within a year, however, both Lincoln and Congress decided to make emancipation of slaves in Confederate states a Union war policy. By the time of the Gettysburg address, in 1863, the North was fighting for a ‘new birth of freedom’ to transform the Constitution written by the founding fathers, under which the United States had become the world’s largest slaveholding country, into a charter of emancipation for a republic where, as the northern version of “The Battle Cry of Freedom” put it, ‘Not a man shall be a slave.’ The multiple meanings of slavery and freedom, and how they dissolved and re-formed into new patterns in the crucible of war, constitute a central theme of this book…”
- James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era

It is impossible to anoint any one book the “best” telling of a historical event, especially one as huge as the American Civil War. After all, you can’t compare a multivolume series to a single entry, or the biography of a general to the dissection of a battle. That said, there are certain touchstone volumes that tend to show up over and over, enduring long after their publication. They are lighthouses in a sea of words.

James McPherson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Battle Cry of Freedom is one of those landmark titles.

It is a massive, nearly nine-hundred page long distillation of the most fraught, deadly period in the fraught and deadly history of the United States. It’s a necessary work for any serious student of the Civil War, and also a go-to for anyone who is just getting started. By the time it ended, I was ready for another thousand pages.

***

The first thing to say about Battle Cry of Freedom is that it’s about the Civil War, but isn’t really a “Civil War book.” Its scope is much, much wider, spanning the years 1848 to 1865.

McPherson starts his masterpiece at the fall of Mexico City following the Battle of Chapultepec. With the end of the Mexican-American War, the United States wrested away huge swaths of territory that would eventually form six states, and parts of five others. This controversial triumph, however, disrupted the fragile compromise over slavery. The South wanted the territories open to slavery, arguing that it was a question of property rights above all. The North – for a variety of reasons – wanted the territory to be free.

The issue was debated in Congress, argued in the Supreme Court, fought over in Kansas and Nebraska, and eventually culminated in eleven states seceding from the Union.

***

One of the central pillars of the Lost Cause myth has always been the erasure of slavery as the chief cause of the Civil War. Instead, proponents argue that it centered on “state’s rights” or tariffs or northern aggression or any number of things besides the four million people held in bondage.

This is not only rank misdirection, but sloppy reasoning, as slavery underlay everything. Acknowledging this, McPherson takes us down the road to war methodically, step by step. He discusses the Wilmot Proviso, the Compromise of 1850, Bleeding Kansas, and the Dred Scott decision. This isn’t a summary either, meant to provide a bit of context. It is three-hundred solid pages of contentious debates, political realignment, and guerilla warfare. There is also a lot of dissembling, even more murders, and a caning in the U.S. Capitol.

McPherson deftly introduces a large cast of characters, and effectively uses their own words to describe their positions. Aside from the obvious stars, such as Abraham Lincoln, we meet lesser knowns, such as future Confederate vice-president Alexander Stephens, who proudly and explicitly declared the type of society he wanted. Given the expansive page count, McPherson is able to devote time to elements of the prewar years that are sometimes shorted, such as the numerous filibustering expeditions to places like Cuba, in order to secure the spread of slavery.

***

While it takes a while for it to start, McPherson’s coverage of the war itself is excellent. One of the most impressive things he is able to do is to present a clear vision of the overall strategic picture, rather than focusing on the Eastern Theater and its famous clashes. This is not a military history, like Shelby Foote’s The Civil War: A Narrative, but it handles the battles well. McPherson is also good with the personalities, and has trenchant critiques of the leaders. Ulysses Grant – before his recent renaissance – is noted to have a marvelous grasp of how all the moving parts fit into a whole. Robert Lee is given his due as a tactical genius, but faulted for his hyperfocus on Northern Virginia, and his inability to win battles away from his own backyard.

The chronology of the war provides Battle Cry of Freedom with its spine, but McPherson leaves it often for in-depth thematic disquisitions on a huge variety of topics, among them the drafts in both North and South; financing of the war; international diplomacy; prisoners of war; the role of women; and the enlargement of federal power.

Overriding this is the war’s transformation from one to secure the Union and preserve democracy, to one to end slavery. To that end, McPherson again focuses on both well-known personages such as Frederick Douglass, as well as unlikely champions of liberty like Benjamin Butler.

***

McPherson is an elegant writer. He delivers good set pieces and precise character portraits. Nevertheless, it must be noted that despite being a runaway bestseller, this isn’t really a popular history. It’s part of the Oxford History of the United States, which is notable for the brilliance of its authors, the weightiness of its tomes, the density of its contents, and the occasional dryness of its prose

I say this because there are sections of Battle Cry of Freedom that might prove somewhat stultifying if you are more interested in era’s martial aspects. For instance, early on, there is a lengthy rundown on the changing economic paradigm of the mid-nineteenth century, as a country of self-sustaining yeoman farmers began to transform into wage earners. Though interesting, it sure ain’t Gettysburg.

***

McPherson – or his editor – chose the title to this book quite deliberately. It refers to a song sung by both North and South, in two different forms. The Union version talks of putting down “the traitors” and ensuring that “although he may be poor, not a man will be a slave.” The Confederate version promises never to yield “to the tyrants.” Both “shout the battle cry of freedom.”

The lyrics are in keeping with McPherson’s chief theme: liberty. North and South each claimed this mantle, though they defined liberty in radically different ways.

In McPherson’s telling, the South could be classified as proactive conservative counterrevolutionaries who dumped the Constitution and tried to form their own country in order to keep things from changing. The North, on the other hand, generally viewed liberty through the prism of democracy, standing on the principle that elections matter, and if you decide to quit when you lose one, the whole project crumbles. As the war dragged on, though, the view expanded to include the literal freedom of enslaved persons. This shift is encapsulated by Lincoln’s second inaugural, where he spoke not just of a union, but of a nation, and in which he acknowledged that “every drop of blood drawn by the lash” might have to be “paid by another drawn by the sword.”

Though both North and South had a different perspective on the war, they are not equal in logical coherence or moral suasion. McPherson recognizes this. He gives voice to all the strands of this great and bloody war, but makes clear his judgments. Battle Cry of Freedom ends at a moment of profound triumph, when it seemed possible that freedom would be accompanied by justice, and that a reunified nation might make good on its lofty promises.

Unfortunately, that moment did not last, and the failure has echoed for one-hundred-and-sixty years.

[Mustafa Ahmad · Rating 5 out of 5]

Being a young history buff, it took me 3 weeks and 3 days to read this. That is, 3 weeks of contemplating reading it and proceeding to finish it in 3 days. This book is undoubtedly the best 1-volume book on the war that divided and reunited America but ended some of our back-then traditions such as slavery. In other words, the Civil War. It has a good balance of the battles such as Gettysburg and Antietam while it does discuss the social, political, and economic factors that also fueled the war. It starts off at the end of the Mexican-American War and does so for the first 100 pages. Then, it starts off on the attack on Fort Sumter and what happened the rest of the time during the Civil War. McPherson's prose reads in the style of a novel. It's a very easy read and also very enjoyable. There are always other books on the subject that go in depth on different aspects such as the battles or the figures, but if you want a general overview of the Civil War from its origins to its aftermath, this is THE book!

[Luís · Rating 5 out of 5]

What any historical work should look like. Devoid of any ideological bias (a lesson that many French historians might take note of), this abundantly documented book (the diversity of sources with which the author had to work is dizzying) presents a slice of mid-19th-century American history.
The first 300 pages delve into the political, economic, social, and cultural landscape of the Northern and Southern states, providing a thorough understanding of the differences in mentality between the future Confederate states and those of the future Union. The book skillfully reveals that the schism, with the question of slavery as its visible tip, was seemingly inevitable.
This "introduction" is relatively daunting (you should not hesitate to consult the Internet or other works as a supplement to reading it), but it is necessary.
The other 600 pages concern the conflict itself. Better "paced," illustrated by numerous maps with multiple points of view, it is complete because it does not forget the political, economic, and geopolitical questions surrounding this fratricidal war.
Everything is covered, from the maritime blockade to prison camps (including the sinister Andersonville), medical problems, and conflicts between generals from the same camps. Each battle details its strategies, both from the perspective of decision-makers and ordinary soldiers.
This book is quite simply a reference work on the Civil War.

[Jan-Maat]

Embarking on reading or in this case rerereading McPherson's civil war at 800 plus pages feels like committing to refighting that four year conflict. One feels the need of a logistics corps to support the reading effort at the front as the page counts mounts and mounts. The book itself, particularly in a hardback incarnation, is virtually a civil war, it could be lobbed with hostile intent at a passerby, or laid on the ground to make a defensive position or strapped to the chest to protect the heart from musket balls or sabre blows.

McPherson paints a busy panorama, crowded with details finely drawn and occasionally even quotable, starting in the 1830s, going through the divergence in economic development in north and south - suggesting at the end that it was the north with it industrialising and increasingly capitalist society which was exceptional while the South was more broadly typical of mid-nineteenth century societies in being agrarian and reliant on tied labour, the Mexican war, land grabbing adventures in Nicaragua, the collapse of the Whig party and sectional violence everywhere, muskets, swords and walking sticks taken up in anger. As a reader there is a desire to kick back against this portentous handling which reads as though McPherson was writing with Wagner's Gotterdammarung playing in the background, Siegfried's death implying this conflict was inevitable, already perhaps in progress by other means long before Fort Sumter was fired upon. This naturally leads to wanting him to just get on with things rather than continuing to set out his stall for several hundred pages. The downside with this feeling of inevitability is that he then has to dismiss initial votes by Southern states against secession as merely 'conditional unionism' or equally praise Lincoln and the Republicans refusal to negotiate after his election as a realistic course of action. Perhaps, but these it seems to me are debatable points. Ultimately he comes down strongly in favour of contingency -pointing out the impact of victories and defeats in shifting public opinion and the sentiments and opinions of the major political actors.

McPherson pulls out the role of race and attitudes about race, not simply white vs black, but even within 'whiteness' - Saxon vs Norman in which reading the southerners were the gentle yet warlike descendants of the Normans, recognisable as the Cavaliers in the earlier English Civil War, while your Northerner was a rude mechanical (and Irish), which I suppose is the inevitable result of creating a concept of fictive kinship to justify a social position, but still one wonders as in Williamsion's The Penguin History of Latin America, how one gets from such divisive thinking to a nation of liberty, equality and fraternity, or even if this can be done in a reasonable time frame - say before the return of Jesus, the arrival of Maitreya Buddha who in a rare piece of good news can apparently be ordered from a well known internet bookseller, or the emergence of the Mahdi, not that this is the topic in hand for this book, simply for society.

McPherson discusses Unionism in Tennessee and West Virginia, divided sentiments in Kentucky and Missouri which interestingly and probably significantly have tended to become far more supportive of the Confederacy since the end of the war than at the time - a process which T.J.Styles describes beginning in Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War , mind you much of this is conjecture, just as after an election newspaper commentators explain the results, without actually asking people. More significant perhaps then is McPherson's roll call of individuals like George Thomas, Admiral Farragut or Pemberton who didn't side with their state or place of birth. Then again this whole issue of identity and identification was peculiarly intense possibly because anti-bellum America was very mobile, many people had moved away from place of birth to settle and make a living in new developing regions - elective affinities it seems are the fiercest of all.

For McPherson this was a second American Revolution and one which saw the birth of a nation rather than an untidy agglomeration of states who grudgingly had admitted it would make good sense to work together to some limited extent in the wake of their treacherous rebellion from poor old George III.

This account is not purely a muddy slog through an exceptionally violent conflict - McPherson regularly points to battles more bloody than various combinations of other American conflicts - but also shoots off to consider other issues, developing technologies, the role of the war in promoting the production of clothes in standardised sizes a regular feature of shopping that can be attributed to the need for uniforming hundreds of thousands of men without needing to tailor every shirt or pair of trousers. The introduction of income tax, not only the existence of war bonds but how they were marketed and rendered affordable to a broad public, in the North. Other elements of a Second Revolution included the creation of a transcontinental railway, a network of agricultural colleges, a Homestead Act to support the settlement of the West, the introduction of the 'greenback' national paper currency and changes to the prevailing system of local banks issuing their own bank notes, eventually the thirteenth amendment, the Freedman's bureau Freedwomen presumably had to just look out for each other, and moves towards universal male suffrage.

Another theme is the disruptive effect of war, providing new opportunities for women - who thanks to increasing mechanisation in the north at least could send off their sons to war confident they could still manage to bring in the hay, but also in industry and professionally, for immigrants, black people, and a host of middle aged men perhaps repressed by the structures and requirements of everyday life who got to have extravagant mid-life crises (and its hard for me not to think of the parade of civil war generals in that way, many of whom I struggle to imagine in civilian life outside of pantomime, apart from McCellan who to me fits perfectly with his Napoleonic pretensions as the prototypical rock-star CEO that he had been of a Railway company.

I get a sense of the overwhelming effort - implicitly implied by the solid heft of this book - required by the war in which both sides, having found themselves at war suddenly had to come up with the armies and logistics to fight it. Originally units elected their own officers, prominent persons with political clout held high commands, it was for almost everyone a learn on the job type war, and those who had combat experience from the Mexican war found that bayonet charges against entrenchments were now unpleasantly fatal given significant improvements in fire-power in the intervening years.

There is emphasis and space given to the politics of the home front on both sides as well as the international diplomacy and espionage of which McPherson occasionally drops heavy hints ought in a just universe be the subject of many rollicking novels. And also we are shown the shifts of opinion in Britain particularly, down to the debated attitude of Lancashire cotton workers towards the conflict

As a war, and whatever else is discussed here this is always the narrative history of a war, the American conflict seems to presage much which is still familiar - total war, the strategic importance of logistics, mobilisation of entire populations, highly technical, mechanised warfare side by side with house to house neighbour on neighbour brutality, massed artillery barrages and scalping.

The best one volume history of the American Civil War? I couldn't say, however I don't see the need to search for another one, yet. footnotes and a bibliographic essay however shows the paths into the apparently endless ink wars that have raged over it ever since

[Bryan Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is reported that there are 15,000 books on the Civil War in the Library of Congress, so the natural question is where do you start? Furthermore, Most of the "seminal" Civil War works are volumes and thousands of pages. Well in 850 pages, McPherson provides succint, yet thorough historical writing of the highest caliber. It unmuddies the waters as to the reasons for the country's schism and the start of the war and provides the necessary level of detail as to the prosecution of the war without going inot excruciating detail about troop movements and the like.

Perhaps the most remarkable piece of the book was the eiplogue in which McPherson presents an interesting point about America's notions of liberty and freedom. Whereas before the Civil War the nation was intent on keeping Americans free from things, the Civil War represented a shift in that the government was now thought of as a agent that gave people freedom to things.

[Anthony · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Second Revolution

I have always admitted I lack any depth of knowledge American history and especially the Civil War era. As such, I have turned to this most famous and excellent book. Battle Cry of Freedom is a definitive, one-volume history of the American Civil War, masterfully blending political, social, and military history. As part of the Oxford History of the United States series, it is an exceptionally well-researched and balanced narrative that provides a comprehensive understanding of the Civil War era, spanning from the 1840s through Reconstruction.

Author James McPherson writes Battle Cry of Freedom in a way that both historians and the casual reader can appreciate, avoiding overly academic jargon while still delivering a meticulously detailed account. He expertly traces the complex causes of the war, showing how political tensions, economic disparities, and the moral crisis over slavery led to the nation’s division. His examination of the lead-up to the war, including the Mexican-American War, the Compromise of 1850, and the rise of the abolitionist movement, provides valuable context that enriches the reader's understanding of why the war was inevitable.

In the sections detailing the war itself, McPherson strikes a remarkable balance between the tactical and human elements of the conflict. The major battles such as Antietam, Gettysburg and Shiloh are described with vivid precision, but McPherson also devotes significant attention to the experiences of soldiers and civilians, highlighting the suffering and resilience on both sides. His account of Abraham Lincoln’s leadership, particularly his navigation of the political currents while steering the nation through its greatest crisis, is one of the book’s most insightful aspects.

The title, Battle Cry of Freedom reflects the central theme of the Civil War: the conflict between competing visions of liberty. For the Confederacy, it was about states’ rights and independence; for the Union, it was the preservation of the nation, which ultimately came to include the abolition of slavery as a moral imperative. McPherson’s nuanced discussion of this evolving war aim, particularly how Lincoln and how the Union came to embrace emancipation as a war goal, is a highlight.

What sets Battle Cry of Freedom apart from other Civil War histories is its breadth. I haven’t seen a more detailed book on the subject that’s as accessible or well written (in the UK at least). McPherson doesn’t just focus on the battles or the leaders; he integrates the social and economic transformations that shaped the conflict and its aftermath. He examines the roles of women, African Americans, and the changing nature of warfare, providing a multi-dimensional view of the war’s impact on American society. What struck me the most was that this war changed America. It was its second revolution. The pivot from old traditional landed power of the South changed to the capitalists and industrials of the North. America would build towards its world hegemony in the next century. McPherson explains that this might have always happened, but the Civil War certainly was the turning point.

Overall, Battle Cry of Freedom is a monumental achievement. Its combination of thorough scholarship, engaging narrative, and balanced perspective make it the definitive single-volume account of the Civil War. Whether you’re a serious student of history or a casual reader seeking a deeper understanding of America’s most pivotal conflict, McPherson’s work is indispensable. I would say that this must be the best single volume account of the war out there. But please correct me if I’m wrong!

[Ali · Rating 5 out of 5]

I should mention that I don’t know a lot about the Civil War to write a proper review of a book as majestic as this, but I figure I can point out a thing or two.

I think one of the reasons that this book has been acclaimed so widely is that the author hasn’t missed that much and the book is sufficiently researched (even though the end-notes are not extensive and apparently not all the sources are mentioned). McPherson starts with a nostalgic prologue and works his way slowly but surely, through the aftermath of the Mexican war and the 1850s (the previous volume in the Oxford series covers the events up to 1848 and this one picks it up from there). The starting chapters contain a lot of material about a lot of different subjects — from balloon-frame houses and the American system of manufactures to the evolving roles of women in the society — and it can be a little bit overwhelming. But McPherson does not get bogged down in detail and deftly moves ahead. This background building and the general study of the economy in the midcentury America, kind of pays off in the end because it makes this one-volume all the more comprehensive and richer.

The writing is clear and never monotonous and time to time you even get a paragraph with flair:

“The Mexican War fulfilled for the United States its self-proclaimed destiny to bestride the continent from sea to shining sea. But by midcentury the growing pains of this adolescent republic threatened to tear the country apart before it reached maturity.”

To be sure I took my time reading this book because there is a lot of ground to cover and no matter how good McPherson is (or the Oxford series for that matter) I’m just starting to dip into this momentous period in U.S. history and as a non-American there is even more for me to unpack. But I’m positive that this book can serve as a solid springboard for the study of the interminable number of books and publications dealing with the subject.

Once the book gets to the Border War it gets all the more absorbing of course, and progresses chronologically to the bitter end. As McPherson himself points out in the preface, one of the reasons for writing this book is to present a big picture of the conflict and how like a giant web, an incident in one corner brought about an upheaval in the other — like the crucial military victories of the North that thwarted the Confederacy’s attempts to secure foreign recognition; the precarious situation of the Union administration near the elections and the victories that it had to achieve to justify waging a total war against the South.

The history books painting with broad strokes tend to be tedious yet McPherson strikes a tasteful balance:

“At one point Yankee troopers swam the river naked except for their cartridge belts and captured the bemused pickets. At another ford, blue horsemen waded dismounted through neck-deep water with their Spencer carbines. ‘As the rebel bullets began to splash around pretty thick,’ recalled a Union officer, northern soldiers discovered that they could pump the waterproof metal cartridges into the Spencer’s chamber underwater; ‘hence, all along the line you could see the men bring their guns up, let the water run from the muzzle a moment, then take quick aim, fire his piece and pop down again.’ The astonished rebels called to each other: ‘Look at them Yankee sons of bitches, loading their guns under water! What sort of critters be they, anyhow?’”
A. A. Hoehling, Last Train from Atlanta

McPherson has brought his narrative to life by finding these little stories and anecdotes and interspersing them throughout.

Another admiring feature is that the book doesn’t let you forget about the contingencies surrounding the contemporaries: McPherson does not believe in any inevitable outcome concerning the end of the war and aptly reminds you that Union victory was by no means certain just because of its industrial capacity or finer leadership; at numerous points it seems that victory barely eluded the Confederacy at the last moment. (He is able to present these ideas, combine them, and dismiss them, partly because he can rest on the shoulders of many historians that have grappled with these viewpoints in much more depth.)

Descriptions of battles are surprisingly good for a one-volume book that usually has only a few pages to spare for a battle as significant as Gettysburg. With one or two glances at the maps and focusing a bit I got a good sense of what was going on: how the flanking maneuvers took place (and usually failed), how the initiative switched sides, and how much the personalities of the commanders mattered when the fight started on the battlefield.

The book ends with the surrender of Lee’s army and provides a fitting epilogue that serves as a prelude to the next book concerning the Reconstruction. I’ll probably make do with a shorter work dealing with that era but it’s good to know that it’s there.

[Steven Peterson · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you want detailed discussion of battles, this is not the book for you. If you want detailed descriptions of key actors during the Civil War, this will not be the book for you. But if you want an all encompassing volume, linking the battles, economic issues, social life, culture, and politics, then this book will be a wonderful resource.

Where does the title of the book come from? A Civil War song, "The Battle Cry of Freedom," written in 1862. Illustrative lines:

"The Union forever, Hurrah boys Hurrah!
Down with the traitor and up with the star; While we rally round the flag boys,
rally once again, Shouting the battle cry of freedom."

McPherson addresses the purpose of this volume (Page ix): ". . .I have tried to integrate the political and military events of this era with important social and economic developments to form a seamless web synthesizing up-to-date scholarship with my own research and interpretations."

The book begins with background, the Mexican War, slavery, bleeding Kansas, and the election of 1860. We learn about the comparative economies in north and south as well as social and cultural and political issues. Then, as one chapter title says so well, "Amateurs go to war." Starting with untrained forces and many inept officers, the war began.

The difference between this and other histories can be noted in space devoted to battles. Pea Ridge (Elkhorn Tavern) is covered in two pages; Shiloh is addressed in 11 pages; 11 pages on Vicksburg; 13 pages are devoted to Gettysburg. But the context in which these battles (and others) were fought provides a deeper view of the Civil War. For instance, a table on page 608 suggests that it was a "poor man's fight," with laborers, farmers, making up the bulk of the Union forces. But McPherson notes that this ignores demographic realities and that, in fact, there was greater representativeness among the Union military than has often been noted.

All in all, an impressive work, integrating the many aspects of the Civil War in just one volume, with 862 pages of text.

[Theo Logos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Widely praised as the best single volume history of the American Civil War, James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom comes close. Its virtues far outnumber its flaws, and it is certainly the most comprehensive single volume history whether or not it lives up to the arbitrary “best” status.

The book's strength is in its inclusiveness. Sub-titled The Civil War Era, it truly lives up to that billing. It begins not with the opening of the Civil War, but with the Mexican War and the developing sectional crisis which that war helped to escalate. The first seven chapters of the book chronicle the many related social and political crises which continued to rive the country into two separate and hostile camps, making war all but inevitable. And even after McPherson launches into the story of the war proper, his book is much more that a simple tale of battles and generals. He devotes whole chapters to related subjects such as manufacturing capabilities of both North and South, the medical situation, the financing of the war, political crises which affect the war effort, foreign diplomacy, and the developing importance of the issue of slavery as an overwhelming factor in the war. He successfully gives the big picture of the overall social and political environment which is absolutely necessary to put the war into context and truly understand it.

The greatest virtue of this volume is its continued insistence on emphasizing the importance of the issue of slavery. McPherson repeatedly emphasizes that while the war was fought for Union, its primary and overriding cause was slavery. He utterly debunks the toxic Lost Cause mythology that downplays the centrality of slavery to the conflict. This is vital, as Lost Cause mythology is as historically odious and dangerous as Holocaust denial, and it is much more pervasive and widely believed than that latter myth. McPherson tackles it head on, and from beginning to end drills in the importance of slavery as the primary cause of division in the country, the catalyst for secession and war, and one of the primary stumbling blocks to a peaceful settlement of the hostilities. He also clearly shows that while the North primarily fought the war for the cause of Union, that as the war progressed, the issue of freedom and emancipation took on greater and greater importance, until by war's end, many in the North saw the two as intertwined and of equal importance.

Battle Cry of Freedom is not without flaw. McPherson writes well enough to make this longish and comprehensive history flow along nicely without bogging down and boring the reader, but his prose lacks the charm that could make the events he writes of come passionately to life. This is compounded by the fact that his comprehensive take on the entire era limits the detail that he can devote to any single battle or personality of the war. All of the important events and people are here, but they are mere utilitarian sketches that mostly lack depth, color, and insight. This is a book to read for an overview, but the reader must go elsewhere for a deeper understanding of any single event or personality of the times.

Battle Cry of Freedom is an outstanding, important history of the American Civil War. I don’t think I stretch too much to say that it is essential if you want to understand the crisis that reshaped America. If you are seriously interested in the American Civil War, you need to read this book.

[RJ - Slayer of Trolls · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The Civil War was pre-eminently a political war, a war of peoples rather than of professional armies.”

This Pulitzer-Prize winning single-volume history of the American Civil War might seem like a long book – and at 900 pages it definitely qualifies for Phone Book weight class – but when you think of how much sheer information had to be distilled down into those essence of those pages the result is nothing less than astonishing. McPherson managed to capture not just the battles and the oversized personalities who fought them, but also described the political and economic setting not just during the war but especially in the years leading up to the conflict. Each paragraph could be a chapter in a more expanded book series (for example, the battle more fully described in the 1989 Academy Award-winning film Glory is relegated to a few sentences in this book), and each chapter could be a book of its own; those interested in history will not want to miss this one.

“And in the final reckoning, American lives lost in the Civil War exceed the total of those lost in all the other wars the country has fought added together, world wars included.”

[Barbara K · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nearly 900 pages on Civil War history, you say? Are you daft, you say? Or has someone taken possession of the woman who normally saves most of her literary praise for those who have mastered the art of writing with economy and style?

Yes to the first question, and No to the second and third. There is a reason this is considered the best comprehensive book on the (American) Civil War Era. The same reason it won the Pulitzer. It’s simply really well done.

As the title indicates, the book covers the Civil War Era, not just the period 1861- 1865. Roughly the first 20% is devoted to the military, social, economic and political circumstances that led up to Lincoln’s election. The remainder of the book addresses the same issues during the war, both for the Union and the South.

McPherson moves among these topics smoothly, generally staying within a chronological framework unless something about a topic requires a different approach. I can’t say that I learned a lot that was completely new to me, but McPherson has a talent for helping the reader appreciate the meaning of events and people in the context of the moment. This is no small thing. I couldn’t help being impressed with his organizational skills. He had a lot to say, stayed on track, and wandered down not a single rabbit hole.

Although he is careful to present multiple sides of many issues, McPherson is consistent in stating that the war was fought over slavery. Yes, there was the concern over “preserving the union”, but had it not been for the matter of slavery, there would have been no reason for the union to be threatened. And on the other end, slavery was the reason the war could not be resolved in any way but militarily. States’ rights were an issue and contrasting economies were an issue - but both of those were tied up with slavery.

As McPherson says in his epilogue, there will never be a shortage of books recounting and analyzing the Civil War and the individuals who were part of it. Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner's Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause, for instance, is a fairly recent addition that provides a different view of Lee’s attitude toward slavery.

Well, I could go on and on about the virtues of Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, but it’s probably best to close with this: if you want to read ONE book that tells you everything you really need to know about the Civil War, this is it.

[Nick Borrelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

As I have gotten older I have definitely become more interested in reading about history, especially books about the Civil War. My reading tastes have evolved from someone who only used to read Fantasy to someone who now reads a lot of non-fiction. Battle Cry of Freedom has been touted as the best SINGLE volume account of the Civil War. I have read Shelby Foote's magnum three-book, 3,500 page opus, found that to be an amazing experience and one that kept me engrossed for over a year. So I picked up McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom with similar expectations. I was not disappointed. I still like Foote's trilogy better, but I agree wholeheartedly that for a single volume account, this one is pretty comprehensive and well-written. Where the two differ is that Foote's trilogy focuses much more on the actual battle tactics, formations, troop movements, etc.... Battle Cry of Freedom delves more into the economic and political backdrop of the time. That's not to say that there aren't vivid descriptions of battles, because there are. But McPherson seemed to be more concerned with setting up the events that led to the war rather than jumping right in the way Foote did. So if you are looking for a wonderful account of the Civil War, and you are intimidated by reading a 3,500 page narrative, then McPherson's book is probably the way to go. You won't lose much because McPherson is a skilled writer who knows his subject well. You'll definitely get all of the necessary detail and the battles that you need to walk away feeling satisfied.

[Eric Byrd · Rating 4 out of 5]

The times, they change so fast, and the Young People Today know nothing of drive-ins… of paper routes…of bizarrely racist street parades:

Indiana Democrats organized a parade which included young girls in white dresses carrying banners inscribed “Fathers, save us from nigger husbands!”

(p. 159)

A Democratic float in a New York parade carried life-size effigies of Horace Greeley and a “good looking nigger wench, whom he caressed with all the affection of a true Republican.” A banner proclaimed that “free love and free niggers will certainly elect Old Abe.”

(p.224)

And of course Frederick Douglass’ fame recommended him to white imagination as a spectre of Black Sexual Menace. Here’s Stephen Douglas doing his best, in the 1858 Illinois Senate race, to smear Lincoln as the candidate of most-dread “amalgamation”:

Why, in Freeport Douglas saw a handsome carriage drive up to a Lincoln meeting. “A beautiful young lady was sitting on the box seat, whilst Frederick Douglass and her mother reclined inside, and the owner of the carriage acted as driver. If you, Black Republicans, think that the negro ought to be on a social equality with your wives and daughters, whilst you drive the team, you have a perfect right to do so. Those of you who believe that the negro is your equal…of course will vote for Mr. Lincoln.(‘Down with the negro,’ no, no, &c.)”

(p. 185)

He hath lept into my seat! (The stenographer’s parenthetical capture of crowd comments is priceless.) Have you seen pictures of the young Frederick Douglass? Hot. Smoldering. Dark, needless to say. Brooding over a Tortured, ahem, Past. Daguerreotype pin-up. He’d have been an ideal heartthrob-villain of the smutty pulp Democrats used to terrify-titillate white voters back then. McPherson cracked me up with this description of the literature they distributed during the 1864 presidential campaign:

Numerous cartoons showed thick-lipped, grinning, coarse black men kissing apple-cheeked girls “with snow-white bosoms” or dancing with them at the “Miscegenation Ball” to follow Lincoln’s re-election. The “Benediction” of a leaflet entitled “Black Republican Prayer�� invoked “the blessings of Emancipation throughout our unhappy land” so that “illustrious, sweet-scented Sambo may nestle in the bosom of every Abolition woman, that she may be quickened by the pure blood of the majestic African.”

(p. 789)

~

Most dramatic for me were the 300 pages before war even broke out. Is there anything more compelling than the death of an old regime? The gradual polarization of opinion…the slow gathering of anti-slavery (or at least anti-slaveholder) sentiment…the revolutionary emergence of the Republicans and the election of Lincoln in 1860…the south’s counter-revolutionary breakaway…a war to restore the Old Union becoming a war to destroy the Old South. And the military-industrial Titanism of the wartime North, and the Congress endorsing “the blueprint for modern America” by passing the Homestead Act, centralizing the nation’s banking system, and voting funds for the transcontinental railway and land-grant colleges, measures that had been successfully opposed by southern representatives while they remained in the Union. McPherson’s subtitle, The Civil War Era heralded this reader’s re-orientation: more than a neatly bounded conflict, the Civil War is a political process of decades, a revolutionary watershed. America 1846-1865 compares to France 1789-1804 or Russia 1914-1923.

I was surprised by the amount of violence that took place before war actually started. I knew about Bleeding Kansas, proslavery bushwhackers vs. antislavery Jayhawks, and John Brown and his broadsword-armed sons kidnapping proslavery men in the dead of night and then hacking them to pieces all Charles Taylor-style. But I knew nothing about the southern adventurers, would-be John C. Frémonts, who in the 1850s set out to conquer a Caribbean empire for slavery. At the head of small private armies—“hirelings picked from the drunken spew and vomit of an uneasy civilization,” said Charles Sumner—and with the tacit support of factions of the Federal government, these gringo conquistadors launched from New Orleans to go filibustering about the gulf (from the Spanish filibustero, freebooter; almost needless to mention their later, senatorial mastery of the art). Cuba was invaded, twice; also Nicaragua and Baja California. These ruffian forays came to naught. Cuban garrotters and Nicaraguan firing squads stayed busy. And Cuba wouldn’t be taken under American “protection” until 1898, when the Federal government dispatched its fleet and its army (those ranks filled with jobless men from the still-devastated south). In mid-nineteenth century America, Joe Average North dreamt of a homestead in the bountiful West, in the honey-glazed Bierstadt landscape, once the Indians were exterminated. Joe Average South dreamt of the annexation of Cuba. The island’s 400,000 slaves seemed to promise that every poor white man “would get some niggers too.” Aw, like a chicken in every pot!

[Wick Welker · Rating 5 out of 5]

America has always been insane.

I’m no Civil War buff and wanted to learn more specifically about the politics, culture and war during that time so I picked up Battle Cry of Freedom hoping it would do the trick and it was exactly what I was looking for. This book provides not only the war stratagem and battles (something I care about less) but the political contextualization about how all this crazy stuff fits together. After coming away from this book I am absolutely stunned about what an insane country the United States was then and continues to be today with new reincarnations of the same political and social turmoil that birthed the Civil War. This is a perfect first book to read for people looking to learn about the Civil War.

So, the Civil War was obviously about slavery despite the ridiculous revisionists who like to pretend otherwise. In my opinion, the 3 ⁄ 5 compromise did little to diminish the strength of the southern states, only served to legitimize their practice and to hold undue political power. Huge economic growth in the 1850s created more tension between the North and South and accelerated the slavery problem which had been around since the country’s inception. Americans got the edge over Europe by simply having more land, wood, labor all with higher fertility rates and a more educated class. Industrialization was taking off in the North and the South got a bit behind. Wage labor was a pretty new concept coming in at this time and many Americans didn’t like it and saw it as antithetical to republicanism and being master over your own labor. There were also large shifts in the cultural attitudes of women’s role as a women’s rights movement was starting around this time.

Lots of the preamble to the war had to do with Polk stealing a ton more land from Mexico and Native Americans and then the South wanting to legalize slavery there. The South was basically obsessed with acquiring new slaveholding land and backed several bids by mercenary groups to capture Cuba and parts of Latin America. The Wilmot Proviso was an unsuccessful 1846 proposal in Congress to ban slavery in the newly acquired territory during the Mexican-American war and the South didn’t like that one bit. During this time, lots of different social attitudes about slavery were pervasive including militant abolitionists. Uncle Tom’s Cabin came out and blew people’s minds and was extremely impactful. Of course the book was banned in the South.

Lots of political and legislation maneuvering was happening pre war. The Kansas-Nebraska act created the two states but repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which prevented Northern expansion of slavery. And then you have the Dred Scott SCOTUS decision of 1857 which prohibited black people from ever being citizens. For whatever gains there were for the South, there was always Northern abolitionist backlash which helped the new radical Republican party gain more political control when they fractured from the Whig party. The 1857 depression mixed things up and then the Homestead Act also riled up the South who didn’t like the idea of Northern folks spreading their non-slavery ways across the country.

The pre-war drama and culture wars really culminated with John Brown, a militant abolitionist, who stormed Harpers Ferry arsenal with like 5 other guys in what appeared to be a very ill conceived attempt to liberate black people in the South with a slave revolt. Even Fredick Douglas told him something like “Hey, you shouldn’t do this, it’s crazy.” John Brown was almost immediately arrested and was sentenced to death for treason. His courtroom speeches are not the words of an unhinged man but someone who knew exactly what he was doing and understood the cultural power of martyrdom. Just read this snippet of his last speech:

This court acknowledges, as I suppose, the validity of the law of God. I see a book kissed here which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least the New Testament. That teaches me that "all things whatsoever I would that men should do to me, I should do even so to them" [Matthew 7:12]. It teaches me, further, to "remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them" [Hebrews 13:3]. I endeavored to act up to that instruction. I say, I am yet too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to have interfered as I have done as I have always freely admitted I have done on behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong, but right. Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I submit; so let it be done!

Right? John Brown knew exactly what he was doing and very quickly after execution became a cultural icon. He was an immediate folk hero in the North and a boogeyman to the South.

And then Abraham Lincoln was elected as President in 1860. A big realization for me reading this is that the Civil War started not because of all the threats of the South to secede or even because the North finally said “Hey, we’re coming to abolish slavery!”. No. They HATED the progressive Republican party and the new President and they were afraid they would abolish slavery. So the election of Lincoln is what finally prompted the South to revolt. The Confederate constitution was drafted 3 months after the election of Lincoln. And then the matchstick was when Lincoln decided to try to protect Fort Sumter from the South. That was it: war finally broke out.

McPhearson, appropriately, spends a lot of this book on the war and its battles. There are so many ups and downs on either side and many, many times where each seemed like they were going to prevail only to have it swing back the other way. Throughout all this, there are bitter political fights in the North with the Peace Democrats who want an armistice, the Black Republicans who supported Lincoln and the more radical abolitionists who didn’t think Lincoln was doing enough. There was tons of social turmoil in the North from draconian measures that limited free speech, to race riots from fear mongering among whites that Lincoln wanted to free slaves and enslave the white race. What seems to differentiate the North and South during this time seems to be lots of political turmoil and internal conflict on the North and more political cohesion to the South which McPherson seems to imply was the South’s undoing because their leadership didn’t stay agile enough to adapt like Lincoln in the North.

The Union often had the upper hand in the war because of more sheer numbers and also a superior navy. A river blockade really helped starve trade in the South as well. The South early on bet that they could get Britain to intervene in the war if they stopped their cotton trade but it wasn’t in the cards. Britain and France decided to not get involved and fear fallout with the Union more than loss of the cotton trade. No European power ever recognized the Confederacy as more than belligerent. The Confederacy started to go broke and went fiat and printed a bunch of money and made things worse. At one point the South had 9,000% inflation to the North’s 80%. There were the Bread Riots in the South where women just straight up looted and mobed stores to feed their families. Compare this to what the North started doing: instituted a new income tax, funded higher education, enacted the homestead act, invested in railroad infrastructure and other social programs. The Union congress at this time basically drafted the blueprint for what is now modern America.

At some point during the war, Lincoln realized that emancipation and abolishment was necessary to end the war rather than an armistice. But he had the wisdom to know that there was a political timing to these things so he waited for the Emancipation until a string of Union victories. The Union capturing Vicksburg and then Gettysburg were clearly the turning point in the war. This book really does an incredible job talking about Grant and Lee and a slew of other big time military leaders like McClellan and Stonewall Jackson that I’m not really going to touch on but it’s in this book if you want it.

The shocking thing was that the war just kept on going and so many more men died that didn’t need to. Jefferson Davis refused to surrender and even fled the Confederate capitol in Richmond after the Yanks finally took it. The battles and carnage went on long after it was obvious the Confederacy was doomed and that their economy was absolutely devastated.

The war did result in a legacy of a new federal government that, in my opinion, actually did help average Americans namely federal taxation, a national bank and a welfare program for the Freedmen. What we got at the end was also a slew of new amendments with the abolishment of slavery in the 13th and the beginning of the Reconstruction era which would usher in a great time of racial harmony. KIDDING. No it didn’t but there was a glimpse before the conservative bigots regrouped and kept doing their thing which they kind of keep doing today. The exact same political dynamics at play during the Civil War era are going on now namely the opposition between progressivism and conservatism and between the labor class and the aristocracy. It’s incredible how some things don’t change.

[Donna Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you only choose to read one (challenging and sizable) resource on the American Civil War, this is the one. It won the Pulitzer, and although it is a large piece of work, it is immensely readable. It begins with the Mexican-American War because that is where much of the Civil War's military leadership is forged. It also makes it much more interesting to see whose fortunes rise, and whose fall (although these are, naturally, secondary to the issue of the war itself).

This is unquestionably the most thorough and accurate volume about America's last righteous war. It requires a high level of literacy, but with that caveat, it is a surprisingly accessible narrative, from a man who documents everything and knows what he's talking about.

One other thing: I find that in discussions about the Civil War (still referred to in much of the South as "the war between the states"), though it is long past, it isn't over. Feelings are sometimes still heated. And indeed, anyone who writes history is subjective, even if it is only by the facts they include (and which are emphasized); what sections or titles are named; and which generals are given the most air time. Though nobody is entirely objective, McPherson is widely recognized as the go-to expert in this field. Furthermore, his bias is on the side of the angels, to my way of thinking.
When I taught in this field, I kept two copies of this book, the glorious illustrated version shown here at home, and my beloved old paperback copy full of highlighted passages and sticky notes on my desk in the classroom.

Highly recommended, and one of my all-time favorite nonfiction titles.

[Murray · Rating 5 out of 5]

An extraordinary history of the American Civil War. Recommended. He writes with flow and verve.

[Esdaile · Rating 2 out of 5]

This work is certainly very extensively researched and annotated and abounds in comments from contemporaries-quotations, extracts from diaries etc. This is so much the case that it is arguable that McPherson did not so much write a historical account as piece together as produce a series of quotations from eye-witnesses and those who lived through events and has interspersed them with a linking narrative and his own biased comments. The book is rather like a printed version of popular tv histories where dramatic footage is interspersed with aging eye witnesses making their truncated and edited comments on past events. In other words this is a documentary rather than a history and it has the surreptitious bias of a modern newspaper. Interestingly, the back cover of the penguin edition gives visible support to this by producing in the popular type of the US at that time (Galliard?) for the name of the publications 6 promotional puffs. The worst thing about the kind of bias in a book like this is that it is very difficult for a layperson to argue, since it is not a question of untruths or errors but of truths not mentioned or facts ignored, and McPherson is too good at his job to leave anything out which is well known. Many are also likely to think that this is a fair account since the writer takes pains to give it the superficial appearance of being so. There is no officious sabre rattling or trumpet blowing about this book. It appears to be sweetly reasonable while relentlessly pursuing a pro-Northern line from beginning to end.
Nearly every famous quotations and many obscure ones from the war can be found in the pages of this book. As a mine of quotations it is certainly second to none. The only exception that comes to mind is the remark made by one Southerner on hearing of Lincoln’s condemnation of rebellion and disloyalty-“if rebellion is always wrong, then God save the King!”. Stonewall Jackson referred to the South’s attempt at independence “the Second War of Independence”, an aspect of the struggle which McPherson does not address with any seriousness. The issue is by no means dead. In recent years the state of Vermont has begun to mutter about secession from the Union. At the Vermont Independence Convention held on October 28th 2005 in the state capital, Thomas Naylor declared that “South Carolina and the Confederate states had a perfect right to secede”.

I was not surprised after 550 pages of pro-yankee journalism to find McPherson belittling a notorious statement of Northern malice. This is the infamous invitation to the rape of women in the occupied South made by the commander of Union forces in occupied New Orleans. It is termed euphemistically by Mc Pherson as “an incident” and “Butler’s women’s order”. : The writer notes that it “intensified British upper-class alienation from the North” (Is McPherson suggesting that the British middle classes of the time more sympathetic to a bit of rough treatment of snooty belles?) Butler’s statement ran as follows: : “any woman who persisted in the practice of insulting Northern soldiers shall be regarded and held liable to be treated as a woman of the town plying her trade” Even today, with two world wars and countless horrors between then and now, this order sounds appalling and is appalling. It is also historically significant since it breaks the very codex which Gibbon in Decline and Fall had so proudly noted a hundred years before as the hallmark of civilized behaviour-soldiers in the eighteenth century refraining from attacking or molesting civilians. But McPherson who is always more understanding of Northern outrages than Southern ones-finds what he calls “considerable provocation” for Butler’s declaration. What can this “considerable provocation” be? Something pretty drastic to justify an invitation to rape one would think. Nothing less than murder and terrorism surely? Not exactly. Southern provocation was “climaxed by a woman who dumped the contents of a chamber-pot from a French-Quarter balcony on Fleet Captain Farragut’s head.” This would be hilarious if the writer were not so serious in believing this largely excuses Butler’s order. McPherson does not tell us how many women were raped as a result of the green light given by their commander. I am sure that if the history had been in reverse the reader would have received a very different account.. Apart form the relentless bias of the book, it is poorly served by the publishers: the photographs are cramped and mostly anyone’s second choice, more seriously, the maps of the battlefields are so poorly printed as to be almost unuseable. Maybe that suits McPherson’s belief that battles are not half so important as they are made out to be by most historians. Like Tolstoy in War in Peace he sees them and portrays them as a lot of sound and fury and confusion-decisive battles do not take place in this account. Gettysburg is presented as just one more bloody conflict rather than the decisive battle is its traditionally presented as being. Far more important for McPherson is the calibre of generals-this seems to him to be all important, not that he is over-enthusiastic about Southern generalship. It is not brilliance on the part of Lee but timidity, incompetence and rivalry among Northern generals which is here offered as the major clue to the slow progress of the Northern war effort. As for Lincoln, needless to say he, he is the hero of the story, as infallible as the Pope. If McPherson ever criticises Lincoln, I missed it.
This may be, as some claim, the best book on the subject. If that is true I am sorry to hear it.

[B. P. Rinehart · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The terms of...peace and the dimensions of black freedom would occupy the country for a decade or more. Meanwhile the process of chronicling the war and reckoning [with] its consequences began immediately [after it ended] and has never ceased. More than 620,000 soldiers lost their lives in four years of conflict-360,000 Yankees and at least 260,000 rebels. The number of southern civilians who died as a direct or indirect result of the war cannot be known; what can be said is that the Civil War's cost in American lives was as great as in all of the nation's other wars combined through Vietnam. Was the liberation of four million slaves and the preservation of the Union worth the cost? That question too will probably never cease to be debated--but in 1865 few Black people and not many northerners doubted the answer."

This is year 3 of United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent

Oh hey, look what I found: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/w...

If ever there was a one volume history as comprehensive on anything--this is it! I feel this to be a truly monumental achievement for me to complete this book. As good as Ken Burns' documentary on the war was, this is easily more comprehensive a history. It is amazing to believe that this volume was made to serve as an introduction to the American Civil War, but that's what this is. If you are trying to understand why United States of America is the way it is right now you must know the history of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Much of the turbulence in the current American government can be traced back to a plurality of people in the United States still trying to grapple with the events of the 19th century. It took this book 200 pages to thoroughly explain what the Civil War was fought over, then the action begins.

James M. McPherson is THE preeminent historian on the American Civil War. He came of age, professionally, during the American Civil Rights Movement (which ironically coincided with the centenary of the Civil War). He and his colleagues were inspired by then-current events to re-evaluate all of the histories concerning the Civil War written since it ended and their scholarship has overturned much of the poison of the Dunning School/Lost Cause mythology (at least in the academies. I can say with disappointment that in the heart of many white southerners--even of my generation--the lie remains strong). I cannot wait to read his other books in the future.


This is the second book in a trilogy that I have given myself to read on America in the 19th century. The first book I read last year was The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism and the book that will conclude this particular project of mine is Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880. For now though, I will make like Grant after Appomattox and meditate quietly on events.

[robin friedman · Rating 4 out of 5]

McPherson's Illustrated Battle Cry Of Freedom

Professor James McPherson's "Battle Cry of Freedom" initially appeared in 1988 and received the Pulitzer Prize, together with great popular and critical acclaim, for its detailed single-volume study of the Civil War. In "The Illustrated Battle Cry of Freedom" (2003), Professor McPherson reformatted and edited his outstanding 1988 study. The major change to the book is the addition of many illustrations, which include photographs, portraits, paintings, cartoons, drawings, and maps from the Civil War era. To make room for the illustrations, about 20 percent of the original text was cut, and there are no footnotes or bibliography.

I read McPherson's original study well before I began reviewing. I also read this illustrated version shortly after its publication and found it too an excellent single-volume introduction to the Civil War. The illustrations enable the reader to see and to get the feel of the Civil War, its era, and its major protagonists in a way the printed word cannot capture. The photographs and the contemporary artwork, including drawings and paintings by the soldiers, are difficult to find in one place. I found they added a great deal to my understanding.

Apart from the illustrations, this book remains, as was the original version, a magisterial overview of the Civil War. The book weaves together descriptions of the military campaigns of the War with discussions of the sources of the conflict. It discusses in depth the differences between the North and the South in their conceptions of freedom and in their understanding of our country. McPherson covers the domestic fronts of the War, including both economic and social issues, in both North and South and also explains the efforts of both sides in the sphere of international relations. The book focuses on the change of the Civil War from a conflict to restore the Union to a total war to create a unified Nation. The climactic point of the story is President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation which made the abolition of slavery an irreducible element of the Union war effort.

McPherson describes eloquently how the Civil War effected a radical change in our country from a loose union of states to a united Nation. He discusses the changing concept of human freedom and liberty which emerged from the War and which remains evolving in our country to this day. The valor of the soldiers and civilians on both sides of the conflict is presented from the inside and with respect and reverence. McPherson shows the reader how and why the Civil War was the turning point in our Nation's history and encourages the reader to reflect and to explore further.

The loss of portions of the text is a pity, but it is compensated by the illustrations. Readers who wish to track down sources or explore further will need to consult the original edition for references. This book and the unabridged original are still the best sources to introduce the reader to the facts and significance of the American Civil War.

Robin Friedman

[CoachJim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era
by James M. McPherson

The late C. Vann Woodward in the Editor’s Introduction to this volume notes how unique this book is in that it is a one volume history of the Civil War. This becomes remarkable in that this is the longest of the ten Oxford History of the United States series, and also covers the shortest period of any of the volumes.

In this volume the author covers all the aspects of life and war. He deals with the politics, the culture, the economics, diplomacy by both the North and South, the varying goals of the war by both sides, the treatment of the POWs, and, of course, the military activities. For some one interested in an overall survey of the period this is an excellent source. For me this was the best of the 4 volumes I have read this year from this series.

The first 300 pages or so cover the antebellum period and based on the reading I have done this year of that period it is a good summary. The gradual divisions of the country are explored. This becomes a division between Jeffersons Republicanism and the new capitalist system practiced in the North. There is a the belief that Jeffersonian agrarianism was culturally superior to the Capitalism of the North. The South’s defense and rationalization of slavery is described. The South tries to compare the life of slaves on their plantations with the poor workers in Northern factories. This division becomes one of separate political parties, but eventually becomes a divide between the sections of the country. Here the leading question becomes the status of slavery in the new territories.

For someone interested in the battles of the Civil War this is probably not the book for you. Although all of the major battles are mentioned there is not much detail regarding the military aspects of the battles. For me once you have read about the thousands of corpses lying in the fields there is no reason for more battle descriptions. The horrific casualties were a result of military tactics not keeping up with modern weaponry. One of the reoccurring issues that is raised is the incompetence of the various military leaders — McClellan, Meade for the North, and Bragg, Pemberton and Hood for the South. Here it is hard to not blame McClellan and Meade for the horrific results of these battles. They had opportunities to bring the War to an end, but their lack of boldness missed those chances.

The industrialization of the North and the greater population gave the North an advantage that over time made a victory by the South unlikely. In discussing the failure of economy of the South it is quoted:

classical economists considered free labor more efficient than slave labor because the free worker is stimulated by the fear of want and the desire for betterment. A slave, wrote [Adam] Smith, “can have no other interest but to eat as much, and to labor as little as possible.”

Lincoln’s original reason for fighting the Civil War was to preserve the union, but as the military difficulties increased he began toying with the idea of an Emancipation Proclamation. His reasons had more to do with turning the tide of the war instead of freeing the slaves. But the Emancipation Proclamation unleashed a wave of racism in both the North and the South. The roots of racism in this country run deep, but they grew deeper during this period. In the South the Confederacy needed to keep the poor whites and the non-slaveowners loyal to the cause. They did this by convincing the poor whites that even though they were poor being white still made them superior to the slaves. In the North the idea of freed slaves competing for the jobs was used to scare the working class. This racism took on even worse forms when fears were spread of racial amalgamation. The 1864 Presidential election found the Democratic party using racism as its major platform.

As the difficulties grew for the South attempts to raise more men for the army faced its own States Rights problem. This led to internal conflicts which weakened the Confederacy. The individual Confederate states did not feel they were bound to the obey the policies of the Confederacy. Another interesting note here was that the one political party in the South allowed several members of their Congress to run as independents. This led to so many varied ideas that no unanimity was found. In the North the two party situation instilled some party discipline.

There is a chapter entitled “Fire in the Rear” which describes the civilian woes during the War. However, I found this chapter to be especially cluttered with statistics which detracted from the reading.

The Epilogue to this book was the most interesting to me. Here the question is discussed as to Why The South Lost. He mentions the “Lost Cause” mentality and the worship of Robert E. Lee. The author presents several reasons given by the South for the cause of their loss and then refutes each of them. Here he mentions the “Rich man’s war and the poor man’s fight”; An attitude in both the North and the South. He discusses the ability of the Republicans in the North to close ranks on the Democratic party’s obstruction. His main point is that many historians have ignored the “dimension of contingency”. There were numerous critical points during the war where things could have gone differently and drastically changed the course of the War. For example, the fall of Atlanta in the Fall of 1864 probably ensured Lincoln’s reelection.

His most interesting observation here was the amount of change this War brought to the Country. The more centralized National government vastly expanded its powers at the expense of the States. This paralleled a shift of political power from the South to the North. The change in the Country during the span of 4 years led many to feel like they were now living in a different country.

The challenges ahead that are described in many books about the Reconstruction await. I hope I can find some as interesting as this one.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

You might have taken a stab at reading Bruce Catton's or Shelby Foote's Civil War trilogies that are now gathering dust in prominent places on your bookshelves. Probably didn't get too far. In fact, at your last bookmark that cur General George McClellan is probably still dithering with the Union Army and saying rude things about President Lincoln. Your best bet in making sense of the Civil War is James. M. McPherson's one volume masterpiece, "Battle Cry of Freedom".

"Battle Cry" is the most comprehensive account of the Civil War there is. The first hundred or so pages takes the reader through the years at the beginning of our country when the slavery issue was put off to be dealt with at a later date. But expansion began with the Louisiana Purchase and slave owners wanted slavery to expand with it. This led to growing tension between the slave owning south and the industrial north and led to compromises in 1820 and 1850 that tried to keep the two sections balanced. But compromises did little to maintain harmony as anger rose between abolitionists in the North and secessionists in the South. When Lincoln was elected president in 1860, and with the firing on Fort Sumter, secessionists took their states out of the Union and declared war.

Lincoln's initial response was to fight to restore the Union. But after his Army of the Potomac was pummeled in battles in Virginia Lincoln began to look to the war in the West where U.S. Grant was winning many battles. Grant eventually took control of the Mississippi which was vital to the South for transport of supplies and troops. With the Mississippi gone the South's Confederate commander, Robert E. Lee who had been bedeviling the Army of the Potomac, thought that the best alternative was to bring the war to the North, win a decisive battle, and negotiate a peace. And he nearly pulled it off but he lost the battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania, the farthest North Lee was able to reach.

With Lee's retreat to Virginia the war was not over. There followed almost two more years of bloody fighting. But with success on the battlefield Lincoln was now able to frame the war as one of emancipation of the slaves and was able to introduce amendments to the constitution for the abolishing of slavery. Lincoln was able to do, almost alone, what the founding fathers were unable to do together. The founding fathers established a country of thirteen states with separate interests. But Lincoln established a nation.

If they still teach the Civil War in school (big if) "Battle Cry" is the perfect reference for any student doing a Civil War project. This is actually my second time reading it and one glaring omission I noticed this time around is there is very little written about Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. I think it is worth a paragraph or two because it is a masterpiece, a tribute to our war dead and to our nation. And a rededication to the principles that make our nation great. And to remember our freedoms.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read James McPherson's classic history of the Civil War era when I was in high school. At the time I had a pretty callow understanding of history; because of this, while I took a lot from McPherson's book, many of his arguments and details went largely unappreciated. In the years that followed his book remained on my shelf as a valued resource that I drew from, even as I moved on to more focused studies about the period. Recently, however, a friend's request brought me back to the book for my first cover-to-cover reading of it in decades. This proved an extremely interesting experience, for several reasons.

Foremost among them was the opportunity to learn the things I had missed the first time around. I credit this to my maturity, as I have a far greater range of interests than my 17-year-old self ever did. This helped give me a deeper appreciation for McPherson's book, as I saw the balance and nuance he displayed on the numerous topics he addressed. I also found myself admiring even more so the fluidity of McPherson's presentation of the era and his ability to range from topic to topic in a way that never weakened my engagement with the text.

Yet for all of the book's strengths and my increased admiration for them, I also saw flaws that I missed the first time through. Foremost among them is McPherson's scope, for as brilliantly as he covers the lead up to the Civil War and the war itself, this remains his predominant focus. Other subjects relevant to the era, such as cultural developments, are ignored so long as they are irrelevant to his focus, making his book less comprehensive than some of the others in the series. Another is the increasingly dated nature of the text. Unlike Robert Middlekauff with his volume on the Revolutionary era, McPherson has stated that he has little interest in updating his work. Though his decision is understandable in some respects, the absence of the considerable amount of Civil War historiography that has been published over the past three decades erodes its value and will continue to do so as time went along.

Because of this, I finished McPherson's book with an appreciation both renewed and more tempered than before. While it remains the single best book on its subject, it is one that is showing its age. I expect that I will turn to it again in the years to come, but when I do it will be an awareness that it no longer can serve as the solitary go-to source for understanding this pivotal era of American history.

[Max · Rating 5 out of 5]

Comprehensive, concise and well written, “Battle Cry of Freedom” digs deeply into the politics, economics and social attitudes leading up to the Civil War as well as giving a blow by blow accounting of the battles and their greater impact on the home front. Disparate economies pave the road to war as the North takes off with the transportation and industrial revolutions and the South remains a stagnant agrarian society dependent on slavery. McPherson highlights many points in the conflict where opportunities were missed or seized with dramatic consequences. He cuts through the mythical stereotypes of the generals. Lee and Jackson had their good days and their bad ones just as did Grant and Sherman.

The war’s legacies included progressive measures that could only be taken in the absence of the South: a national bank, a transcontinental railroad, land grant colleges, homesteading and of course emancipation. The economic ascendance of the country during and immediately after the war would have faced continuous challenge if compromise between North and South continued rather than a decisive war. The progressive unionist attitude of the North vs. the conservative states-rights attitude of the South still persists as the Tea Party and liberals continue the fight, hopefully without a war.

McPherson characterizes this disparity of views in his afterword in terms of Isaiah Berlin’s “Negative Liberty” and “Positive Liberty”. Negative Liberty encompasses the hands off position towards government to leave the individual free to do what he wants. Positive Liberty means the intervention of government to ensure that the rights of everyone are protected. Oddly, this characterization makes me think of Lewis Thomas’ book “The Lives of a Cell” which describes the role of cooperation between different organisms in nature to ensure their mutual success. The opposing view being that success in nature is primarily competitive often described as “survival of the fittest”. Certainly there is truth to both sides, but it seems to be an American trait to be strongly on one side or the other with little middle ground.

[MacWithBooksonMountains Marcus · Rating 2 out of 5]

After having managed, barely, to get halfway through James McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, I put the book aside in wonder. And, unfortunately, I don’t mean that in a favorable way.
Neither eloquent nor impartial, lacking any new hypotheses and perspectives, this work falls abysmally short of what one should expect from a Pulitzer Prize winner.
A dry read that is laced with sanctimonious regurgitation of political agendas that were made with hindsight many decades after the Civil War. McPherson portrays – if he does at all - the characters of the era (leading men and lower ranks alike) like long dried-up gingerbread men and to add insult to injury the majority of such characters are related to the Union. There is also noticeable “cherry-picking” involved in his scheme. Clearly, in such instances when he writes about notables that fought for the South, he selects the most infamous ones, and then spends his mediocre literary talent expanding - even carefully trotting out their most damning character flaws and recorded actions - of which there were many.
A less than sophisticated writing style one can forgive but should not a writer of a serious work of any history abstain from such subterfuge?

Most readers don’t seem to care and neither does the association awarding the Pulitzer Prize. At least, they did not in 1989. Well, the reasons completely elude me.
This is even more puzzling as there are infinitely better works out there like Shelby Foote’s equally eloquent and exhaustive Narrative of the Civil War though offering a somewhat narrower perspective does include intriguing new perspectives. Also much more neutral in tone is Controversies and Commanders: Dispatches from the Army of the Potomac by Stephen Sears. I get it, the writer is an educated, smart man but in this here case - who wrote this here book then?

[Ben Denison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Known as one of, if not the top book on the Civil War, I can agree with this sentiment. It’s definitely a great overview and flies through the war with all the specific battles. But it also does a great job of hitting all of the major and minor battles, players, and issues revolving around the war.

The war didn’t even start until around page 300 and so it covered the build up and issues around secession that caused all the division.

Overall, I’d call it a fairly even account, if not leaning slightly to the Union.

I had been splitting my reading pretty evenly between audiobooks, ebooks, and hardback , but this one I read much of it in the hardback while listening to the audiobook. And I loved it! It help keep me focused, not pulling away, getting distracted looking at the phone, or any other call, sound, distraction. Much more like that to come.

[Aaron Arnold · Rating 5 out of 5]

Widely acclaimed as the best single-volume history of the Civil War around, this is another entry in the Oxford History of the United States, which I am enjoying immensely. The preface had an interesting observation: though this book covers the shortest span of all the books in the series (albeit with some significant overlap), it's one of the longest books in the series. The Civil War is the most-written about period in American history simply because there's so much history in it, as it did more to turn a bunch of squabbling states into the United States than anything since 1789. McPherson doesn't even get to recounting the actual war until over a third of the way into the book as the country splits and splinters and tries and fails to resolve a vast number of contradictory pressures and choices about its future, and the Federalists' nightmares about factions turned into reality: Northerners vs. Southerns, those who wanted to settle the West vs. those who wanted to preserve the existing balance of the states, wets vs. dries, immigrants vs. nativists, Catholics vs. Protestants, tariff supporters vs. free traders, developers favoring Hamiltonian projects vs. laissez faire adherents, plantation owners vs. industrialists, rural folk vs. urban dwellers, Democrats vs. Whigs, Democrats vs. Know-Nothings, Democrats vs. Republicans, war hawks vs. doves, but most of all, slavery supporters vs. abolitionists.

It's a truism that in elementary school you learn that the Civil War was about slavery, in high school you learn that it was about states' rights, and that in college you learn that actually it was still really about slavery. McPherson completely demolishes the idea that it could have possibly been about anything other than the South's "peculiar institution" - slavery was the bedrock of the South's economy, the keystone of its social structure, and the altar on which they convinced themselves that they were the highest, most advanced civilization on Earth. McPherson somehow works that discussion smoothly into the book among a million other things, from advanced demographic analysis (like his eye-opening mythbusting of the "rich man's war, poor man's fight" canard), to the background political scheming that Lincoln had to overcome, to the shockingly large tolls that disease and poor sanitation took on each army, to the massive economic chasm opening between the modernizing North and the magnolia-tinged South, and most especially, to the battles. You can't really be interested in this greatest of all American wars if you're not fascinated by the senseless, bloody, magnificent meetings between two of the mightiest armies of the 19th century, and McPherson seemingly covers every cavalry raid and clash of picket lines. It's an impressive feat, well-worthy of its 1988 Pulitzer Prize, and though it's rare to describe a book as being the last word on a subject, surely even rarer is the reader who finishes this masterwork unsatisfied.

[Ozymandias · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best overview I’ve ever read on the American Civil War. It’s been widely hailed as a classic, and rightly so. I’ve read multi-volume books (see the Foote trilogy) that couldn’t manage to get all the nuance this book managed in one. What makes it so good? It covers everything! From the war’s origins through espionage through naval war through tactics and strategy to political structure to racial prejudice to imperialism to economics to... etc.

One part of what makes the book readable instead of just insightful is the way that it’s organized. The book has good use of chapters on several thematic topics arranged where it’s chronologically appropriate. For example, the chapter on fiscal policies appears amid discussion of military events in early 1862 when both sides were coming to consensuses on the issues. And the discussion of naval warfare fits into the discussion of late 1861 when the blockade runners and the Confederacy’s campaign to get British intervention was most active. The fact that the chapter then continues on into the Monitor/Merrimack fight of 1862 and indeed summarizes the situation of the navy for the rest of the war doesn’t really get ahead of the main narrative because it’s an isolated subject. Vital, but isolated.

I really appreciated the division and focus on how much attention to give each area. It shows the balance of the war pretty well. It’s not just a string of Southern triumphs until Grant takes charge and teaches the Army of the Potomac to fight. The war hung by a thread the whole time. Even the generalization that the South was mainly dominant until Gettysburg reflects an unjustly eastern perspective. The West was really the decisive theater of the war and it had been moving erratically in a Union direction the whole time. That’s where the Confederacy was split in two and Sherman led his army through Georgia to the sea to envelope the eastern theater from behind. But what shines out the strongest was how important Grant’s (and Lincoln’s) strategy was to success: attack on all fronts simultaneously so the outnumbered South couldn’t move around reinforcements. Grand strategy was what won the war.

Probably the best thing about this book though is how effectively it demolishes the whole “Lost Cause” narrative that dominates so many of the popular and therefore accessible accounts: that the war was initiated by a few radicals (mainly abolitionists who wrongly opposed white supremacy) and was fought over the question of State’s Rights. What state’s rights? They never say. And McPherson is blunt in calling them out on it. The state’s right they were defending was slavery, and they wanted to defend it (ironically) by violating Northern states’ rights by gaining federal recognition for slavery nationwide. In short, the cause of the war was that the North wanted to prevent the expansion of slavery and the South would accept nothing less than its legality across all states in the union. Including the free states of the north. Inasmuch as there was a second most important issue it was white supremacy. A poor Southerner would never be able to afford his own slaves, but at least he was superior to a n*gger. And yes, that’s exactly how they put it. Alexander Stephens (VP of the Confederacy) gave a whole speech about the superior moral and economic virtue of slavery: it kept the childish, unmanageable blacks under control and working for the benefit of white men who thereby gained the leisure for the worthy cultural pursuits that made them the superior race.

This book isn’t revisionist history, rather it’s an attack on decades of revisionist historians from the South who sought to give the Lost Cause some luster while justifying the continued oppression of their African-American population (Stephens himself changed his argument after the war and declared it had all been for state’s rights). And Northern historians were equally complicit in gaslighting everyone and promoting the cause of white supremacy, even if it meant ignoring quite literally everything said by any Southern politician before and during the war. To put it simply, from the 1890s through 1950s racial inequality was not seen as a real problem as it didn’t affect true Americans. After the Civil Rights Movement in the ’60s this changed dramatically. Once you decide that black lives do matter and white supremacy isn’t good or even neutral policy it really changes the way you look at the Civil War. And this book reflects that change in viewpoint.

The obvious implications of the “Lost Cause” narrative are plain, but there are a lot of subsidiary ones that are equally distorted. I had never, for example, questioned that the South was the real underdog in the war. The North had all the industry, railroads, and manpower so naturally they could overpower the South through force of numbers if not held back by brilliant Southern generalship. But that’s a product of the South’s comforting effort to explain away defeat as a force of nature beyond their control (although it does make them look dumber for starting it). The North’s advantages were obvious, yet they took time to mobilize and weren’t necessarily decisive. Had Lincoln not managed to win broad support for his war aims this mobilization may never have happened. And the South had advantages too: a substantial number of talented generals, interior lines, a free labor source, and a monopoly on cotton that made them potentially attractive to European traders.

The North’s objective was also a lot harder. The South merely had to keep an army in the field and protect its core lands. The North had to invade hostile territory and fill it with garrisons to keep the population in line and protect vital infrastructure. Something that would go a long way to reducing Northern superiority in numbers. Just consider how many troops must have been kept from the fight because they were locked down garrisoning the coastal regions and Mississippi! If you look to European public opinion, Southern victory was considered inevitable well into 1863. Why? Because they knew from bitter experience how exceedingly difficult it was to hold such a large territory against the will of its inhabitants. Looking at the closest comparison, the American Revolution, it’s clear that subduing a dispersed population who didn’t want to be subdued was no easy feat. And had things gone only slightly differently that’s the “insurmountable” advantage we would have been taught about in school.

McPherson’s emphasis at all points is on contingency. The North’s industrial and manpower advantages ultimately prevailed because they were successful in battle. Their unified strategy across all fronts managed to capitalize on their advantages while exploiting real weaknesses in the South. This didn’t derive from any universal principle of superiority of resources. In fact, even when adopting this strategy they could have failed. As late as Fall 1864, with the tide moving inexorably in the Union's favor, the slowness of the advance and the desperate Confederate strikes northwards made it a very real possibility that McClellan would be elected president on his Copperhead (antiwar Democrat) platform. And that could easily have meant a Southern victory through a negotiated peace (certainly it would have meant the continuation of slavery and likely a further war down the road).

There’s a lot here I don’t have room to unpack. The book is, after all, very long and filled with facts. That it’s eminently readable as well is a true achievement. This should be the starting point for anyone interested in the Civil War.

[Marley · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE Civil War book. Many thanks to the blogging of Ta-Nehisi Coates to teach me this fact. Reads like Greek myth or Shakespearian tragedy, but with incredible footnotes. And with an unbelievably good first 300 pages about the politics that made war inevitable, and which includes evidence that demolishes the idea that some unsullied struggle for "states' rights" was what spawned the secession.

All I can think about now is who would play Grant in the movie, and how much of a dick McClellan was, and how incredibly lucky we were that Sherman took Atlanta in time, and all the little amazing bits about how the South wanted to conquer Cuba or how the Crater exploded and all those men charged straight into a smoldering hole in the planet, or Bleeding Kansas or John Brown awaiting execution and feeling sanctified.

Or the glorious terrible revelation as the Confederacy comes crashing down that they got so desperate for about 2 months to try enlisting black soldiers and maybe or maybe not promising them freedom, but tearing each other apart over it because "our whole theory of slavery is wrong" if these men can fight, and because they themselves realized there was no reason to be a rebel if you lost the awful thing you rebelled for.

AMAZING.

[Creighton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'd like to dedicate this review to my great-great-great uncles Jehu (confederate soldier, he died from wounds in 1863) and Joseph Norman (died in 1862), both of whom died in the war, fighting brother against brother.

James McPherson’s book The Battle Cry of Freedom, is a great book that covers the whole conflict known as the American Civil War. His book skillfully takes various events and important factors, and combines them together to write a book that I think everyone who is interested in the conflict should read. I would venture to argue this is one of the best examples of a perfect history book. It starts explaining the antebellum situation, discussing events, and the lead up to the war itself. When the author begins writing about the war, he doesn’t just write about the campaigns, but in-between and in the same chapters as the campaigns, he discusses events or happenings that were relevant to the situation that were on the home front. He discussed the diplomatic, and economic situation of the conflict, which I give him props for, because I learned a great deal there.

Reading this was an interesting journey, as I think our nation is still reeling from the effects of the war today. My wish is that we can come to some compromise where we can call out the vileness of slavery, but highlight the heroic deeds of many southern soldiers who fought for their beliefs.

I will definitely use this book to look back at certain aspects of the war, and I would re-read it again.
I have read quite a few civil war books, so a lot of these battles I am familiar with, along with the events. I consider myself a civil war buff, and I would like to never stop reading whatever books are written on the conflict.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

McPherson's book is a wonderful history of the Civil War. He begins by setting the scene describing what was happening politically, culturally, and socially in the United States before the war began. Using this same wide scope he takes readers through the war years, through the end of the war, and Lincoln's death.

I had not read anything about the Civil War since my college American History survey and so I learned a great deal. Although it took me a longtime to read this book, it wasn't because I wasn't enjoying the roll of history. Death pervades the book. I remember reading that more Americans died in the Civil War than in all other American wars combined and now I know why. After every conflict the number of the dead was in the thousands. Many more died from disease and hunger. So, I needed a break from this book to read something else from time to time.

Until I read this book, I did not know that Lincoln feared that he would not be elected to a second term as President and that members of his own party were against him. I assumed that Lincoln always enjoyed the well deserved status that his reputation enjoys today.

McPherson's book has shown me how much more there is to read and understand about one of the most important events in our nations' history. I found a Pulitzer Prize winning biography of President Grant and of course Team of Rivals has been on my nightstand forever, and the new biography of Seward all look like wonderful avenues to keep expanding my knowledge.