Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford History of the United States)
by James M. McPherson
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Book Summary Information
Author: James M. McPhersonBrand: Spring Arbor/Ingram
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2003-12-11
ISBN: 019516895X
Number of pages: 952
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Book Reviews of Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford History of the United States)
Book Review: A Masterpiece of Historiography
Summary: 5 Stars
"Battle Cry of Freedom" has been on my mental must read list for a few years. But, other commitments (mainly law school) prevented me from sitting down and reading too many books, especially a 867-page tome. But, now that I have a certain amount of free time on my hands, as well as a renewed interest in things historical, I finally got the chance to read it. In a word: MASTERPIECE.
I'm not going to dissect the books factual accuracy or McPherson's thesis and conclusions. That's for another time. (Since the book won the Pulitzer, the odds are good that all of that was done right; the copious footnotes and bibliographical material lend credence to that.)
The merits of the book are the issue, and they are many. First, despite its considerable length, McPherson's writing is brisk, crisp, and engrossing. The first chapter or so, which reviews the developments in the United States, north and south, leading up to the Civil War, specifically the impact of industrialization on the population of the country, can be a little slow. However, when McPherson begins to examine the relationship between the north and the south, particularly the split on the slavery issue, the books really takes off, and I had great difficulty in putting it down.
McPherson's prose is very vivid. His arguments for the inescapable import of slavery to the Civil War are abundant and persuasive. But they are balanced arguments, acknowledging the ambiguities of the issue, as he differentiates pure abolitionists from those who feared slavery's impact on the free-labor, and acknowledges that not all abolitionists particularly wanted the freed slaves to remain in the United States. He is also very honest about Lincoln's initial interest in preserving the Union, regardless of the slavery issue, and charts Lincoln's shift from this stance into an essentially abolitionist by necessity as the war progressed. He also details the subsequent schism in the Confederacy wherein slavery became hindrance to independence, and debate about conscripting blacks into the army (critiques by other reviewers that McPherson discounted this are incorrect).
McPherson is also pretty evenhanded in his discussion of the war itself. He takes time to discuss the political, social, and economic impacts on both sides of the war, creating a full picture of this horrible conflict. The names you know become a little more real: Lincoln, Davis, Grant, Lee, Sherman, Jackson are just that much more real to me. While McPherson doesn't spend a huge amount of ink examining these men, he gives us vital facts about their lives, and is quite content to allow their actions speak for them. His examination of those actions are frequently instructive.
While McPherson's main interest is the politics of the war, he is no slouch when it comes to examining the battlefield. Even in the dispassionate recounting that McPherson the historian provides does little to alleviate the horror of the war. McPherson paints a brutal picture of a country tearing itself apart, and the lives lost as a consequence.
The aspect of this book that impacted my world view was the acknowledgment that the country was different after the war. This is an obvious statement. But McPherson explains a point that I "knew" but never really thought about: the South represented, in McPherson's words, the mainstream of the world, that is, it had more in common with the majority of Europe. It was the North that was "radical". All in all, I find myself pleased that the radical view won out.
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Summary of Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford History of the United States)
Now featuring a new Afterword by the author, this handy paperback edition of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Battle Cry of Freedom is without question the definitive 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 including the Dred Scott decision, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry. From there it moves into a masterful chronicle of the war itself--the battles, the strategic maneuvering by each side, 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.
Published in 1988 to universal acclaim, this single-volume treatment of the Civil War quickly became recognized as the new standard in its field. James M. McPherson, who won the Pulitzer Prize for this book, impressively combines a brisk writing style with an admirable thoroughness. He covers the military aspects of the war in all of the necessary detail, and also provides a helpful framework describing the complex economic, political, and social forces behind the conflict. Perhaps more than any other book, this one belongs on the bookshelf of every Civil War buff.
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