Lee, the book doesn't paint him out as any monster, but a many who was a hero in the Mexican War, and himself was against the idea of slavery. After all the hullabalooh about Robert E. There are some great outlines of the generals of Ulysses Grant and Robert E. The launch of the rifle resulted in a major increase in casualties with old school tactics. I would say I lost some interest when the war began, as the book goes into considerable detail on the battles and the significant escalation in the amount of casualties as battles progressed.
BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM AMAZON FREE
It is quite interesting that Democratic voters, particularly the Irish contingent, were very reluctant to the join the fight to free southern slaves (the Irish were afraid cheap labour would then flood the north and deprive them of work). The increasing casualties and the decision (need) to enlist black soldiers fully swung the war that way. Although Lincoln, and many of his soldiers, did not think the war was about that, in essence the matter was inescapable. Soon after the war begins, the freeing of slaves from Confederate territory is really what settles the context of the war. However, it seems quite clear that is about the freedom to have slaves or not. McPherson tries to be sympathetic to the Confederate view that the war was not about slavery but rather freedom (indeed one must ask the question if Battle Cry for Freedom does actually allude to both sides).
States wanted to secede from the Union and not be beholden to the whims of Washington DC. The rise of the Lincoln and the newly formed Republican Party put the south on edge, with their principles, rather than policies, of being anti-slavery. That swing the balance towards a Union where there were more slave states than non. McPherson makes the excellent point that the expansion of the "Union" south and westwards swallowed up new slave states. The first 300 pages of the book are the best in my opinion, where McPherson draws a magnificent line between the end of the Mexican War in 1848 and the first shots of the Civil War (some papers referenced as early as 1851 "first shots of Civil War at Christiana"). I finally settled on Battle Cry For Freedom by James McPherson and am entirely satisfied with the book - it is a brilliant summation of the economic, political and military details before and during the war. Trawling through the masses of Civil War books, it became difficult to choose one alone.
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. This "new birth of freedom," as Lincoln called it, constitutes the proudest legacy of America's bloodiest conflict. 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. 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.
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. 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. 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. 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.
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