But history, real history, is everything that has gone into shaping "now" - that infinitesimally short span of time, that temporal singularity in which our consciousness resides. Many people still think of "history" as something that by definition happened a long time ago remote, dusty and boring. The present becomes history in the blink of an eye. It deserves it's place near the top of any "must read" list on the American Civil War. It's a superbly written book too, highly readable. The book ends quickly with a mentioning of the dispatch of Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth, unimpressed by black people gaining citizenship.Īs much as I would like a slightly abridged version, this book has bucket loads of information for anyone interested in the many aspects of the Civil War. The second half of the book largely follows the armies around on horseback for the war. Lincoln actually gets surprisingly little personal coverage in the book, nor indeed is there a huge amount of politics. The cotton industry collapsed, of which it had little else, as most of its machinery etc was made in the north. The south suffered terrible inflation, with huge shortages of much needed salt in particular. The complicated relationship between the south and Britain is well told. The blockades of southern ports by the superior naval capabilities of the north choked the south. There is also a huge amount of economic detail in the book that made it clear the south could never win, both in terms of financial, technological capabilities and manpower. In fact, he wished to grant freedom to any slave who would take up arms in the Confederate army (which never came to pass). 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.
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