1988 history book by James M. McPherson
Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era is a 1988 book on the American Civil War, written by James M. McPherson. It is the sixth volume of the Oxford History of the United States series. An abridged, illustrated version of the book was published in 2003. It won the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for History.[1]
Content
Battle Cry of Freedom covers two decades, the period from the outbreak of the Mexican–American War to the Civil War's ending at Appomattox. Thus, it examined the Civil War era, not just the war, as it combined the social, military and political events of the period within a single narrative framework. Historian Hugh Brogan, reviewing the book, commends McPherson for initially describing "the republic at midcentury" as "a divided society, certainly, and a violent one, but not one in which so appalling a phenomenon as civil war is likely. So it must have seemed to most Americans at the time. Slowly, slowly the remote possibility became horrible actuality; and Mr. McPherson sees to it that it steals up on his readers in the same way."[2]
A central concern of this work is the multiple interpretations of freedom. In an interview, McPherson claimed: "Both sides in the Civil War professed to be fighting for the same 'freedoms' established by the American Revolution and the Constitution their forefathers fought for in the Revolution—individual freedom, democracy, a republican form of government, majority rule, free elections, etc. For Southerners, the Revolution was a war of secession from the tyranny of the British Empire, just as their war was a war of secession from Yankee tyranny. For Northerners, their fight was to sustain the government established by the Constitution with its guaranties of rights and liberties."[3]
Reception
Battle Cry of Freedom was an immediate commercial and critical success, an unexpected achievement for a 900-page narrative. It spent 16 weeks on The New York Times hardcover bestseller list with an additional 12 weeks on the paperback list.[3] Dudley T. Cornish cited the lack of naval history as the book's "only discernable flaw" and further commented by saying "the book's strongest connecting themes are the comprehensive discussions of diplomatic, economic, industrial, political, and social aspects of the nation's travail."[4] Michael P. Johnson regarded the book as an overarching synthesis of evidence that refutes Walt Whitman's claim that the war should primarily be understood from the perspective of the sufferers of battle. Johnson asserts that the book classifies the Civil War as revolving primarily around the politics of slavery, and he states that its title "invites the conceptual miscalculation: Victory = Freedom", this characterization being Johnson's main critique. Still, he praises it for being "as a narrative of wartime maneuvers-both political and military-[...] unsurpassed".[5]
Robert Franklin Durden noted McPherson as "in the nationalist tradition of [James Ford] Rhodes and [Allan] Nevins" and his borrowed view of southerners as "preemptive counterrevolutionaries" from Arno Mayer.[6] Harold Hyman positively compared its compactness to Peter Parish's America's Civil War (1975), but criticized its misleading phraseology regarding geographic mobility of wage earners, his use of "women of questionable virtue", "troop train" when referring to events in 1861, the exclusive riding prowess of "the sons of Virginia gentry", and including the greying of Robert E. Lee's beard instead of expanding on important issues such as slave marriage. However, he concluded readers "will nevertheless reap large rewards from its pages."[7] Writing for The New York Times, Brogan described it as "...the best one-volume treatment of its subject I have ever come across. It may actually be the best ever published."[2]
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