Battle Cry Of Freedom: The Civil War Era (2003) - Plot & Excerpts
I was at Gettysburg yesterday and decided to purchase a copy since I have only a grade-school knowledge of the war.In "Battle Cry of Freedom", the author does an excellent job portraying the views of all sides and tracing the American Civil War back to General Scott's victory over Mexico 25 years earlier. While slavery was always an issue in America, after the Revolution many felt it would eventually wither on the vine. The constitution prohibited the slave trade after a few years, many northern states outlawed slavery within their borders, and with the coming industrial revolution, slavery was seen as inefficient and costly. With Scott's victory, however, the land available for slavery increased dramatically. When this land increased, the fighting between regions in Congress increased as well.Here is where this book is so different from most books on this topic. "Battle Cry of Freedom" goes into detail about many possible routes history could have taken. The author discusses southern attempts to invade Cuba, a former doctor/lawyer who recruited men to take over Nicaragua and individual invasions of Baja, California. The South felt that these expansions would create more land where slaves could be held and would have the added bonus of preventing war within our borders while we fought nations outside of them. Indeed, but for a corrupt offical who wanted a bribe before he would consider selling Cuba, we might have purchased Cuba from Spain 160 years ago."Battle Cry of Freedom" also discussed many other facts, not found in most Civil War books. I particularly liked the discussion of foreign policy of the Union and the Confederacy. Both "countries" focused their attention on England and France. I never knew how close England or France came to recognizing the Confederacy. Lincoln did. He actually changed battle plans at least once to prevent France from recognizing the Confederacy.The author also does a good job discussing how, as the war progressed, the aims of both sides changed. The south armed freed slaves and trained them as soldiers. Soldiers quit, in droves, when Lincoln proposed freeing the slaves in rebelling states. Soldiers were also aloud to quit at the end of their enlistments, which ran for three years. I never knew that soldiers could quit in the middle of the war, on the eve of victory.Confederate states did claim the right to secede, but no state claimed to be seceding for that right. In fact, Confederates opposed states’ rights — that is, the right of Northern states not to support slavery.If the South fought for States' rights, especially states' right to secede, why did the Confederate Constitution establish a government as centralized as (and virtually identical to) the US government? Southerners complained about a strong federal government, but praised that government when it made the Dred Scott ruling, which, was, duh, about slavery.Confederate Vice President Stephens plainly asserted in March 1861 that the “present revolution,” which had brought about the creation of the Confederate States of America, “is founded … on the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first in the history of the world based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”The legal argument against secession is straight-forward. Beyond the simple fact that most countries don’t provide for their own dissolution at the outset, the Constitution is not silent on the use of force by the federal government. Article I Section 8 clearly grants Congress the power to put down insurrections, as the South was well aware. As recently as 1859, that power had been used by then-Union colonel Robert E. Lee to put down John Brown’s mindless and bloody raid on Harpers Ferry.Because Confederate-secession defenders will not typically make arguments in favor of chattel slavery, they rely instead on the assumption that secession is an unbounded right and thus a state may leave a country for whatever reason it chooses. To accept this premise, one has to bypass moral judgment on the cause of secession, yet affirmatively assign a morality to secession as a matter of preferred political procedure—in common parlance as “states’ rights.” This turns the assumption of individual rights on its head, if the federalist procedure is to supersede the right of exit of any group or individual within that state, as the Confederacy’s slave economy unquestionably did. Many Southerners deny that slavery was not what motivated the South because it affected only 6% of the population. But this is lunacy. First, the "issue" here is, clearly, Negro slavery. According to the 1860 census the total population of the seceding states was about 9.5 million and of these about 3.5 million (or almost 40 percent) were Negro slaves. (The, oft quoted, figures of 4 million slaves in a population of 11 million would include the non-seceding slave states.) In South Carolina alone the Negro slave population was 57 percent and in Mississippi the Negro slave population was 55 percent. Clearly, the 6 percent figure is not just wrong, but a lie. Neo-Confederates say they were only considering the white population and Negro slaves were only property and didn't count (except for the 3/5 rule in the US Congress.) But this would be hypocritical (surprise!) since many Confederate apologists expends a great deal of effort extolling Black Confederate combatants and how much the black population supported the South against those terrible Yankees. The 6 percent figure is determined by playing a slight of hand game with numbers. The (unbiased) census authorities of 1860 were astute enough to consider families rather than just individuals. You see, in a family of husband, wife, several children, and occasional family hangers-on, all benefit from the property, but only the husband (usually) owns the slaves. So, in a family of 5 or 6 only one person gets credit for ownership (i.e., legal ownership). Combine this with the 6% (fantasy) figure and you compute that approximately 30% to 40% of the population owned slaves; a percentage compatible with the census figures. One can't help but notice this little accounting trick.As an aside: that most soldiers of the Confederacy didn’t have slaves or think they were fighting to preserve slavery is non sequitur. The argument against the South’s actions in the Civil War has nothing to do with the motivations of its soldiers. The blame lies with the actions of the political elite. There are many Americans who went to fight and die in Vietnam who thought they were fighting for the preservation of liberty—when, in fact, they were fighting on an arbitrary side in a civil war that had nothing to do with the United States or its way of life. (That communism makes people less free is a truism, but I’m less convinced the people of Vietnam were better off with civilians subject to napalm attacks and a million war dead during American operations than they were under Ho Chi Minh and the more open style of communism that has defined Vietnam in the five decades hence.) It’s remarkably sad that so many died for a lie, but that doesn’t change the essence of the lie.If the cause of the Civil War was not slavery, what was it? If you can name something, and show that it has NO connection to slavery, then you win. But of course, you can't do this, because slavery was at the heart of everything during the sectional crisis. Westward expansion was about slavery. Bleeding Kansas was about slavery. So called "States' Rights" is really just another way of saying "The Right to Own Slaves," because what other "rights" did the South have to maintain that were so different than the North? None.Think about this: What about Lincoln's election so terrified the South? Did Lincoln threaten to take away southern land? No. Did Lincoln threaten to shut down southern manufacturing? No. Did Lincoln threaten to take away southern livestock? Did he threaten to dismantle the southern court system? No. No, what was the one thing, the one single cornerstone of southern society (and the one thing that seperated the South from the North) that seemed to be at stake with the election of Abraham Lincoln? Yep, slavery."Northern Aggression"? Please. If you pre-emptively seceded before Lincoln was even inaugurated, encouraged other people to join you in open rebellion, fired the first shot, and then refused his personal offer to send representatives back to Congress to work out your disputes like sane adults, calling it a War of Northern AGGRESSION is simply missing the point.If you still don't think slavery was the single root cause of the Civil War, answer this: could there have been a Civil War without slavery? No. Because if you take slavery out of the equation, than you take away the root that connects every other minor branch of supposed reasons for the outbreak of war, from "States Rights" to the "Southern Way of Life," ie: the slaveholding way of life. If you are still ignorant to the basic truth, consider this famous quote from Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederacy, from a speech he delivered in Savannah, Georgia, on March 21, 1861. Quote: "The new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions-African slavery as it exists among us-the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the 'rock upon which the old Union would split.' He was right."Abraham Lincoln stated that if he could save the Union by freeing no slaves, he would do that, if he could save it by freeing all, he would do that, or if he could save the Union by freeing some and not others, he would do that as well. This is not a statement of his feeling about the black race, as so many wish to ascribe to it, but a statement reflecting his priorities and his understanding of the limits of his Presidential powers.1) His priority was to save the Union, over abolishing slavery.2) He believed (and correctly I feel) that the Office of President did not have the power to simply abolish slavery by Executive Order.Who cares if some southern generals did not own slaves while some northern generals did? The soldiers didn't start the war - the Southern politicians who relied on slavery for their economic well-being did.And yes, some northern robber barons grew very rich from the slave trade, but most northern profits on slavery were ended by the federal governments ban on it in 1808 (over Southern objections). Besides, the northern economy did not rely on slavery; the southern economy did. And northern popular sentiment was overwhelmingly anti-slavery, while southern sentiment was not.Issues regarding Ft. Sumter are readily determined by first reading the US Constitution that grants ownership of forts and related property to the Federal government as well as extraterritoriality. The issue then becomes one of illegal seizure of property by South Carolina. It's also worth recalling that the first shots on Fort Sumter were fired on 12 January 1861, two months before Lincoln was inagurated as President. The decision to hold Ft. Sumter was taken at that time by the Buchanan presidency (in an amazing display of backbone).During the nadir of post-civil-war race relations – the terrible years after 1890 when town after town across the North became all-white “sundown towns” and state after state across the South prevented African Americans from voting – “anything but slavery” explanations of the Civil War gained traction. To this day Confederate sympathizers successfully float this false claim, along with their preferred name for the conflict: the War Between the States. At the infamous Secession Ball in South Carolina, hosted in December by the Sons of Confederate Veterans, “the main reasons for secession were portrayed as high tariffs and Northern states using Southern tax money to build their own infrastructure,” The Washington Post reported.These explanations are patently false. High tariffs had prompted the Nullification Crisis in 1831-33, when, after South Carolina demanded the right to nullify federal laws or secede in protest, President Andrew Jackson threatened force. No state joined the movement, and South Carolina backed down. Tariffs were not an issue in 1860, and Southern states said nothing about them. Why would they? Southerners had written the tariff of 1857, under which the nation was functioning. Its rates were lower than at any point since 1816.And the war was not provoked by Lincoln. Not really. From Day One, Confederacy was an assault on the United States, and did many things to provoke and start, then formally declared war on the United States. From Day One secessionists began to unlawfully seize dozens of Federal properties (i.e., forts, armories, ships, arsenals, mints, etc.), often even before they formally declared secession. At the same time, they illegally threatened, imprisoned and fired on Federal officials -- for example, the ship Star of the West attempting to resupply Fort Sumter in January 1861 -- then launched a major assault to force Sumter's surrender, while offering military support for secessionist forces in a Union state (Missouri). And all of that was before formally declaring war on the United States.One author of some forgettable Lost Cause book uses a tired argument when he states, "In withdrawing from the Union, they [secessionists] simply removed themselves from a government they did not want." False. The South wanted to remove itself from the men who had been constitutionally elected to run the government. The government itself was not the issue, and they proved it by forming a nation virtually identical to the one they left.Over and over this book surprised me with little facts which I never knew. This is this book's great strength, and part of its weakness. In a way, there is almost too much here. If you read any particular chapter I think you will find that it is well written and interesting. Together, however, not all the chapters flowed smoothly. The author will talk about the campaigns on the front in one chapter, and the talk about the peace movement in the next. By necessity, he would jump back and forward in time as he discussed these different issues. This can be confusing.While discussing Napoleon III McPherson includes some random French that he doesn't bother translating.But, yes, this was an awesome read.
James McPherson's Pulitzer winning work Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era is often referred to as being the best single volume account of the American Civil War*. This book is all it was cracked up to be. It exams the major causes leading up to the conflict and the war itself by exploring them from multiple angles. The book shifts smoothly from the bottom Union ranks to the presidential chair, from radical abolitionists to powerful slave holders. One of the main themes of the book is 'liberty', how it is defined by the major actors and how the definition changes toward the end of the war. McPherson points out that both sides were fighting for their version of liberty, what they felt were the right American traditions, and how they understood the Constitution of the Framers. However, the obvious truth is that part of the South's definition of liberty is the right to own slaves, and that was the right for which they were going to break apart the Union and go to war to defend.McPherson's narrative begins at the end of the Mexican-American War, where the nation is debating on what to do with the newly acquired territory and the slave issue moves to front and center. In this debate we see the close of a second generation of American leaders and the rise of third. The actors Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John C. Calhoun leave the stage after their last act and are replaced by the likes of William Seward, Salmon Chase, Stephan Douglas, and Jefferson Davis. Although his star would continue to rise, at the start of the 1850s Abraham Lincoln was but a minor and unimportant character.The debate heats up and in 1860 Lincoln is elected President but before he can even enter the office, states begin leaving the Union. McPherson points out that some historians have faulted President Lincoln for not taking the South's threat to secede seriously and failing to address it. McPherson continues to describe that view as seriously flawed. To McPherson, the only thing that Lincoln and the Republicans could do to satisfy the Southerners would be to disband and declare that slavery was a positive good.As the war begins the South has the good fortune to have great generals in their cause such as Robert E. Lee and Thomas 'Stonewall' Jackson. While the Union's best general, Winfield Scott, was a relic from another age. U.S. Grant, William T. Sherman, and Philip Sheridan would have to rise up through the ranks by the measure of skill and merit while the conflict was going on. The generals that Lincoln would start with, George McClellan and Joe Hooker, were not very good. Although McClellan thought of himself as the second coming of Napoleon and his fans agreed."But perhaps career had been too successful. He had never known, as Grant had, the despair of defeat or the humiliation of failure. He had never learned the lessons of adversity and humility. The adulation he experienced during the early weeks in Washington went to his head. McClellan's letters to his wife revealed the beginnings of a messiah complex."(p.359)The Civil War changed society more than anything since the American Revolution and maybe even more so. Although American Revolution changed things by making a bunch of British subjects American citizens and the Civil War saw everyone remain Americans, the long range changes seemed faster and greater."By the beginning of 1862 the impetus of war had evolved three shifting and overlapping Republican factions on the slavery question. The most dynamic and clear cut faction were the radicals, who accepted the abolitionist argument that emancipation could be achieved by exercise of the belligerent power to confiscate enemy property. On the other wing of the party a smaller number of conservatives hoped for the ultimate demise of bondage but preferred to see this happen by the voluntary action of slave states coupled with colonization abroad of the freed slaves. In the middle were the moderates, led by Lincoln, who shared the radicals' moral aversion to slavery but feared the racial consequences of wholesale emancipation. Events during the first half of 1862 pushed the moderates toward the radical position."(p.494)Lincoln would issue the Emancipation Proclamation that would free the slaves in the Confederacy and be the first major step to freeing the all the men and women who were slaves in United States of America. But it was only a step and a war measure, in order to permanently eradicate the 'particular institution' the U.S. Constitution needed to be amended. Lincoln would work to insure the passage of 13th Amendment in the Congress and send it to the states."Among the spectators who cheered and wept for joy when the House passed the 13th Amendment were many black people. Their presence was a visible symbol of revolutionary changes signified by the Amendment, for until 1864 Negros had not been allowed in congressional galleries. Blacks were also admitted to White House social functions for the first time in 1865, and Lincoln went out of his way to welcome Fredrick Douglass to the inaugural reception on March 4."(p.840)The Civil War would end for all practical purposes when Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox. There were other formalities, other armies that needed to surrender, but the long bloody conflict was over. There was a lot of work to be done and, unfortunately, Abraham Lincoln would not be there to lead it. John Wilkes Booth stole him from the nation. James McPherson does an incredible job bringing these events to life. If you want to know something about the Civil War this is a great place to start, for in the years since it was published it has made Civil War history buffs of many people.*Several book reviews, including Washington Post, New York Times, and L.A. Times, all use that term.
What do You think about Battle Cry Of Freedom: The Civil War Era (2003)?
Widely praised as the best single volume history of the American Civil War, James McPherson's `Battle Cry of Freedom' comes close, but does not quite live up to that high praise. It has many virtues to recommend it, yet it contains flaws that are closely related to its virtues which, to my mind, make it fall short of the admittedly arbitrary "best" status.The book's strength is in its inclusiveness. Sub titled `The Civil War Era'; it truly lives up to its 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. 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 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, however, is its continued insistence on emphasizing the importance of the issue of slavery. McPherson repeatedly points out that while the war was fought for Union, its primary and overriding cause was the slavery issue. Many historians downplay or avoid this issue as much as possible, as it causes controversy and resentment among a large subset of Civil War students who are committed to the myth that slavery was a wholly peripheral issue that had little or nothing to do with the war. Though many of these people may be well meaning and sincere, I believe this myth to be as historically odious and dangerous as the idea of Holocaust denial, and it is much more pervasive and widely believed than that latter myth. McPherson tackles this myth 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, however, 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. Though it falls just short of its billing as the best single volume history of the war (Fletcher Pratt's `A Short History of the Civil War: Ordeal By Fire' still holds that distinction), it should be considered absolutely essential reading for any Civil War scholar or anyone wishing to gain a full knowledge of this great American conflict. It has my recommendation.
—Theo Logos
McPherson has written a brilliant account of the American Civil War—the war that made the country what it is today. He discusses in clear, incisive detail the causes of the war, the military operations, the Soldiers, the leaders, and the political, economic, and social aspects of life in the Union and the Confederacy before and during the war. With many experts judging it to be the best one-volume history of the Civil War, it provides an excellent introduction to the most significant war fought by the American Army.
—Steve Sckenda
Yes, finally! This book took over two years for me to finish. It wasn’t due to the writing or content, it was I who would find an excuse to move on to the next great read. This may not make sense to some and may sound contradictory when I get to my review but the only thing that I can attribute it to is that this is not the only novel that I have read on the Great American Skirmish. Ok, that said, I decided in the last month to clear my reading list and get down to finishing this bad boy. Superb!!! In a nutshell, this is probably the best book you can read to get a great synopsis of the overall struggles from both factions. I am not an expert, that’s why I read these books, but this was very informative not only about the battles but the politics involved. I am not an American but I do live on the east coast and have always been interested on how this continent was founded. I have dragged my poor wife and kids on long afternoons during holidays to numerous battle sites and read I don’t know how many plaques. In meaning, I have physically traveled to a lot of the battles mentioned in this book but still found Mr. McPherson had lots of information that I had never heard before. An example; in the latter part of the war I found out that a peace initiative was conducted in the Niagara Falls region of Canada. Did not know that!This book was first published in the late 80’s so I will not get deep in a review about specifics of the book that has not already been brought up. I will add that I am in the majority in giving this volume of the over 15,000 books published about the American Civil War a definite 5 stars!
—Bernie Charbonneau
