![]() He used as his "data base" hundreds of letters and diaries written by soldiers, from both the Union and Confederate ranks. James McPherson is an eminent historian, who has written some classics, such as "Battle Cry of Freedom." This is a slender volume (part of a larger research project and the basis for a lecture) that is based on an interesting thesis: that soldiers, both north and south, fought to a considerable extent for ideology, and not solely as brothers in arms with other troops, for ideals of manhood, for the notions of honor and duty, and so on. The result is both an impressive scholarly tour de force and a lively, highly accessible account of the sentiments of both Northern and Southern soldiers during the national trauma of the Civil War. In What They Fought For, McPherson takes individual voices and places them in the great and terrible choir of a country divided against itself. Living only eighty years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Civil War soldiers felt the legacy and responsibility entrusted to them by the Founding Fathers to preserve fragile democracy-be it through secession or union-as something worth dying for. Their insights show how deeply felt and strongly held their convictions were and reveal far more careful thought on the ideological issues of the war than has previously been thought to be true. In their letters home and their diaries-neither of which were subject to censorship-these men were able to comment, in writing, on a wide variety of issues connected with their war experience. His conclusion that most of them felt a keen sense of patriotic and ideological commitment counters the prevailing belief that Civil War soldiers had little or no idea of what they were fighting for. In an exceptional and highly original Civil War analysis, McPherson draws on the letters and diaries of nearly one thousand Union and Confederate soldiers, giving voice to the very men who risked their lives in the conflict. With What They Fought For, he focuses his considerable talents on what motivated the individual soldier to fight. McPherson presented a fascinating, concise general history of the defining American 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.In Battle Cry Of Freedom, James M. ![]() 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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