_cover.jpg) First edition cover | |
| Author | James M. McPherson |
|---|---|
| Series | TheOxford History of the United States |
| Genre | Narrative history |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Publication date | February 25, 1988 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| Pages | 904 |
| ISBN | 978-0195038637 |
| Preceded by | What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 |
| Followed by | The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States During Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865–1896 |
Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era is a 1988 book on theAmerican Civil War, written byJames M. McPherson. It is the sixth volume of theOxford History of the United States series. An abridged, illustrated version was published in 2003.[1] The book won the 1989Pulitzer Prize for History.[2]
Battle Cry of Freedom is anarrative history[3] of two decades of thehistory of the United States from the outbreak of theMexican–American War to theCivil War's ending atAppomattox. 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. HistorianHugh 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."[4]
A central concern of this work is the multiple interpretations offreedom. In an interview, McPherson claimed: "Both sides in the Civil War professed to be fighting for the same 'freedoms' established by theAmerican Revolution and theConstitution their forefathers fought for in the Revolution—individual freedom,democracy, arepublican form of government,majority rule, freeelections, etc. For Southerners, the Revolution was a war of secession from the tyranny of theBritish 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."[5]
Battle Cry of Freedom was an immediate commercial and critical success, spending 16 weeks onThe New York Times hardcover bestseller list with an additional 12 weeks on the paperback list.[5] HistorianMark E. Neely Jr. praised the book's wide-ranging coverage, writing that in the book McPherson "seems equally interested in all aspects of the Civil War" including but not limited to diplomacy,inflation, legislation, medicine, military campaigns, andprisoner-of-war exchanges.[6] 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."[7] Michael P. Johnson regarded the book as an overarching synthesis of evidence that refutesWalt 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".[8]
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" fromArno Mayer.[9]Harold Hyman positively compared its compactness to Peter Parish'sAmerica's Civil War (1975), but criticized its misleading phraseology regardinggeographic 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 asslave marriage. However, he concluded readers "will nevertheless reap large rewards from its pages."[10] Writing forThe 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."[4]
Quotations related toJames M. McPherson at Wikiquote| Preceded by | Pulitzer Prize for History 1989 (shared withParting the Waters) | Succeeded by |
