Battle Cry of Freedom (book)

For 1862 song, see Battle Cry of Freedom.

Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era

First edition cover
Author	James M. McPherson
Series	Oxford History of the United States
Subject	U.S. history
Genre	Non-fiction
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 Long Crisis

Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era is a Pulitzer Prize-winning work of history published in 1988 by James M. McPherson. It was published as the sixth volume in the Oxford History of the United States series, though it was actually the second after only Robert Middlekauff's The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763–1789 preceded it.

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. One reviewer 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."

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."

Reception

The book 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. Writing for The New York Times, historian Hugh 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."

See also

• For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War

External links

• Quotations related to James M. McPherson at Wikiquote

Preceded by The Launching of Modern American Science, 1846–1876

Pulitzer Prize for History 1989 (shared with Parting the Waters)

Succeeded by In Our Image