Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era by James M. McPherson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


What a great history of the Civil War and the politics that surrounded the era. My understanding of the time period has increased immensely now that I have finished this book.



Typically we’re taught in school that the North won the war over a belligerent South and not much more. After all, the winners write the history books so this makes sense. What we aren’t taught is how close the South came to possibly winning this war had some events gone another way. The South’s loss of Stonewall Jackson at the height of the conflict and a failure to send competent generals to the Confederacy’s west largely sealed the rebels’ fate.



Lee certainly was a military genius and “Battle Cry for Freedom” tells us why. At the beginning of the war the North was plagued with incompetent generals content with assuming a defensive position and Lee was able to exploit that in the east until the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863.



The war did abolish slavery upon its conclusion but much more came out of this darkest time in American history: federal power consolidated and touched the average citizen for the first time ever. No longer are we a group of “United States” as we were before the war but a “United States” nation where the federal government trumps the fifty states.

I can’t recommend this book highly enough as an excellent account of the events that led up to the Civil War, the war itself, and the implications of the war.



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