A review by lukescalone
Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, by James M. McPherson
4.0
South Carolina must be destroyed.
And so it was. As McPherson points out, the place that the Civil War began was effectively the place the War ended (ignoring Appomattox, where Robert E. Lee's armies did not stand a chance).
This book is dated. From my standpoint, the book misses out on critically important discussions that are important today but may not have been in the 1980s. Additionally, this book is actually two books. One book contained in here is the story of military tactics, generals, and the conduct of the war. The other book is a political history of the outbreak of the Civil War, political debates and contests, and legal processes. The latter book is subordinated in the interest of the former, and that's a damned shame because the actual conduct of battles are nowhere near as interesting as what occurred behind the scenes in both the Union and the Confederacy. At the same time, there is almost no discussion of social or cultural history here, and fascinating topics like the Constitutional Convention leading up to the passage of the 13th amendment are only given in bite-sized pieces. At least we learn plenty about the CSS Virginia and the USS Merrimack, I guess. I swear, if I have to read battlefield history of Shiloh or Antietam one more time, I'm going to shoot myself.
In McPherson's narrative, the war essentially began the moment with John Brown's heroic raid on Harper's Ferry. In the wake of outcry against John Brown's actions, it's a wonder that Abraham Lincoln managed to be elected president. In the wake of the Dred Scott decision, there was brought unrest about Lincoln's avowed policy of preventing the expansion of slavery into the territories, and his election pushed slaveowners to enact a virtual coup against the representative government of the United States. McPherson is clear here that the issue of slavery is why the Civil War started, and that brain-dead states-righters could not imagine a world without an institution that deprived the liberty of millions of people (more than half of the population of South Carolina, which was a cesspool of slaveholder treason).
The war proceeded here and there, sometimes the Union was successful--especially in the West--sometimes the Confederates were successful. There's some interesting discussion here about the wobbling of border states and pro-Union regions within the Confederacy--eastern Tennessee and the newly-formed state of West Virginia, in particular. There's some discussion of the start of Reconstruction in 1863, and there are also some interesting contrasts between Jefferson Davis and Lincoln. Lincoln was an outstanding wartime leader, Davis was a proto-fascist who was so deep in shit that it's a wonder that any gray matter existed between his ears. Black soldiers are given the respect that they deserve, as are prisoners of war.
For all intents and purposes, the war ended the moment that William Tecumseh Sherman's armies burned Atlanta. The march to the sea was, effectively, a cakewalk for Sherman's soldiers, and the campaign through South Carolina was a harder, but it ended in the complete and utter devastation of the South, as was absolutely and undeniably deserved. Lee didn't stand a chance, he knew that he'd be crushed should he be attacked on both sides, so he attempted to maneuver towards Tennessee. Lee's armies barely took their first steps before they were crushed by Ulysses S. Grant. And with that, Lee sued for peace. Davis fucked off to Texas, where he continued to rally against the Union, claiming that the war could still be won. Needless to say, Davis was an absolute clown.
I wish that McPherson spent much more time talking about women, the "homefront," and African Americans who weren't soldiers. These topics were already being discussed in the 1980s, although they were not yet in vogue. Failing to do so is a missed opportunity, and it may have been useful to add a bit more information on these topics in the 2004 edition. There's also a really interesting philosophical discussion in the Afterword about Southern conceptions of "negative liberty" and the way that the Union attempted to supplant it with "positive liberty." The shift toward positive liberty was arrested with the end of Reconstruction, and did not emerge again until Franklin Delano Roosevelt's administration and did not mature again until the Civil Rights Movement. I'm hoping that Richard White's subsequent volume covers this, as I crave more of it.
Needless to say, the only failure the Union had after the fall of Atlanta was that it did not smash the South hard enough. As a result, organizations like Daughters of the Confederacy and General Nathan Bedford Forrest's terrorist organization, the Ku Klux Klan, emerged and further transformed the South into a racist dystopia. I have no doubt that Confederate success would have devolved into military dictatorship and would have acted as a laboratory for testing out fascist policy in a North American context during the 20th century. Luckily, our universe managed to avoid that pathway.
In spite of all my complains, McPherson's book is riveting--a real page turner--and I enjoyed it on those grounds.
And so it was. As McPherson points out, the place that the Civil War began was effectively the place the War ended (ignoring Appomattox, where Robert E. Lee's armies did not stand a chance).
This book is dated. From my standpoint, the book misses out on critically important discussions that are important today but may not have been in the 1980s. Additionally, this book is actually two books. One book contained in here is the story of military tactics, generals, and the conduct of the war. The other book is a political history of the outbreak of the Civil War, political debates and contests, and legal processes. The latter book is subordinated in the interest of the former, and that's a damned shame because the actual conduct of battles are nowhere near as interesting as what occurred behind the scenes in both the Union and the Confederacy. At the same time, there is almost no discussion of social or cultural history here, and fascinating topics like the Constitutional Convention leading up to the passage of the 13th amendment are only given in bite-sized pieces. At least we learn plenty about the CSS Virginia and the USS Merrimack, I guess. I swear, if I have to read battlefield history of Shiloh or Antietam one more time, I'm going to shoot myself.
In McPherson's narrative, the war essentially began the moment with John Brown's heroic raid on Harper's Ferry. In the wake of outcry against John Brown's actions, it's a wonder that Abraham Lincoln managed to be elected president. In the wake of the Dred Scott decision, there was brought unrest about Lincoln's avowed policy of preventing the expansion of slavery into the territories, and his election pushed slaveowners to enact a virtual coup against the representative government of the United States. McPherson is clear here that the issue of slavery is why the Civil War started, and that brain-dead states-righters could not imagine a world without an institution that deprived the liberty of millions of people (more than half of the population of South Carolina, which was a cesspool of slaveholder treason).
The war proceeded here and there, sometimes the Union was successful--especially in the West--sometimes the Confederates were successful. There's some interesting discussion here about the wobbling of border states and pro-Union regions within the Confederacy--eastern Tennessee and the newly-formed state of West Virginia, in particular. There's some discussion of the start of Reconstruction in 1863, and there are also some interesting contrasts between Jefferson Davis and Lincoln. Lincoln was an outstanding wartime leader, Davis was a proto-fascist who was so deep in shit that it's a wonder that any gray matter existed between his ears. Black soldiers are given the respect that they deserve, as are prisoners of war.
For all intents and purposes, the war ended the moment that William Tecumseh Sherman's armies burned Atlanta. The march to the sea was, effectively, a cakewalk for Sherman's soldiers, and the campaign through South Carolina was a harder, but it ended in the complete and utter devastation of the South, as was absolutely and undeniably deserved. Lee didn't stand a chance, he knew that he'd be crushed should he be attacked on both sides, so he attempted to maneuver towards Tennessee. Lee's armies barely took their first steps before they were crushed by Ulysses S. Grant. And with that, Lee sued for peace. Davis fucked off to Texas, where he continued to rally against the Union, claiming that the war could still be won. Needless to say, Davis was an absolute clown.
I wish that McPherson spent much more time talking about women, the "homefront," and African Americans who weren't soldiers. These topics were already being discussed in the 1980s, although they were not yet in vogue. Failing to do so is a missed opportunity, and it may have been useful to add a bit more information on these topics in the 2004 edition. There's also a really interesting philosophical discussion in the Afterword about Southern conceptions of "negative liberty" and the way that the Union attempted to supplant it with "positive liberty." The shift toward positive liberty was arrested with the end of Reconstruction, and did not emerge again until Franklin Delano Roosevelt's administration and did not mature again until the Civil Rights Movement. I'm hoping that Richard White's subsequent volume covers this, as I crave more of it.
Needless to say, the only failure the Union had after the fall of Atlanta was that it did not smash the South hard enough. As a result, organizations like Daughters of the Confederacy and General Nathan Bedford Forrest's terrorist organization, the Ku Klux Klan, emerged and further transformed the South into a racist dystopia. I have no doubt that Confederate success would have devolved into military dictatorship and would have acted as a laboratory for testing out fascist policy in a North American context during the 20th century. Luckily, our universe managed to avoid that pathway.
In spite of all my complains, McPherson's book is riveting--a real page turner--and I enjoyed it on those grounds.