- #BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM BY JAMES M.MCPHERSON SERIES#
- #BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM BY JAMES M.MCPHERSON FREE#
He does quote from, and refer to, people on the Confederate side who weren't fighting for slavery, and people on the US side who weren't fighting to free the slaves. But alas, the author subscribes to the winner's view of history - that after all it was slavery, and really nothing else, that motivated southern secession and the War of Northern Aggression. Though this is a small book, I hoped for better from it.
#BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM BY JAMES M.MCPHERSON SERIES#
Those who attended this lecture series surely got their monies' worth! For an interesting effort to understand what the soliders, blue and gray fought for, this is a nice volume. In his Introduction, he observes that there were a range of motivations among soldiers, but that one emerged that surprised him-(pages 1-2) "This theme has emerged to greater importance r=than I expected when I began the project." He notes this thesis in juxtaposition to one common perspective, namely, that many soldiers had little or no idea what they were fighting for.Īmong the "causes" that soldiers said they were fighting for in their writings: liberty and independence (both Yankees and Rebs), to preserve what the Founding Fathers stated in 1776 (the Declaration of Independence) and what they fought for in the Revolution, and slavery (many Confederate troops in favor of the peculiar institution and many Union troops opposed to it-far more, apparently, than one might have guessed).Īll in all, given its brevity, a good little book. 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.
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