I have a few answers.įirst, for Americans, the human cost of the Civil War was by far the most devastating in our history. As a beneficiary of this popular interest in the Civil War, I am often asked to explain what accounts for it-in particular, to explain why my own recent contribution to the literature on the war and its causes, Battle Cry of Freedom, was on national best-seller lists for several months as a hardcover book in 1988 and again as a paperback in 1989. It’s not the buffs who buy it’s the general public, from high school kids to retired people.”Īlthough we are approaching the end of the 125th-anniversary commemorations of Civil War events, the boom shows no signs of fading. “For the last two years,” he said in 1988, “Civil War books have been flying out of here. Many bookstore owners echo the words of Jim Lawson, general manager of the Book ‘N Card shop in Falls Church, Virginia. Nearly every month a new Civil War book is offered by the History Book Club or the Book-of-the-Month Club, often as the main selection. In recent years some eight hundred titles, many of them reprints of out-of-print works, have come off the presses annually. More than fifty thousand separate books or pamphlets on the war have been published since the guns ceased firing 125 years ago. Another two hundred and fifty thousand Americans describe themselves as Civil War buffs or “hobbyists” and belong to one of the hundreds of Civil War round tables or societies, subscribe to at least one of the half-dozen magazines devoted to Civil War history, or buy and sell Civil War memorabilia.Ībove all, Americans buy books on the Civil War. More than forty thousand Civil War reenactors spend hundreds of dollars each on replica weapons, uniforms, and equipment many of them travel thousands of miles to help restage Civil War battles. Millions of visitors come to Vicksburg and to more than a dozen other Civil War national battlefield and millitary parks every year. This authoritative volume makes sense of that vast and confusing "second American Revolution" we call the Civil War, a war that transformed a nation and expanded our heritage of liberty."Americans just can’t get enough of the Civil War.” So says a man who should know, Terry Winschel, historian of the Vicksburg National Military Park. This "new birth of freedom," as Lincoln called it, constitutes the proudest legacy of America's bloodiest conflict. Eventually, the North had to grapple with the underlying cause of the war-slavery-and adopt a policy of emancipation as a second war aim. The book's title refers to the sentiments that informed both the Northern and Southern views of the conflict: the South seceded in the name of that freedom of self-determination and self-government for which their fathers had fought in 1776, while the North stood fast in defense of the Union founded by those fathers as the bulwark of American liberty. Particularly notable are McPherson's new views on such matters as the slavery expansion issue in the 1850s, the origins of the Republican Party, the causes of secession, internal dissent and anti-war opposition in the North and the South, and the reasons for the Union's victory. Packed with drama and analytical insight, the book vividly recounts the momentous episodes that preceded the Civil War-the Dred Scott decision, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry-and then moves into a masterful chronicle of the war itself-the battles, the strategic maneuvering on both sides, the politics, and the personalities. James McPherson's fast-paced narrative fully integrates the political, social, and military events that crowded the two decades from the outbreak of one war in Mexico to the ending of another at Appomattox.
BookPage Featured Titles: June 2022 Issueįilled with fresh interpretations and information, puncturing old myths and challenging new ones, Battle Cry of Freedom will unquestionably become the standard one-volume history of the Civil War.
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