Battle Cry of Freedom

 As Clauswitz famously declared, war is the continuation of politics by other means. The story told in “Battle Cry of Freedom” by James M. McPherson is dominated by the politics leading up to and continuing through the Civil War. Indeed, the story begins in 1848 and we read through 250 of the >800 pages before the assault on Fort Sumter is recounted.

Although the book is over 30 years old, the style is fresh and contemporary. While inevitable descriptions of key battles, replete with black and white maps showing troop movements described in the text, appear at key points in the narrative, the political as well as military circumstances leading up to the battle and the political as well as military consequences of their outcomes are well-integrated. I’m not much into military history, so I was glad to be spared the granular detail that I’ve encountered in other civil war histories.

My enthusiasm for reading history for pleasure really began when I read a couple of books by Barbara Tuchman, who ironically was not a trained historian. McPherson is a historian, but his style compares favorably with Tuchman. I’ve read numerous histories and biographies that cover the time period of Battle Cry of Freedom, but the perspective on offer here is distinct from those books, while recalling some of the events I’d read about before. McPherson is an engaging writer with a lively style littered with revealing quotations and anecdotes that color out the personalities of familiar and unfamiliar actors. I chose this book at a time when the phrase “civil war” was appearing frequently in the press, looking to gain insight into the politics that lead to an actual, you know, civil war in the US. I was not disappointed, and it gave me renewed confidence that this country can confront and defeat treason.