If you want to know as much as your head can comfortably hold, and you do not want to read an entire shelf of your local library to do it, then this book is a must. But if the reader is willing to work his way through these chapters he finds that he will come out the wiser, and that the next chapter, perhaps one on the next military campaign, will be better understood in itself because the larger context has been appreciated.How James McPherson (no relation to the Union general of that name) was able to do this is nothing short of astonishing, a kind of scholarly and artistic legerdemain that allows so much to be packed into so short a space. There are periods, especially when delving into some of the voting and politicking, the changes of party affiliations, voting data, etc., that get somewhat tedious. Battle Cry of Freedom does what would appear to be the impossible: it includes virtually everything of consequence about the war and continues to hold the reader's interest. I took a chance on this book and now that I have finished it I have to say that it is all that I could have hoped for. To the contrary, the battles remain central and are accompanied by helpful maps. And this book did not give short shrift to the battles. Then I found this book: a single volume that encompasses the entire conflict from its military and political antecedents to the economic and sociological ingredients that forced the Union to enter into a war that would change forever the face of democracy. Plus I had to admit that it was the battles that interested me the most, and I despaired of having to read a separate book or two on each of the dozens of battles that are considered "major" during those four years. I had no desire to immerse myself in some three or four volume 2000-page work because, aside from believing myself unable to keep everything in perspective and not to get bogged down in minutiae, I reasoned that plain laziness and attention span problems would keep me from ever finishing anything like that. But I was daunted by the plethora of information on the American Civil War. I found that I wanted to know more about the circumstances surrounding that battle, the situation of the two armies, the generals, the politicians, and the state of the economies of the two sides engaged. I read this book after having read two other books on the Battle of Gettysburg. As such, it is vital reaading for anyone interested in the War and its effect on American History. What McPherson has done is place the great painting of the war in a proper frame to give one the whole picture. This fact often gets lost in the tales of epic battles, almost mythical generals and incredible sacrifice. McPherson would rather focus on why the North ans South decided to fight it out and once they did, how the war evolved slowly from an attempt to put down an insurrection to a holy quest to end slavery.No other period in American History has seen as many political changes of earthquake proportions as The Civil War. But there are countless other volumes by other authors available for those whose interest primarily lies with the shooting war itself. His descriptions of the battles themselves tend to be brief overviews rather than extensive studies. As a result, his book gives the war a proper context that is lacking in many other works. For example, McPherson spends nearly the first three hundred pages of the book on the events, political and otherwise, leading up to the firing on Fort Sumter. James McPherson's "Battle Cry of Freedom" is the best work on the politics of The Civil War available.
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