If he does not know what to make of the brilliant P. If he joins in the anti-Bragg chorus, he uses the best evidence to prove his point.

Johnston's brilliant defensive maneuvers in his retreat beforeAtlanta, he does put blame for ultimate failure in the West on the foolhardiness of John Bell Hood. The Confederate government's inability to find able generals to fight on so many fronts is also discussed carefully. Connelly's The Marble Man is almost worth the volume itself. His unraveling of the Lee legend through the use of Thomas L. The synthesis of many of the best recent works on the military struggle, which includes biography and military narrative, will please amateur and professional alike. Military accounts thus take up the majority of this work, exactly because of the author's abiding belief in their centrality to the entire period. Discounting many nonmilitary theories, McPherson maintains that the Confederates lost the war on the battlefield. Within these episodes, the reader is led through a series of civilian and military activities which ultimately explain why the North had to prevail. This study of the war is organized around four episodes: the 1862 summer of the South's discontent the North's rise to military ascendancy in the fall of 1862 the decisive turning point of summer and fall 1863 and the summer of 1864, which witnessed Southern success in delaying defeat, and then the ultimate crushing of the Southern armies and popular will after that long, hot summer. 858), Battle Cry of Freedom becomes a drama of missed opportunities and the relentless drive for conquest. Because he describes a 'dimension of contingency,' or 'the recognition that at numerous critical points during the war things might have gone altogether differently' (p.

The moving narrative mode is the book's major contribution. But to unite synthesis and thesis perhaps is more than his at times brilliant use of the evidence and his stylistic competence can deliver. In this volume in the Oxford History of the United States series, he has composed a thrilling and exciting narrative account for both an educated popular audience and his peers in the historical profession. McPherson has written a valuable one-volume synthesis of- and has offered an interesting thesis on-the American Civil War era. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:īOOK REVIEWS Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era.

Battlecry of freedom book