Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson **** (of 5)

Back in November 2017, John Kelly, President Trump's Chief of Staff, said “the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War.”  Ta-Nehisi posted an article in the Atlantic shortly thereafter, "Five Books to Make you Less Stupid About the Civil War."  Battle Cry of Freedom was top of the list.  With good reason.

Until the casualties of the Vietnam War were fully counted, the number killed by the Civil War, more than 600,000, was greater than all of America's wars combined. 

Kelly's wish that such a calamity could have been avoided is not unreasonable, but as the first third of McPherson's book makes unavoidably clear, the Civil War was fought over the South's insistence that enslaved blacks were property.  Southern owners of other human beings made clear that their property could only be taken by theft and even in such cases, southern owners had as much right to search for and regain their human property as they did when searching for stolen plows or buggies.

Among the many strengths of McPherson's single volume summary of the war is his infusion of  the political and economic forces battering Abraham Lincoln as he tried to reunite the country.  The economy of the south depended upon agricultural production that could only be profitable if it ran on the backs of enforced free labor.  Dependence on agriculture, moreover, meant the south did not have the industrial capacity to construct weaponry and supplies for its fighting men.  Additionally, a significant number of the men in the south were black and could not be armed, nor fully trusted if their masters were away fighting.  

In contrast, the Northern states were hot on the tail of England's industrial revolution with ample capacity to produce guns and uniforms (sometimes with cotton harvested by southern slaves.)  The North also had superior numbers, but greater reluctance to engage in a foreign war that had little bearing on their well-being.  In fact, for many new immigrants, like the Irish already at the bottom of the economic ladder, the prospect of freed blacks competing for their jobs was an abomination.  Lincoln had to appease a wide range of Republican perspectives in Congress making the war effort a political as much as military campaign.  Legislators had to respond to constituent desires as far afield as New York's bowery-men and Missouri's farmers.

Rich men in the south owned slaves and consequently favored the war to protect their property, income, and plantations.  Poor southern farmers, without slaves, had to do the fighting but with little to gain personally if they prevailed.  Wealthy men of the North had the intellectual underpinning and New England educations with which to oppose slavery and the funds to purchase their way out of conscription.  

The majority of those who died in the Civil War, then, were poor men fighting a rich man's war.  Of those who perished two-thirds died of disease, not gunshots: dysentery, typhoid fever, bacterial infection, malaria, small pox, yellow fever, and just plain starvation.

McPherson recounts battles with fervor and concision a necessary task given the war's duration and intensity.  It is estimated that more books have been written in English about the Civil War than any other subject save Jesus Christ and Shakespeare.  If you want an overview deep with insight and meaning, this is a fine beginning.