The illustrated Battle cry of freedom : the Civil War era

The illustrated Battle cry of freedom The Civil War era

James M. McPherson

Book - 2003

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Subjects
United States > History > Civil War, 1861-1865 > Campaigns.
United States > History > Civil War, 1861-1865 > Campaigns > Pictorial works.
United States > History > Civil War, 1861-1865.
United States > History > Civil War, 1861-1865 > Pictorial works.
Published
New York : Oxford University Press c2003.
Language
English
Main Author
James M. McPherson (-)
Item Description
Rev. ed. of: Battle cry of freedom.
Physical Description
786 p. : ill., maps
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN
9780195159011
  • Preface to the Illustrated Edition
  • Preface to the First Edition
  • Prologue: From the Halls of Montezuma
  • 1. The United States at Midcentury
  • 2. Mexico Will Poison Us
  • 3. An Empire for Slavery
  • 4. Slavery, Rum, and Romanism
  • 5. The Crime Against Kansas
  • 6. Mudsills and Greasy Mechanics for A. Lincoln
  • 7. The Revolution of 1860
  • 8. The Counterrevolution of 1861
  • 9. Facing Both Ways: The Upper South's Dilemma
  • 10. Amateurs Go to War
  • 11. Farewell to the Ninety Days' War
  • 12. Blockade and Beachhead: The Salt-Water War, 1861-1862
  • 13. The River War in 1862
  • 14. The Sinews of War
  • 15. Billy Yank's Chickahominy Blues
  • 16. We Must Free the Slaves or Be Ourselves Subdued
  • 17. Carry Me Back to Old Virginny
  • 18. John Bull's Virginia Reel
  • 19. Three Rivers in Winter, 1862-1863
  • 20. Fire in the Rear
  • 21. Long Remember: The Summer of '63
  • 22. Johnny Reb's Chattanooga Blues
  • 23. When This Cruel War Is Over
  • 24. If It Takes All Summer
  • 25. After Four Years of Failure
  • 26. We Are Going to Be Wiped off the Earth
  • 27. South Carolina Must Be Destroyed
  • 28. We Are All Americans
  • Epilogue: To the Shoals of Victory
  • Index
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

McPherson's Pulitzer Prize-winning opus is by now the standard one-volume treatment of the Civil War. Encyclopedic in scope, it synthesizes political and military history into a sweeping narrative of America's national epic, one that paints the North's victory as the triumph of a "revolutionary future" of "competitive, egalitarian, free-labor capitalism" over the tradition-bound and hierarchical society of the South. This new edition eliminates the footnotes and trims a fifth of the text to make way for color maps of major battles and campaigns and hundreds of photographs, cartoons and artist's depictions from the period. McPherson's accompanying captions sometimes overdo the characterological readings (in one portrait of a Confederate general we can supposedly "almost see Breckinridge's handlebar mustache twitching in anger"), but they provide interesting biographical background as well as piquant details and an indelible period feel. Serious Civil War buffs will delight in this magisterial treatment. (Nov.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Review by Library Journal Review

In this impressive book, famed Civil War historian McPherson revises his Pulitzer Prize-winning Battle Cry of Freedom, reducing the text by one-fifth in order to add a stunning array of over 700 illustrations from the Civil War era-photographs, cartoons, lithographs, etchings, woodcuts, and paintings-that give new life to an already vivid, engrossing history. McPherson's text is a condensation rather than a reconsideration of his earlier work, but his original arguments stand up well even in the face of new scholarship on war, politics, and ideology because in the original he had anticipated much of that scholarship. Here, real value is added not only by the illustrations, which are neatly woven into the narrative, but also by the copious captions (which add up to some 35,000 words), which introduce new material and expand on subjects sometimes lightly touched in the original. Only the lack of a modern bibliographical essay mars McPherson's otherwise monumental achievement. One can smell the sweat and sulfur from McPherson's riveting narrative and can see the dangerous age as those who lived in it. Essential.-Randall M. Miller, St. Joseph's Univ., Philadelphia (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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