Book Reviews

“Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era” Book Review

Take another look at the American Civil War history you thought you knew

McPherson, James M. 2003. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York: Oxford University Press, USA.

Contrary to the notation “The real [American Civil] War will never get in the books,”[1] Walt Whitman penned, there can be seen in various bookstores books of varying titles pertaining to the subject.[2] Chronicling the Civil War has not been the sole venture of historians for essayists, memoirists and novelists influenced by various academic fields.

Refuting Whitman, the 1989 Pulitzer Prize-winning Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era,[3] written by James M. McPherson, is the sixth volume of the Oxford History of the United States.

McPherson, currently the George Henry Davis ’86 Professor Emeritus of United States History at Princeton University, is eminently qualified to discuss the Civil War.

The narrative the Princeton University history professor presents to his audience, in crafting a hauntingly detailed picture of mid-nineteenth-century America and what life was actually like for Americans of the period, speeds through no fewer than 28 chapters.

McPherson, with his prologue titled “From the Halls of Montezuma,”[4] raises the curtain on the sixth volume in the Oxford History…