Battle Cry of Freedom: The American Civil War

McPherson recounts the momentous episodes that preceded the Civil War including the Dred Scott decision, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry. From there it moves into a masterful chronicle of the war itself--the battles, the strategic maneuvering by each side, the politics, and the personalities.

Table of Contents:
Prologue: from the halls of Montezuma. The United States of midcentury; Mexico will poison us; an empire for slavery; slavery, rum and Romanism; the crime against Kansas; mudsills and greasy mechanics for A. Lincoln; the revolution of 1860; the counterrevolution of 1861; facing both ways - the upper south's dilemma; amateurs go to war; farewell to the 90 Days' War; blockade and beachead - the Salt-Water War, 1861-1862; the River War in 1862; the sinews of war; Billy Yank's chickhominy blues; we must free the slaves or be ourselves subdued; carry me back to Old Virginny; John Bull's Virgina Reel; three rivers in winter, 1862-1863; fire in the rear; long remember - the summer of '63; Johnny Reb's Chattanooga Blues; when this cruel war is over; if it takes all summer; after four years of failure; we are going to be wiped off the Earth; South Carolina must be destroyed; we are all Americans. Epilogue: to the shoals of victory.

About the Author :
James McPherson is Professor Emeritus of American History at Princeton University. Battle Cry of Freedom won the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction in 2003.

Review :
The definitive study, meticulous in its scholarship and compulsive in its readability McPherson is wonderfully lucid... Above all, everything is in a living relationship with everything else ... Omitting nothing important, whether military, political or economic, he yet manages to make everything he touches drive the narrative forward ... historical writing of the highest order A distinguished contribution to American history ... He has succeeded brilliantly. He has written what will surely become the standard one-volume history of the great conflict which forged America as a united nation Absolutely brilliant ... McPherson has fresh approaches to the war's background, the four years of struggle and the aftermath McPherson wears with equal ease the hats of biographer, economist, sociologist and military historian .. Probably the best single-volume history of America's Civil War yet written