The opening line, of James McPherson’s one volume treatment of the Civil War, Battle Cry of Freedom, declares “The hallmark of the United States has been growth” (6). In Battle Cry of Freedom McPherson traces this growth and how its impact culminated in the Civil War and a new nation that emerged in its aftermath.
McPherson provides the reader with the economic, social, and political conflicts that were helping divide the nation long before southern states seceded in 1860. He contends the Mexican-American War and the territories won as a result of it, fueled the growing conflict between Northern and Southern states with respect to expansionism, slavery, and states rights. The possibility of adding new states to the union as either free or slave further compounded the growing ideological differences between the North and South with respect to economic, social, and political issues. As the North became transformed by the growth of industrialism and a new way of life, the South clung to its traditional lifestyle, including agricultural production and slavery. While some historians argue that slavery was not the main issue serving as the catalyst for the U.S. Civil War, McPherson disagrees, “The greatest danger to American survival at mid-century, however, was neither class tension nor ethnic division. Rather it was sectional conflict between North and South over the future of slavery” (7).
The economic, social, and political conflicts between the North and South would rise periodically in the midst of war and McPherson highlights the reactions of both sides based on them. He provides us with secession as a means of Southern states to retain their traditional economic, social, and political institutions. Ironically, the very economy giving rise to a new way of life in the North would supply the North with superior resources during the Civil War. The book is written largely in narrati
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