Filled with new information and fresh interpretations, BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM challenges traditional pictures of the Civil War. Starting with The Dred Scott Decision, the Lincoln-Douglas Debates and John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, McPherson recreates the atomosphere of the time.
The war in Mexico two decades earlier had fueled national passions, but which way was the nation to go? One compromise after another failed, leaving finally the grimmest but only alternative -- war.
Still the questions remain: what would have happened had the war not been fought? What if the South had won? McPherson so illuminates the era that we understand the war had to be fought, and once entered, why the North had to win. A brilliant reconstruction of that era.
