Divided against ourselves

Lately a friend and I have been talking about the Civil War. We've discussed the role of rifled weapons and armored steam-powered watercraft; the cultural and economic differences between the South and the North; the things that had to happen before Lincoln would issue the Emancipation Proclamation.

My friend and I both have a good layman's understanding of the war, partly because we've both seen the incredibly watchable Ken Burns documentary series. My friend is into military history, and has studied the way technology affects battlefield tactics. I'm more interested in the big social trends that led to the war, the the issue of slavery, and the reasons people fought. I've been reading Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson, a big survey of the war that won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1989.

Battle Cry of Freedom is beautifully-written, and it presents highly-complicated situations in a way that illuminates without oversimplifying. It begins in 1847, fourteen years before the war erupted, presenting a detailed portrait of a country that was deeply divided but by no means on the verge of dissolution. McPherson's description of how the threat of secession became a terrible inevitability is riveting. Descriptions of troop movements and battles are detailed enough to allow me to keep up with my military-history-buff friend.

The title of the book comes from a marching song that both Northern and Southern soldiers sang, with slightly different lyrics. McPherson points out that both the Union and Confederacy fought for freedom -- but they meant very different things when they invoked that word. He spends much of the book exploring the meanings of the word freedom in the Union and in the CSA.

It's that kind of interesting insight that makes Battle Cry of Freedom such a treasure. It's a good and important book, and it's a great conversation-starter, too.