James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988).

SYNOPSIS:

McPherson's book is a narrative account of the causes and fighting of the Civil War. McPherson believes that a genuine conflict over slavery divided North and South before the war. He argues that as long as "the slavery controversy focused on the morality of the institution where it already existed, the two party system managed to contain the passions it aroused." (41) When the controversy, however, began to focus on slavery's expansion into new territories, conflict became "irrepressible." (41) McPherson asserts that past attempts to explain Southern defeat have lacked the "dimension of contingency (857-858)." He believes that "Northern victory and Southern defeat in the war cannot be understood apart from the contingency that hung over every campaign, every battle, every election, every decision during the war." (858)

EXCERPT:

"Northern Whigs and their Republican successors after 1854 elaborated a free-labor rationale for their vision of capitalist development." (27)

"People who subscribed to these Whig-Republican principles tended to be those who had succeeded in the market economy, or aspired to." (30)

"the greatest Democratic support came from 'outsiders': workers who resented the deskilling of artisan occupations and the dependency of wage labor." (30)

"And while slavery certainly made the Old South 'different' from the North, the question whether differences outweighed similarities and generated an irrepressible conflict remains a matter of interpretation. North and South after all, shared the same language, the same Constitution, the same legal system, the same commitment to republican institutions, the same predominantly Protestant religion and British ethnic heritage, the same history, the same memories of a common struggle for nationhood." (39)

RELATIONSHIP:

McPherson's treatment of the coming of the war in Battle Cry of Freedom differs sharply from ours. For McPherson the conflict builds inexorably from a clash over modernization. He argues that secession was purely about protecting slavery and the right to extend it and that nonslaveholders join the cause because of white supremacy. He stresses the South's "defensive-aggressive temper," which grew from its "economic subordination" to the North, an economy that was "racing ahead of the South in crucial indices." (91) We find instead regions that were intensely competitive and successful, and a Southern community in which moderation and Whig ideas predominated, acting with purpose to enter the war when it came. McPherson's approach does not address the complex regional, subregional, and local interests and the internal conflicts over the future growth and development of the country.

"In Augusta clusters of contiguous precincts gave their support in the 1860 presidential election in similar patterns."

"Whigs accounted for the most visible party activists in Augusta County, but activists in both parties exerted significant influence."

"Precincts in Augusta that supported Breckinridge at a high level in 1860 represented the extremes of wealth, as the wealthiest and the poorest precincts drew more support for Breckinridge than any other precincts."

"The precincts with high Bell support had average household wealth and farm value well below county averages. For these marginal places a vote for Bell represented a safe course, the least change."

"In Franklin County, John Breckinridge won a majority in six precincts, most of them in the far northern and western belt of the county, where few blacks lived and farmers planted corn not wheat."

"Lincoln won sixteen precincts in Franklin, ten of them by margins greater than 55 percent, with support mainly from the urban center of the county and places with the highest numbers of black residents--even though black men could not vote in Pennsylvania."