The result is both an impressive scholarly tour de force and a lively, highly accessible account of the sentiments of both Northern and Southern soldiers during the national trauma of the Civil War. In What They Fought For, McPherson takes individual voices and places them in the great and terrible choir of a country divided against itself. Living only eighty years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Civil War soldiers felt the legacy and responsibility entrusted to them by the Founding Fathers to preserve fragile democracy-be it through secession or union-as something worth dying for. Their insights show how deeply felt and strongly held their convictions were and reveal far more careful thought on the ideological issues of the war than has previously been thought to be true. In their letters home and their diaries-neither of which were subject to censorship-these men were able to comment, in writing, on a wide variety of issues connected with their war experience. His conclusion that most of them felt a keen sense of patriotic and ideological commitment counters the prevailing belief that Civil War soldiers had little or no idea of what they were fighting for. In an exceptional and highly original Civil War analysis, McPherson draws on the letters and diaries of nearly one thousand Union and Confederate soldiers, giving voice to the very men who risked their lives in the conflict. With What They Fought For, he focuses his considerable talents on what motivated the individual soldier to fight. McPherson presented a fascinating, concise general history of the defining American conflict. McPherson wears with equal ease the hats of biographer, economist, sociologist and military historian. McPherson has fresh approaches to the war's background, the four years of struggle and the aftermath ( Washington Post Book World) He has written what will surely become the standard one-volume history of the great conflict which forged America as a united nation ( Independent)Ībsolutely brilliant. historical writing of the highest order ( The New York Times)Ī distinguished contribution to American history. Omitting nothing important, whether military, political or economic, he yet manages to make everything he touches drive the narrative forward. Above all, everything is in a living relationship with everything else. The definitive study, meticulous in its scholarship and compulsive in its readability ( Financial Times) "synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title. The whole panorama of the Civil War is captured in these pages, from the military campaign, which is described with vividness, immediacy, a grasp of strategy and logistics, and a keen awareness of the military leaders and the common soldiers involved, to its political and social aspects. With a broad historical sweep, it traces the heightening sectional conflict of the 1850s: the growing estrangement of the South and its impassioned defence of slavery the formation of the Republican Party in the North, with its increasing opposition to slavery and the struggle over territorial expansion, with its accompanying social tensions and economic expansion. This book covers one of the most turbulent periods of the USA's history, from the Mexican War in 1848 to the end of the Civil War in 1865. the best one-volume treatment of its subject I have ever come across. It is a masterful work' New York Review of Books that effectively integrates in one volume social, political and military events from the immediate aftermath of the Mexican War through the sectional strife of the 1850s, the secession movement, and the Civil War. 'A remarkably wide-ranging synthesis of the history of the 1850s and the Civil War. It will shock you for what it tells you about politics in America today.' Richard Ford It will open your eyes about race history in America.
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