Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era

Chapters 1-8

Now…I messed up a bit with picking this week’s book of the week, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era by James McPherson. I had intended to read it over the course of two weeks. This is because I forgot a bunch of other things I had planned for August, which cuts into my reading time. So, I am reviewing this book over the next three weeks, pushing out President Andrew Johnson to the end of September and skipping a president in the month of August. Life just got in the way.

But, on the plus side, while there is not a defined part 1, part 2, part 3, there was a natural break point for review this week. The first 8 chapters of the book specifically cover the politics in the country leading up to the Civil War.

Now first off, these first 8 chapters were a bit of a slog for me. Not because it wasn’t well written, it was. Not because the topic isn’t interesting, it absolutely is. But because a lot of it was rehashing old ground for me, given that all this history was already reviewed in the books I’ve been reading about the presidents leading up to this point in history.

But, unlike in those books, where I didn’t necessarily report on that information, let me see what tidbits of fascination I can unravel for this week.

The book opens by explaining the key differences between north and south in the decade before the Civil War. And to explain that he explains how policy differences between north and south impacted growth in these areas of the country.

In the south, cotton was booming. With that boom came the need for more slaves to pick cotton. I know history likes to teach that the invention of the cotton gin rang the death knell on slavery, but it does not seem to have had that impact. While the cotton gin may have made processing cotton faster, not having to pay your workers was a real boon to profits in the south. So much so that, get this, the slaveholders in the south called the workers in the north wage slaves. Doesn’t that sound alarmingly familiar. Far better to do the work for free for your overlords than to earn an honest wage working for someone else.

In the north, the population was booming. See, all those immigrants that were coming to America, seeking the American dream, didn’t just land in the north and stay there. There was no future for them in the south. Why would the southerners pay a wage slave to do what they could just order their slaves to do for free? So, the north got ALL the immigrants, which was not necessarily a picnic. Racism was also rampant in the north, with the Irish bearing the brunt of northern prejudice, right behind racism against free blacks and escaped slaves. Seriously. Abolitionism was a thing and there was a steady and growing population of northerners who believed slavery was evil. Did not mean they saw the black men as equals.

But, with the immigrant population, came all the ideas. So, wealth in the north began booming as patent applications took off and more people began working their way out of poverty. This also contributed to population centers staying concentrated in the north. This, incidentally, plays in to that 3/5 compromise. Civics 101, state legislatures to the house of representatives were apportioned based on population of freedmen. The compromise allowed that slave would be counted as three for every five slaves. So if a person owned five slaves, only three of them would be counted for purposes of determining how many representatives would be assigned to that state following a census. This was very much a check designed on the slave-owning states, to ensure their power waned over the years.

And it was working. The Confederate states had been losing representatives based on population count. At its height of power in 1810’s, Virginia had 23 representatives. By 1850, it had 13. In that same time, Pennsylvania went from 23 representatives to 25, New York went from 27 to 33, due to population explosions in the north. Between the 1840’s and the 1850’s, Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia all lost seats in the House of Representatives. That representation began directly affecting laws that were passed, including the Compromise of 1850, which only granted the south federal help in retrieving fugitive slaves, while the north got all the remaining benefits.

So, in addition to the shifting power in congress, the actual policies of the northern states were creating inequality. The north encouraged education. Learned about that during American Nations, but it’s reinforced with statistics and other sources in this book. The south did not actively encourage education, unless you were wealthy. And those who DID receive an education, received it from northern schools.

So, the south was poorly educated and losing representation in Congress. The abolitionists were first seen as a fringe movement in the north but began gaining power as the courts began passing judgements that struck everyone in the north as grossly unfair. The two big ones mentioned in the book are Prigg v Pennsylvania, which I did not recall learning about in school, and Dred Scott v Sandford, which I did learn about in school.

So, the background of Prigg v Pennsylvania is that in 1837, Edward Prigg was convicted of kidnapping in the state of Pennsylvania after seizing a slave woman and her children and returning them to Maryland where their owner was. This was…quasi-legal under current federal law. Let me explain the quasi-legal part of that.

The US Constitution does not actually contain the word slave, until the passage of the 13th and 14th amendments after the Civil War. The text of the Constitution, as written, in Article IV Section 2 specifies that “any person held to service or labor in one state” who escapes to another “shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor shall be due.” The Constitution did not specify how this provision should be enforced.

In 1793, a federal law was enacted that allowed slaveowners to cross state lines, capture their escaped slave, and bring it before any magistrate or court to prove ownership. The slave had no legal recourse. No habeus corpus law would free them, they were not able to present a case before a court indicating their status as free, no jury to judge the accuracy or truth of the slave catchers claim. Over time, this process degraded to the point where slave catchers would not even try to prove the person they had grabbed was actually an escaped slave. They would just grab a likely person who seemed to fit the bill and drag them off to bondage.

As abolitionism gained ground as a popular movement, the north began enacting laws on the state level that DID give the rights of testimony, habeus corpus, and trial by jury, as well as imposing criminal penalties for kidnapping. Which brings us back to Prigg v Pennsylvania. After returning the “escaped slave” and her children to her owner in Maryland, Edmund Prigg was then convicted of kidnapping in Pennsylvania in 1837. Prigg’s lawyers appealed the case all the way to the US Supreme Court, which heard the arguments in 1842. What was determined was that the Pennsylvania anti-kidnapping law as unconstitutional, but the original fugitive slave law of 1793 was constitutional. However, the courts also determined that enforcement of the fugitive slave laws was a FEDERAL responsibility and that states did not have to cooperate with the returning of fugitive slaves. The northern states responded by passing a host of new laws prohibiting the use of state facilities in capturing fugitive slaves. Which meant if a slave was caught, the catcher had to basically stay awake until back in the more cooperative south because they were not allowed to hold the slave in state run prisons.

This ultimately fed into the passage of the 1850 compromise with the new, harsher fugitive slave provisions, requiring federal marshals to assist with the capture, and all the messiness that entailed. See the book on Millard Fillmore for how bad that was. The north, for its part, also started stops along the underground railroad that assisted slaves or anyone expected to be captured as such, with escape to Canada. The south saw this as a direct attack on their honor.

Dred Scott, for those who did not pay attention in history class…or who have been taught in our post social justice educational system, included the eponymous Dred Scott. Dred Scott was the slave of John Emerson, who was an army surgeon. As he was in the military, Emerson traveled to Illinois from Missouri as part of his job with the Army. Emerson was stationed in Illinois for several years and while there. Scott married another slave owned by Emerson, who then gave birth to a daughter on free soil. After Emerson died, Scott and his wife and daughter were inherited by Emerson’s widow. Friends of Scott advised him in 1846 that he should sue for freedom based on prolonged residency in the free state of Illinois, even though he was now again residing in the slave state of Missouri.

This case went back and forth in the courts. Scott lost his first round, but won on re-trial in St. Louis. But then lost on appeal and was sent back to slavery. Missouri, a slave owning state, had granted freedom to other slaves in similar circumstances. It’s quite possible that if his owner hadn’t pushed so hard on keeping her property, we would have never known Dred Scott’s name, as his second trial would have seen him free and heading north to safety, especially as in the intervening 11 years before the Supreme Court heard the case, his owner had moved to New York, which was definitely a free state.

Dred Scott v Sandford had long reaching implications. The arguments placed before the court were three.

1.       As Scott was black, was he even considered a citizen with the right to sue in federal courts?

2.       Did prolonged residency in a free state and territory translated into freedom for Scott?

3.       Was Fort Snelling, where Emerson had been stationed, considered free territory? Specifically, was the 1820 Missouri Compromise even legal under the US Constitution? Did Congress in 1820 have the right to ban slavery in the Louisiana Purchase north of the 36’ 30 parallel.

 The court, which was dominated by southern judges, ruled that no, any person descended from Africans, regardless of whether free or slave, is not a citizen of the US. Therefore, they could not sue in federal court. The Ordinance of 1787, which addressed slavery in incoming territories of the Northwestern territories, could not confer freedom or citizenship to non-white individuals. And that the 1820 compromise was not constitutional.

The vote was not unanimous. There were two justices who wrote a dissenting opinion, pointing out that the original 1787 Ordinance had been written, passed, and signed into law by the founding fathers of the nation, many of whom were slave owners. Since the founders themselves had denied the right of slavery in the northern states, it seems fairly logical to assume they wanted the gradual eradication of slavery. Since many of those founders also signed the 1820 compromise into law, the dissenting opinion became the voice of outrage in the north.

Dred Scott was announced more or less in Buchanan’s inaugural address and set the stage for the increase in hostilities in Kansas, John Brown’s militant activism in Kansas and his raid on Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, which ultimately led to his being hung there. Brown does not seem to have minded this, recognizing that his death would make him a martyr to the cause of freedom.

Brown is an interesting character and I’m going to read a book on him specifically. But all of these actions, the disparity in income, resources, education between north and south, led to increased tensions. Everything the north did was seen as a mortal insult to the south. And the south’s reactions to everything was so dramatically over the top that people stopped voting democrat because they could no longer support the over-the-top rhetoric.

And in 1860 Lincoln was elected, and in 1861, South Carolina fired on Fort Sumter. And the war has started. And that’s where I stopped reading this week.

You can one hundred percent see parallels between the tension of the political situation in the 1850’s and the political situation today. Having read How Civil Wars Start a few months ago, and just watching the world burn today, I can see where this is a distinct possibility for America. In this book, James McPherson consistently refers to them as North vs South, rather than Republican vs Democrat. Which is 100% fair, since there was a fairly large democratic constituency that remained in the Union during the war. But the reactions are the same. In the 1850s the democrats threw a fit every time they didn’t get their way. In the 2020’s, the democrats throw a fit every time they don’t get their way.

And when the democrats throw a fit, the republicans respond in kind, by doubling down on whatever is enraging the democrats. Happened in the 1850s. Is happening today.

So yes, I think we’ll have another war. Because while just letting secession happen is an option, no politician would ever give up the power that comes from forcing others to their bidding. Which means war. The only question remaining is, When?

These first 8 chapters of Battle Cry of Freedom were initially reviewed on YouTube on August 14, 2022, but are now available on Rumble and PodBean. The next chapters review will be posted tomorrow here at Loki’s Librarian.

Chapters 9-18

Now, last week, I was not here, because I had a cold that knocked me out for about five days. So we are still on Battle Cry of Freedom, this week Chapters 9 through 18, by James McPherson.

At the start of the civil war, the south had problems. Plural. A lot of them. Starting with the upper south, specifically the four slave owning states that did NOT secede, Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, and Delaware. The south, ideally, would have loved to have all slave states with them. However, those four states were tied to the union, and genuinely believed in the Union. When Lincoln said that he was not looking to free the slaves, they believed him, and they stayed. Lukewarm in the case of Missouri, Maryland, and Delaware, but still they stayed. Kentucky was shooting for absolute neutrality in the matter of the coming war. That neutrality lasted until the south jumped the gun and invaded Kentucky, ostensibly to keep the north from doing so, but Kentucky did not see it that way. They saw it as an invasion and reluctantly threw in with the union as a result of this invasion.

Other problems included that the majority of manufacturing was done in the north. This included all munitions and weapons, all fabric and leather used for uniforms. In fact, the majority of southerners who showed up to fight showed up with their own arms and ammunition, which was frequently squirrel rifles and antiques, even by 19th century standards. What the south DID have…in droves, was an absolute cadre of highly capable officers. When I read the book on Polk, I think I commented that the Mexican/American war was a who’s who of Civil War military talent. And a big chunk of that talent fought for the south. But along with that talent came massive egos, which certainly added to the problems Jefferson Davis had to manage.

Additionally, not everyone in the south WANTED to secede, and from the Civil War, we got the state of West Virginia, which didn’t see why they should have to bleed and die for the slaveholders, when they were barely able to scrape by on a subsistence living.

Now, while the officer corps was heavily made up of experienced soldiers, the soldiers themselves were decidedly not. Additionally, most of the officer corps had been out of the army since the last war, the aforementioned Mexican/American War, which had been fought 12 years prior. Which meant, as the author named an entire chapter, the amateurs go to war. And it’s a fair assessment. Neither the north nor the south was under command of anything resembling professional soldiers. The closest thing to professionalism was probably General George McClellan of the north, and he was Lincolns biggest problem, and best appointee…for a time.

He was the best appointee because he was inarguably adept at organization. McClellan truly pulled the Army of the Potomac together, turned them into a fighting force. On the flip side, he tended to grossly overestimate the strength of the confederates and was reluctant to fight. Ever. Even when ordered to do so, he would find reasons NOT to fight. Valid reasons, but reasons. There’s one anecdote that was repeated in both Malice Towards None and in this book about Lincoln showing up at McClellan’s house one evening while McClellan was out. When McClellan got home, he went straight up to bed without even acknowledging Lincoln’s presence. Lincoln said something like, “That man’s going to win us the war so he can treat me how he likes.” I paraphrased that badly. But can you imagine the absolute gall? Your BOSS…the guy who can literally fire you at a moment’s notice, shows up at your house, and you ignore him. McClellan did not like Lincoln. And he was Lincoln’s biggest problem, versus the south’s myriad problems.

What was interesting to learn is that, while not everyone wanted the war, and while the armies at the start of the war were certainly amateurs, the women stepped up in a big way. The south, at first, did not want the ladies involved in nursing. The north did not care. They knew they needed the men to fight, which meant if the women wanted to step into the medical corps, Lincoln was happy for the assist. And boy did they ever. Clara Barton is discussed in some detail and how she helped to build the American Red Cross. McPherson covered how the medical corps kind of slacked off, but the women ran to battle to help the wounded. I learned how the women were pushing for keeping the camps clean as a way to combat the disease that was endemic in field armies in the 19th century.

As part of the south’s amateur warrior problem, was the fact that they didn’t have long terms of enlistment. The north had regular enlistment of three-year terms. The south would enlist for one year. So right around the time the soldier actually knew what he was doing, his enlistment was up. And they had a hell of a time getting soldiers to reenlist. Basically, the north was able to throw more dedicated manpower at the problem, and with a solid core of woman power helping medically, the north began to slowly turn the tide.

Now, when the war started, both sides genuinely seemed to think the war would be over in 90 days. The south thought the northerners would never stand for the fight. The north thought the south would realize they were outgunned and go home. Both were dead wrong, and both realized it after the first battle of Bull Run/Manassas, which ended in a Confederate victory. If the south had lost, then indeed the war might have been much shorter. But since they won, it reconfirmed in their minds the righteousness of their cause. But for the north, the stakes were higher. Lincoln did not want to be the man responsible for losing the Union. And so, the war went from 90 days to a four-year slog.

The remaining chapters I read this week, er last week before I got too sick to read, covered basically, one specific aspect of the war. So, we have a chapter on the Northern blockade of the south and what worked and didn’t work about this. Not least of which was England. Now, in history class, I was taught that England was all for the Union because the Union was trying to end slavery. Obviously, this is incorrect, as Lincoln’s stated goal at the beginning of it all was preservation of the Union. And England didn’t really care about preserving the Union. In fact, England kind of watched the beginning of the Civil War with a deal of schadenfreude, since this desire to live free of imperial rule was America’s reason for breaking with England and was now the reason the south gave for breaking with the north. So, England, at least the nobility, thought that was pretty funny, and actually supported the south for a time.

As far as the working man in England went, they were also kind of indifferent to the war. Their main concern was ensuring that the mills had enough cotton to keep manufacturing, since cotton was woven to fabric in either New England, which was right out because of the war, or England, which was problematic because of the blockade. And so, England became the number one manufacturer of blockade running ships, many of which were manned by Englishmen. And once the blockade was firmly in place, for the north at least, it became a boring babysitting job for the US Navy. The south had no problem running the blockade and so they argued since it was so easy to run, it wasn’t seriously part of the war effort. But the blockade WAS effective. In the years prior to the war, 20,000 ships had come through southern ports. During the war, that number was reduced to 8,000. The more than 50% reduction in shipping took its toll on southern supplies. But to be fair to history teachers circa 1989-1995, once Lincoln pulled out the Emancipation Proclamation and made the war about freeing the slaves, England did reject the South’s bid for national recognition.

The River War covered, much like it sounds, war on the internal river system of the United States, primarily the Mississippi, but also any battles or troop transport that involved the US River system. This brings us to the Battle of Shiloh. The Union outmanned the Confederacy, bringing approximately 60,000 troops to the Confederates 40,000. But the south fought, and between the two sides, there were 20,000 killed, almost evenly split. Numbers that high are hard to wrap your head around. That’s the size of a small city. That’s South San Jose Hills, California being wiped off the map over the course of two days. That’s Elko, Nevada vanishing. Alamo, Texas, gone. All over two days. The fighting was so bad, they had to call temporary cease fires to bury the dead.

Jefferson Davis was liked as president as long as he was winning. But every time the south lost, the critics came out. Lincoln had his critics too, but he was able to more or less ignore them. Both sides suspended habeus corpus, but Davis only did so with the approval of Congress. Lincoln did so on his own merit as wartime president. The South had problems money wise. While nominally the wealthiest region of the country prior to the war, their wealth was non-liquid being tied up in the form of vast land holdings and slaves, which are not easily converted into cash, as only other slave owners could or would purchase the slaves. Their largest form of easily available wealth was raw cotton, which was effectively stifled with the blockade. So, the confederacy issued bonds, which led directly to inflation. It also didn’t help that most of the planters…the wealthy class of the south, were in debt up to their eyeballs…to bankers in the north. Since the South disliked taxes as much as the next group of American’s, they began printing money. Which led to inflation. Because that’s what printing money does. By 1863, it took $7 to buy what a dollar had bought at the start of the war. That’s inflation.

Now the north was blessed with Lincolns pick for secretary of treasury, Salmon P. Chase. Chase did not have a finance background. But he was an adept learner. And he pushed and made successful war bonds, raising 1.2 billion in revenue from these bonds. The north also issued fiat currency. But when the south issued it, they made it not legal tender. Which meant it could not be used for private debt or private purchases. You bought it to support the war. The north issued fiat currency and made it legal tender.

So far, this book has been a really solid explanation of the politics, finances, leadership, and soldiering involved in the Civil War. 1862 was pivotal for several reasons. September 1862 Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation. And in November 1862, he replaced General McClellan with General Ulysses S. Grant. And unlike McClellan, Grant would fight.

And that’s kind of where I left off before getting too sick to really focus on what I was reading. So, now that I’m better, I will finish Battle Cry of Freedom over the next week, and let you know how it goes. Spoiler alert…the South loses.

These next 10 chapters of Battle Cry of Freedom were initially reviewed on YouTube on August 28, 2022, but are now available on Rumble and PodBean.

Chapters 19-28

This week, we are finishing up the rather depressing history of the American Civil War with the last chapters of Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson.

When we left last week, McClellan had just been sacked by Lincoln, with Grant being placed in charge of the army overall. In the first several years of the war, Grant had impressed Lincoln as a man who would A: Fight, and B: Get shit done. In Malice Towards None, that author described Grant as the one general Lincoln had who never complained that he didn’t have enough men or supplies. Grant knew where he fell short and he knew Lincoln knew, and he knew that the entire army was beset by the same problems. Grant found solutions.

His solutions tended toward living off the land. Which meant as the Union army started working their way through the south, they raided everywhere they went, pulling their supplies from the already starving southerners. This, by the way, is very effective at weakening the enemy. It is NOT effective if you want to win the hearts and minds of those you are conquering. I kind of feel like this roving band of northern raiders might be why the south still refers to it as the War of Northern Aggression.

Putting Grant in charge of the armies overall was nothing short of a stroke of genius though, as this new tactic of foraging as the army moved allowed the union armies to MOVE. And while there were many battles in 1863 that were won by the Union, the two that seemed to have a decisive impact on morale for both sides were the siege of Vicksburg, where the second Confederate army under General Pemberton surrendered Vicksburg, Mississippi to Grant. And the other battle was Gettysburg. General Meade was the Union officer in charge at Gettysburg, and just from the limited descriptions provided in the book, I can see why this battle in particular captures the imagination, and why this is one of those pivotal historical battles that has entire books written solely on this one military engagement.

This was one of those stand-up battles, fought between titans. On the north you had General Meade commanding, in the south you had General Lee, who for once had brought the fight to the north. No, seriously, the vast majority of Civil War battles were fought in southern States. I think Kentucky and West Virginia were the Union states that had their share of blood and guts during the four years of the war. While they were not all fought in Virginia, the vast majority of battles were fought in confederate states. Which sort of proves the lie of the south’s intended Offensive-Defensive strategy. Or more likely, the south WANTED to go offensive to defend their homes but were prohibited from doing so by the aggression of the north. So maybe there’s more than one reason it’s called the War of Northern Aggression.

So, Gettysburg. This one battle killed off 51,000 troops, 23,000 of Union troops, or ¼ the army’s strength at the start of the fight, and 28,000 in the South, which was 1/3 of the south’s troops. To put that in perspective, that is the population of Carson City, Nevada gone over the course of three days. Antelope, California. Grapevine, Texas. And with Gettysburg vanished any remaining trace of hope that Europe might recognize the Confederacy as its own nation.

Unquestionably, one of the things that contributed to the north winning was that it started allowing the enlistment of black soldiers in 1863. By the end of the war, 179,000 freemen and former slaves would have served in the Union, constituting about 10% of the Union forces. The south…was not amused by this. They seemed to see this as the Union taunting them and were particularly vicious to black soldiers who were caught. Depending on the mood of the confederate troops doing the catching, the black soldiers might be executed on the spot. Or they might be returned to slavery…or placed in slavery for the first time ever, in the case of those who had been born free in the north.

Lincoln tried to curtail this tendency by basically stopping prisoner exchange unless the south returned the black prisoners too. And when he found out the confederate congress had passed laws that black soldiers who were captured were to be executed immediately, Lincoln let it be known that if that happened, the north would start executing on a one for one basis confederate soldiers. Now, as a result of this, OFFICIALLY, the south did not execute black soldiers. Meaning IF they made it to a prison camp, they were not executed specifically because they were black. In reality, few if any ever made it to a prison camp, the troops in the field deciding to simply execute them in place.

He does cover…because how could he not…the 54th regiment of Massachusetts, which was the first all-black regiment in the Civil War, excepting the commanding officer Colonel Robert Gould Shaw. Civil War buffs are undoubtedly familiar with the movie Glory, which also tells this story, and how the south, thinking they were degrading Shaw, buried him in a mass grave with his men. And Shaw, being from a proud abolitionist family, his father declined northern efforts to retrieve his son’s body, saying “We hold that a soldier’s most appropriate burial place is on the field where he has fallen.”

And as the 1864 campaign season starts heating up, Grant sends Sherman to take Atlanta. And man, if the south thought Grant’s living off the land was hard on supplies, Sherman must have seemed like a hoard of biblical locusts. Grant, when he rolled through, took supplies, but was also leaving occupation forces behind, which meant he wasn’t as detrimental to supply routes. Sherman didn’t just take the food, he also destroyed railroads and supply lines behind him, destroying Atlanta, which had become the manufacturing hub of wartime goods for the Confederacy, then rolled on to the sea before cutting north and destroying South Carolina. And the Union troops with him took South Carolina very personally. South Carolina had been the first to secede, and whether right or wrong in this, the Northern troops blamed the entire war on South Carolina.

Jefferson Davis, at this point his whole hope was that a democrat would win the 1864 election. And when that didn’t happen, about the only person who didn’t know the war was over, was Jefferson Davis. And the Confederate Congress. Quite early in the war, when it looked like the North was going to authorize black troops, Robert E Lee had recommended the south do the same. This unpopular suggestion was swept under the rug but was revisited in March 1865. The authorization to requisition black troops barely squeaked by the confederate congress about two weeks before Union troops took over the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia. And less than a month later, Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to General Grant at Appomattox Court House. More specifically, and you can’t help but feel almost sorry for this poor bastard, in the living room of one Wilmer McLean. Wilmer McLean was there at the start of the war, in 1861, when a Yankee shell crashed through his dining room during the first battle of Manassas. So, he packed and moved to the remote village of Appomatox to try and avoid the war. This was a particularly poignant direct quote from the book. “There in McLean’s parlor the son of an Ohio tanner dictated surrender terms to the scion of a First Family of Virginia.”

One might argue that Lee was the scion of THE first family of Virginia, given that Robert E Lee was the son of a Revolutionary War hero who had been a trusted aide to General George Washington. This family connection led Lee to marry the daughter of Washington’s adopted son, the legal son of one Martha Dandridge Custis Washington.

And it goes to show that, no matter what station you were born to in America, you can always work your way up.

This book was quite comprehensive and informative. But give yourself plenty of time to read and absorb the information. The American Civil War is one of those conflicts that has entire books dedicated to single battles, not just Gettysburg, but all the major engagements have individual books dedicated to them. As I said in one of my earlier postings on this book, the generals who fought were a who’s who of the Mexican/American war, and most of them also have books dedicated to them. There are definitely books dedicated to single units, like the 54th Massachusetts. The scope of this war was massive. There is a Wikipedia page that has the list of American Civil War battles that were fought, in order of the fighting.

When all was said and done, more than 620,000 soldiers lost their lives. That’s just the soldiers. That does not count civilian casualties during the conflict. Now, with the reading I’ve been doing on the presidents up to this point, I have no doubt the Civil War would have been fought eventually. The matter of slavery was the elephant in the room from the moment the Declaration of Independence was signed. The irony of fighting for freedom while keeping half of humanity enslaved was a guaranteed powder keg, that was kicked down the road as far as it could be.

Let’s just for a second pretend Lincoln had allowed the south to secede peacefully. The South, in their absolute arrogance, would have seen this as proof of northern cowardice. And eventually, the south would have pushed to claim more land, probably south of that 36’30 parallel, all the way to California. Eventually, there would have been fighting over land, if not over slavery. And the fighting would have happened regardless. All Lincoln did was ensure it happened on his watch, and not the next presidents, which could just as easily have been a Democrat who wanted to appease the south.

It is ironic that when the south realized it was losing, there were several confederate congress critters who sought to try and rejoin the union based on the original US constitution…sort of an “oops, our bad, can we keep our slaves please?” But by that time, the 13th amendment had passed and ratification of it was a requirement for reclaimed states.

I would recommend this for anyone who thinks that a second civil war in America is a GOOD idea. It is not. It was awful enough with the technology they had in the 19th century. It would be exponentially worse with 21st century tech. 10 out of 10 civil war survivors would not recommend. But I DO recommend this book.

The last 10 chapters of Battle Cry of Freedom were initially reviewed on YouTube on September 4, 2022, but are now available on Rumble and PodBean.