Stepping back from the detail, this reader’s general sense of the actual fighting of the American Civil War – having just finished this 860-page book about it – was that the slaughter steadily escalated, until tens of thousands were being killed and wounded at each brutal, bloody, slogged-out battle, causing death and injury on such […]
All posts found when searching for battle cry of freedom
Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (4) by James M. McPherson (1987)
Slavery is the normal condition of the negro… as indispensable to his prosperity and happiness… as liberty is to the whites. (From a petition sent to Confederate President Jefferson Davis from the 56th Virginia regiment against allowing black soldiers to fight for the Confederacy, quoted on page 836) Racism… The signers of the Declaration of […]
Posted by Simon on August 20, 2018
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2018/08/20/battle-cry-of-freedom-the-civil-war-era-4-james-m-mcpherson/
Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (3) by James M. McPherson (1987)
This is a long book. It takes McPherson about 280 pages before he gets to the outbreak of hostilities, just to paint in the complicated political, economic, legal and social background to the American Civil War. This build-up section is absolutely fascinating, giving insights into a number of deep and enduring aspects of American history […]
Posted by Simon on August 19, 2018
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2018/08/19/battle-cry-of-freedom-the-civil-war-era-3-james-m-mcpherson/
Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (2) by James M. McPherson (1987)
In mid-19th century America there was a cohort of people who were professional slave hunters. Let’s just reflect on that fact… people whose full-time job it was to reclaim the lost ‘property’ of southern slave owners. How did this come about? The Fugitive Slave Act In 1850 the US Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act […]
Posted by Simon on August 16, 2018
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2018/08/16/battle-cry-of-freedom-the-civil-war-era-2-james-m-mcpherson/
Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (1) by James M. McPherson (1987)
‘Our political conflicts must be in future between slavery and freedom.’ Whig Congressman Joshua Giddings at the Free Soil convention in 1848 (quoted on page 61) This massive volume (900 pages) is part of the multi-volume Oxford History of America which began publishing back in the 1980s. The civil war is by far the most written-about […]
Posted by Simon on August 14, 2018
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2018/08/14/battle-cry-of-freedom-the-civil-war-era-james-m-mcpherson/
Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam, the battle the changed the course of the American Civil War by James M. McPherson (2002)
The 160 pages or so of this tidy little book are like a pendant to ‘Battle Cry of Freedom’, McPherson’s vast 860-page history of the Civil War Era, which I have reviewed at length. Crossroads of Freedom is part of a series called Pivotal Moments in American History. In his introduction McPherson says that, as […]
Posted by Simon on August 2, 2021
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2021/08/02/crossroads-of-freedom-antietam-american-civil-war-james-m-mcpherson/
To Lose a Battle: France 1940 by Alistair Horne (1969)
General Altmayer, who seemed tired out and thoroughly disheartened, wept silently on his bed. (p.575) [A typical example of the behaviour of senior French militaryfigures during the Battle of France.] This is the third of Sir Alistair Horne’s trilogy about the three great wars fought between Germany and France, the others being The Fall of […]
Posted by Simon on September 5, 2017
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2017/09/05/to-lose-a-battle-france-1940-alistair-horne/
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass (1845)
I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery; he must be made to feel that […]
Posted by Simon on August 4, 2021
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2021/08/04/narrative-of-the-life-of-frederick-douglass/
Books & Boots 