Read Online Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era by James M. McPherson - Free Book Online

the Civil War and its causes includes only a fraction of the studies cited in the footnotes, which in turn constitute but a portion of the sources consulted in the research for this book. And that research merely sampled the huge qorpus of literature on the Civil War era, which totals more than 50,000 books and pamphlets on the war years alone—not to mention a boundless number of articles, doctoral dissertations, and manuscript collections. Indeed, there are said to be more works in English on Abraham Lincoln than on any other persons except Jesus of Nazareth and William Shakespeare.
    The best introduction to this era can be found in two multi-volume studies, published a half-century apart, which have become classics in American historiography: James Ford Rhodes, History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 to the Restoration of Home Rule at the South , 7 vols. (New York, 1892–1906); and Allan Nevins, Ordeal of the Union , 4 vols., and The War for the Union , 4 vols. (New York, 1947–71). These magisterial volumes present a strong nationalist interpretation of the crisis of the Union, as do nearly all biographies of Lincoln, of which the fullest are John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A History , 10 vols. (New York, 1890), by the wartime president's private secretaries; and James G. Randall, Lincoln the President , 4 vols. (New York, 1945–55; Vol. IV completed by Richard N. Current), a scholarly tour de force marred only by Randall's attempt to squeeze Lincoln into a conservative mold that he did not quite fit. For an ov-ercorrection of that viewpoint, consult the most readable one-volume biography, Stephen B. Gates, With Malice Toward None: The Life of Abraham Lincoln (New York, 1977). Reflecting a southern viewpoint toward this divisive era is Hudson Strode's biography Jefferson Davis , 3 vols. (New York, 1955–64). The papers of these two leading actors in the ordeal of American and Confederate nationalism have been published in Roy P. Easier, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln , 9 vols. (New Brunswick, 1953–55) an The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln — Supplement , 1832–1865 (New Brunswick, 1974); and Dunbar Rowland, ed., Jefferson Davis, Constitutionalist: His Letters, Papers, and Speeches , 10 vols. (Jackson, Miss., 1923). Rowland's edition has been superseded for the years through 1855 by Haskell M. Monroe, Jr., James T. Mclntosh, Lynda L. Crist, and Mary S. Dix, eds., The Papers of Jefferson Davis , 5 vols. to date (Baton Rouge, 1971–85). Mark E. Neely, Jr., The Abraham Lincoln Encyclopedia (New York, 1982) contains an extraordinary amount of useful information about the sectional conflict and war; as does David C. Roller and Robert W. Twy-man, eds., The Encyclopedia of Southern History (Baton Rouge, 1979). Two other reference works, while focusing mainly on military events and personnel, also include some political developments of the antebellum as well as war years: Mark M. Boatner III, The Civil War Dictionary (New York, 1959); and Patricia L. Faust, ed., Historical Times Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Civil War (New York, 1986).
    A study of antebellum economic developments that has achieved the status of a classic well worth reading is George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolution, 1815–1860 (New York, 1951). A more recent study by the dean of American economic historians, Thomas C. Cochran, Frontiers of Change: Early Industrialism in America (New York, 1981), also focuses on the antebellum era. The rise of the "American System of Manufactures" is chronicled in Nathan Rosenberg, ed., The American System of Manufactures (Edinburgh, 1969); and Otto Mayr and Robert C. Post, eds., Yankee Enterprise: The Rise of the American System of Manufactures (Washington, 1981). Paul Wallace Gates, The Farmers' Age: Agriculture 1815–1860 (New York, 1962), chronicles changes in agriculture during this era; while Gavin Wright, The Political Economy of the Cotton South (New