Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era

by James M. McPherson

In this view, the issues of the American Civil War mirrored the issues of class conflict in Britain. The Union stood for popular government, equal rights, and the dignity of labor; the Confederacy stood for aristocracy, privilege, and slavery. Lincoln expressed this theme in his speeches portraying the war as “essentially a People’s contest … a struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance of government whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men … to afford all an unfettered start, and a fair chance in the race of life.”4 British radicals expounded numerous variations on the theme. For a generation they had fought for democratization of British politics and improved conditions for the working class. For them, America was a “beacon of freedom” lighting the path to reform. The leading British radical, John Bright, passionately embraced the Union cause. “There is no country in which men have been so free and prosperous” as the Union states, declared Bright. “The existence of that free country and that free government has a prodigious influence upon freedom in Europe.” Confederates were “the worst foes of freedom that the world has ever seen,” [Page 550] Bright told workingmen.