Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era

by James M. McPherson

James Ford Rhodes’s seven-volume History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 to the Compromise of 1877; Allan Nevins’s four-volume Ordeal of the Union from 1847 to 1861, and four more on The War for the Union; David M. Potter’s 600-page study The Impending Crisis 1848–1861; Bruce Catton’s three volumes on the Army of the Potomac (Mr. Lincoln’s Army; Glory Road; and A Stillness at Appomattox), his three additional volumes, The Centennial History of the Civil War, plus two volumes on Ulysses S. Grant’s Civil War career; Douglas Southall Freeman’s magnificent four-volume biography R.E. Lee and his additional three-volume Lee’s Lieutenants; and Shelby Foote’s The Civil War, three engrossing volumes totaling nearly three thousand pages.