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William J. Cooper and John McCardell, In the Cause of Liberty: How the Civil War Redefined American Ideals. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2009. Pp. viii + 195. $18.95 paperback.
The American Civil War is a central event in the history of the United States because of the ways in which the war radically changed the nation. For almost hundred and fifty years since the war's end, historians have been trying to interpret die war and understand its significance. The contributors to this monograph propose a new course in this search for understanding and significance. The essays were papers given at a symposium in March of 2007 sponsored by the American Civil War Center at Historic Tredegar in Richmond, Virginia. Tredegar is a unique Civil War museum that encourages scholarship that tells the story of the American Civil War from Union, Confederate and African American perspectives. This method is built on the belief that only when the story of the Civil War is told from these various perspectives can we truly understand the war's magnitude and its lasting effects on the United States of America. In keeping with Tredegar's mission the essays in this monograph tell the story of the Civil War and its impact by addressing the antebellum era, the war years and the postbellum era from multiple perspectives.
James McPherson's essay, "The Civil War and the Transformation of America," evaluates the different ways in which northerners, southerners and African Americans defined liberty in the years leading up to the war and the ways in which these definitions of liberty changed as the war progressed. McPherson contends that instead of seeing the war as a static event we should see it as a pivotal event in the process to define liberty that began with...