Book Review: Battle Cry of Freedom
If you want to dig a little further into this subject I recommend reading the post written a while back on the subject of the USA civil war here. The book reviewed there is worth reading for a very different narrative. The book I’m reading now is much more comprehensive covering a lot more ground, and both are great.
I’m reading the book “Battle Cry of Freedom” by James M. McPherson. It’s a pretty long book and rich in content so it warrants multiple posts. I’ll likely do two to four posts on this book, maybe more. I want to start off saying that it is a very well written book. If you like history or want to learn more of the details on the civil war it’s a great one to read. Even though it is a lengthy book it flows well – at least so far from what I have read. The civil war that the USA went through is very important, more important than I think many give it credit for. It didn’t just shape the United States, I think it is shaping the world. This is primarily because the USA became the world “superpower” or the empire that began shaping the world. I think the world shaping happened primarily after WWII, but it started through ideas before that and it started by force after that.
I just want to lay out in the beginning here that I disagree with quite a bit of this author’s narrative. I don’t disagree with many aspects of this, it’s loaded with great quotes and information. It’s well worth the read even if I’m in disagreement. The disagreement I have is a bit more subtle than many may pick up on – and that is okay, it is still worth reading. Ideologies and narratives shape the human mind. They are extremely powerful strongholds, or protective layers, that shield one’s mind from thinking of alternative points of view. We are in an artificial prison containing our minds into a very narrow view of reality. I don’t exclude myself in this condition. I’d like to dig my way out, but as I do am I just surrounding my mind with new false constructs?
Since I’ve really started thinking outside the box of official or basic left/right paradigm mindsets I started having some problems with Abraham Lincoln and the civil war. The freeing of the slaves as a result is great, but what else happened? We always hear about the slavery narrative because that’s really difficult to disagree with. I’d say only extremely racist and somewhat insane people would be against Lincoln and the civil war because of the liberation of slaves in the USA. I came to a point that it seemed there was much more going on behind the narrative and it seemed terrible. But I couldn’t put my finger on it for many years. So as I tried to express the ideas I had and it didn’t resonate with people that I’d bring it up with, and it may not still but I hope you’ll continue thinking about it. The first thing I could point at as a problem with the USA civil war was that it set the precedent that the union was no longer voluntary. To me this dissolved the beauty of the union, what is freedom if it isn’t a voluntary association?
The beginning of the book I found fairly boring, but I find many books to be the same so I don’t hold it against it. If you are like me it takes a little while to get into the rhythm and style of the writer then just give it a little time. Something interesting mentioned in the beginning of the book is that the civil war is the most written about event in American history. Another pretty amazing fact is that they lost more lives during that war than all of the wars up to this point combined. It was a very bloody and dramatic event in American history.
I found chapter 3 section II very interesting and revealing. Some may find it a boring area of the book because it digs into economy and statistics. But to me those are important and if done well can reveal a lot on a subject. The author is primarily focusing on the pre-war 1800’s in this segment. What it shows is that high rates of white people were leaving the south and heading to the north. The north was advancing quickly into the industrial age and becoming major producers. The south was relying on slave labor and not advancing, they were in a rut. Like I mentioned in the post linked at the top of this, I believe that slavery as it was pre-civil war would have died on its own if left to try and compete with the new ways of production. If the south left the union and tried to compete with the north and the rest of the world it would have failed over time. Perhaps it would have lasted another 40 years or so, but it very well may have had a much less bloody and peaceful end – and I believe that would have been great. But that is not what happened. So what did happen? Was the civil war primarily about slavery? That is what this author focuses on and all other official narratives I’ve been taught. To me I believe it was about the federal government versus the state sovereignty. It looks to me like the intent in the establishment of the USA was that the people were the sovereigns, it was an abolishment of kings and lords over people. Next was the state sovereign under the individual sovereign. And last was the federal sovereignty under the state and individual sovereignty. The federal government was established to accomplish the things that the individual or the state could not accomplish very effectively – at least in the minds of the founders. Things like national defense and also international and even national trade systems. The other primary idea the federal government was to focus on was minting gold coins as the standard money. These things make sense.
The declaration of independence set the first primary standard. Then they put together their constitution. This was primarily to set up what the federal government could do, it was also established to limit the power of government, not make it all powerful. Then they added the bill of rights to protect the people and the states from the federal government. It seems to me if the founders of the USA came back and saw what this had become and they could do it over again, they would have drastically limited the federal government – maybe never even created it. They would have gone another path, because what they did did not work towards the aims and hopes they started with. At least most of the founders.
So what the federal government has done is taken back the seat of King, or Sovereign over the petty little people and states. In chapter 8 section II the author digs into this idea. Both the incumbent president Buchanan and Lincoln unify on this subject, that the states have no right to secession. That the states were created by the federal government, not the other way around. To me this completely disregards the words from the framers of the constitution and the declaration of independence. So their arguments are invalid. But what this shows to me is that there likely was a puppeteer behind the throne of presidency even at this early stage of the government. Perhaps it was just a desire for concentrated power by those sitting in the throne of presidency. That would mean that that puppeteer was just an ideology, the ideology of concentrated power and authority over all and everything.
All of those who rejected the right to secession ignored the first paragraph of the declaration of independence:
“The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
So close to disunion they got into the nuances of it all and split hairs. Some believed they did not have the right to secession but they had the right to revolution. To me this means that you cannot voluntarily leave, but you can violently leave. Which is a terrible precedent and promotes violent upheaval, not diplomatic and voluntary association. It also sets the stage for whoever is the biggest will likely win. Lincoln said, “The doctrine of secession is anarchy.” But he did not reject the idea that they could revolt. I reject that the doctrine of secession is anarchy. But it is peaceful and creates a more voluntary situation – which is threatening to a central governing body. It isn’t anarchy because the local or state government still exists.
There is a chance that the USA was created as the “New Order of the Ages” or “Novus odo seclorum” and the founders, or at least some of them, did mean it as Lincoln and Buchanan did. That the USA federal government was a supra government to control all its subjects. This precedent set through the civil war crushes the meaning behind the Declaration of Independence in my view. It sets the stage for a New World Order that will be a supra government over the entire world. Either coming from and of the USA, which I have my doubts, or submitted to by the USA which I think more likely. If and when that takes place the precedent is set. If the federal government says so, you have no choice but to obey, or have a revolution. Well, those are pathetic choices.
Even if the intent of the founders was to have an all powerful central force with some checks and balances, or if that became the intent after their civil war, why not choose a different path forward? The founders of the USA are not my god. They are men, smart men but they are only men. Why not have individual sovereignty top tier, then local, then county, then state, then nation, then world and have this association a voluntary thing? Perhaps it’s only worth breaking that pattern if someone becomes an aggressor on an other. You and I are an other, I don’t want us to be aggressed upon. The south was breaking that pattern, they were enslaving people and breaking the first level of individual sovereignty. But it has never been presented to me in that way. If that is why the civil war happened I would be much more supportive and it would make more sense. Let’s protect that individual sovereignty over that of the state or confederacy trying to enslave a race and it’s people. Instead they used the logic that the federal government was more powerful than the state… I disagree. However I would agree if they were using the standard that individual sovereignty trumps the desire to enslave others which breaks their sovereignty. They just never posed their arguments in such a way. That is likely intentional, they don’t want us to be free – they want to free. We are supposed to be inpatients to their insane asylum. And insane we must be if we enjoin ourselves to them and the precedents they have set with the imaginary narratives to lock us into their box. An imaginary prison with imaginary shackles that are getting heavier decade after decade after decade.
This book is long and it’s not winter time so I don’t read a whole lot each week. When I get through more I may add one to three more updates on this book, and then I may combine it all as one final post reviewing this book. Even though I disagree with some of the narrative it is a well done book so far.
Further reading:
Battle Cry of Freedom (Internet archive link)