For over thirty years James McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom has stood as the gold standard single volume history of the American Civil War. Recently, a friend recommended Elizabeth Varon’s contribution to the genre, Armies of Deliverance, as a possible successor, or at the very least valuable supplement to McPherson’s venerable classic. Having now read Varon’s book I have to say that it is a very impressive piece of scholarship and a thoroughly enjoyable read. It certainly could act as an alternative to McPherson’s hefty tome, but with the caveat that it depends on what exactly you want out of your history of the American Civil War. It would be wrong to say that Varon is doing the same thing that McPherson did – these are two very different histories with different approaches, and both offer valuable insights into the war and the people who fought it.
Varon’s title, Armies of Deliverance, gives a very strong indication of what she focused on: the use of deliverance rhetoric in the American Civil War. While most people will probably be familiar on some level with the idea of deliverance rhetoric as it applied to emancipation, what Varon really focuses on is the use of deliverance rhetoric towards white southerners. In particular, the book explains how the belief that secession was the product of an elite minority in the south was used to hold together the fraught political coalitions of the northern states. The belief that the majority of the populations of Confederate states were loyal Unionists played a central role in the development of war policy and could define political fault lines. This perspective greatly expanded my understanding of why the war developed the way it did and why key political decisions were made when they were. It also does an excellent job at underlining tensions within the Union as well as juxtaposing the internal narratives of the Union and the Confederacy. It’s a radically different perspective than I was used to and an incredibly valuable one because of that.
That’s not to say that this is a niche academic book of little interest to anyone but specialists. While the first chapter, which lays down some essential theoretical foundations for understanding everything that follows, can be a bit dense most of the rest of the book is incredibly readable and an engaging account of the war. This is perfectly suited as a general history for anyone interested in learning about the American Civil War. That said, it may still not be for everyone. If what you want is plenty of minutiae, including in depth explanations of the build-up to the war, the mobilising of wartime economies, and the ins and outs of the main campaigns this isn’t really that book – you’d be better off with McPherson. Varon provides enough detail about the key chronology of the war so that after reading it you will be familiar with its major moments, but this is more of a hybrid political-military history. Varon’s book also does a lot more to explain the aftermath of the war, in particular the key fault lines that would define Reconstruction, than McPherson, who is much stronger on the build up to the war and how the American society changed between 1830 and 1865. Really, though, the best solution is to just read both. It’s what I did, and I can heartily recommend it.
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