What They Fought For Summary

James M. McPherson, What They Fought For, 1861-1865 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Publisher, 1994; reprint, Logan: Perfection Learning Corporation, 2013). First thing’s first, anyone who encounters this wonderfully constructed book, What They Fought For, by James M. McPherson, must acknowledge his great work. McPherson is one of the few historians worth reading; this is coming from a Kinesiology major who wants little to nothing to do with historians. I strongly believe that this marvelous piece of art work has no flaws or weaknesses, yet has many strong points.
Chapter 1: "The Holy Cause of Liberty and Independence" This first entry into the book showcases the side of the southern Confederate armies, who were comparing the Civil War to the Revolutionary War. They saw their enemies, the Northern Yankees, as nothing more than tyrants trying to oppress the south. Just as the British had done to the colonists a century and a half ago. This gave them a "holy cause of southern freedom", a reason to step into the shoes of their famed forefathers and once again fight for their liberties and constitutional rights.
Chapter one also gives acounts of Confederates lives through letters and journals they wrote in during the Civil War. These letters told
One side wanted to keep it and the other wanted to destroy it. Chapter three delves on both sides, and their opinions on the already touchy subject. The Confederates felt it was their god-given right to have slaves, the superior controlling the weak. The North wanted to abolish slavery because it went against the Constitution. But letters show that some of the Yanks felt it was the only way to defeat the south, so they could really care less. Abraham Lincoln knew though, that the only way to end the war and bring the United States of America back together again, was to end slavery and free the