NONFICTION - April 24, 1994

WHAT THEY FOUGHT FOR: 1861-1865 by James M. McPherson (Louisiana State University Press: $16.95; 88 pp.). A Union soldier wrote following the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862 that “as god gives us liberty we Should try to impart it to others . . . thank god the chanes will Soon be bursted.” It’s an eloquent statement of a view held by many Northern soldiers--but by no means all, for others believed Lincoln’s order had turned the civil conflict, as one put it, into “nothing but an abolition war.” “What They Fought For” is essentially a work-in-progress, an essay surveying some of the themes James McPherson (author of the 1989 Pulitzer winner “Battle Cry of Freedom”) plans to explore in greater detail in a forthcoming history, but this volume stands on its own due to the many strong voices it contains--those of James M. McPherson and those of the soldiers he quotes. McPherson’s reading of thousand of letters and diary entries have led him to dispute the common belief that Civil War soldiers didn’t know why they were fighting, and to conclude that although slavery was indeed a central issue, Confederate and Union combatants alike believed themselves to be “custodians of the legacy of 1776.” It’s appalling to read Southern soldiers’ references to battling “tyrants” on behalf of “liberty” while suggesting a few sentences later that their families purchase more slaves, but equally inspiring to learn of the English-born Union corporal explaining his re-enlistment in a letter home by writing “if Liberty should be crushed here, what hope would there be for the cause of Human Progress anywhere else?”