![]() ![]() As the population began to move from farm to city, farmers increasingly specialized in the production of crops for the market rather than for home consumption. While both rich and poor enjoyed rising incomes, their inequality of wealth widened significantly. “Although per capita income doubled during the half-century, not all sectors of society shared equally in this abundance. The remedy lies not in removal of restraint but in achievement of the capacity to read and write.” ![]() He suffers not the absence of a negative liberty-freedom from-but of a positive liberty-freedom to read and write. But an illiterate person suffers from a denial of positive liberty he is unable to enjoy the freedom to write or read whatever he chooses, not because some authority prevents him from doings so but because he cannot read or write anything. ![]() Freedom of the press is generally viewed as a negative liberty-freedom from interference with what a writer writes or a reader reads. It is not necessarily incompatible with negative liberty, but has a different focus or emphasis. Positive liberty can best be understood as freedom to. Negative liberty, therefore, can be described as freedom from. A law requiring motorcyclists to wear a helmet would be, under this definition, to prevent them from enjoying the freedom to go bareheaded if they wish. It can be defined as the absence of restraint, a freedom from interference by outside authority with individual thought or behavior. This authoritative volume makes sense of that vast and confusing "second American Revolution" we call the Civil War, a war that transformed a nation and expanded our heritage of liberty.“This was a transformation from what the late Isaiah Berlin described as “Negative Liberty” to “Positive Liberty.”4 The idea of negative liberty is perhaps more familiar. This "new birth of freedom," as Lincoln called it, constitutes the proudest legacy of America's bloodiest conflict. ![]() Eventually, the North had to grapple with the underlying cause of the war-slavery-and adopt a policy of emancipation as a second war aim. The book's title refers to the sentiments that informed both the Northern and Southern views of the conflict: the South seceded in the name of that freedom of self-determination and self-government for which their fathers had fought in 1776, while the North stood fast in defense of the Union founded by those fathers as the bulwark of American liberty. Particularly notable are McPherson's new views on such matters as the slavery expansion issue in the 1850s, the origins of the Republican Party, the causes of secession, internal dissent and anti-war opposition in the North and the South, and the reasons for the Union's victory. Packed with drama and analytical insight, the book vividly recounts the momentous episodes that preceded the Civil War-the Dred Scott decision, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry-and then moves into a masterful chronicle of the war itself-the battles, the strategic maneuvering on both sides, the politics, and the personalities. James McPherson's fast-paced narrative fully integrates the political, social, and military events that crowded the two decades from the outbreak of one war in Mexico to the ending of another at Appomattox. Filled with fresh interpretations and information, puncturing old myths and challenging new ones, Battle Cry of Freedom will unquestionably become the standard one-volume history of the Civil War. ![]()
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