James M. McPherson

James M. McPherson

James M. McPherson (born October 11, 1936 in Valley City , North Dakota ) is an American historian, professor at Princeton University and author of several award-winning books on the American Civil War .

He received the Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for his main work, Battle Cry of Freedom (dt .: To die for freedom ) . In 2003 he was president of the American Historical Association , an organization that has collected and edited sources on American history for over a century. He is also a member of the editorial board of the Encyclopædia Britannica .

Life

McPherson grew up in Minnesota and graduated with a bachelor of arts degree from Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, with distinction cum laude in 1958 . He received his doctorate in philosophy from Johns Hopkins University in 1963 . Since 1962 he has taught at Princeton University, where he is currently George Henry Davis Professor of American History . He is married and has one child.

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McPherson began studying the abolitionist movement that preceded the American Civil War. He was motivated by the parallels to the civil rights movement in the USA from the late 1950s. The book The Struggle for Equality, abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War and Reconstruction , which was published in 1964 and received the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in 1965 , emerged from his dissertation on this topic . He became famous for his main work, Battle Cry of Freedom , which became the standard work on the American Civil War and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1989. His book For Cause and Comrades , which was published in 1998 and was awarded the Lincoln Prize , sheds light on their motives in the civil war by examining numerous diaries and letters from ordinary soldiers. For War on the waters: the Union and Confederate Navies, 1861-1865 , he received the Civil War Book Award from the New York Military Affairs Symposium .

McPhersons' works are characterized by a careful and comprehensive analysis of individual events and their embedding in or connection with other events, so that historical strands of development are revealed to the reader and the core of the events emerges. He knows how to leave out the superfluous and tap into a mass audience. His strongest work in this regard is to die for freedom (Battle Cry of Freedom), as the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes:

“... a book that will remain a standard work for a long time. It does justice to all aspects of the topic, is the latest state of research and impresses with its excellent readability. "

In 2007 he received the Pritzker Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing for the book and his life's work and was its first prize winner. In the same year he received the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize . In 2014 he was awarded the Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Award .

In 1991 he was elected to the American Philosophical Society and in 2009 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

McPherson in the American public

McPherson is committed to preserving historic sites from the Civil War. In addition, in his opinion, historians should also critically monitor current politics. He supported Bill Clinton in the Lewinsky affair . He criticized George W. Bush 's Iraq war several times. He made several statements on current political issues in his capacity as president of a historical society.

Publications

(without claim of completeness)

• The struggle for equality. Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War and Reconstruction. Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 1964.
• The Negro's Civil War. How American Negroes felt and acted during the war for the Union. Pantheon Books, New York NY 1965.
• Marching toward freedom. The Negro in the Civil War, 1861-1865. Knopf, New York NY 1967.
• with others: Blacks in America. Bibliographical essays. Doubleday, Garden City NY 1971.
• The Abolitionist Legacy. From Reconstruction to the NAACP. Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 1975, ISBN 0-691-04637-9 (Second edition with a new foreword by the author, ibid 1995).
• as editor with J. Morgan Kousser: Region, Race, and Reconstruction. Essays in Honor of C. Vann Woodward. Oxford University Press, New York NY et al. 1982, ISBN 0-19-503075-3 .
• Ordeal by Fire. The Civil War and Reconstruction. Knopf, New York NY 1982, ISBN 0-394-31206-6 .
• Lincoln and the Strategy of Unconditional Surrender. Gettysburg College, Gettysburg PA 1984.
• How Lincoln won the War with Metaphors. Louis A. Warren Lincoln Library and Museum, Fort Wayne IN 1985.
• Battle Cry of Freedom. The Civil War Era (= The Oxford History of the United States. Vol. 6). Oxford University Press, New York NY et al. 1988, ISBN 0-19-503863-0 .
• as editor with Richard Gottlieb: Battle Chronicles of the Civil War. 6 volumes. Macmillan et al., New York NY et al. 1989, ISBN 0-02-920661-8 .
• Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution. Oxford University Press, New York NY et al. 1990, ISBN 0-19-505542-X .
• as editor with Paula McGuire and Gary Gerstle: Steven G. O'Brien: American Political Leaders. From Colonial Times to the Present. ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara CA et al. 1991, ISBN 0-87436-570-8 .
• Images of the Civil War: the Paintings of Mort Künstler , Gramercy Books 1992 ISBN 978-0-517-07356-8
• American Victory, American Defeat. In: Gabor S. Boritt (Ed.): Why the Confederacy lost. Oxford University Press, New York NY et al. 1992, ISBN 0-19-507405-X , pp. 15-42.
• Gettysburg: The Paintings of Mort Künstler , Turner 1993 ISBN 1-878685-79-1
• What they fought for. 1861-1865. Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge LA et al. 1994, ISBN 0-8071-1904-0 .
• as editor: The Atlas of the Civil War. Macmillan, New York NY et al. 1994, ISBN 0-02-579050-1 .
• as editor: "We cannot escape history". Lincoln and the last best Hope of Earth. University of Illinois Press, Urbana IL et al. 1995, ISBN 0-252-02190-8 .
• as editor: Bruce Catton : The American Heritage new History of the Civil War. Viking, New York NY et al. 1996, ISBN 0-670-86804-3 .
• Drawn with the Sword. Reflections on the American Civil War. Oxford University Press, New York NY et al. 1996, ISBN 0-19-509679-7 .
• For cause and comrades. Why men fought in the Civil War. Oxford University Press, New York NY et al. 1997, ISBN 0-19-509023-3 .
• Is blood thicker than water? Crises of Nationalism in the modern World. Vintage Canada, Toronto 1998, ISBN 0-679-30928-4 .
• as editor: Personal memoirs of US Grant. With an Introduction and Notes. Penguin Books, New York NY et al. 1999, ISBN 0-14-043701-0 .
• as editor: Encyclopedia of Civil War biographies. 3 volumes. Sharpe Reference, Armonk NY 2000, ISBN 0-7656-8021-1 .
• Crossroads of Freedom. Antietam. Oxford University Press, New York NY et al. 2002, ISBN 0-19-513521-0 .
• The Boys in blue and gray. Atheneum Books for Young Readers, New York NY 2002, ISBN 0-689-84833-1 .
• Hallowed Ground. A Walk at Gettysburg. Crown Journeys, New York NY 2003, ISBN 0-609-61023-6 .
• This Mighty Scourge. Perspectives on the Civil War. Oxford University Press, New York NY et al. 2007, ISBN 978-0-19-531366-6 .
• Tried by War. Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief. Penguin Press, New York NY et al. 2008, ISBN 978-1-59420-191-2 .

Web links

• Homepage of the university. Princeton
• Article on McPherson and his book Battle Cry of Freedom
• Portrait of McPherson

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Washington Post, July 16, 2007
2. ^ Member History: James M. McPherson. American Philosophical Society, accessed December 17, 2018 .