![]() ![]() If there is a problem in Civil War history that he has not fully worked out to his satisfaction, he has the modesty to say so. He treats facts with respect, as they deserve, and while he clearly has a conceptual framework within which he approaches his raw material, he is not blind to nuance and ambiguity. His Battle Cry of Freedom won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1989.Īt a time when the appellation “historian” is loosely applied to ideologues such as Richard Pipes and Daniel Goldhagen, and much of “left” historiography consists of largely subjective and arbitrary exercises in “class, race and gender” analysis, McPherson continues to take the study of history and its responsibilities seriously. The author of a number of major works on the Civil War, as well as countless articles, reviews and essays, he has paid particular attention to the role of slaves in their own liberation and the activities of the Abolitionists. Born in 1936, he received a PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 1963 and has taught at Princeton University for more than 35 years. ![]() Professor McPherson is a remarkable and admirable figure. We hope that readers will find that the subjects of the discussion-the political turmoil of the period leading up to the Civil War, the violence of the war, Lincoln's legacy, the impeachment of Andrew Johnson-are of interest and that they shed some light on contemporary events. ![]() McPherson, probably the leading contemporary historian of the American Civil War era. Starting tomorrow we will be presenting on the WSWS a lengthy interview with James M. ![]()
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