Battle cry of freedom book review series#

McPherson is known for his outspokenness on contemporary issues and for his activism, such as his work on behalf of the preservation of Civil War battlefields. In 2009, he was the co-winner of the Lincoln Prize for Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009.

In 2007, he was awarded the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize for lifetime achievement in military history given by the Society for Military History. In 2007, he was awarded the $100,000 Pritzker Military Library Literature Award for lifetime achievement in military history and was the first recipient of the prize. In 2002, McPherson received The Lincoln Forum's Richard Nelson Current Award of Achievement. By establishing the highest standards for scholarship and public education about the Civil War and by providing leadership in the movement to protect the nation's battlefields, he has made an exceptional contribution to historical awareness in America. McPherson has helped millions of Americans better understand the meaning and legacy of the American Civil War. In making the announcement of McPherson's selection, NEH Chairman William R. McPherson was named the 2000 Jefferson Lecturer in the humanities by the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 1995, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement presented by Awards Council member David McCullough. McPherson was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1991. McPherson, in an exchange with a Civil War historian I guess that's my sense of what a historian ought to do. So that people can face their current situation realistically, rather than mythically. I think that one job of the historian is to try to cut through some of those myths and get closer to some kind of reality. There are all kinds of myths that a people has about itself, some positive, some negative, some healthy and some not healthy. Americans learned that bitter lesson in Vietnam, and apparently having forgotten it, we're forced to learn it all over again in Iraq.' One of McPherson's examples is the American Civil War, in which both the Union and the Confederacy sought regime change.

'For at least the past two centuries, nations have usually found it harder to end a war than to start one. One essay describes the huge difficulty of negotiation when regime change is a war aim on either side of a conflict.

Battle cry of freedom book review series#

McPherson published This Mighty Scourge in 2007, a series of essays about the American Civil War. In 2002, he published both a scholarly book, Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam 1862, and a history of the American Civil War for children, Fields of Fury. McPherson's 1998 book, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War, received the Lincoln Prize. His 1990 book, Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution argues that the emancipation of slaves amounts to a second American Revolution. In 1988, he published his Pulitzer-winning book, Battle Cry of Freedom. His works include The Struggle for Equality, awarded the Anisfield-Wolf Award in 1965. McPherson joined the faculty of Princeton in 1962. Panel discussion hosted by the American Historical Association on the career of James McPherson, January 8, 2012, C-SPAN McPherson speaking at the American Historical Association annual meeting in January 2014.