James McPherson

James McPherson argues that new histories, biographies, novels and reenactments continue to capture the American imagination about the Civil War because the issues that caused the war are still with us. "Even though the war resolved the issues of Union and slavery,” he said, “it didn't entirely resolve the issues that underlay those two questions. These issues are still important in American society today: regionalism, resentment of centralized government, debates about how powerful the national government ought to be and what role it ought to play in people's lives."

McPherson is the George Henry Davis ’86 Professor of American History Emeritus at Princeton University. A renowned Civil War historian, McPherson in 2007 became the first recipient of the Pritzker Military Library Literature Award for lifetime achievement in military writing. The award is an honor designed to acknowledge the highest levels of scholarship and writing in a field that often does not gain appropriate recognition.

McPherson’s Pulitzer Prize winning book, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, broke ground by combining the complexities of the war while maintaining the narrative that made it appealing to the American public. It has sold more than 600,000 copies.

Some of his other books include Marching Toward Freedom: The Negro in the Civil War 1861-1865, Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction, Drawn with the Sword: Reflections on the American Civil War and This Mighty Scourge: Perspectives on the Civil War. He has also authored more than 80 reviews in various professional journals and in The New York Times Book Review, New York Review of Books, Atlantic Monthly and The New Republic.     

In 1991 the U.S. Senate appointed him to the Civil War Sites Advisory Commission, which determined major battle sites, evaluated their conditions, and then recommended strategies for their preservation. He has since argued publicly against the commercial exploitation of historic sites and continues to guide new students and the general public through the sites of America’s bloodiest war.

McPherson lives in New Jersey with his wife and daughter. He received a bachelor’s degree from Gustavus Adolphus College and a doctoral degree from Johns Hopkins University.