The War That Forged a Nation: Why the Civil War Still Matters

232 Pages·2015·0.84 MB·English

by  James M. McPherson

THE WAR
THAT FORGED
A NATION

T H E WA R
T H AT F O R G E D
A NAT I O N
Why the Civil War Still Matters
JAMES M PHERSON
c
1
1
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© James McPherson 2015
Title page image: The Hawkins Brothers, Captain Charles A. (born 1841) and
Sergeant John M. (born 1843), Co. E., 38th Reg’t Georgia Vol. Infantry.
Ambrotype by unknown photographer. David Wynn Vaughan Collection.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McPherson, James M.
The war that forged a nation : why the Civil War still matters / James McPherson.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-19-937577-6 (hardback)
1. United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Influence.
2. United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Psychological aspects.
3. United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Social aspects.
4. War and society—United States—History.
5. Social change—United States—History.
6. National characteristics, American—History. I. Title.
E468.9.M19 2015
973.7'1—dc23 2014018008
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
CONTENTS
Preface vii
Provenance of the contents ix
1. Why the Civil War Still Matters 1
2. Mexico, California, and the Coming of the Civil War 15
3. A Just War? 32
4. Death and Destruction in the Civil War 46
5. American Navies and British Neutrality
During the Civil War 65
6. The Rewards of Risk-Taking: Two Civil War Admirals 80
7. How Did Freedom Come? 97
8. Lincoln, Slavery, and Freedom 108
9. A. Lincoln, Commander in Chief 123
10. The Commander Who Would Not Fight:
McClellan and Lincoln 144
11. Lincoln’s Legacy for Our Time 160
12. War and Peace in the Post–Civil War South 173
notes 193
Index 213

PREFACE
More than 140 years ago, Mark Twain observed that the Civil War,
which had recently ended, “uprooted institutions that were
centuries old, changed the politics of a people, transformed the social
life of half the country, and wrought so profoundly upon the entire
national character that the influence cannot be measured short of two
or three generations.”
Five generations have passed, and we are still trying to measure that
influence. The long shadow cast by the Civil War continues to affect us
today. More Americans died in that conflict than in all the other wars
this country has fought combined, right through the latest casualty
reports from Afghanistan. Several new books about Abraham Lincoln
and Jefferson Davis, and the movie Lincoln, have offered important
insights about presidential leadership in a time of crisis and have raised
questions about the political and constitutional constraints on execu-
tive powers. The film Twelve Years a Slave powerfully dramatized the
pain and cruelty of an institution that lay at the root of American soci-
ety and brought on the war. The close relationship between the aboli-
tion of slavery and the subsequent evolution of race relations in the
United States has received a great deal of attention, especially since the
election of Barack Obama as president.
Since the publication of my first book fifty years ago, I have sought to
dissect the Civil War’s impact at several levels and in several dimensions.
vii
Preface
The twelve chapters in this volume represent a continuation of that
effort. One of the essays is published here for the first time (chapter 1).
The others have appeared in various venues and formats during the
past eight years, but several have been substantially revised and up-
dated. Each chapter is complete in itself and can be read independ-
ently of the others, but I have also tried to fit them together in a cohe-
sive pattern so that they can be read consecutively from beginning to
end. Although the essays are grounded in many years of reading and
research, they are more interpretive than monographic, and I have
therefore confined the endnotes mainly to citations for quotations. My
interpretations are sometimes stated strongly, and some of them may
disagree with the reader’s own judgments. I welcome disagreement
and dialogue, for that is how scholarship and understanding advance.
James McPherson
Princeton, New Jersey
viii
PROVENANCE OF THE CONTENTS
Chapter 1 has not been previously published. Chapters 2, 3, 4, 7,
and 8 are adapted from review essays that first appeared in the
New York Review of Books. I own the copyright to these essays, and
I am grateful to the NYRB for giving me carte blanche to use them in
this changed format, and to Robert Silvers for his invitations to review
the books that provided the basis for my analyses of several important
Civil War issues. Chapter 5, to which I also own the copyright, was
initially published in Dixie Redux: Essays in Honor of Sheldon Hackey,
edited by Raymond Arsenault and Orville Vernon Burton (Montgomery,
Ala.: New South Books, 2013). Chapter 6 first appeared in the October
2014 issue of the Journal of Military History. I am indebted to the Society
for Military History for permission to publish it herein. Chapter 9, to
which I own the copyright, was first included in Our Lincoln: New
Perspectives on Lincoln and His World, edited by Eric Foner (New
York: W. W. Norton, 2008). Chapter 10 was originally titled “My Ene-
mies Are Crushed: Lincoln and McClellan” and appeared in Wars
within a War: Controversy and Conflict over the American Civil War,
edited by Joan Waugh and Gary W. Gallagher (Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 2009). Chapter 11 initially appeared in Lincoln
Lessons: Reflections on America’s Greatest Leader, edited by Frank J.
Williams and William D. Peterson (Carbondale: Southern Illinois
ix