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

Abstract

Reviewed by: The War That Forged a Nation: Why the Civil War Still Matters by James McPherson J. Matthew Gallman The War That Forged a Nation: Why the Civil War Still Matters, James McPherson. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. ISBN 978-01-9932-5776, 232pp., cloth, $27.95. In 1989 James McPherson’s grand narrative, Battle Cry of Freedom, won the Pulitzer Prize and went on to be a best-seller, shaping how a generation understood the Civil War. Before he became the “Pulitzer Prize–winning historian of the American Civil War,” McPherson had written three important volumes on abolitionism and African American history. In the last quarter century, McPherson has published— among other things—books on soldiers’ motivations, Abraham Lincoln, the battle of Antietam, Jefferson Davis, and naval warfare during the Civil War. I mention these volumes because despite their collective weight a case can be made that McPherson has been as skilled an essayist as he has been an author of big books. The short form, if done well, calls for concise prose, clear arguments, and the willingness to make a big statement in few words. The essayist must also understand his audience. Different readers require different levels of detail and different sorts of arguments. James McPherson writing a short essay is like Willie Mays closing in on a long fly ball: it does not look that hard at all. At least until you try it yourself. The War That Forged a Nation collects a dozen essays, only one of which is new for this volume. Half are reprinted from various journals or collections. The remaining five are reworked review essays that originally appeared in the New York Review of Books. Taken together, the collection demonstrates McPherson’s skills as a versatile author and it illustrates many of the big arguments that he has made about the Civil War era throughout his career. Even the most engaged Civil War historian will find unfamiliar essays here, although perhaps no surprising new discoveries. General readers will learn a huge amount. Budding authors should read for the art of writing. Ten of the essays focus on the war years. One—among the strongest pieces in the volume—considers antebellum politics and the War with Mexico; the final essay looks beyond the Civil War, arguing that the violence of the Civil War continued well into the postwar years. The review essays are nice examples of short essays written for one occasion and then reworked for a new purpose. In some cases, the books become the context [End Page 329] for an interpretive piece that no longer “reviews” the books at all. In a few cases, McPherson takes on an author and interpretation head on. One of the best essays wrestles with the notion of “just war” and includes some harsh criticism of the work of religious historian Harry Stout. Another returns to the popular debate about “Who Freed the Slaves?” laying out a moderate position that insists on the primacy of the Union army while acknowledging the important agency of individual slaves. In an excellent essay on Total War and the conflict’s essential destructiveness, McPherson argues that historian Mark Neely overstated the extent of restraint exercised by the warring armies, but he also dissents from those scholars who see the conflict’s overwhelming death and destruction as its key legacy. Two essays build on McPherson’s recent excursion into naval history. One compares the careers of David Farragut and Samuel DuPont. McPherson finds that DuPont’s cautious, self-involved nature resonates with the unfortunate history of George McClellan; while the aggressive Farragut reminds him of the military mind of Ulysses S. Grant. The other naval essay turns to diplomatic history, exploring how a series of naval conflicts opened up the possibility—never realized—that foreign powers might enter the War between the States. These essays illustrate a fundamental truth: as a scholar of the Civil War era, James McPherson has highly informed opinions about a wealth of seemingly distinct subdisciplines, including religious history and ethics, military history at all levels, political history, diplomatic history, and African American history. He is equally comfortable discussing causality and morality, in examining short-term...