James M. McPherson (born October 11, 1936) is an American Civil War historian, and is the George Henry Davis '86 Professor Emeritus of United States History at Princeton University. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Battle Cry of Freedom, his most famous book. He was the president of the American Historical Association in 2003, and is a member of the editorial board of Encyclopædia Britannica.
Born in Valley City, North Dakota, he graduated from St. Peter High School, and he received his Bachelor of Arts at Gustavus Adolphus College (St. Peter, Minnesota) in 1958 (from which he graduated magna cum laude), and his Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University in 1963. Currently he resides in Princeton, New Jersey, and is married with one child.
McPherson's works include The Struggle for Equality, awarded the Anisfield-Wolf Award. In 1989, he published his Pulitzer-winning book, Battle Cry of Freedom. And in 1998 another book, For Cause and Comrades, received the Lincoln Prize. In 2002 he published both a scholarly book, Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam 1862, and a history of the Civil War for children, Fields of Fury. Unlike many other historians, he has a reputation of trying to make history accessible to the public. Most of his works are marketed to popular audiences and his book Battle Cry of Freedom has long been a popular one-volume general history of the Civil War.
McPherson was named the 2000 Jefferson Lecturer in the Humanities by the National Endowment for the Humanities (replacing the first selection, President Bill Clinton, who declined the honor in the face of criticism from scholars and political conservatives).[1] In making the announcement of McPherson's selection, NEH Chairman William R. Ferris said:
James M. McPherson has helped millions of Americans better understand the meaning and legacy of the American Civil War. 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.[2]
In 2007, he was awarded the $100,000 Pritzker Military Library Literature Award for lifetime achievement in military history--the first person to be awarded the prize. [3]
One of his most recent books is This Mighty Scourge, a series of essays about the Civil War. One essay describes the huge difficulty of negotiation when regime change is a war aim on either side of a conflict. “For at least the past two centuries, nations have usually found it harder to end a war than to start one. 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 Civil War in which both the North and the South sought regime change. It took four years to end that conflict. [4]
McPherson is known for his outspokenness on contemporary issues and his activism, such as his work on behalf of the preservation of Civil War battlefields. As president in 1993-1994 of Protect Historic America, he lobbied against the construction of a commercial theme park at the Manassas battlefield. He has also served on the boards of the Civil War Trust and the Association for the Preservation of Civil War Sites, and on the Civil War Sites Advisory Committee.