This Mighty Scourge: Perspectives on the Civil WarThe author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Battle Cry of Freedom and the New York Times bestsellers Crossroads of Freedom and Tried by War, among many other award-winning books, James M. McPherson is America's preeminent Civil War historian. In this collection of provocative and illuminating essays, McPherson offers fresh insight into many of the enduring questions about one of the defining moments in our nation's history. McPherson sheds light on topics large and small, from the average soldier's avid love of newspapers to the postwar creation of the mystique of a Lost Cause in the South. Readers will find insightful pieces on such intriguing figures as Harriet Tubman, John Brown, Jesse James, and William Tecumseh Sherman, and on such vital issues as Confederate military strategy, the failure of peace negotiations to end the war, and the realities and myths of the Confederacy. This Mighty Scourge includes several never-before-published essays--pieces on General Robert E. Lee's goals in the Gettysburg campaign, on Lincoln and Grant in the Vicksburg campaign, and on Lincoln as Commander-in-Chief. All of the essays have been updated and revised to give the volume greater thematic coherence and continuity, so that it can be read in sequence as an interpretive history of the war and its meaning for America and the world. Combining the finest scholarship with luminous prose, and packed with new information and fresh ideas, this book brings together the most recent thinking by the nation's leading authority on the Civil War. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 51
Page 4
... historians. The “Progressive school” dominated American historiography from the 1910s to the 1940s. This school posited a clash between interest groups and classes as the central theme of American history: industry vs. agriculture ...
... historians. The “Progressive school” dominated American historiography from the 1910s to the 1940s. This school posited a clash between interest groups and classes as the central theme of American history: industry vs. agriculture ...
Page 5
... historians who seized upon it as proof that slavery had little to do with the origins of the Confederacy. The Nashville Fugitives, an influential group of historians, novelists, and poets who gathered at Vanderbilt University and ...
... historians who seized upon it as proof that slavery had little to do with the origins of the Confederacy. The Nashville Fugitives, an influential group of historians, novelists, and poets who gathered at Vanderbilt University and ...
Page 6
... historians of the South from the 1920s to the 1950s, “was part of the agrarian system, but only one element and not an essential one”—but rather such matters as the tariff, banks, subsidies to railroads, and similar questions in which ...
... historians of the South from the 1920s to the 1950s, “was part of the agrarian system, but only one element and not an essential one”—but rather such matters as the tariff, banks, subsidies to railroads, and similar questions in which ...
Page 7
... historians now subscribe to them. Of all these interpretations, the state's-rights argument is perhaps the weakest. It fails to ask the question, state's rights for what purpose? State's rights, or sovereignty, was always more a means ...
... historians now subscribe to them. Of all these interpretations, the state's-rights argument is perhaps the weakest. It fails to ask the question, state's rights for what purpose? State's rights, or sovereignty, was always more a means ...
Page 8
... Historians have often dismissed such labels as another example of the “paranoid style” of American politics. But in an eye-opening book titled The Slave Power: The Free North and Southern Domination, 1780–1860, historian Leonard ...
... Historians have often dismissed such labels as another example of the “paranoid style” of American politics. But in an eye-opening book titled The Slave Power: The Free North and Southern Domination, 1780–1860, historian Leonard ...
Contents
THE LOST CAUSE REVISITED | 41 |
ARCHITECTS OF VICTORY | 107 |
HOME FRONT AND BATTLE FRONT | 143 |
LINCOLN | 185 |
Notes | 223 |
Index | 253 |
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Common terms and phrases
Abraham Lincoln Adams American American Civil War Ann Rutledge Antietam antislavery Army of Northern attack Basler battle biography campaign capture Charles Charles Francis Adams Civil command Confeder Confederacy Confederate armies Confederate Veterans Congress Constitution Copperhead Davis’s declared defeat defensive Democrats Diary election emancipation Emancipation Proclamation enemy Federal Fehrenbacher fighting forces fought Gettysburg Grant Greeley Halleck Harriet Harriet Tubman Henry Herndon historians Ibid James Jefferson Davis Jesse John Brown July later Lee’s army letter Lowell March Maryland Massachusetts McClellan McClernand military Mississippi Missouri negotiations newspapers North Northern Virginia officers Papers peace political Potomac president Proclamation quoted raid rebels regiment Republican Richmond River secession Seven Days battles Seward Sherman slavery slaves South Carolina Southern strategy Tennessee territory theater tion troops Tubman Union armies Union soldiers United Vicksburg victory vols Washington William Wilson words wrote Yankee York York Tribune