16 quotes
If Lincoln had been a failure, he would have lived a longer life.
James M. McPherson. Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief (2008)
Interpretations of the past are subject to change in response to new evidence, new questions asked of the evidence, new perspectives gained by the passage of time.
People are going to dislike you if you make a decision, even if it turns out to be the right one.
An Exchange With a Civil War Historian (1995)
The unending quest of historians for understanding the past — that is, 'revisionism' — is what makes history vital and meaningful.
The bottom line in the Civil War, after all is said and done, showed that every Confederate state was a slave state and every free state was a Union state. These facts were not a coincidence, and every Civil War soldier knew it.
Southern political leaders were threatening to take their states out of the Union if a Republican president was elected on a platform restricting slavery.
James M. McPhersonThis Mighty Scourge: Perspectives on the Civil War (2007)
Of all these interpretations, the states' rights argument is perhaps the weakest. It fails to ask the question, states' rights for what purpose?
James M. McPhersonThis Mighty Scourge: Perspectives on the Civil War (2007)
What were these rights and liberties for which Confederates contended? The right to own slaves; the liberty to take this property into the territories.
James M. McPherson. Battle Cry of Freedom (1988)
More than any other American, Lincoln's name has gone into history. He gave all Americans, indeed all people everywhere, reason to remember that he had lived.
James M. McPherson. Abraham Lincoln (2009)
Lincoln was the only president in American history whose administration was bounded by war.
James M. McPherson. Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief (2008)
Defeat would blot the Confederate States of America from the face of the earth. Confederate victory would destroy the United States and create a precedent for further balkanization of the territory once governed under the Constitution of 1789.
Scorned and ridiculed by many critics during his presidency, Lincoln became a martyr and almost a saint after his death. His words and deeds lived after him, and will be revered as long as there is a United States. Indeed, it seems quite likely that without his determined leadership the United States would have ceased to be.
James M. McPherson. Abraham Lincoln (2009)
By the time of the Gettysburg Address, in November 1863, the North was fighting for a 'new birth of freedom' to transform the Constitution written by the founding fathers, under which the United States had become the world's largest slaveholding country, into a charter of emancipation for a republic where, as the northern version of 'The Battle Cry of Freedom' put it, 'Not a man shall be a slave'.
James M. McPherson. The Illustrated Battle Cry of Freedom (2003)
Slavery was at the root of what the Civil War was all about. If there had been no slavery, there would have been no war, and that ultimately what the Confederacy was fighting for was to preserve a nation based on a social system that incorporated slavery. Had that not been the case, there would have been no war. That's an issue that a lot of Southern whites today find hard to accept.
The risk of making a decision that's wrong is so enormous that sometimes it just crushes people so that they can't make any decision at all because they're afraid of making the wrong decision. And that's exactly what McClellan's problem was.
An Exchange With a Civil War Historian (1995)
To a good many southerners the events of 1861–1865 have been known as 'The War of Northern Aggression'. Never mind that the South took the initiative by seceding in defiance of an election of a president by a constitutional majority. Never mind that the Confederacy started the war by firing on the American flag. These were seen as preemptive acts of defense against northern aggression.