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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.

— James M. McPherson

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More quotes by James M. McPherson

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.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: James M. McPherson (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.