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I spoke to Professor McPherson in late March in his book-lined office in Dickinson Hall on the Princeton campus, where he has taught for three decades. Subsequently I requested an interview and he was kind enough to consent. I sent the piece to Professor McPherson and he responded in December with a brief letter. The Decemissue of The International Workers Bulletin carried a favorable review by this writer of his latest work, What They Fought For, 1861-1865. He is also the author of two comprehensive studies of the Civil War, Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction (1982) and Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (1988), as well as a collection of essays, Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution (1991). He has paid particular attention, in works such as The Negro's Civil War: How American Negroes Felt and Acted During the War for the Union (1965) and Marching Toward Freedom: The Negro in the Civil War (1967), to the role of slaves in their own liberation. Professor McPherson's dissertation, published in 1964 as The Struggle for Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War and Reconstruction, was a groundbreaking study of the Abolitionist movement during the Civil War. Peter, Minnesota in 1958 and received his Ph.D. On the basis of an extensive analysis of historical fact, Professor McPherson has refuted attempts to diminish the significance of the great conflict, dismiss its accomplishments and denigrate its leading figures.īorn in 1936 in North Dakota and raised in Minnesota, he graduated from Gustavus Adolphus College in St. For more than 30 years, in many books, articles and essays, he has championed the view that the Civil War was a revolutionary struggle of epic dimensions. McPherson of Princeton University is perhaps the foremost historian of the Civil War period currently writing and teaching in the United States. Originally published in the International Workers Bulletin, June 19, 1995