Perspective

James McPherson is a professor emeritus of history at Princeton and is widely regarded as one of the great contemporary historians of the American Civil War. He is an eminent scholar whose works on the Civil War have won him not only an endowed chair and the presidency of the American Historical Association, but even a Pulitzer Prize. His perspective is that of an erudite scholar. He reports in the book that he read over twenty-five thousand Civil War soldier letters in preparation for writing the book. He is clearly a man committed to conveying the truth about the Civil War to his readers.

McPherson is arguably fiercely pro-Union, disgusted by the outrageous racism of Confederate soldiers and more or less indifferent or insensitive to any legitimate moral complaints that non-slave owning Confederate soldiers might have to being conquered by their fellow countrymen. He exposes the shocking and...