Janet Napolitano reviews "The War That Forged a Nation," by James McPherson
James McPherson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning history, “Battle Cry of Freedom,” is often regarded as the best single-volume treatment of the Civil War. But if reading “Battle Cry’s” 800-plus pages is too daunting, turn to “The War That Forged a Nation,” McPherson’s collection of 12 essays. Each essay (10 previously published and two new) can be read independently. Taken together, they illuminate the great themes and personalities that make the Civil War still so riveting at its sesquicentennial. This is first-rate narrative history, told by one of our nation’s pre-eminent historians.
We all know — or think we know — the major questions the Civil War settled. It answered, definitively, the question of secession. A war that began to preserve the union became the war that forged a
nation, as McPherson’s title attests. It answered the question of slavery: The United States would no longer exist as half slave and half free. And it also began to redefine the relationship of citizens to their government. As McPherson points out, the first 12 amendments to the U.S. Constitution were express limitations on the government’s powers. The next 15 amendments, beginning with the Civil War Amendments, basically stated what the government should do.
Reaching this point was neither quick nor painless. The slavery question bedeviled the country from its founding, and tensions about slavery’s continued expansion only grew in the decades that followed, foreshadowing the brutal, internecine conflict to come. In McPherson’s terms, the Civil War, if not a “total war” in the sense of World War I, was a “hard war.” By the war’s end, there were 750,000 war dead, approximately 2.4 percent of the country’s population, the equivalent of 7.5 million today.
McPherson examines closely the diplomatic, military and political constraints under which the Civil War was fought. He reviews why it was essential that the European powers remained neutral, and the diplomacy and espionage undertaken to ensure this was the case. He identifies the profound military challenges the Union faced.
At the war’s beginning, Lincoln was saddled with incompetent leadership. McPherson’s harshest judgments are reserved for Maj. Gen. George McClellan, the commander of the Army of the Potomac. To Lincoln, McClellan was the general “who would not fight.” To McPherson, he was an egomaniac suffering from a messiah complex. (In an interesting footnote, McClellan was elected to be the first president of the University of California in 1868. The news was met with shocked and widespread protest throughout California, and McClellan ultimately declined the presidency.)
McPherson also lingers on Lincoln’s considerable political risk-taking. What began as the president’s simple opposition to the expansion of slavery blossomed into full-bore abolitionism as the war progressed. At the same time, Lincoln had to face political realities; he needed both the northern and the border states to stand with the Union at the war’s outset, and they were not all of one mind about slavery. The path of political leadership was a rocky one for him, with notable low points, among them his recommendation to a group of blacks in 1862 that he would offer government assistance to any blacks who volunteered to emigrate to Haiti.
But in 1864, Lincoln committed a singular act of political courage. He had witnessed years of the war’s carnage, and the bravery of more than 100,000 black soldiers. Despite intense pressure to retreat from the abolition of slavery as a condition for negotiating the end of the war, Lincoln refused. Everyone thought his stand would result in his defeat for re-election. Regardless, Lincoln was not about to turn his back on those who were fighting for their freedom.
Because the caliber of these essays is so high, and the history so illuminating, I would have enjoyed a few additional pieces in this collection. Other than the essay about the number of deaths, for example, there is nothing about domestic life while the men were off fighting. The roles of the press, the Congress and prominent abolitionists like Frederick Douglass are left unexplored.
Perhaps the keenest disappointment, however, comes from the book’s subtitle: “Why the Civil War Still Matters.” McPherson leaves this as a conclusion without deep explication, offering only a few words in the book’s short preface and one essay — the book’s weakest — on Reconstruction. On the surface, it seems obvious to say that the Civil War still matters. But how does it, exactly?
One could argue that it matters with regard to how we view the role of the states versus that of the federal government. Just listen to the words of some of today’s presidential aspirants, and you will hear echoes of the mid-19th century. One could argue that it matters because slavery’s legacy painfully endures, and underscores our societal failure to attain the full promise of the Civil War amendments to the Constitution. Just consider the current controversies over the mistreatment of blacks in our criminal justice system. And one could argue that it matters in terms of how we evaluate true political courage, as compared with actions that merely look good in the press or the polls.
If we are to adjudicate the Civil War’s continuing impact today, we should do so with a common understanding of what actually happened and why. To that end, I would give all those who are interested a copy of “The War That Forged a Nation.” They can read “Battle Cry of Freedom” on their own.