2007 Speakers
- Mark Russell
- James McPherson
- History and Future of the American Penny
- Joshua Wolf Shenk
- Gore Vidal
- Sarah Vowell
In recognition of the opening of Lincoln Hall, West Virginia University’s new residential college, the 2007 Festival
of Ideas series will focus on America’s 16th president, Abraham Lincoln—the man, the myth, the martyr and American hero.
Throughout an eight-week period from February to April, a wide array of experts will come to WVU to discuss why Lincoln
matters and examine Lincoln as a politician, historical figure, leader and cultural icon.
JAMES MCPHERSON
For a Vast Future Also: Lincoln and the Millennium
McPherson is credited for facilitating an unprecedented national resurgence of interest in the Civil War. His 1988 New York Times bestseller Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era reached beyond the academic realm and into the public sphere. The National Endowment for the Humanities commended McPherson’s ability to document “the complexities of war while maintaining the narrative that made it appealing to the American public.” Battle Cry of Freedom won the 1989 Pulitzer Prize and has since sold more than 600,000 copies.
McPherson first began studying the Civil War as a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University, where he focused on the abolitionists whose efforts elected Abraham Lincoln to office and produced the social changes brought about by war. He has since written several books on the topic including: For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War, which won the 1998 Lincoln Prize; Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution; We Cannot Escape History; Drawn with the Sword; and The Struggle for Equality.
The prolific historian’s latest book, This Mighty Scourge: Perspectives on the Civil War, is a compilation of 16 essays that address the biggest questions of the Civil War: Why did it start? Why did the South lose? What motivated the men who fought on both sides? How do we evaluate the top leaders—including Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Ulysses S. Grant?
In 1991, McPherson was appointed by the United States Senate to the Civil War Sites Advisory Commission, which determines the war’s major battlegrounds, evaluates their condition, and recommends approaches for their preservation. As a member of the commission, and later as the 2003 president of the American Historical Association, McPherson has been a champion for the preservation of the sites of the nation’s bloodiest war. McPherson is professor emeritus at Princeton University, where he was named the George Henry Davis ’86 Professor of History.