The War That Forged a Nation: Why the Civil War Still Matters

Content Warning: Both the source text and this guide use a historical lens to address sensitive and complex issues such as enslavement, racism, war, and violence.

McPherson attributes Americans’ intense interest in the Civil War to its size, its location on American soil, and the toll on human lives. His interest in the Civil War was first piqued during his graduate studies at Johns Hopkins University. After noticing the parallels between the 1860s and the 1960s, he became a historian of the Civil War and Reconstruction. He asserts that because issues of race and citizenship and the powers and responsibilities of federal versus state governments were left unresolved, the Civil War remains relevant today.

McPherson highlights how the Civil War transformed the character of the United States. He finds the transformation of the United States from a decentralized republic to a centralized polity evident in the differences in language in Abraham Lincoln’s presidential addresses and the amendments to the Constitution. He also sees these trends in the creation and expansion of national government agencies that affect the average citizen. He also observes that the Civil War transformed the United States from an economy based on enslavement to a free-labor entrepreneurial capitalist economy.