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

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2015

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-6

Chapters 7-8

Chapters 9-10

Chapters 11-12

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 7-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 7 Summary: “How Did Freedom Come?”

McPherson asserts that the abolition of enslavement and the preservation of the Union were inextricably linked. He begins by analyzing Gary Gallagher’s The Union War. Although McPherson finds value in Gallagher’s delineation of the meaning of “Union” to mid-19th century Americans, he nonetheless takes issue with Gallagher’s presentation of abolition as a mere by-product of the Union cause. McPherson presents evidence that Union intentionality regarding the abolition of enslavement occurred as early as 1861; he cites the fact that Republican leaders and constituents suggested to Lincoln that enslavement and the Union were incompatible and emphasizes Major General Benjamin Butler’s decision to receive enslaved people who escaped to Union lines as contraband of war. This early intention grew considerably as the war continued, and the Union and abolition causes were fused by 1864.

Lincoln’s adoption of Butler’s pivotal policy and the infusion of Black soldiers into Union camps give rise to the question of whether it is Black people and their initiative to escape or Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation that deserve primary credit for abolition. McPherson discusses the self-emancipation thesis that dominated the 1980s, but he concludes that Lincoln is more directly responsible because the Emancipation Proclamation converted the Union army to a liberation army, and the 13th Amendment freed 3.3 million enslaved people, far outweighing the number freed through escape to Union lines.

Still, McPherson includes an extensive discussion of David Blight’s A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation, wherein Blight asserts unequivocally that both the enslaved people and Lincoln deserve credit for abolition, as their actions were interdependent. Blight’s text includes autobiographies of John Washington and Wallace Turnage, two formerly enslaved men who escaped to Union lines. McPherson summarizes both autobiographies, noting similarities and divergences in their plights, which offer a unique understanding of the process of emancipation during the war.

Chapter 8 Summary: “Lincoln, Slavery, and Freedom”

McPherson analyzes two texts that offer unique insights on Lincoln’s political record and his views on race and enslavement. Despite Lincoln’s upbringing and the cultural influences of pro-enslavement and anti-Black states, Lincoln proved himself an advocate of abolition from the earliest days of his political career. In The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery, Eric Foner emphasizes the fact that Lincoln viewed enslavement as contradictory to the natural rights articulated in the nation’s founding documents and expected the institution to eventually die out. McPherson posits that the major theme of Foner’s text is the evolution of Lincoln’s views. Lincoln considered three options for enslaved people: freedom and emigration, as exemplified by his 1862 gathering of Black delegates to publicize his colonization schemes; freedom and subordination, which became impractical given the sacrifices of Black soldiers to the Union cause; or freedom and equal citizenship, as shown by Lincoln’s unprecedented advocacy for limited Black suffrage in the postbellum South. The latter prompted John Wilkes Booth to assassinate Lincoln.

James Oakes’s The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics addresses radical reformers’ and abolitionists’ criticism of Lincoln’s public actions. Oakes discusses Douglass and Lincoln’s symbiotic relationship and reinterprets Lincoln’s political career, presenting him as a pragmatic politician who used careful rhetoric to appease conservative audiences while simultaneously guiding them toward acceptance of radical ideas. Examples include Lincoln’s responses to emancipation orders issued by two Union generals as well as the New York Tribune editorial written by Horace Greeley. Oakes also makes a distinction between Lincoln’s public and private views on race, asserting that Lincoln used public racism as a strategic method for converting white audiences to the abolitionist cause and for preemptively mitigating conservative backlash toward his more radical measures. After issuing the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln no longer resorted to public racism as a strategic diversion, and Douglass himself attested to Lincoln’s private antiracist morals and character.

Chapters 7-8 Analysis

McPherson strategically organizes the content of Chapters 7 and 8 to collectively provide a sociopolitical perspective that venerates Lincoln as the quintessential figure responsible for abolition. Central to McPherson’s perspective are Lincoln’s convictions about the nation’s ideals and the need to resolve the nation’s founding contradiction to preserve the Union. (McPherson returns to this topic in Chapter 11 as well.) The outline of Lincoln’s public protests against enslavement and its expansion to new territories from 1837 to 1858 establishes the fact that abolitionist sentiment was present in his politics well before the war and was rooted in his interpretation of the founding fathers’ legacy. The specific focus on Lincoln’s politics in Chapter 8 supports McPherson’s intentionality argument in Chapter 7, where he contrasts the British Army’s choice not to end enslavement during the American Revolution with the “abolitionists and Republicans who believed that this war against [the enslavers’] rebellion must end [enslavement]” (98).

By contextualizing Lincoln’s perspective within the influences of the foundational period and the zeitgeist of his era, McPherson provides a basis on which to refute anachronistic readings of Lincoln’s views on race and enslavement and to give Lincoln credit for the political acumen that enabled abolition to become a reality. The historians’ quotes that McPherson uses to exemplify the self-emancipation thesis are critical of Lincoln’s hesitation on the matter of enslavement and emphasize enslaved people’s initiative. Because McPherson uses numerical data to refute the self-emancipation thesis, he dismisses the acknowledgment of Black people’s roles as active agents in the historical record, which is integral to the self-emancipation thesis. He doubles down on drawing attention away from Black agency when referencing Blight’s text and concludes that “Washington and Turnage would have been freed by the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865 even if they had not demonstrated courageous initiative or come into contact with the Union army” (107). However, to present Lincoln as the hero to Black people that McPherson considers him to be, McPherson must acknowledge the agency encapsulated in Douglass’s radical activism, so he turns to Oakes’s text on the relationship between Lincoln and Douglass in Chapter 8, noting Douglass’s role as a consultant to the president on racial policies. Significantly, McPherson also uses Black figures in these two chapters to challenge the idea that all white people of Lincoln’s era treated Black people poorly or regarded them as inferior, thus lending credence to his defense of Lincoln’s character in the public arena.

McPherson’s nuanced reading of the racist undertones in Lincoln’s public-facing decisions and use of “racism as a strategic diversion” (113) is introduced in Chapter 7 and fully fleshed out in Chapter 8. In Chapter 7, McPherson notes that Lincoln’s adoption of the term “contraband of war” (100) in reference to escapees was considered dehumanizing among some abolitionists; however, he also notes that the strategic move to deprive the Confederacy of its main resource becomes the basis for Lincoln’s abandonment of the colonization scheme and the evolution of his view toward Black people. Similarly, McPherson discusses the “widespread condemnation by abolitionists both black and white” (112) regarding the condescending tone of Lincoln’s presidential remarks to the Black delegation on Black emigration, which carried with it the suggestion that free Black people should or could not live among their white counterparts. Thus, Oakes’s contention that these remarks were a “staged performance” (121) to appease white constituents ahead of the forthcoming Emancipation Proclamation supports McPherson’s defense of Lincoln.

Chapters 7 and 8 present Lincoln as the figure chiefly responsible for emancipation by conceding that Lincoln’s public choices and presentations were swayed by important political influences and considerations. However, McPherson contends that Lincoln’s rise to the role of emancipator was ultimately based on personal moral convictions and a constitution of character that proved the role genuine. Therefore, the author upholds Lincoln as the primary example of The Impact of Leadership and Individual Actions on Historical Outcomes, emphasizing the idea that he played a key role in The Transformation of the American National Identity from contradiction to cohesion.