The Jefferson Lecture

On March 27, 2000, historian James M. McPherson delivered the Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. In his lecture, "For a Vast Future Also: Lincoln and the Millennium," McPherson spoke about Lincoln's sense of history as he envisioned the future for our country and for the world.

McPherson described Lincoln's reverence for the goals of the American Revolution and his admiration for Thomas Jefferson's inspiring words. McPherson recounted a speech that Lincoln gave on George Washington's birthday in Pennsylvania, 1861: "Lincoln told them: 'I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.' The ringing phrases that 'all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,' said Lincoln, 'gave promise' not just to Americans, but 'hope to the world' that 'in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance.'"

"Lincoln had come a long way in his understanding of history since his boyhood reading of Weems's biography of George Washington," said McPherson. He said Lincoln saw the Union's victory in the Civil War as imperative for the survival of democracy in the world. "'Our popular government has often been called an experiment,' he told a special session of Congress that met on July 4, 1861. 'Two points in it, our people have already settled--the successful establishing, and the successful administering of it. One still remains--its successful maintenance against a formidable internal attempt to overthrow it.' If that attempt succeeded, said Lincoln, the forces of reaction in Europe would smile in smug satisfaction at this proof of their contention that the upstart republic launched in 1776 could not last."

McPherson continued, "The American sense of mission invoked by Lincoln--the idea that the American experiment in democracy was a beacon of liberty and democracy for oppressed people everywhere is as old as the Mayflower Compact and as new as apparent American victory in the Cold War."

Born in North Dakota and raised in Minnesota, McPherson's first fascination with the Civil War began as a graduate student in 1958 under the mentorship of C. Vann Woodward at Johns Hopkins University. But it was not the war McPherson focused on then. His subjects for study were the abolitionists whose passions and protests helped put Abraham Lincoln in office and shape the social reforms brought about by the war. While McPherson studied in Baltimore, events similar to the abolition movement were taking place all around the country. "I was struck by all of these parallels between what was a freedom crusade of the 1860s and a freedom crusade of the 1960s. My first entrée in Civil War scholarship focused on that very theme," says McPherson. His dissertation about the abolition movement went on to be published in 1964 as The Struggle for Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War and Reconstruction.

He has since written several books about abolition, the war, Abraham Lincoln, and Reconstruction. His latest work, which won the Lincoln Prize for 1998, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War, delves into the hearts and minds of the three million soldiers that fought on both sides of the war. A decade earlier, his book Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era broke ground in combining the complexities of the war while maintaining the narrative that made it appealing to the American public. Battle Cry of Freedom went on to win the Pulitzer Prize and has since sold more than six hundred thousand copies. The book helped launch an unprecedented national renaissance of interest in the Civil War. Because of it and other books, followed closely by Ken Burns's documentary, now thousands of Americans every year choose to visit historic battlefields and homes of Civil War generals and leaders. New histories, biographies, miniseries, novels, and reenactments continue to capture the American imagination about the turbulent years between 1861 and 1865, partly because, as McPherson explains, the issues that caused the war are still with us. "Even though the war resolved the issues of Union and slavery, it didn't entirely resolve the issues that underlay those two questions," McPherson said. "These issues are still important in American society today: regionalism, resentment of centralized government, debates about how powerful the national government ought to be and what role it ought to play in people's lives. The continuing relevance of those issues, I think, is one reason for the continuing fascination with the Civil War."

McPherson has taught at Princeton University since 1962 and is the George Henry Davis '86 Professor of American History. He lives in New Jersey with his wife Patricia.