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

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 11-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 11 Summary: “Lincoln’s Legacy for Our Time”

McPherson highlights Lincoln’s profound sense of history and his understanding that the war secured the future of the democratic republic. In Lincoln’s addresses to the New Jersey legislature and at Independence Hall, he invoked the American Revolution to highlight the state of disunity that threatened the founding fathers’ vision of a society defined by equal rights to liberty and opportunity. Lincoln’s egalitarian sentiments came with the awareness that although the founding fathers’ sense of equality and liberty was abstract, they nonetheless set up a viable social and political system in which those ideals could be pursued.

Secession motivated Lincoln to ensure that the nation survived the fate of other republics. Many Northerners and some immigrants were mobilized by the conviction that democracy was at stake, but European opinion was not unanimous. Working-class, middle-class, and radical Europeans looked to American institutions as an example of how to secure rights for oppressed people, while European monarchists and conservatives hoped that the Union would fail. These conflicting opinions came about in part due to the issue of enslavement. In the early part of the war, the Union had no strong abolitionist stance, but as Northern abolitionist sentiment grew and emancipation became a part of the national strategy, Lincoln was finally able to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, thereby resolving the contradiction of fighting for democratic ideals while denying freedom to some.

The Gettysburg Address defined the war’s meaning by weaving past, present, and future. It also contained two other tripartite images: that of continent, nation, and battlefield, and that of birth, death, and rebirth. McPherson notes that while the message of the Gettysburg Address was secular, Lincoln’s religious inquiries grew as he attempted to come to terms with the widespread death, destruction, and suffering caused by the war. Lincoln ultimately concluded that God was using the war to punish the nation for the sin of enslavement. McPherson identifies the immediate impact of the Union victory in other countries and in the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. He concludes by noting the resonance of Lincoln’s words and legacy in the 21st century.

Chapter 12 Summary: “War and Peace in the Post Civil War South”

McPherson posits that the decades of sectional conflict over enslavement constitute the country’s longest war, and he considers Reconstruction to be a continuation of the war. The central issue of Reconstruction was to determine the terms on which the South would be reincorporated into the Union. When Andrew Johnson became president after Lincoln’s assassination, he initially seemed to favor the severe terms of radical Republicans, but his loyalty to the Democratic Party and to white supremacy prompted him to take a minimalist approach that included pardoning ex-Confederates, restoring their property, and vetoing a Freedmen’s Bureau bill that would give Black people abandoned land in the South. Johnson’s actions emboldened white Southerners’ defiance, and his executive obstruction prompted his impeachment in 1868, although he was not convicted by the Senate.

Meanwhile, the Southern states elected ex-Confederates to state offices and instituted Black Codes. Among the acts of defiance by the white Southerners were instances of violence perpetrated by the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and other shadow organizations that were determined to disfranchise Black people and expel Northern Republicans from the South. The Grant Administration cracked down on such violence through the Enforcement Act of 1870 and the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871. Paramilitary organizations such as the White Leagues, White Liners, and Red Shirts rose to prominence and functioned as armed auxiliaries of the Democratic Party. The most notorious and deadly events were the 1873 Colfax confrontation and the 1874 Red River Parish confrontation.

As the violence continued, Northern Republicans grew weary of what they perceived as the federal government’s interference in the South, and they wanted the government to withdraw troops. Their disdain deepened with the 1875 military invasion to expel Democrats seated in the Louisiana House of Representatives. Subsequently, White Liners carried out the Mississippi Plan, which was characterized by economic coercion, lynching, and riots that left many Black people and Republicans in the state dead. The Mississippi Plan also effectively discouraged Black people from voting, enabling other Southern states to carry out their own disfranchisement plans in advance of the national election of 1876. Rutherford B. Hayes withdrew federal troops from the South in 1877, effectively ending Reconstruction and allowing the triumph of white supremacist ideology in the South.

Chapters 11-12 Analysis

Like Chapters 1 and 2, Chapters 11 and 12 emphasize the persistence of key historical themes, for McPherson contextualizes the Civil War within the legacy of the American Revolution and discusses the impact of the Civil War on the years that immediately followed it. The focus on Lincoln’s sense of the founding fathers’ legacy provides a unifying element across McPherson’s essays. In Chapter 11, Lincoln invokes the American Revolution as a preface to the anxiety that he feels about the “dis-United States” (161), in which “many Americans enjoyed neither liberty nor equality” (162). However, unlike previous chapters, in which McPherson suggests that the contradiction itself is the legacy, Chapter 11 presents a more optimistic view, asserting that Lincoln saw the founding fathers as having “set up a standard maxim for a free society, which should be […] constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated” (163).

Lincoln’s perspective suggests that the instability created by the contradiction is mediated by safeguards that prevent the total collapse of the country and bring the nation’s ideals from an abstraction to a reality. McPherson supports this point by emphasizing the function of the amendments in the aftermath of the war. Key clauses of the 14th and 15th Amendments enable Congress to expand the federal government’s power to prosecute crimes over which states have jurisdiction, provided that those crimes interfere with voting rights. McPherson concludes Chapter 12 by highlighting that although the South perpetuated “disfranchisement, Jim Crow, poverty, and lynching” (191), the 14th and 15th Amendments became the constitutional basis for school desegregation 80 years after the withdrawal of troops from the South. Therefore, this point illuminates The Transformation of the American National Identity to a centralized polity even as McPherson acknowledges The Ongoing Struggle for Racial Equality.

Moreover, Lincoln’s perspective of the founding fathers’ legacy emphasizes America’s self-styled national identity as the leading example of democracy and a “beacon of liberty for oppressed people everywhere” (166), thus enlarging the Civil War from a national dispute to an international matter. McPherson supports this point by discussing differing opinions and desires about the survival of democracy among Europeans. He also demonstrates that the matter of democracy is inseparable from the issue of enslavement. In a callback to Chapter 5 (in which he asserts that the Emancipation Proclamation was a major factor in Britain’s nonintervention), McPherson now states that the Emancipation Proclamation clarified for “many potential European friends of the Union cause” (168) that supporting the Union would place them on the right side of history. McPherson’s mention of Britain’s Reform Bill of 1867 and the abolition of enslavement in Brazil and Cuba further support his argument about the international impact of the Civil War.

Although McPherson emphasizes the successes of the Civil War, he also suggests that racism is embedded in the American national identity in both overt and subtle ways, therefore emphasizing the fact that The Ongoing Struggle for Racial Equality remains an issue. While Chapter 12 primarily focuses on Southern obstruction of Reconstruction and the extension of civil rights to freedmen, it also suggests that white Northerners prioritized peace over justice. This is why McPherson opens the chapter with a quote from Grant: “Let us have peace” (173). McPherson drives the point home by mentioning that the primary purpose of the KKK crackdown was to bring back “a semblance of law and order in the South rather than secur[ing] mass convictions. Thus the courts granted clemency to many convicted defendants and Grant used his pardoning power liberally” (182-83). McPherson also reveals Northerners’ position in response to the endless violence in the South, stating, “Withdraw the federal troops, they argued, and let the Southern people work out their own problems, even if that meant a solid South for the white supremacy Democratic Party and curtailment of [B]lack civil and political rights” (186). McPherson’s inclusion of these statements indicates that in the aftermath of the Civil War, white Americans—including the president himself—were willing to sacrifice justice for peace. This is precisely McPherson’s determination as he closes Chapter 12.