Untrustworthy writer, McPherson is a "red-diaper" Leftist who likes to hang with the Communists at Pacifica Radio when he feels like letting his hair down.
McPherson's whole thesis was that the Civil War was a huge example of the glories of vanguard-led, top-down, classic Marxist-Leninist "revolution" (as in, "war of national liberation", for the benefit of those of you old enough to recognize that Communist formula) against a hated and hateful capitalist bourgeoisie.
That's why Bill Clinton called in McPherson and Columbia University (as in, "Little Red Schoolhouse") Communist historian Eric Foner to rewrite all the historical material distributed by the National Park Service to visitors at Gettysburg. All the docents and pamphlets now bark the Clinton Party Line that the South was Wrong and Evil and clearly deserved, morally, spiritually, and historically, to be defeated at Gettysburg and in the Civil War, now and forever, without relief or surcease, in a hell of Lincoln's sacred making, and be sure to Vote for Liberal Democrats. </Clintonista b.s.>
I can't believe you guys go for that garbage. It was whomped up after Lincoln died by German Reds like Carl Schurz and is now being reinforced by Clintonistas as a political tool to divide the electorate.
It's hard to figure out how that happened, but Congress and the bureaucracy and local administrators as well as non-governmental groups sponsor a lot of things that can be made to look like some great evil plan from a distance, though they may only be separate and independent initiatives.
James McPherson, out of North Dakota and Gustavus Adolphus College, most likely didn't come from the same CP background, though he has given several interviews to the World Socialist Website.
McPherson was appointed by the Senate to the Civil War Sites Advisory Commission in 1991 before Clinton was elected. They were more concerned with the preservation of battlefields: important, essentially non-partisan work.
In 1991, McPherson wrote a letter to the White House urging that the President not send a wreath to honor the Confederate dead on Confederate Memorial Day. Obama sent the wreath anyway. As of last year he was still sending a wreath. No word on whether he will do so this year.
If you were talking about Philip Foner (Eric's uncle) writing his books 60 years ago in between party meetings you might have a valid point, but just making personal attacks doesn't do much to support whatever argument you may have.
Surely, just how different individuals or groups or parts of the country reacted to John Brown is something that can be studied on its own, by evaluating arguments and assertions on their own merits, rather than by simply discounting whatever is said in a book by one author.
I can't believe it either.