| 1 | Name: | Dr. James M. McPherson | |
| Institution: | Princeton University | ||
| Year Elected: | 1991 | ||
| Class: | 3. Social Sciences | ||
| Subdivision: | 303. History Since 1715 | ||
| Residency: | Resident | ||
| Living? : | Living | ||
| Birth Date: | 1936 | ||
James M. McPherson was born in North Dakota but grew up in Minnesota from the age of six to twenty-one. He graduated from Gustavus Adolphus College in 1958 and pursued graduate study at the Johns Hopkins University from 1958-62, receiving his Ph.D. in history in 1963. From 1962-2004, he taught in the Department of History at Princeton University, working his way up from instructor to George Henry Davis '86 Professor of American History from 1991-2004, when he retired and became Davis Professor Emeritus. In the year 2000, he served as president of the Society of American Historians and in 2003-04 he was president of the American Historical Association. He has also served, and continues to serve on several historical advisory boards and preservation organizations, mostly concerned with Civil War museums and/or the preservation of Civil War battlefields and other sites. He is the author of some fifteen books, mostly about the era of the American Civil War and Reconstruction, and editor of almost another dozen books on a variety of historical subjects. His most recent works are Embattled Rebel: Jefferson Davis as Commander in Chief (2014) and Tried By War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief (2008), which won Gettysburg College's 2009 Lincoln Prize for scholarship. A number of his books have won prizes, most notably the Pulitzer Prize in History for Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (1989) and the Gettysburg Lincoln Prize for his book, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (1998). In 2007 he was named the first recipient of the Pritzker Military Library Literature Award for lifetime achievement in writing. In 2018 he was presented with the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award by Marquis Who's Who. Dr. McPherson lives in Princeton with his wife, Patricia. His daughter Jenny Long, her husband and three children live nearby. | |||