James M. Mcpherson's Abraham Lincoln And The Second American Revolution

James M. McPherson’s book, “Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution,” is a truly informative and exciting book, which explores this simple, yet difficult question. Through his own documented lectures and published papers, the author defends the idea that the Civil War was indeed a second revolution by exploring various definitions of the word “revolution” and investigating data related to the wages of African-Americans, employment, property ownership, education, etc., in antebellum and postwar America. McPherson describes how the Civil War changed over time, and how Abraham Lincoln changed with the war. He also suggested that Lincoln could be viewed as a “conservative revolutionary,” and proposed that there were three main ways in which Lincoln as

After the Civil War, the South was left faced with problems, debt, and inferiority to the North. The North’s wealth and power grew significantly, while the South’s decreased. This brought some major changes to government and society, including an abundance of new laws passed (in the North’s favor), and the social order of modern-day capitalism, which would forever obliterate the old structure of plantation economies. These major changes in America were undoubtedly revolutionary, which McPherson states “Lincoln was one of the principal architects of this capitalist revolution” (p.40). McPherson’s essay contained plenty of useful information for me as a student to reflect on. It goes in depth to reveal information about Lincoln and the Civil War that my textbook might have omitted. I learned how Abraham Lincoln’s position changed from conservative to revolutionary, and how. This is useful to my American history studies because I can see how the Civil War really played out, and just what our great American leader did in order to establish civil