Historian discusses Civil War legacy

McPherson

ames McPherson, author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning book and an advisor on Ken Burns's documentary on the Civil War, will speak at 8 p.m. Thursday, April 4, in the Welles-Brown Room of Rush Rhees Library. McPherson's talk, "The American Civil War: Its Meaning for the New Millennium," is presented as part of the Department of History's Verne Moore Lecture Series.

Considered among the foremost historians of the Civil War, McPherson was the 2000 Jefferson Lecturer in the Humanities, the highest honor the federal government bestows for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities. He has taught for four decades at Princeton University, where he holds the title of George Henry Davis '86 Professor of American History.

"Even though the Civil War resolved the issues of Union and slavery, it didn't entirely resolve the issues that underlay those two questions," McPherson says. "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."

For more information about the lecture, which is free and open to the public, call x5-2052

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