Dean of Civil War Historians Honored at Lincoln Society's Presidential Banquet

Dr. James McPherson, Professor Emeritus of U.S. History at Princeton University, recently received the prestigious Lincoln Legacy Award from the Lincoln Society in Peekskill.

Dr. McPherson, considered the Dean of Civil War Historians in the United States, was the featured speaker at the Society’s annual Presidential Banquet, held at the Hollow Brook Golf Club in Cortlandt Manor.

Founded in 1903, the Lincoln Society in Peekskill is one of the oldest Lincoln groups in the United States. It annually commemorates Lincoln’s only speaking stop in Westchester County—at the old railroad depot in Peekskill—during the train journey to his Inauguration in Washington, DC in 1861.

The dinner became a national launching event for Dr. McPherson’s newest book, entitled The War That Forged a Nation: Why the Civil War Still Matters, published by Oxford University Press.

Dr. McPherson won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1989 for Battle Cry of Freedom. He twice received the coveted Lincoln Prize from the Gilder-Lehrman Institute of History for Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief (2009) and For Cause and Comrades (1998).

Dr. McPherson is a past president of the American Historical Association.

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