July 16, 2007
James McPherson Awarded the First Pritzker Award
By Elisabeth Grant
Past AHA President and Civil War historian James McPherson has been awarded the first ever Pritzker Military Library Literature Award for lifetime achievement in military writing. The award will be presented on October 6, 2007, in Chicago. McPherson will also be granted a $100,000 honorarium, sponsored by the Tawani Foundation. James N. Pritzker, founder of the Pritzker Military Library, explains that the award is given, “to acknowledge the highest levels of scholarship and writing in a field that often does not gain appropriate recognition.” McPherson is a prolific writer, and was recognized with the Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. Read more about the Pritzker award at the Washington Post or on the Pritzker Military Library web site.
I’m surprised Pritzker awarded McPherson a prize. McPherson defamed immigrants, particularly Catholic ones, with snide comments about skulking and desert in Battle Cry and other works. The Union army didn’t record soldiers’ religions and Medal of Honor and New York State records assure us that immigrants had a significant presence in the Union army throughout the Civil War. For heaven’s sake Gettysburg generals Reynolds and Meade were Irish.
— Jim McManus Jul 17, 03:07 PM