Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution

This study guide references the 1990 Oxford University Press edition of James M. McPherson’s Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution. The book is a collection of seven essays originally delivered as lectures, all on the 16th president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, and his role in the Civil War (1861-1865). The book calls the Civil War era the “Second American Revolution” because, with Lincoln’s help, it brought about a fundamental transformation in the social and political make-up of the United States. Lincoln’s administration shifted national power structures away from aristocracy to Northern industrial capitalism, transformed the national economy, instituted a national currency, and passed amendments to the Constitution that emancipated slaves and redefined the concept of civil liberty in America. In each of these actions, Lincoln preserved the Constitution, forged by the Revolution of 1776, as the primary document communicating the laws and identity of the United States. Therefore, his second revolution changed the United States into the nation we know and live in today.

Chapter 1, “The Second American Revolution,” deals exclusively with the question of whether the Civil War can be understood as a revolution in social, political, and historical terms. This broad overview does not discuss Lincoln’s participation in the Civil War.