James McPherson, an American Civil War historian, descriptively wrote about who deserved the credit for freeing the slaves. In his work titled Who Freed the Slaves? many counter arguments were made to support his reasoning and logic he was trying to get across: Lincoln freed the slaves. Although, valid evidence was used I did not find it convincing. Paraphrasing from primary documents seemed to be the main premise of James McPherson’s evidence, leading to the lack of analysis that could have been made. I did not find his evidence to be convincing, because I felt as if he paraphrased often and did not give his personal input which I would find quite intriguing. For example, from pages 194 to 195 over half the argument being made is dependent…show more content… He accurately uses information that would persuade and manipulate the reader into thinking that Abraham Lincoln was a “vital role, indeed the central role, in all of these achievements” (pg. 207). On page 196, McPherson begs the question, did the Civil War free the slaves? He answers by saying, “Without the Civil War there would have been no confiscation act, no Emancipation Proclamation, no Thirteenth Amendment...” He then relates all of these achievements back to Abraham Lincoln. But a question he never asked was, would slaves be free if Abraham had not been elected? This is a detrimental question concerning his position in this matter, because it would help further and develop his argument. If he could prove that there was no way that slaves could have been free without Abraham Lincoln, his argument would be rock solid, and I would be further convinced. But, if Abraham had not been elected, would there still be a Civil War? And would the slaves not self-emancipation? I believe these events could still have happened without Abraham Lincoln. In my opinion, parts of McPherson’s argument seems like a post hoc fallacy, meaning since event Y followed event X, event Y must have been caused by event X. In other words, since
