Born in North Dakota in 1936 and raised in Minnesota, American historian James McPherson's fascination with the Civil War began as a graduate student in 1958 under the mentorship of C. Vann Woodward at Johns Hopkins University, where he received his Ph.D. He began his teaching career at Princeton University in 1962 and retired in 2004 as Davis Professor of History there. He is now professor emeritus.

Professor McPherson won the Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era.

In January 2000 McPherson, "considered among the greatest historians of the Civil War" was named the 2000 Jefferson Lecturer in the Humanities, by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

He was president of the American Historical Association in 2003-4. In 2007 he received the first Pritzker Military Library Literature Award for lifetime achievement in military writing.