David M. Potter

David Morris Potter (December 6, 1910 in Augusta, Georgia – February 18, 1971) was an American historian of the South. Born in Georgia, he graduated from the Academy of Richmond County, then from Emory University in 1932. Potter entered graduate school at Yale the same year, but he left four years later without finishing his dissertation. He taught at the University of Mississippi for two years, then taught at Rice University for another two before completing his dissertation in 1940 under Ulrich Bonnell Phillips.[1]

In 1942 Yale published his dissertation as Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis and hired him as an assistant professor. As professor of history at Yale University in 1942–1961 and Coe Professor of American History at Stanford University in 1961–1971 he directed numerous dissertations and served on numerous editorial and professional boards. He also held the Walgreen Lectureship at the University of Chicago, and the Commonwealth Fund Lectureship at the University of London. Potter held the Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University in 1947.[2] He was a pioneer in sponsoring the study of Women's history.

Potter posthumously won the 1977 Pulitzer Prize for History for The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861 (1976), an in-depth narrative and analysis of the causes of the American Civil War. His main achievement was to put the history of the South in national perspective. He rejected the conflict model of Charles A. Beard and emphasized the depth of consensus on American values. He considered himself a conservative and was a prominent exponent of Consensus history.[3]

Publications

  • His most important book, finished and edited by Don Fehrenbacher, was The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861 (1976).
  • Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis, new introduction by Daniel W. Crofts, Louisiana State U. Pr., 1995. 408 pp.
  • People of Plenty: Economic Abundance and the American Character (1954)
  • The South and the Sectional Conflict (1968)
  • "American Women and the American Character" in American Character and Culture in a Changing World: Some Twentieth-century Perspectives (Greenwood Press, 1979): 209-225.
  • History and American Society: Essays of David M. Potter. ed. by Don E. Fehrenbacher, Oxford U. Press, 1973. 422 pp.
  • "The Historian's Use of Nationalism and Vice Versa," American Historical Review, Vol. 67, No. 4 (Jul., 1962), pp. 924–950 in JSTOR
  • "An Appraisal of Fifteen Years of the Journal of Southern History, 1935-1949," Journal of Southern History, Vol. 16, No. 1 (Feb., 1950), pp. 25–32 in JSTOR
  • "The Historical Development of Eastern-Southern Freight Rate Relationships," Law and Contemporary Problems, Vol. 12, No. 3, (Summer, 1947), pp. 416–448 in JSTOR
  • "Horace Greeley and Peaceable Secession," Journal of Southern History, Vol. 7, No. 2 (May, 1941), pp. 145–159 in JSTOR

Notes

  1. ↑ Kammen, Michael (February 1996). "A Message of Hope". OAH Newsletter: 24. Leonard W. Labaree encouraged Potter to return to Yale, noting his "tendency toward being a 'perfectionist'".
  2. ↑ historicalsociety.stanford.edu
  3. ↑ Collins, Robert M. (1988). "David Potter's People of Plenty and the Recycling of Consensus History". Reviews in American History. 16 (2): 321–335. JSTOR 2702542.

Bibliography

  • Barney, William L. "Potter's the Impending Crisis: a Capstone and a Challenge." Reviews in American History 1976 4(4): 551-557. JSTOR
  • Brogan, Denis. “David M. Potter.” In Pastmasters: Some Essays on American Historians edited by Marcus Cunliffe and Robin W. Winks, (1969) pp. 316–44
  • Collins, Robert M. "David Potter's People of Plenty and the Recycling of Consensus History," Reviews in American History 16 (June 1988): 321-35. in JSTOR
  • Fredrickson, George M. "Two Southern Historians." American Historical Review 1970 75(5): 1387-1392. in JSTOR
  • Johannsen, Robert W. "David Potter, Historian and Social Critic: a Review Essay." Civil War History 1974 20(1): 35-44. ISSN 0009-8078
  • Temperley, Howard. "David M. Potter", in Robert Allen Rutland, ed., Clio's Favorites: Leading Historians of the United States, 1945-2000, U of Missouri Press (2000), pp. 138–155.
  • Thomas Winter. "Potter, David Morris";American National Biography Online 2000.
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