Andrew C. McLaughlin

Andrew C. McLaughlin

Andrew Cunningham McLaughlin (born February 14, 1861 in Beardstown , Illinois , † September 24, 1947 ) was an American historian .

McLaughlin graduated from the University of Michigan with a bachelor's degree in 1882 and a law degree in 1885. He practiced briefly in Chicago as a lawyer, then went back to the University of Michigan as an instructor in Latin and turned to constitutional history. In 1891 he became a professor of history. He was the editor of the American Historical Review . In 1903 he became the first director in the history department ( Bureau of Historical Research ) of the newly established Carnegie Institution in Washington, DC. In 1906 he became a professor at the University of Chicago . He was head of the Faculty of History until 1927 and retired in 1929 .

During World War I he was a member of a committee of American historians ( National Board for Historical Service ) that argued for war against Germany, and in 1918 he traveled to Great Britain, where he lectured on the reasons for the war and American war aims. One of his sons died in the First World War.

McLaughlin dealt primarily with the constitutional history of the United States and received the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1936 for his major work, A Constitutional History of the United States . He saw the American constitution and US political institutions less as a revolutionary innovation than as the result of organic development from the British colonial era.

He was the brother of the politician James C. McLaughlin . In 1890 he married Lois Angell, the daughter of the President of the University of Michigan, James B. Angell . His daughter, Constance McLaughlin Green , also received the Pulitzer Prize for History. He was president of the American Historical Association .

Henry Steele Commager is one of his students .

Fonts

• Confederation and Constitution, 1783-1789. Harper, New York 1907
• The Courts, the Constitution, and Parties: Studies in Constitutional History and Politics. University of Chicago Press, 1912
• The Foundations of American Constitutionalism. New York University Press, 1932 (Phelps Lectures at New York University)
• A Constitutional History of the United States. D. Appleton Century, New York 1935, online
• with Claude H. Van Tyne: History of the United States for Schools. Appleton, 1911 and more
• A history of the American Nation. Appleton, 1905

Web links

• Andrew C. McLaughlin in the database of Find a Grave (English)
• McLaughlin Papers, University of Chicago