David Morris Potter

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David Morris Potter (born December 6, 1910 in Augusta (Georgia) ; † February 18, 1971 ) was an American historian who mainly dealt with the prehistory of the American Civil War .

Potter graduated from Emory University with a bachelor's degree in 1932 and was trained by Ulrich Bonnell Phillips at Yale University in 1940 (Lincoln and his Party in the Secession Crisis, published 1942). Before completing his doctorate, he began teaching at the University of Mississippi and the Rice Institute . From 1942 he was professor of history at Yale and from 1961 at Stanford University . He was there Coe Professor of American History . From 1965 to 1968 he headed the history faculty.

He has been visiting professor at Oxford ( Harmsworth Professor ), the University of London, the University of Wyoming , Louisiana State University , Connecticut College, the State University of New York , the University of Delaware and the University of Chicago .

For his major work on the causes of the American Civil War, The Impending Crisis from 1976, he was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for History (Don E. Fehrenbacher completed the last two chapters and edited the work). Even in his dissertation, he examined the complex processes within the Republicans around Abraham Lincoln in the run-up to the civil war.

In People of Plenty he wrote an interpretation of all American history and the formation of the American national character using methods of cultural anthropology and social psychology. He was also known for his historical essays and had a good reputation as a teacher (Dinkelspiel Award 1968).

He was an honorary doctor from the University of Wyoming and Emory University. In 1965 he was elected to the American Philosophical Society and in 1966 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In 1971, the year of his death, he was president of the American Historical Association .

He was a passionate ornithologist .

Fonts

  • with Don E. Fehrenbacher : The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861 , New York: Harper and Row 1976
  • Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis , Yale University Press 1942, Louisiana State University Press, 1995 (preface Daniel W. Croft)
  • People of Plenty: Economic Abundance and the American Character , University of Chicago Press 1954
  • The South and the Sectional Conflict , Louisiana State University Press 1968 (essay collection, received the Jules F. Landry Award from Louisiana State University)
  • History and American Society: Essays of David M. Potter , edited by Don E. Fehrenbacher, Oxford University Press, 1973
  • Division and the stresses of reunion, 1845–1876 , Glenview / Illinois: Scott Foresman 1973
  • The Historian's Use of Nationalism and Vice Versa , American Historical Review, Volume 67, July 1962, pp. 924-950
  • National and sectional forces in the United States , The New Cambridge Modern History , Volume 10, Cambridge University Press 1960

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Member History: David Morris Potter. American Philosophical Society, accessed December 19, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Potter, David Morris
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American historian
DATE OF BIRTH December 6, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Augusta (Georgia)
DATE OF DEATH 18th February 1971