William Archibald Dunning

William Archibald Dunning (born May 12, 1857 in Plainfield , New Jersey , † August 15, 1922 ) was an American historian and political scientist .

life and work

Dunning studied at Columbia University with a bachelor's degree in 1881, a master's degree in 1884 and a doctorate in 1885 ( The Constitution of the United States in Civil War and Reconstruction: 1860-1867 ). He then spent a year in Europe, where he studied with Heinrich von Treitschke in Berlin . On his return he became a professor at Columbia University, from 1903 Francis Lieber Professor of History and Political Philosophy .

He undertook fundamental historical research into the post- Civil War reconstruction era and founded the Dunning School at Columbia University in this area . Many professors at southern universities belonged to this school, who had a predominantly negative image of the reconstruction as the oppression of white southerners by radical republicans and profiteers from the north ( carpetbaggers ) and their white southern collaborators, the scalawags , as well as the freed blacks ( freedmen ) drew. This image was reflected in the film Gone With the Wind from 1939 and the book of the same name by Margaret Mitchell . The pre-war plantation owners were viewed positively and defended, and abolitionists from the north were held responsible for the worsening political situation and the outbreak of war. Dunning himself was a supporter of the Democrats and a staunch opponent of slavery in the southern states. The Dunning School was criticized by revisionist historians such as Howard K. Beale in the 1930s and later by neoabolitionist historians affiliated with the civil rights movement in the late 1950s and 1960s (such as Eric Foner ) and by African-American ones as early as the early 20th century Historians such as WEB Du Bois and later John Hope Franklin .

Dunning also studied the history of political theory and in 1914 wrote a book on British-US relations over the past hundred years.

From 1894 to 1903 he was editor of the Political Science Quarterly . He was one of the founders of the American Historical Association and its president in 1913. His students included Charles Edward Merriam , Harry Elmer Barnes , James Wilford Garner, and Carlton JH Hayes .

Fonts

• Essays on the civil war and reconstruction and related topics , New York: Macmillan 1897, 2nd edition 1904
• History of Political Theories , 3 volumes, New York: Macmillan, 1902–1920, Volume 1 Ancient and Medieval, 1902, Volume 2 From Luther to Montesquieu 1905, Volume 3 From Rousseau to Spencer 1920
• Reconstruction, Political and Economic, 1865–1877 , New York, Harper 1907 (in the American Nation series ), Harper 1962
• with Frederic Bancroft A Sketch of Carl Schurz 's Political Career, 1869–1906 , in The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz , Volume 3, New York 1908
• Paying for Alaska: some unfamiliar incidents in the process , New York: Ginn and Company, 1912
• The British Empire and the United States: a review of their relations during the century of peace following the treaty of Ghent , New York: Scribners 1914

literature

• Studies in southern history and politics , Columbia University Press 1914 (commemorative publication by his students)
• Charles Merriam, Harry Elmer Barnes (Editor) A History of Political Theories, Recent Times , Macmillan 1924 (Festschrift for Dunning by his students)
• Thomas J. Pressly, Americans Interpret Their Civil War, Princeton University Press 1954, 2nd edition 1962
• Kenneth M. Stampp, The Era of Reconstruction, 1865–1877, A. Knopf 1965
• John David Smith, J. Vincent Lowery (Editor) The Dunning School: Historians, Race, and the Meaning of Reconstruction , University Press of Kentucky; 2013
• Eric Foner Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution 1863–1877 , 1988
• David Blight Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory , 2000
• Howard K. Beale On Rewriting Reconstruction History , American Historical Review, 45, 1940, pp. 807-827
• Bernard A. Weisberger The dark and bloody ground of reconstruction history , Journal of Southern History, 25, 1959, 427-447