James Ford Rhodes
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
James Ford Rhodes (1 May 1848–22 January 1927), was an American industrialist and historian born in Cleveland, Ohio.
He attended New York University beginning in 1865. He also attended the Collège de France. During his studies in Europe he visited ironworks and steelworks. After his return to the United States, he investigated iron and coal deposits for his father.
In 1874, with his father, he started in the iron, coal, and steel industries at Cleveland. Having earned a considerable fortune, he retired in 1885, moved to Boston for its libraries, and devoted himself to writing history. His brother in law was Mark Hanna, a dominant leader of the Republican Party, but Rhodes himself was a Bourbon Democrat.[citation needed]
His major work, History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 appeared in seven volumes, 1893-1906; the eight-volume edition appeared in 1920. The one-volume version History of the Civil War, 1861-1865 (1918), which is online, earned him a Pulitzer Prize in History in 1918.
His work focuses on national politics. Using newspapers and published memoirs, Rhodes meticulously reconstructed the process by which major national decisions were made. He carefully evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of all the major leaders, and is well regarded for his lack of bias. He emphasized slavery and anti-slavery as causes of the Civil War, and bemoaned the corruption of the Reconstruction Republican governments in Washington and the Southern states.
He was awarded the Loubat Prize of the Berlin Academy of Sciences (1901) and the gold medal of the National Institute of Arts and Letters (1910). Oxford and many American universities gave him honorary degrees.
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[edit] References
- Cruden, Robert. James Ford Rhodes: The Man, The Historian, and His Work (1961)
- Howe, M. A. De Wolfe. James Ford Rhodes: American Historian (1929)
- Raymond Curtis Miller. "James Ford Rhodes: A Study in Historiography" The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, (1929) Vol. 15, No. 4, 455-472 online at JSTOR
[edit] Books by Rhodes
- History of the Civil War, 1861–1865 (1918), one-volume v ersion; Pulitzer Prize online
- History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 to the McKinley-Bryan Campaign of 1896 - Vol. 1 online
- History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 to the McKinley-Bryan Campaign of 1896 - Vol. 2 online
- History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 to the McKinley-Bryan Campaign of 1896 - Vol. 3
- History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 to the McKinley-Bryan Campaign of 1896 - Vol. 4
- History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 to the McKinley-Bryan Campaign of 1896 - Vol. 5
- History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 to the McKinley-Bryan Campaign of 1896 - Vol. 6 online
- History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 to the McKinley-Bryan Campaign of 1896 - Vol. 7 online
- History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 to the McKinley-Bryan Campaign of 1896 - Vol. 8 online
- The McKinley and Roosevelt Administrations, 1897-1909 (1922) online
- Historical Essays (1909)
- Lectures on the American Civil War (1913), delivered at Oxford University in 1913.
