David Herbert Donald, historian widely known for works on Lincoln
Oct. 1, 1920—May 17, 2009
NEW YORK (AP)—David Herbert Donald, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of the Civil War and American South whose expertise on Abraham Lincoln brought him a wide general audience and reverence from his peers, has died. He was 88.
Mr. Donald died Sunday of heart failure in Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, while awaiting heart surgery, said his wife, Aida.
A professor emeritus at Harvard University, Mr. Donald won Pulitzers for biographies of abolitionist Charles Sumner and novelist Thomas Wolfe. But his books on Lincoln became his legacy. Presidents from John F. Kennedy to the first George Bush summoned him for lectures, and fellow scholars acknowledged his prominence, especially as Lincoln’s bicentennial was celebrated this year.
Mr. Donald’s stature was so high among Lincoln experts that an award was named for him, the David Herbert Donald Prize for “excellence in Lincoln studies.” In 2005, Mr. Donald was the first honoree.
Mr. Donald published his first Lincoln book in the late 1940s and kept at it for more than 50 years. His books included “Lincoln at Home,” a study of his family life, and “We Are Lincoln Men,” essays about Lincoln’s friends and associates.
“Lincoln,” a single-volume biography of the president, came out in 1996 and became so popular that presidential candidates Bill Clinton and Bob Dole both said they were reading it.
Mr. Donald, grandson of a Union cavalry officer, was not a Lincoln man in his early years. Born into a farming family in Goodman, Miss., he majored in history and sociology at Millsaps College in Jackson, Miss.
His academic adviser at Millsaps was too busy to help him with letters of recommendation for graduate school, so he wrote his own recommendations and was accepted at the University of Illinois.
Having grown up in a segregated town, he was interested in race relations and planned to study the post-Civil War era. But he also needed money and found a job working as a research assistant to James Garfield Randall, a leading Lincoln scholar.
For decades after Lincoln’s death, writing on the president was dominated by nonhistorians, such as poet Carl Sandburg, who wrote a best-selling, lyrical and famously unreliable biography. Randall helped transform Lincoln studies into a professional discipline.
Mr. Donald’s mentor encouraged him to write about William Herndon, Lincoln’s law partner. “Lincoln’s Herndon” began as a dissertation and became Mr. Donald’s first book, published in 1948, with an introduction, ironically, from Sandburg.
Mr. Donald’s reputation grew throughout the next few decades as he carefully picked apart the Lincoln myths dear to poets, dreamers and politicians.
In such classic essays as “Getting Right With Lincoln” and “The Folklore Lincoln,” he noted Lincoln’s transformation from laughing stock to saint upon his assassination and the efforts of both Democrats and Republicans to claim him for their parties.
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