Search - List of Books by David Herbert Donald
"At the beginning, Lincoln was so inexperienced he had reverence for military expertise, not realizing that there wasn't any military expertise, that the most anybody had commanded up to that point had been somebody, some troops in the Mexican War, and it had been years ago." -- David Herbert Donald
David Herbert Donald (October 1, 1920, Goodman, Mississippi – May 17, 2009, Boston, Massachusetts) was an American historian.
"And, finally, Lincoln was not a good impromptu speaker; he was at his best when he could read from a carefully prepared manuscript. Though maybe a teleprompter could have helped that!""But having said all of that, that still doesn't account for a lot of the increase in popularity which stems, I think, from Lincoln's personal characteristics.""But I have tried to go over it very carefully, not merely what the evidence is, but with psychoanalysts and psychologists, and I think we're just about all agreed that Lincoln and Speed did not have a homosexual relationship.""I love mysteries, and I read them every night before I go to bed.""I think, with the gay liberation movement has had need for heroes and heroines, and it would be rather nice to have Abraham Lincoln as your poster boy, wouldn't it?""I was able to sit at Lincoln's side and see how he thought and how he acted, and how he felt about what was going on around him. I felt the pressures that were on him. You can see what people were writing to him, how they were nudging him.""I'm not sure Lincoln would fare well if he were a presidential candidate today.""If you think about it, the historian's task is like that of the detective.""In Lincoln's day a President's religion was a very private affair. There were no public prayer meetings, no attempts to woo the Religious Right. Few of Lincoln's countrymen knew anything at all of his religious beliefs.""Lincoln had no such person that he could talk with. Often, as a result, he debated with himself, and he would draw up a kind of list of the pros and cons of an argument, and carefully figure them out, and he might test them in public.""Maybe I will write a memoir, perhaps I'll do some essays, or maybe I will write a mystery story.""The big biography of Lincoln necessarily had to do so much with his political career, his ambitions, his accomplishments in public, with less time to spend on his private life, his inner life, and I thought this might be a way of getting at that.""The more I have studied Lincoln, the more I have followed his thought processes, the more I am convinced that he understood leadership better than any other American president.""Well, it seems to me Lincoln, I suppose, is kind of a model of a particular sort of presidency, a presidency that first of all is elected by a minority of the votes.""What I thought we ought to try to do in a book like this is to focus closely on Lincoln, himself, to see what he knew, how he knew it, how he came to make the decisions that he did, and how he implemented them."
Majoring in history and sociology, Donald earned his bachelor degree from Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi. He earned his PhD in 1946 under the eminent, leading Lincoln scholar, James G. Randall at the University of Illinois. Randall as a mentor had a big influence on Donald's life and career, and encouraged his protege to write his dissertation on Lincoln's law partner, William Herndon. The dissertation eventually became his first book, Lincoln's Herndon, published in 1948. The effect Randall had on Donald was later illustrated by the fact that he gave his only son the middle name Randall in honor of his former mentor. After graduating, he taught at Columbia University, Johns Hopkins and, from 1973, Harvard University. He also taught at Smith College, the University of North Wales, Princeton University, University College London and served as Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University. At Johns Hopkins, Columbia, and Harvard he trained dozens of graduate students including Jean H. Baker, William J. Cooper, Jr., Michael Holt, Irwin Unger, and Ari Hoogenboom. He received the Pulitzer Prize twice (1961 and 1988), several honorary degrees, and served as president of the Southern Historical Association.
David H. Donald was the Charles Warren Professor of American History (emeritus from 1991) at Harvard University. He wrote over thirty books, including well received biographies of Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Wolfe and Charles Sumner. He specialized in the Civil War and Reconstruction periods, and in the history of the South.
He is best known for his biography of Abraham Lincoln, which has been praised by Eric Foner as the best biography of Lincoln, and by Bill Clinton who called it "one of the best biographies on any person in politics," as well as his Pulitzer-Prize winning biographies of politician Charles Sumner and writer Thomas Wolfe. Weaving in a wealth of new historical material, he also revised his former mentor's classic textbook, Civil War and Reconstruction (1961, 2001).
Donald's first book Lincoln's Herndon (1948) was a biography of William Herndon, the junior partner in Abraham Lincoln's law firm in Springfield, Illinois. Herndon was Lincoln's trusted aide until Lincoln became president and, in 1889 published a highly controversial biography of Lincoln based on numerous interviews. Donald concluded that Herndon, "stands, in the backward glance of history, as myth-maker and truth-teller." In his introduction, Carl Sandburg, the poet and Lincoln biographer, hailed Donald's book as the answer to scholars' prayers: “When is someone going to do the life of Bill Herndon. Isn't it about time? Now the question is out.” David M. Potter, whose own credentials as a Lincoln scholar gave his words authority, said Donald's biography of Charles Sumner portrayed, "Sumner as a man with acute psychological inadequacies” and exposed Sumner's "facade of pompous rectitude." Donald's evenhanded approach to Sumner, Potter concluded, was a model for biographers working with a difficult subject. "If it does not make Sumner attractive [the book] certainly makes him understandable."
Donald argued that the American Civil War was a needless war caused or hastened by the fanaticism of people like Charles Sumner though he admires Abraham Lincoln.
Donald lived in Lincoln, Massachusetts, with his wife Aida DiPace Donald. He died of heart failure in Boston on May 17, 2009. Donald is survived by his son, Bruce Randall Donald, and his wife.
- Lincoln's Herndon (1948)
- Divided We Fought: A Pictorial History of the War, 1861...1865 (1952)
- Editor, Inside Lincoln's Cabinet: The Civil War Diaries of Salmon P. Chase. (1954)
- Lincoln Reconsidered: Essays on the Civil War Era (1947, 2nd edition 1961)(ISBN 0-679-72310-2)
- Editor, Why the North Won the Civil War (1962) (ISBN 0-02-031660-7)
- Civil War and Reconstruction (1961; 2001) (ISBN 0-393-97427-8), 2001 edition with Jean H. Baker & Michael F. Holt; 1961 edition with James G. Randall.
- Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War (1960), prize-winning scholarly biography to 1860; Charles Sumner and the Rights of Man (1970), biography from 1861.
- Politics of Reconstruction, 1863-...1867 (1965)
- Look Homeward: A Life of Thomas Wolfe, Harvard University Press (2003) (ISBN 0-674-00869-3)
- Lincoln (1996) ISBN 0-684-80846-3
- Lincoln at Home: Two Glimpses of Abraham Lincoln's Domestic Life (1999) ISBN 978-0-912308-77-7
- We Are Lincoln Men: Abraham Lincoln and His Friends (2003) (ISBN 0-7432-5468-6)
- Editor with Aida DiPace Donald, Diary of Charles Francis Adams, Volumes 1 and 2, January 1820 - September 1829, Harvard University Press.
- Barnes & Noble
- Paul Goodman, "David Donald's Charles Sumner Reconsidered" in The New England Quarterly, Vol. 37, No. 3. (Sep., 1964), pp. 373—387. online at JSTOR
- Ari Hoogenboom, “David Herbert Donald: A Celebration, ” in A Master's Due: Essays in Honor of David Herbert Donald, ed. William J. Cooper, Jr., et al.(Louisiana State University Press, 1985), 1...15.
