David M. Potter was an American historian of the South

Southern United States

The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...

. He was born in Augusta, Georgia

Augusta, Georgia

Augusta is a consolidated city in the U.S. state of Georgia, located along the Savannah River. As of the 2010 census, the Augusta–Richmond County population was 195,844 not counting the unconsolidated cities of Hephzibah and Blythe.Augusta is the principal city of the Augusta-Richmond County...

, and graduated from Emory University

Emory University

Emory University is a private research university in metropolitan Atlanta, located in the Druid Hills section of unincorporated DeKalb County, Georgia, United States. The university was founded as Emory College in 1836 in Oxford, Georgia by a small group of Methodists and was named in honor of...

 in 1932. At Yale

YALE

RapidMiner, formerly YALE , is an environment for machine learning, data mining, text mining, predictive analytics, and business analytics. It is used for research, education, training, rapid prototyping, application development, and industrial applications...

 he worked with Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

Ulrich Bonnell Phillips was an American historian who studied the American antebellum South and slavery. Phillips concentrated on the large plantations that dominated the Southern economy, and he did not investigate the numerous small farmers who held few slaves...

. His earned his Ph.D. in 1940 and published Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis in 1942. As professor of history at Yale (1942–1961) and Stanford (1961–71) he directed numerous dissertations, and served on numerous editorial and professional boards. He was a pioneer in sponsoring the history of women.

Potter won, posthumously, the 1977 Pulitzer Prize for History

Pulitzer Prize for History

The Pulitzer Prize for History has been awarded since 1917 for a distinguished book upon the history of the United States. Many history books have also been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction and Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography...

 for The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861 (1976), which was an in-depth narrative and analysis of the causes of the Civil War. His main achievement was to put the history of the South in national perspective. He rejected the conflict model of Charles A. Beard

Charles A. Beard

Charles Austin Beard was, with Frederick Jackson Turner, one of the most influential American historians of the first half of the 20th century. He published hundreds of monographs, textbooks and interpretive studies in both history and political science...

 and emphasized the depth of consensus on American values. He considered himself a conservative

American conservatism

Conservatism in the United States has played an important role in American politics since the 1950s. Historian Gregory Schneider identifies several constants in American conservatism: respect for tradition, support of republicanism, preservation of "the rule of law and the Christian religion", and...

.

Publications

• His most important book, finished and edited by Don Fehrenbacher, was The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861 (1976).
• Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis, new introduction by Daniel W. Crofts, Louisiana State U. Pr., 1995. 408 pp.
• People of Plenty: Economic Abundance and the American Character (1954)
• The South and the Sectional Conflict (1968)
• "American Women and the American Character" in American Character and Culture in a Changing World: Some Twentieth-century Perspectives (Greenwood Press, 1979): 209-225.
• History and American Society: Essays of David M. Potter. ed. by Don E. Fehrenbacher, Oxford U. Press, 1973. 422 pp.
• "The Historian's Use of Nationalism and Vice Versa," American Historical Review, Vol. 67, No. 4 (Jul., 1962), pp. 924–950 in JSTOR
• "An Appraisal of Fifteen Years of the Journal of Southern History, 1935-1949," Journal of Southern History, Vol. 16, No. 1 (Feb., 1950), pp. 25–32 in JSTOR
• "The Historical Development of Eastern-Southern Freight Rate Relationships," Law and Contemporary Problems, Vol. 12, No. 3, (Summer, 1947), pp. 416–448 in JSTOR
• "Horace Greeley and Peaceable Secession," Journal of Southern History, Vol. 7, No. 2 (May, 1941), pp. 145–159 in JSTOR