James Ford Rhodes was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 industrialist and historian

Historian

A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...

 born in Cleveland, Ohio

Cleveland, Ohio

Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The city is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately west of the Pennsylvania border...

.

He attended New York University

New York University

New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...

 beginning in 1865. He also attended the Collège de France

Collège de France

The Collège de France is a higher education and research establishment located in Paris, France, in the 5th arrondissement, or Latin Quarter, across the street from the historical campus of La Sorbonne at the intersection of Rue Saint-Jacques and Rue des Écoles...

. 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

Mark Hanna

Marcus Alonzo "Mark" Hanna was a United States Senator from Ohio and the friend and political manager of President William McKinley...

, a dominant leader of the Republican Party, but Rhodes himself was a Bourbon Democrat

Bourbon Democrat

Bourbon Democrat was a term used in the United States from 1876 to 1904 to refer to a member of the Democratic Party, conservative or classical liberal, especially one who supported President Grover Cleveland in 1884–1888/1892–1896 and Alton B. Parker in 1904. After 1904, the Bourbons faded away...

.

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

Pulitzer Prize

The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...

 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 typically well regarded for his lack of bias. However, his factual assertions from "History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850" were challenged by contemporary black Southerners like John Lynch from Mississippi who witnessed Mississippi's Reconstruction first-hand(Lynch 1917). According to Congressman Lynch, "the reader of Mr. Rhodes' history cannot fail to see that he believed it was a grave mistake to have given the colored men at the South the right to vote, and in order to make the alleged historical facts harmonize with his own views upon this point, he took particular pains to magnify the virtues and minimize the faults of the Democrats and to magnify the faults and minimize the virtues of the Republicans, the colored men especially" (Lynch 1917, 353). In book VI, pp. 35–40 Mr. Rhodes stated "[Thaddeus]Stevens' Reconstruction Acts, ostensibly in the interest of freedom, were an attack on civilization...[and] did not show wise constructive statesmanship in forcing unqualified Negro Suffrage on the South" (Rhodes 1920.) To this assertion, Congressman Lynch responded "But for the adoption of the Congressional plan of Reconstruction and the subsequent legislation of the nation along the same line, the abolition of slavery through the ratification of the 13th Amendment would have been in name only, a legal and constitutional myth" (Lynch 1917, 363.) Rhodes 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

Loubat Prize

The Loubat Prize was a pair of prizes awarded by Columbia University every five years between 1913 and 1958 for the best social science works in the English language about North America.The awards were established and endowed by Joseph Florimond, Duc de Loubat...

 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 degree

Honorary degree

An honorary degree or a degree honoris causa is an academic degree for which a university has waived the usual requirements, such as matriculation, residence, study, and the passing of examinations...

s.

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.

External links