Albert Bushnell Hart (July 1, 1854 – July 16, 1943) was an American historian, writer, and editor based at Harvard University. One of the first generation of professionally trained historians in the United States, a prolific author and editor of historical works, Albert Bushnell Hart became, as Samuel Eliot Morison described him, “The Grand Old Man” of American history, looking the part with his “patriarchal full beard and flowing moustaches.”
Albert Bushnell Hart (July 1, 1854 – July 16, 1943) was an American historian, writer, and editor based at Harvard University. One of the first generation of professionally trained historians in the United States, a prolific author and editor of historical works, Albert Bushnell Hart became, as Samuel Eliot Morison described him, “The Grand Old Man” of American history, looking the part in the look of his “patriarchal full beard and flowing moustaches.”
Hart was born in Clarksville (now Clark), Mercer County, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Harvard University in 1880. He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and a classmate and buddy of future U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt. He studied at Paris, Berlin and Freiburg, and time-honored his doctorate below Hermann Eduard von Holst at Freiburg in 1883. Harvard President Charles Eliot appointed Hart an intellectual in 1883 to teach the on your own course in American history that the assistant professor offered, despite the fact that Edward Channing, already an partner in crime in European history, wanted to tutor the course himself. Hart served as scholarly in records from 1883–1887, assistant professor from 1887–1897, and became a professor in 1897. In 1910 he was appointed Eaton Professor of the Science of Government. He was on the Harvard capacity for 43 years, retiring in 1926. In retirement he continued to write and reduce from a room in Widener Library. He maintained a summer house in New Hampshire close Mount Monadnock.
Hart edited, along once Edward Channing, over the get older from 1892 to 1895 a series of extracts from primary documents called the “American chronicles leaflets; colonial and constitutional”, which included titles such as “Extracts from the Sagas describing the voyages to Vinland”, and “Documents illustrating the territorial progress of the United States, 1584–1774”. Hart was an editor of the Harvard Graduates’ Magazine from 1894 to 1902. He served as president of the American Historical Association in 1909 and of the American Political Science Association in 1912. In 1914, he was appointed exchange professor at the University of Berlin.
Hart authored Formation of the Union (1892), Salmon Portland Chase (1899), Essentials of American History (1905), Slavery and Abolition (1906), and many further books. He was editor of the “American Nation” series (28 volumes, 1903–1918) and new series upon American history, of many source books and guides for the examination of American history, and, with Andrew C. McLaughlin, of the Cyclopedia of American Government (3 volumes, 1914). He was an editor of the American Historical Review for 14 years, and president of both the American Historical Association (AHA) and the American Political Science Association. Hart abbreviated the American Year Book from 1911 to 1920 and from 1926 to 1932. He abbreviated a five-volume records of Massachusetts in 1927–1930 and worked as the recognized historian of the George Washington bicentennial commission from 1926 to 1932.
In 1909, he played an important role in enabling his former student, W. E. B. Du Bois, to attend to his paper “Reconstruction and Its Benefits” to the AHA in New York. This essay was elaborated as the book Black Reconstruction in America in 1935 and proved to be a seminal accomplishment in distressing historical ventilation of the Reconstruction era away from the views of the Dunning School. He served as a trustee of Howard University. Though a aficionada in the racial inferiority of African Americans, he nevertheless opposed plans to deny black students places in the Freshman Halls at Harvard in the years subsequent to World War I. Aside from innate the advisor for Du Bois’ doctoral dissertation, Hart was plus the advisor (along following Edward Channing) for Carter G. Woodson’s dissertation. Hart was furthermore the initial doctoral advisor for out of the ordinary African-American historian, Charles H. Wesley, and settled for Wesley to get the similar Austin Scholar Graduate Fellowship that Du Bois had time-honored thirty years earlier; and as a Howard University trustee, Hart used his shape to safe Wesley a depart of non-attendance so he could total his doctorate. However, since Hart was on academic depart that semester, Channing served as Wesley’s dissertation advisor.
A proponent of U.S. participation in World War I, he was accused of espionage in December 1918, but the charges were sure to be the play of German propagandists frustrating to undermine his pro-British stance. In 1922, The Progressive Magazine referred to Hart as an Anglomaniac.
In the slip of 1915, he served on the Mooseheart Governing Board, and remained in that role through 1928. The 1928 edition of Seniors’ Book is dedicated in his honor.
A exposure arose in 1923 as to the “Americanism” of his history textbooks Epochs of American History and National Ideals Historically Traced. An investigating committee suggested the removal of his School History of the United States from New York City schools.
Hart married Mary Putnam in 1889, and they adopted twin boys in 1897. He died on July 16, 1943. Although Hart had certainly that everything of his papers would build up Harvard after his death, his papers were sold by his sons through LP dealers in Newburyport, and the college attempted to recover as many as possible.