Forrest McDonald, Historian Who Punctured Liberal Notions, Dies at 89

The New York Times ^ | January 22, 2016 | Sam Roberts

[KC Burke]

Forrest McDonald, a presidential and constitutional scholar who challenged liberal shibboleths about early American history and lionized the founding fathers as uniquely intellectual, died on Tuesday in Tuscaloosa, Ala. He was 89.

The cause was heart failure, his daughter Marcy McDonald said.

As a Pulitzer Prize finalist in history and a professor at the University of Alabama, Dr. McDonald declared himself an ideological conservative and an opponent of intrusive government. (“I’d move the winter capital to North Dakota and outlaw air-conditioning in the District of Columbia,” he once said.) But he refused to be pigeonholed either as a libertarian or, despite his Southern agrarian roots, as a Jeffersonian.

[KC Burke]

Shuddering, I compliment the NYT on a generous obituary for a conservative icon. If you haven't read a half a dozen of his history books you are missing one of the greats for our era.

ISI is publishing a collection of essays in his honor that should be a good read.

Somehow with the Snow-ma-geddon of last week this event of that Tuesday got missed later in the week on our forum and others.

Anyone that met the man should certainly chime in as I never had the honor.

[LS]

McDonald was awesome, wrote about the Constitution, Samuel Insull, George Washington.

[KC Burke]

fyi

[laplata]

RIP

[KC Burke]

< hitting my forehead > Well duh, I should have pinged you.

Others out there should note that Forrest McDonald was the historian that destroyed the great liberal interprative work of Charles Beard that stood like a collosus over the understanding of the Constitution during the first half of the 20th century and even into the 70s. McDonald beginning in his dissertation in 1958 showed how utterly wrong and without foundation Beard’s marxist thesis of 1913 was. Despite the clarity of his rebuttal, when I took my first major American History class in the mid 1960s it was Beard’s thesis that was given prominence with nary a word on McDonald’s work.

[LS]

He has some good clips in the video series “They Made America,” discussing Sam Insull.

[StoneWall Brigade]

Forrest was an amazing historian he will be deeply missed.

RIP

[IronJack]

I humbly confess that he's one constitutional historian I haven't read. That will be remedied soon.

Sorry to see a good one go ...

[StoneWall Brigade]

Ping

[KC Burke]

I always loved the comment he made in one interview that it was always isolated at their house so he wrote in the nude due to the Alabama heat.

I have always wondered if he was pulling the leg of the interviewer.

[Skooz]

RIP

and

BFL

[KC Burke]

I liked “Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution” and “E Pluribus Unum”. His major work on Hamilton is somewhat dry but central to his overall work.

[fella]

Bump for later.

[fieldmarshaldj]

RIP.

[KC Burke]

thanks

[IronJack]

Novus ordo seclorum didn't have the ominous ring in those days that it has today.

[Monterrosa-24]

I had the honor of taking two of his classes at the University of Alabama. His wife red-inked/graded the compositions we did and she was a great one too.

[Publius]

Federalist/Anti-Federalist ping. We’ve lost a giant, one of our greatest historians and a national treasure.

[StoneWall Brigade]

Agreed

[KC Burke]

Everything I read about him seemed to suggest he would be both a task master and yet entertaining to engage. Any actual observations or anecdotes?

By the way, one son has a masters from Alabama so this Jayhawk says, Roll Tide.