Arthur Charles Cole

Background

Arthur Charles Cole was born on April 22, 1886 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. He was the son of Harry Loomis Cole, a building contractor, and Pauline Kuster.

Education

He was educated at Ann Arbor High School, the University of Michigan (B. A. , 1907; M. A. , 1908), and the University of Pennsylvania (Ph. D. , 1911). At Pennsylvania, he was awarded a Harrison Fellowship in history (1909 - 1911) and a Harrison Senior Fellowship in research (1911 - 1912).

Career

Between 1908 and 1909 he taught at Short Ridge High School in Indianapolis, and in 1912 he accepted a position at the University of Illinois, where he rose from instructor to associate professor of history. Accepting a professorship at Ohio State University in 1920, he remained in Columbus until 1930, when he transferred to Western Reserve University in Cleveland. In 1944 he was a member of the Secret Committee of Historians of the Air Force in Washington, D. C. , where he performed studies concluding that Germany could not be subdued by bombing alone. Joining the faculty of Brooklyn College that same year, he moved to Brooklyn where he was active until his retirement in 1956 and served as chair of the Department of History after 1950. He was also a visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin, Columbia University, and the Brookings Graduate School, and taught summer school at the Universities of Michigan (1909, 1914, 1926), Pennsylvania (1912), Texas (1920), Wisconsin (1928), Oregon (1930), Washington (1934), and Southern California (1942). After leaving Brooklyn College, he served as Whitney Professor at C. W. Post College (1956 - 1957). After his retirement, he moved to Naples, Florida. Specializing in the Civil War period, Cole made valuable contributions to his field in various books and articles. In 1914 he published his innovative study, The Whig Party in the South, for which he had received the American Historical Association's Justin Winsor Prize in 1912. The book demonstrated the appeal of the Whigs to the large slaveholders of the section, and in his 1914 review in the American Historical Review, William E. Dodd called it an "important book" with "a poise and certainty of touch" marking its author as "a sound and discriminating scholar. " Charles Ambler, in the Mississippi Valley Historical Review, pronounced it "the best contribution to the political history of the South that has yet been made. " In 1919 Cole's second work appeared. Entitled The Era of the Civil War, 1848-1870, it constituted the third volume of the Centennial History of Illinois, published by the Illinois State Library. Not only was it praised for its incisive social insights, but its author was also asked to contribute a chapter to the Centennial History's twentieth-century volume, in which he covered World War I and was singled out for special praise by the historian Dixon Ryan Fox. At the same time, he also edited the Constitutional Debates of 1847 for the Illinois State Library. Historian Charles Ramsdell, whose views diverged sharply from Cole's, conceded that History of American Life series was "a solid and notable contribution to the social history of the American people. " Written at a time when the moral issues of the Civil War tended to be minimized, The Irrepressible Conflict continued to uphold the antislavery ideal, a stance for which Cole was criticized by such contrary-minded historians as Avery Craven, who thought the author depicted the South "very much as the abolitionists would have had it. " Cole's next book, A Hundred Years of Mount Holyoke College: The Evolution of an Educational Ideal (1940), was also praised by eminent scholars. Merle Curti stated that "no student of the history of women, of education, and of social life in the United States should neglect it. " An indefatigable searcher for hidden sources, both printed and manuscript, Cole was a splendid social historian whose books have remained as easily read as they were when first written. He also contributed numerous articles on social and political history to various learned publications, including his famous exchange with J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton in the 1931 and 1932 issue of the American Historical Review, "Lincoln's Election an Immediate Menace to Slavery in the States?" in which he took the negative point of view, and The Puritan and Fair Terpsichore, which appeared in book form in 1942. Widely recognized by the profession, Cole served as a member of the board of editors of the American Historical Review from 1928 to 1934, as one of the editors of the Mississippi Valley Historical Review (now the Journal of American History) between 1921 and 1924, and as its managing editor from 1930 to 1940. Cole also delivered the prestigious Walter B. Fleming Lectures in Southern History at Louisiana State University in 1944. Throughout his life, Cole was a firm believer in civil liberties in general and academic freedom in particular. An opponent of America's participation in World War I, he was the subject of an investigation of Illinois University trustees in a loyalty probe in which he was completely exonerated. A prominent member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)--for which he served as chair of the Academic Freedom Committee during the McCarthy period--and of the American Association of University Professors, he defended many a colleague in difficulties because of politically or personally unpopular views. It was in keeping with his devotion to freedom of expression that when the American Historical Review refused to review W. E. B. Du Bois's controversial Black Reconstruction in America (1935), Cole not only accepted it for the Mississippi Valley Historical Review but critiqued it himself. His willingness to allow his opponents to review his own books in the journal also showed his devotion to academic freedom. He died in Naples, Florida.

Achievements

• Cole's best-known work was his contribution to the History of American Life series, edited by Dixon Ryan Fox and Arthur M. Schlesinger.

Works

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• book

  • The Era of the Civil War: 1848-1870 (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from The Era of the Civil War: 1848-1870 HE deve...)

  • Studies in Microscopical Sciences ...

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • The Whig Party in the South (Prize essays of the American Historical Association)

Membership

American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)

Interests

• He devoted his time to growing fruit trees.

• Sport & Clubs

  Swimming, ice skating, bicycling, and horseback riding

Connections

In 1907 he married Ethel Sleight; they had two children.

Father:

Harry Loomis Cole

He was a building contractor

Mother:

Pauline Kuster

Spouse:

Ethel Sleight