Background

William E. Dodd was born on October 21, 1869, in Clayton, North Carolina, United States and died on February 9, 1940. He was a son of John Daniel and Evelyn Creech Dodd. He was the oldest of seven children (five boys and two girls) who survived infancy. His father was a farmer, and the family, though substantial, was in no way distinguished above its rural neighbors.

Education

Dodd worked during his childhood in the fields and excelled in school. Young Dodd attended Clayton High School and later Oak Ridge Military Academy. At the academy, he achieved the highest rank and, in 1890, attempted unsuccessfully to secure an appointment to the United States Military Academy.

The next year he entered the Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College (after 1896, Virginia Polytechnic Institute), where he wrote essays about the South for the college’s literary magazine, graduating with honors in 1895. History had played only a minor part in his studies, but he remained at the Institute for the next two years to teach a course in general history and to earn the Master of Science degree. In the summer of 1897, Dodd went to Germany to study at the University of Leipzig. It was there that he met the historian Erich Marcks, who influenced him to view history in a more personal and intuitive fashion, and to give careful attention to the experience of individuals who played important roles in history. In 1899, Dodd completed his doctoral thesis about the politics of Thomas Jefferson and returned to the United States.

Career

Dodd gained a post as a professor of history at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia, and he began writing historical essays from a Southern perspective. In 1903, his book "The Life of Nathaniel Macon," a biography of a Jefferson-era North Carolina congressman, was published. Like nearly all of Dodd’s writings to come, The Life of Nathaniel Macon contained a considerable number of small inaccuracies, yet, as Wayne Mixon states in Dictionary of Literary Biography, it “is a sound work that is still the standard biography of a major Jeffersonian figure eighty years after its publication.” Over the next several years, Dodd wrote essays about the South for the Nation, the South Atlantic Quarterly, and the American Historical Review, as well as critical reviews of other historical works for the New York Times.

In 1907, Dodd published his second book, "Jefferson Davis," a biography that caught the attention and earned the praise of President Theodore Roosevelt, among others. A reviewer for Outlook remarked, “Professor Dodd has performed a difficult task well, writing sympathetically of the President of the short-lived Confederacy, yet not allowing his sympathies to run away with his judgment.” By and large, Dodd’s portrait of Davis was hailed as even-handed and fair, yet Dodd was criticized for his many lapses of scholarly accuracy. “Notwithstanding his superior qualities, Professor Dodd must take heed lest his errors furnish hostile critics with weapons for his own destruction,” noted a Nation reviewer. Yet another critic from The American Historical Review noted that “[Dodd] is not always accurate in his statements.”

In 1908, Dodd was offered a trial appointment as a professor of history at the University of Chicago, where he was to teach for the next twenty-five years, and where he was to mentor other budding historians such as Henry Steele Commager, Avery O. Craven, H. C. Nixon, Frank Lawrence Owsley, and James G. Randall. Between 1910 and 1920, he published his most famous and enduring works, beginning in 1911 with Statesmen of the Old South, a study of the evolution of Southern politics through the deeds and words of Thomas Jefferson, James C. Calhoun, and Jefferson Davis. Though its sales were disappointing, the Statesmen of the Old South was roundly lauded by both critics and scholars. A reviewer for the Nation wrote, “Professor Dodd’s essays are well written and they abound in a vivid portrayal of the character. They are especially valuable in their frank revelation of how the political game was played. Unlike many other writers, the author makes us realize how completely the statesmen of the past were the politicians of their time.”

"Expansion and Conflict," which Dodd published as the third volume of Houghton Mifflin’s “Riverside History of the United States” series, examined the roots and the nature of regional conflict in pre-Civil War America, a time when the North and South were competing for the allegiance of the American West. Although it stands as an important contribution to a complex historical understanding of sectional antagonism, "Expansion and Conflict" is regarded today as an overly biased work, which neglected, among other matters, to fairly scrutinize the institution of slavery. Mixon summarizes by noting that “Dodd characterizes the abolitionists as irresponsible agitators motivated primarily by envy of Southern power in national affairs.”

Dodd’s 1919 title, however, "The Cotton Kingdom: A Chronicle of the Old South," is widely considered an unqualified scholarly and literary success, and the culmination of Dodd’s life’s work. "The Cotton Kingdom" is an examination of the culture in the “lower South” in the decade before tire Civil War, a culture defined by the philosophy, economy, religion, and social ethics of the cotton planters. Though only 30,000 words long, and written within a mere six weeks, "The Cotton Kingdom," which was often employed as a textbook during the 1920s, stands as Dodd’s most authoritative and influential work. A reviewer for American Historical Review wrote, “The student who knows something about the conditions in the South before the war will lay the book down with the feeling that it presents the results of much careful research condensed into space and expressed in the manner suited to popular work. Especially good are the chapters on the cotton magnates and the philosophy of the planter.”

In 1933, Dodd was appointed U.S. ambassador to Germany, where he became alarmed about the emerging danger of Naziism. He served as an ambassador through 1938, and he kept a diary of this time, which was edited and published by his children after his death. A critic for the New Republic lauded Dodd: “Ambassador Dodd relumed to this country literally to die, but before his death, he threw his remaining strength into last efforts by writing and speaking to set before his countrymen the fate which threatened them in a world given over to violence. His diary is a prophecy as well as history.” As a historian, throughout his life, Dodd was dedicated to illustrating the why as well as the what of historical events: he attempted to document the “real” forces of history and how they operated. As a writer, Dodd was as colorful and compelling as a skilled novelist, and what he lacked inaccuracy, he amply compensated for in vision and conviction.

On the day after William E. Dodd’s death on February 9, 1940, the New York Times called him “the world’s foremost authority on the history of the American South.” That authority largely came from Dodd’s passion and affinity for the region rather than the fastidiousness of his scholarship and research. As one of his students, Henry Steele Commager, once stated, Dodd “understood more than he knew and... knew more than he could prove.” Dodd’s historical works ushered in an era of closer analytic examination of a region whose documented history had hitherto been consigned to sweeping cultural generalizations, romantic cliches, and apologetics. Unlike many of his predecessors who had chronicled life in the Old South, Dodd genuinely loved the South, and he interpreted the nation’s history from the perspective of the South.

Achievements

• Dodd was among the first to treat the South's past in scholarly, objective fashion. For a time he was the only professor in the country whose teaching efforts were given entirely to the southern field, and he made the University of Chicago the center for such graduate study. He received many accolades during his career, including honorary doctorates from Emory University (1920), the University of Alabama (1923), and the University of Cincinnati (1929).
  
  During World War II the Liberty ship SS William E. Dodd was built in Panama City, Florida, and named in his honor.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Life of Nathaniel Macon

    (Founding Father, soldier, planter, a representative in th...)

    1903
  • Woodrow Wilson and His Work

    (This work has been selected by scholars as being cultural...)

    1920
  • Expansion and Conflict 1915
  • The Old South: Struggles For Democracy 1911
  • The cotton kingdom: A chronicle of the old South 1918
  • Jefferson Davis 1907

Politics

Unlike most other American officials, Dodd warned Roosevelt that Germany's war machine was expanding and neighboring countries might be targets. Although Dodd struggled to contain personal opinions not conducive to diplomacy, his criticisms were clear to the Nazi government. In May 1937 he created controversy when he publicly supported Roosevelt's plan to pack the Supreme Court of the United States and further asserted that an unnamed American billionaire was plotting to overthrow the United States government and replace it with a dictatorship. The final blow to Dodd's tumultuous diplomatic career came in September when he protested American attendance at the Nazi Party rally in Nürnberg. Disregarded by the German government, undermined by embassy and State Department staff, and dogged by fading political support, Dodd was removed as ambassador in December.

Personality

Slight of build and always giving the impression of frail health, Dodd nevertheless proved himself an unusually effective lecturer. His classes were always crowded, but he had the rare ability to keep them personal and intimate. As a director of research he was particularly successful. Students found him stimulating and suggestive.

Quotes from others about the person

• A recent writer has concluded that Dodd's "greatest contribution to scholarship was his inspirational teaching."
  
  Dodd's ambassadorial appointment caught many observers by surprise. As Max Lerner wrote:
  
  "If the record of our times were not so keyed to the tragic, it might be read as first-rate ironic comedy. Here was a Germany in which there had just come to dominance a power-drunk fanatic, a ruthless activist who knew little of history and hated democracy; and the man we sent to him to represent American interests was a retiring scholar... who, in the character of his democracy, was perhaps the last pure Jeffersonian to be found in America."

Interests

• Politicians

  Thomas Jefferson

Connections

In 1901 Dodd had married Martha Johns of Wake County, North Carolina. Their two children are William Edward and Martha Eccles.

Father:

Daniel Dodd

Mother:

Eveline Creech

Spouse:

Martha Johns

Daughter:

Martha Eccles

Son:

William Edward Jr.

References

• Contemporary Authors New Revision Series, Vol. 194
  2010
• William Edward Dodd: The South's Yeoman Scholar
  1997