Historian by Happenstance

B] ORN and raised in tidewater North Carolina, I never thought of continuing my education at any place other than the state university of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. My stay there was ended after two years by the onset of World War II and induction in the armed forces. After assignment to various military schools at several airfields in the Midwest, I was sent off to fight the Japanese from the safety of posts in India and Burma. The most important (and only lasting) benefit I derived from military service was eligibility for the G. I. Bill, which in a rather convoluted way prompted my career as a historian. After the war, I re-enrolled at the University of North Carolina, where (perhaps to compensate for my previous mediocre performance there) I became something of an academic grind. Although I majored in history, largely because I could garner high grades in that subject, I also took a smattering of economics courses to improve my chance of admission to business graduate school. After graduating, I was persuaded by a classmate to accompany him to New York City, where he was contagiously confident that we would get rich quickly. He did, but I didn't. With or without money, New York in the late I940s and on into the early sixties was an enchanting city. In order to remain there I decided to get a graduate degree in history at Columbia University. Columbia's history department glittered with talent, including such stars as Garrett Mattingly, Jacques Barzun, Robert Livingston Schuyler, Henry Steele Commager, Richard B. Morris, and Allan Nevins. Whether because I was starstruck or became intellectually involved, I decided after getting a master's degree to stay on at Columbia. My dissertation was directed by Nevins, who furthered my career in decisive ways. As a graduate school advisor he was neither particularly solicitous nor accessible, but in other ways he was cooperative and generous. When I told him I had not settled on a dissertation topic, he recommended a biography of Frederic Bancroft (gentleman scholar best known for his Slave Trading in the Old South), whose papers, along with a generous financial bequest, Nevins was instrumental in securing for Columbia.1 Although Nevins provided little guidance while I was .writing the dissertation, he made copious editorial changes and recommendations once it was submitted. A close and frequent study of these was the most rewarding instruction I ever received in the craft of writing

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