Charles W. Ramsdell

Charles William Ramsdell (April 4, 1877 – July 3, 1942) was an American historian who concentrated on the history of the Southern United States, especially the Confederacy.

Early life Charles William Ramsdell was born on April 4, 1877, in Salado, Texas. His father, Charles H. Ramsdell, arrived in Texas from New England just before the Civil War. He enlisted as a private for the Confederate States of America. Charles H. worked as a merchant and as a cotton farmer. His mother was Fredonia (Halley) Ramsdell, who bore four sons and two daughters.

During Reconstruction, prior to Ramsdell's birth, Bell County, Texas, was the location of anti-Unionist violence. Union troops were called in to enforce the peace, and Hiram Christian, a federal judge, administered Reconstruction law in the area. By 1870, however, anti-Unionists drove the Reconstruction officials out of Bell County. Ramsdell grew up in an area that persisted in anti-Union sentiment. He earned a B.A. and M.A. in 1903 and 1904, respectively. Among his influences as an undergraduate were Professor Lester G. Bugbee and his classmates, Eugene Campbell Barker and Herbert Eugene Bolden. He completed his doctorate in 1910 at Columbia University, He assembled at the university a large collection of manuscripts and other printed material on that subject, and was instrumental in building the university's Littlefield collection on southern history. During summer sessions, he taught at the University of Illinois (1923, 1926), the University of Colorado (1924), Columbia University (1927), the University of North Carolina (1928), Western Reserve University (1930), Northwestern University (1932), the University of West Virginia (1933), the University of Missouri (1935) and Duke University (1938).

As a southerner and a historian of the South, Ramsdell was proud that new generations of southern historians had moved away from the apologias which earlier generations had produced, and were instead writing what he saw as objective accounts of Southern history. Because of this, he bemoaned, frequently in person and once in print, the failure of these works to receive recognition by northern historians.

Memberships Ramsdell was a member of a number of academic organizations: Civil War historian James M. McPherson cites Ramsdell – along with J. S. Tilley in his 1941 book Lincoln Takes Command – as being the "two principal historians who advanced this interpretation" of events.

Books written Reconstruction in Texas (1910). New York: Longmans, Green and Company. (PhD. dissertation) A School History of Texas (with Eugene C. Barker and Charles S. Potts, 1912). Chicago: Row, Peterson and Company. Behind the Lines in the Southern Confederacy (1943). Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.

Books edited The History of Bell County by George W. Tyler (1936). Austin, Texas: Naylor Company. Laws and Joint Resolutions of the Last Session of the Confederate Congress (November 7, 1864—March 18, 1865) Together with the Secret Acts of Previous Congresses (1941). Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press.

Death Ramsdell died on July 3, 1942.