William W. Freehling

William Wilhartz Freehling (born December 26, 1935) is an American historian, and Singletary Professor of the Humanities Emeritus at the University of Kentucky.

Early life Freehling was born in Chicago, Illinois on December 26, 1935, a son of Norman Freehling and Edna ( Wilhartz) Freehling.

Freehling has written several well-respected works on the American South during the antebellum era and on the American Civil War. His most notable book, Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina, won the 1967 Bancroft Prize.

As of 2011, he was senior fellow at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.

Personal life On January 27, 1961, Freehling married Natalie Paperno, with whom he had two children, Alan and Deborah Freehling. The former wife of William Emmons Bradshaw, she was a daughter of Frank H. Goodyear Jr. and a granddaughter of lumber baron Frank H. Goodyear and Edmund P. Rogers. Together, they are the parents of two children, Alison and William Freehling.

Awards 1965 Allan Nevins Prize of the Society of American Historians 1967 Bancroft Prize Senior Fellow at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities 2007 Louis R. Gottschalk Lecture

Works

(collection of articles and essays) "The Divided South, Democracy's Limitations, and the Causes of the Peculiarly North American Civil War", in "The Civil War: Repressible or Irrepressible" (with Allan Nevins), in Francis G. Couvares, George Athan Billias, Martha Saxton, eds., Interpretations of American History: Through Reconstruction. Simon & Schuster, 2000. The South vs. the South: How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War. Oxford University Press, 2001

"Arthur Schlesinger Jr: William W. Freehling Remembers", OUPblog Oxford University Press website

Becoming Lincoln. University of Virginia Press (2018).