Arthur S. Link
Arthur Stanley Link was an American historian and educator, known as the leading authority on U.S. President Woodrow Wilson.
Early life
Born in New Market, Virginia, 50 miles from Wilson's birthplace, in Staunton, Virginia, to a Lutheran minister of German descent, Link graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, receiving a B.A. in 1941 and a Ph.D. in 1945. He got inspired to look into the career of Woodrow Wilson career by Fletcher Green, one of his professors.Career
Although his early writings were critical of Wilson for demanding overly-harsh reparations from a defeated Germany after World War I, Link grew to love him. He became the leading specialist on Wilson, published a five-volume biography , and edited all 69 volumes of Wilson's papers. Although he published numerous textbooks, Link concentrated his scholarship on the politics and diplomacy of the 1910s.Link's first major contribution was to stress the importance of Progressivism in the South, a theme developed by C. Vann Woodward, and the importance of the South to Progressive Era nationally. Link saw Wilson as a southerner with a southern base, who thus broadened the scope of the politics of Proogressivism.
The second was to locate the heart of Progressivism in Theodore Roosevelt's New Nationalism platform of 1912, not in Wilson's New Freedom. Link's point was that Wilson was a conservative until 1913, when he suddenly accepted the core values of Roosevelt's proposals to use the federal government to reform the economy.
The third was to argue that Progressivism collapsed after World War I because of internecine conflicts among reformers and uncertainties about how to pursue their agendas further. The Progressives ran out of ideas and so left the field to Warren G. Harding. Still, Link also argued that Progressivism was stronger in the 1920s than was generally acknowledged and that its underground currents formed the heart of the New Deal in the 1930s.
As Link delved into the manuscripts, he changed his mind but usually did not try to rewrite his books. The one exception was Woodrow Wilson: Revolution, War, and Peace . Link softened his criticism of Wilson's responses to the Mexican Revolution and German submarine warfare and also gave Wilson higher marks than before as a war leader and articulator of war aims in the Fourteen Points. Link had previously stated that Wilson would have taken the same unbending stand against ratification of the Versailles Treaty with Henry Cabot Lodge's reservations if he had enjoyed perfect health.
In Link's revision, he stressed Wilson's deteriorating cardiovascular condition and massive stroke. His medical deterioration made it hard for Wilson to compromise with Lodge and caused, in part, Wilson's earlier actions at the Versailles Peace Conference and his dealings with the US Senate over the treaty. Link incorporated his new ideas in elaborate notes in his edition of the Papers. The book is an attempt at a refutation of George F. Kennan's American Diplomacy.
Link taught at Northwestern University and Princeton University. He directed numerous PhD dissertations, including those of William Harbaugh and Gerald Grob. His relations with his colleagues at Princeton were sometimes strained, as with Eric F. Goldman. At one point, Link was attacked by some scholars for his medical interpretation of Wilson, and Princeton University and the funding agencies seemed unsupportive, which caused the long relationship to end on a sour note in 1949.
Princeton did not eagerly invite his return in 1958, but the Woodrow Wilson Foundation insisted on it as a condition for financing The Papers of Woodrow Wilson.
According to his obituary in The New York Times by Michael T. Kaufman:
"Day after day, year after year since 1958, Mr. Link would rise at 5:30 in the morning and search for, read and assess hundreds of thousands of documents that would eventually fill the volumes that Princeton University Press published at $65 each. Princeton has sold almost 100,000 of them, an extraordinary number for this sort of work. At his desk, the same one that Wilson had used when he was president of Princeton, Professor Link wrote each of the long footnotes that explained the context of a particular letter or document, linking it to material that came before or would come later."
Link was distant from the administration and faculty but enjoyed working with undergraduates. His star pupil at Princeton University was Bill Bradley and at Northwestern University was George McGovern, who wrote labor history and was supported by Link during his 1972 Democratic candidate for president. Future Princeton, New Jersey mayor Phyllis Marchand, who worked for him as an indexer, noted that he rejected the idea of using computers and preferred index cards and a typewriter.
Link served as president of the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, and the Southern Historical Association. In 1958–1958, he served as the Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University. He published 30 books, including history textbooks, and was the recipient of numerous awards, including 10 honorary degrees and two Bancroft Prizes. An active Presbyterian, he served as vice-president of the National Council of Churches of Christ in America. When not doing history, he enjoyed reading and rereading the novels of Anthony Trollope.
Personal life
He married Margaret Douglas Link in 1945; they had four children, William A. Link, Dr. A. Stanley Link Jr. of Winston-Salem, N.C., and James Douglas Link of Flemington, N.J.; a daughter, Margaret Link Weil of Chapel Hill, N.C.; and four grandchildren.Death
Link died of lung cancer in Advance, North Carolina, at the age of 77.Notable quotations
- "I've read a lot of history in my life, and I think that aside from St. Paul, Jesus and the great religious prophets, Woodrow Wilson was the most admirable character I've ever encountered in history."
- "Most of the Hitler and Stalin scholars I know are depressed people."
Works
- Wilson, a biography in 5 volumes. Volume I: "The Road to the White House, 570 pages ; Volume II: "The New Freedom", 504 pages ; Volume III: "The Struggle for Neutrality", 733 pages ; Volume IV: "Confusions and Crises, 1915–1916", 386 pages ; Volume V: "Campaigns for Progressivism and Peace, 1916–1917", 464 pages .
- Woodrow Wilson, A Selected Bibliography of His Published Writings, Addresses and Public Papers.
- Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era, 1910–1917.
- American Epoch: A History of the United States Since the 1890s, textbook
- Wilson the Diplomatist: A Look at His Major Foreign Policies, New Viewpoints,
- "What Happened to the Progressive Movement in the ?" The American Historical Review, Vol. 64, No. 4, pp. 833–851
- Wilson: The Struggle for Neutrality, 1914–1915.
- Our American Republic.
- editor, The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 69 volumes, 1966–1983
- *v. 1. 1856–1880—v. 2. 1881–1884—v. 3. 1884–1885—v. 4. 1885—v. 5. 1885–1888—v. 6. 1888–1890—v. 7. 1890–1892—v. 8. 1892–1894—v. 9. 1894–1896—v. 10. 1896–1898—v. 11. 1898–1900—v. 12. 1900–1902—v. 13. Contents and index, vols. 1 to 12, 1856–1902—v. 14. 1902–1903—v. 15. 1903–1905—v. 16. 1905–1907—v. 17. 1907–1908—v. 18. 1908–1909—v. 19. 1909–1910—v. 20–21. 1910—v. 22. 1910–1911—v. 23. 1911–1912—v. 24–25. 1912—v. 26. Contents and index, vols. 14–25, 1902–1912—v. 27–28. 1913—v. 29. 1913–1914—v. 30–31. 1914—v. 32–34. 1915—v. 35. 1915–1916—v. 36–38. 1916—v. 40. 1916–1917—v. 41–44. 1917—v. 45. 1917–1918—v. 46–48. 1918—v. 50. The complete press conferences, 1913–1919—v. 51. 1918—v. 52. Index, 1916–1918—v. 53. 1918–1919—v. 54–63. 1919—v. 64. 1919–1920—v. 65–66. 1920—v. 67. 1920–1922—v. 68. 1922–1924.
- The Impact of World War I .
- The Diplomacy of World Power: The United States, 1889–1920, edited by Arthur S. Link and William M. Leary, Jr.
- The Democratic Heritage: A History of the United States .
- The Higher Realism of Woodrow Wilson, and Other Essays, with a foreword by Dewey W. Grantham..
- Problems in American History, edited by Richard W. Leopold, Arthur S. Link, and Stanley Coben. 4th ed. 2 vols..
- The Age of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1921–1945. 4th ed..
- The Era of the Cold War, 1946–1973, by Arthur S. Link and William B. Catton. 4th ed..
- Woodrow Wilson: Revolution, War, and Peace
- An Era of Economic Change, Reform, and World Wars, 1900–1945, maps and charts by Theodore R. Miller. 5th ed..
- Woodrow Wilson and a Revolutionary World, 1913–1921..
- Progressivism..
- The Twentieth Century: An American History ..
- The American Historical Association, 1884–1984: Retrospect and Prospect
- The Wilson Era: Essays in Honor of Arthur S. Link, edited by John Milton Cooper, Jr. and Charles E. Neu..
- The Real Woodrow Wilson: An Interview with Arthur S. Link, editor of the Wilson Papers, by James Robert Carroll. 1st ed..