Avery Craven


Avery Odelle Craven was an American historian who wrote extensively about the nineteenth-century United States, the American Civil War and Congressional Reconstruction from a then-revisionist viewpoint sympathetic to the Lost Cause as well as democratic failings during his own lifetime.

Early life and education

Craven was born near Ackworth, Iowa. His parents were Quakers who left North Carolina because of slavery and racism. Craven graduated from Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa in 1908, and would later leave his library and papers at the institution.
After brief stints teaching at Simpson College and North High School in Des Moines, Iowa, Craven moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he was influenced by Frederick Jackson Turner and earned an M.A. from Harvard in 1914.
Craven then married and taught at North Division High School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin until 1920, when he moved to Chicago to complete a doctorate in history under the guidance of Marcus Jernegan and William E. Dodd. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1923, and would later receive honorary doctorates from Tulane University and Cambridge University in 1952, as well as from the College of Emporia in 1974, Purdue University in 1969, Western Michigan University in 1963, the University of South Carolina in 1961, Wayne State University in 1957, and from his alma mater, Simpson College. He would marry for a second time in 1938.

Career

Craven first taught at the graduate level at Michigan State University and then the University of Illinois. In 1927, Craven joined the faculty of the University of Chicago, where he spent the rest of his career. His works included The Coming of the Civil War, The Growth of Southern Nationalism, 1848–1861 and Reconstruction, and the Ending of the Civil War. He served as president of the Organization of Southern Historians in 1952, as president of the Mississippi Valley Historical Society and of the Organization of American Historians in 1963–1964.

Views

Craven was a leader of the "revisionist" historians in the 1930s who said the Civil War was caused by a failure of democracy. He rejected the "progressive" school of Charles A. Beard, which argued the war was an inevitable conflict between the agrarian South and the industrial North.
Craven increasingly took a pro-Southern and even pro-slavery position on the causes of the Civil War. His explanation of the war was basically psychological and argued, according to John David Smith that "fear, suspicion, passion, propaganda, distortion" caused the war. Craven especially emphasized exaggerated abolitionist attacks on slavery and argued that the war could have been avoided if selfish politicians had not escalated the psychological fears to their own advantage.

Death and legacy

Craven died in Chesterton, Indiana in 1980 and his remains were returned for burial in Iowa. His alma mater, Simpson College, received his library and papers.
The Organization of American Historians gives an annual award named after Professor Craven, "for the most original book on the coming of the Civil War, the Civil War years, or the Era of Reconstruction, with the exception of works of purely military history. The exception recognizes and reflects the Quaker convictions of Craven, President of the Organization of American Historians 1963-1964."

Works