Channing, Edward

Channing, Edward, 1856–1931, American historian, b. Dorchester, Mass.; son of William Ellery Channing (1818–1901). He was a prominent teacher at Harvard from 1883 until his retirement in 1929, holding a professor's rank from 1897. Channing wrote The United States of America, 1765–1865 (1896, 2d ed. 1930, repr. 1941); Guide to the Study and Reading of American History (with Albert B. Hart, 1896; rev. and augmented ed. by Channing, Hart, and Frederick Jackson Turner, 1912), an excellent brief bibliography of American history; and The Jeffersonian System, 1801–1811 ("American Nation" series, 1906, repr. 1968). Most of these books were, however, either incidental to, or preparation for, the great work to which Channing devoted most of his life—A History of the United States (6 vol., 1905–25), embracing the years from 1000 to 1865. Based throughout on the author's extensive knowledge of the sources, remarkably accurate in fact, and excellently written, it is generally considered one of the finest histories of the United States ever produced by one man. The final volume on the Civil War won a Pulitzer Prize in 1926.