Randall, James Garfield

Randall, James Garfield, 1881–1953, American historian, b. Indianapolis, Ind. He taught history and political science at various colleges before joining (1920) the faculty of the Univ. of Illinois. A leading authority on Lincoln, Randall was a leader of the Civil War revisionists (who maintained that the war was not inevitable and came about as a result of the failures of American statesmanship). Randall wrote Constitutional Problems under Lincoln (1926), The Civil War and Reconstruction (1937; rev. by David Donald, 1961), Lincoln the President: Springfield to Gettysburg (4 vol., 1945–55; Vol. IV completed by R. N. Current), Lincoln and the South (1946), and Lincoln the Liberal Statesman (1947).