Historians’ Responsibilities: Telling the of Story Past Accurately and Effectively - An Interview with Eric Foner

Abstract

Eric Foner (1943). DeWitt Clinton Professor of Hist01y at Columbia University and President of the American Historical Association (2000-2001), is one of the most distinguished historians in the United States. A leading authority of the 19'h-century United States history, Professor Foner has published 8 major works on the Civil War, Reconstruction and American political culture, . including Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The ideology of the Republican Before the Civil War (1 970); Tom Paine and Revolutionary America (1976); Politics and Ideology in the Age of the Civil War (1980); Nothing Bill Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy (1983); Recomtruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (1988, a winner of several prestigious awards including the Bancroft Prize); Freedom's Lawmakers: A Direct01y of Black Officeholders During Reconstruction (1993); and The Story of American Freedom (1998). Professor Foner was a former president of the Organization of American Historians (1993-9./) and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy.