William E. Gienapp (February 27, 1944 – October 29, 2003) was an American historian noted for his writing on the period of the American Civil War. His prize-winning The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852-1856 (1987) was based on original research and revised the traditional understanding of the political party's origins. Later he wrote Abraham Lincoln and Civil War America: A Biography (2002). He co-authored a widely-used United States history textbook, Nation of Nations, and compiled one of the most widely-used documentary readers on the era of the Civil War, The Civil War and Reconstruction: A Documentary Collection (2001).

Education and career[edit]

Gienapp held a B.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied under Kenneth Stampp, and an M.A. from Yale University. After earning his doctorate in 1980, Gienapp began working at the University of Wyoming. He became a visiting associate professor at Harvard in 1988 before formally joining the faculty the following year. Gienapp died prematurely in the fall of 2003 at the age of 59 from complications surrounding a rare form of blood cancer. He was survived by his wife and two sons.^[1]

During his tenure at Harvard University, Gienapp acquired a reputation as a teacher and mentor of graduate students. In addition to teaching popular courses on the American Civil War, Reconstruction, and antebellum America, he also taught a popular course on the history of baseball in the United States.^[1]

Many years after his death, his wife, Erica Gienapp, completed one of his final projects: The Civil War Diary of Gideon Welles, Lincoln's Secretary of the Navy: The Original Manuscript Edition (2014). It restored one of the most important primary sources of Abraham Lincoln's administration to its complete, original form.

Books[edit]

• The Civil War Diary of Gideon Welles, Lincoln's Secretary of the Navy: The Original Manuscript Edition (University of Illinois Press, 2014), edited with Erica L. Gienapp.
• Abraham Lincoln and Civil War America: A Biography (Oxford University Press, 2002)
• This Fiery Trial: The Speeches and Writings of Abraham Lincoln (Oxford University Press, 2002), edited.^[2]
• The Civil War and Reconstruction: A Documentary Collection (W. W. Norton, 2001), edited.
• The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852-1856 (Oxford University Press, 1987)^[3]
• Nation of Nations: A Narrative History of the American Republic (McGraw-Hill/Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), contributor.
• "Nativism and the Creation of a Republican Majority in the North before the Civil War." Journal of American History 72.3 (1985): 529-559 online

References[edit]

External links[edit]

• Appearances on C-SPAN