Robert E. Bonner
Professor of HistoryKathe Tappe Vernon Professor in Biography
Robert Bonner is the Kathe Tappe Vernon Professor in Biography at Dartmouth and, over the 2020-21 academic year, the Rogers Distinguished Fellow in 19th Century American History at the Huntington Library. Previous books include Colors and Blood: Flag Passions of the Confederate South (Princeton University Press), The Soldiers Pen: Firsthand Impressions of the American Civil War (Hill and Wang); and Mastering America: Southern Slaveholders and the Crisis of American Nationhood (Cambridge University Press). He is now completing a biographical study of Confederate Vice-President Alexander H. Stephens titled Master of Lost Causes and launching a book-length account of Confederate commerce raiding, privateering, and slave trading, titled Slaveocrats At Sea:The Global Menace of a Maritime Southern Confederacy.
Selected Publications
"1860s Capitalscapes, Governing Interiors, and the Ilustration of North American Soveriegnty," in Remaking North American Sovereignty (Fordham University Press, 2020).
The Salt Water Civil War: Thalassological Approaches, Ocean-Centered Opportunities, Journal of the Civil War Era June, 2016
"Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Seas?: Civil War Statecraft and the Liberal Quest for Oceanic Stability" in The Transnational Significance of the American Civil War (Palgrave, 2016)
"Teaching the Civil War in a Global Context: A Discussion" Journal of the Civil War Era March, 2015.
Mastering America: Southern Slaveholders and the Crisis of American Nationhood, (2009).
“Proslavery Extremism Goes to War: The Counterrevolutionary Confederacy and Reactionary Militarism,” Modern Intellectual History 6 (September 2009) 261-285.
The Soldier’s Pen: Firsthand Impressions of the Civil War, (2007).
“Civil War Diplomacy, Racial Science, and the Confederate Mission of Henry Hotze,” Civil War History , 51:3 (2005) 288-316.
Works in progress
Master of Lost Causes: Alexander Stephens and the Legacy of Confederate Defeat