President’s Day wouldn’t be worth a plug nickel without recognizing the contribution of that expatriate Texan Forrest McDonald, the eminent American historian now retired to the backwoods of Alabama not far from his last teaching assignment at the University of Alabama. (His primary publisher, the University of Kansas Press, is the source for the facts in this article.)
McDonald has always exuded the ultimate of honor in character. In 1987, the 200th anniversary of the United States Constitution, the National Endowment for the Humanities selected McDonald for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities. McDonald quietly refused, without fan fare, the $10,000 award that went with the honor. He later said he’d been on record for abolishing the National Endowment for the Humanities – the very folks who’d selected him for the honor. He just didn’t think taking the money would be "right."
His lecture was entitled "The Intellectual World of the Founding Fathers" and was later described by the noted conservative historian George H. Nash as "a luminous introduction to the intellectual world of the Founding Fathers." The lecture was published in the essay collection, “Requiem: Variations on Eighteenth-Century Themes.”
McDonald published 14 books, many of them dealing with the presidency in one way or another. The list includes the following, according to Wikipedia:
We The People: The Economic Origins of the Constitution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958; new ed. New Brunswick: Transaction, 1992)
Insull (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962)
E Pluribus Unum: The Formation of the American Republic (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1965; new ed., Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1979)
The Presidency of George Washington (University Press of Kansas, 1974, paperback ed., 1985)
The Phaeton Ride: The Crisis of American Success (Doubleday, 1974)
The Presidency of Thomas Jefferson (University Press of Kansas, 1976; paperback ed., 1987)
Alexander Hamilton: A Biography (Norton, 19790)
The American People, textbook with David Burner and Eugene D. Genovese; Revisionary Press, 1980
Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution (University Press of Kansas, 1985) (1986 Pulitzer Prize Finalist)
Requiem: Variations on Eighteenth-Century Themes (University Press of Kansas, 1988), with wife Ellen Shapiro McDonald
The American Presidency: An Intellectual History (University Press of Kansas, 1994; paperback ed., 1995)
States' Rights and the Union: Imperium in Imperio, 1776-1876 (University Press of Kansas, 2000)
Recovering the Past: A Historian's Memoir (2004) an autobiography
Two copies of his biography of Alexander Hamilton and two copies of “Novus Ordo Seclorum” are available in the Albuquerque public library system.
Examiner has collected many of the McDonald books, having become a fan of the historian when he met McDonald and wife Ellen in Spain in 1962.
Of all McDonald’s books, Examiner would recommend as a starting place, “E Pluribus Unum: The Formation of the American Republic” (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1965; new ed., Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1979)
McDonald was born in Orange, Texas. He took his B.A. and Ph.D. degrees (1955) from The University of Texas at Austin. He taught at Brown University (1959–67), Wayne State University (1967–76), and the University of Alabama (1976–2002).
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