David Lightner
Professor Emeritus
| Email: | david.lightner@ualberta.ca |
Education
Ph.D. Cornell University (1969)
A.M. University of Pennsylvania (1964)
B.A. Pennsylvania State University (1963)
Expertise & Research Interests
- American Economic and Labour History
- Nineteenth-Century United States
- Slavery and Antislavery
- 1930s Great Depression and New Deal
Publications
Books:
Winnie Lightner: Tomboy of the Talkies. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2016.
Slavery and the Commerce Power: How the Struggle Against the Interstate Slave Trade Led to the Civil War. New Haven and London: Yale University Press,2006.
Asylum, Prison, and Poorhouse: The Writings and Reform Work of Dorothea Dix in Illinois . Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999.
Labor on the Illinois Central Railroad, 1852-1900: The Evolution of an Industrial Environment. New York : Arno Press, 1977.
Chapters and Essays:
"Dorothea Dix." Oxford Encyclopedia of American Social History. Ed. Lynn Dumenil. 2 vols. Oxford University Press, 2012. Vol. 1, pp. 280-81.
"The Supreme Court and the Interstate Slave Trade: A Study in Evasion, Anarchy, and Extremism." "The Friendship": Civil Rights and Litigation. Pennsylvania Bar Institute, 2005. Chap. 3. Reprint of 2004 article.
"Dorothea Lynde Dix." Philanthropy in America: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia. Ed. Dwight F. Burlingame. 3 vols. ABC-CLIO sponsored by Indiana University Center on Philanthropy,2004. Vol. 1, pp. 119-20.
"Dorothea Lynde Dix (1802-1887), Campaigner for Mental Hospitals." Notable American Philanthropists: A Biographical Encyclopedia of Giving and Volunteering. Ed. Robert T. Grimm. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2002. pp. 80-83.
"The Interstate Slave Trade in Antislavery Politics." Abolitionism and American Politics and Government. Ed. John R. McKivigan. New York: Garland Publishing, 1999. Chap. 12, pp. 217-34. Reprint of 1990 article.
"William Henry Bissell." American National Biography. Ed. John A Garraty and Mark C. Carnes. 24 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Vol. 2, pp. 843-44.
"Railroads and the American Economy: The Fogel Thesis in Retrospect." Railways. Ed. Terry Gourvish. Studies in Transportation History Series. Ed. John Armstrong. 6 vols. Aldershot, UK: Scholar Press, 1996. Reprint of 1983 article.
"Abraham Lincoln and the Ideal of Equality." American Vistas. Ed. Leonard Dinnerstein and Kenneth T. Jackson. 6th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Chap. 21, pp. 326-41. Also in 5th ed. (1987), chap. 18, pp. 274-89. Reprint, with revisions, of 1982 article.
Articles:
Co-author with Alexander M. Ragan. "Were African American Slaveholders Benevolent or Exploitative?: A Quantitative Approach." Journal of Southern History 70 (Aug. 2005): 535-58.
"The Supreme Court and the Interstate Slave Trade: A Study in Evasion, Anarchy, and Extremism." Journal of Supreme Court History 29 (Nov. 2004): 229-53.
"The Founders and the Interstate Slave Trade. Journal of the Early Republic 22 (Spring 2002): 25-51.
"The Interstate Slave Trade as an Issue in the Secession Crisis." Southern Studies 9 (Summer/Fall 1998): 1-35.
"Ten Million Acres for the Insane: The Forgotten Collaboration of Dorothea L.Dix and William H. Bissell." Illinois Historical Journal 89 (Spring 1996):17-34.
"Managing Madness." Canadian Review of American Studies 26 (Winter 1996):147-58.
"'A Thousand Times, No!': William H. Bissell and the Southern Challenge." Lincoln Herald 97 (Summer 1995): 51-59.
"Abraham Lincoln and American Values." Canadian Review of American Studies 25 (Spring 1995): 103-112.
"Myths About Lincoln : Peeling the Onion." Canadian Review of American Studies 22 (Winter 1991): 441-55.
"The Interstate Slave Trade in Antislavery Politics." Civil War History 36 (June 1990): 119-36.
"More Time on the Cross: Slavery and the Slave Trade." Canadian Review of American Studies 21 (Winter 1990): 363-68.
"The Door to the Slave Bastille: The Abolitionist Assault upon the Interstate Slave Trade." Civil War History 34 (Sept. 1988): 235-52.
"Simon Newton Dexter and the Panic of 1857." Mid-America 69 (April-July 1987): 61-70.
"Good and Evil Mixed: Lincoln and His Party in the Civil War Era." Canadian Review of American Studies 18 (Winter 1987): 541-51.
"Railroads and the American Economy: The Fogel Thesis in Retrospect." Journal of Transport History 3rd series, 4 (Sept. 1983): 20-34.
"Abraham Lincoln and the Ideal of Equality." Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 75 (Winter 1982): 289-308.
"Abolitionism, Women's Rights, Labor Reform, and Evangelicalism: The Search for Connections." Canadian Review of American Studies 12 (Fall 1981): 225-34.
"Construction Labor on the Illinois Central Railroad." Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 66 (Autumn 1973): 285-301.
"Private Land Claims in Alabama ." Alabama Review 20 (July 1967): 187-204.