Robert E. Bonner

|Professor

Academic Appointments

Professor of History
Kathe Tappe Vernon Professor in Biography

Robert Bonner is the Kathe Tappe Vernon Professor in Biography at Dartmouth and served, over the 2020-21 academic year, as 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.

Contact

Robert.E.Bonner@dartmouth.edu

Carson Hall, Room C208

HB 6107

Department(s)

History

Education

A.B. Princeton University
Ph.D. Yale University

Selected Publications

"Slavery and Statecraft" History of America and the World: Volume 2, 1812-1900 Kristen Hoganson and Jay Sexton, eds., (University of Chicago Press, 2021).
"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.
Colors and Blood: Flag Passions of the Confederate South, (2004).

Works In Progress

Confederate Infamy: The Proslavery Rebellion as Global Pariah

The Life of Alexander H. Stephens, Master of Lost Causes

Courses