Research Interests

  • American History from the Colonial Period through Reconstruction
  • Politics, Slavery and Race in America from 1790 to 1880

Education

  • B.A. History Montana State University
  • M.A. History University of Wisconsin-Madison
  • Ph.D. History University of Wisconsin-Madison

Select Publications

  • “President James Monroe’s Domestic Policies, 1817-1825: ‘To Advance the Best Interests of Our Union,’” A Companion to James Madison and James Monroe, Stuart Leibiger, ed., (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2013)
  • Political Abolitionism in Wisconsin, 1840-1861. (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1998.)
  • “`Freedom and Liberty First, and the Union Afterwards,’ State Rights and the Wisconsin Republican Party, 1854-1861,” in David W. Blight and Brooks D. Simpson, eds., Union and Emancipation: Essays on Politics & Race in the Civil War Era. (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1997.)

Awards

  • Research Fellowship, The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York, NY,  2005.
  • Research Fellow, The Gilder, Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition, Yale Center for International and Area Studies, New Haven, CT, 2005.
  • Award of Merit, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, for best book length study of Wisconsin history published in 1998.