About David M. Potter
David Morris Potter (December 6, 1910 – February 18, 1971) was an American historian specializing in the study of the lead up to the American Civil War, especially the political factors involved. His best known book is The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861, which was completed and edited by Don E. Fehrenbacher and published posthumously in 1976; it won the 1977 Pulitzer Prize for History. == Life and career == Potter was born in Augusta, Georgia. He graduated from the Academy of Richmond County, and, in 1932, from Emory University. Potter entered graduate school at Yale University the same year, working with Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, who died in 1934 before he started his dissertation. He taught at the University of Mississippi for 1936–1938, then at the Rice Institute, now Rice University, in 1938–1940. He completed his dissertation in 1940 at Yale. In 1942 Yale published his revised dissertation as Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis and hired him as an assistant professor. At Yale from 1942 to 1961 and at Stanford University as Coe Professor of American History, 1961 to 1971, he directed numerous dissertations and served on various editorial and professional boards. He edited The Yale Review from 1949 to 1951.
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