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Richard R. Stenberg

{{Short description|American historian (b. 1910)}}

Richard R. Stenberg (b. {{circa|1910}}) was an American historian. During the 1930s and early 1940s he wrote several influential papers on the U.S. politics and events of the second quarter of the 19th century, sometimes known as the Jacksonian era. He also worked as regional administrator of Federal One's Historical Records Survey. He then largely disappeared from the public record himself, apparently having been confined to a hospital in Washington, D.C.

Life and work

Stenberg was born around 1910 in Nebraska. He did his doctorate at the University of Texas.{{Cite journal |date=1934 |title=Historical News and Comments |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1896457 |journal=The Mississippi Valley Historical Review |volume=21 |issue=1 |pages=133–144 |jstor=1896457 |issn=0161-391X}} In 1934 he was hired to teach European history at the University of Arkansas.{{Cite news |date=1934-01-14 |title=Texan Selected for Arkansas U. Post |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/fort-worth-star-telegram-texan-selected/167322461/ |access-date=2025-03-06 |work=Fort Worth Star-Telegram |pages=29}} He was a regional director, based in San Antonio, of the New Deal-era Historical Records Survey, serving from inception until August 1936.{{Cite news |date=1936-04-25 |title=Reed Heads Archives Project |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/el-paso-times-reed-heads-archives-projec/167322535/ |access-date=2025-03-06 |work=El Paso Times |pages=12}}{{Cite book |last=Historical Records Survey (U.S.) |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UwcvAAAAMAAJ&dq=%22richard+r.+stenberg%22&pg=PP9 |title=Inventory of Federal Archives in the States: The Department of the treasury |date=1939 |publisher=Historical Records Survey |language=en}} At the time of his son's birth in 1937, he reported to the registrar that he had worked as a teacher at the University of Texas for the past four years.{{cite web |url=https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/60871/ |title=Stenberg |publisher=Ancestry.com |website=Indiana (U.S.) Birth Certificates, 1907–1944}} {{subscription required}}

Stenberg is remembered for consistently attacking what was then consensus view of history{{Mdash}}represented in his time by figures including John S. Bassett and Eugene Barker{{Mdash}}and he "particularly assaulted the reputations of Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk and Sam Houston." As part of Stenberg's "debunking" set-the-record-straight style, he was in the habit of "ignoring any other possible interpretation of his evidence, unless he use[d] it to show how wrong it was."{{sfnp|Odom|1970|p=942–943}} In 1958, Charles G. Sellers described him "Jackson's most inveterate scholarly foe in the twentieth century."{{sfnp|Sellers|1958|p=623 n. 18}} Stenberg intended to produce a book called The Insidious Andrew Jackson, which was never published, but nonetheless "Stenberg's point of view gained some currency through a series of articles."{{sfnp|Sellers|1958|p=623 n. 18}} Jackson's research on the relationship between Sam Houston and Jackson and American expansionism into Texas was considered almost transgressive to some in the 1930s but by the 1970s the work was deemed "brilliant" and "endlessly cited."{{Cite news |date=1971-08-22 |title=Houston's Wife by Haver Currie |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-austin-american-houstons-wife-by-ha/167322646/ |access-date=2025-03-06 |work=The Austin American |pages=99}} Edward Pessen both recommended Stenberg's Jackson-critical articles and called them "studies in vitriol."{{Cite book |last=Pessen |first=Edward |author-link=Edward Pessen |title=Jacksonian America: Society, Personality, and Politics |date=1985 |publisher=University of Illinois Press |isbn=978-0-252-01237-2 |edition=Rev. |location=Urbana |pages=362 |language=en-us |lccn=85001100 |oclc=11783430 |orig-year=1969}} Donald Ratliffe wrote in his 2015 history of the 1824 U.S. presidential election that "One does not have to accept Richard R. Stenberg's character assassination of Jackson in his 'Jackson, Buchanan, and the Corrupt Bargain Calumny'...to appreciate his demonstration of the thinness of the evidence for the 'bargain and corruption' charge."{{Cite book |last=Ratcliffe |first=Donald |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MrquEAAAQBAJ&dq=%22richard+r.+stenberg%22&pg=PA335 |title=The One-Party Presidential Contest: Adams, Jackson, and 1824's Five-Horse Race |date=2021 |publisher=University Press of Kansas |isbn=978-0-7006-3247-3 |pages=335 |language=en}}

Stenberg was an inmate of St. Elizabeth's Asylum in Washington, D.C. at the time of the 1950 U.S. census.{{cite web |work=United States, Census, 1950 |publisher=FamilySearch |url=https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:6F73-Q7BV |title=Entry for Edwin Statkus and Catherine Stecker, 3 April 1950}}

Selected publications

  • {{Cite journal |last=Stenberg |first=Richard R. |date=1932 |title=The Motivation of the Wilmot Proviso |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1898562 |journal=The Mississippi Valley Historical Review |volume=18 |issue=4 |pages=535–548 |doi=10.2307/1898562 |jstor=1898562 |issn=0161-391X|url-access=subscription }}
  • {{Cite journal |last=Stenberg |first=Richard R. |date=1932 |title=Jackson, Anthony Butler, and Texas |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/42864814 |journal=The Southwestern Social Science Quarterly |volume=13 |issue=3 |pages=264–286 |jstor=42864814 |issn=0276-1742}}
  • {{Cite journal |last=Stenberg |first=Richard R. |date=1933 |title=An Unnoted Factor in the Buchanan–Douglas Feud |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40188819 |journal=Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society |volume=25 |issue=4 |pages=271–284 |jstor=40188819 |issn=0019-2287}}
  • {{Cite journal |last=Stenberg |first=Richard R. |date=March 1933 |title=Some Political Aspects of the Dred Scott Case |url=https://academic.oup.com/jah/article-lookup/doi/10.2307/1897809 |journal=The Mississippi Valley Historical Review |volume=19 |issue=4 |pages=571–577 |doi=10.2307/1897809|jstor=1897809 |url-access=subscription }}
  • {{Cite journal |last=Stenberg |first=Richard R. |date=1934 |title=Jackson, Buchanan, and the "Corrupt Bargain" Calumny |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/20086857 |journal=The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography |volume=58 |issue=1 |pages=61–85 |jstor=20086857 |issn=0031-4587}}
  • {{Cite journal |last=Stenberg |first=Richard R. |date=1934 |title=The Texas Schemes of Jackson and Houston, 1829–1836 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/42879202 |journal=The Southwestern Social Science Quarterly |volume=15 |issue=3 |pages=229–250 |jstor=42879202 |issn=0276-1742}}
  • {{Cite journal |last=Stenberg |first=Richard R. |date=February 1934 |title=The Boundaries of the Louisiana Purchase |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2506137 |journal=The Hispanic American Historical Review |volume=14 |issue=1 |pages=32–64 |doi=10.2307/2506137|jstor=2506137 |url-access=subscription }}
  • {{Cite journal |last=Stenberg |first=Richard R. |date=1934 |title=President Polk and the Annexation of Texas |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/42864918 |journal=The Southwestern Social Science Quarterly |volume=14 |issue=4 |pages=333–356 |jstor=42864918 |issn=0276-1742}}
  • {{Cite journal |last=Stenberg |first=Richard R. |date=1935 |title=The Failure of Polk's Mexican War Intrigue of 1845 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3633243 |journal=Pacific Historical Review |volume=4 |issue=1 |pages=39–68 |doi=10.2307/3633243 |jstor=3633243 |issn=0030-8684|url-access=subscription }}
  • {{Cite journal |last=Stenberg |first=R. R. |date=1936 |title=J. Q. Adams: Imperialist and Apostate |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/42879288 |journal=The Southwestern Social Science Quarterly |volume=16 |issue=4 |pages=37–49 |jstor=42879288 |issn=0276-1742}}
  • {{Cite journal |last=Stenberg |first=Richard R. |date=April 1936 |title=Jackson's Neches Claim, 1829–1836 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/30235583 |journal=The Southwestern Historical Quarterly |volume=39 |issue=4 |pages=255–274 |jstor=30235583 |issn=0038-478X}}
  • {{Cite journal |last=Stenberg |first=Richard R. |date=November 1936 |title=Jackson's "Rhea Letter" Hoax |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2192034 |journal=The Journal of Southern History |volume=2 |issue=4 |pages=480–496 |doi=10.2307/2192034 |jstor=2192034 |issn=0022-4642|url-access=subscription }}
  • {{Cite journal |last=Stenberg |first=Richard R. |date=1937 |title=President Jackson and Anthony Butler |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/43466385 |journal=Southwest Review |volume=22 |issue=4 |pages=391–404 |jstor=43466385 |issn=0038-4712}}
  • {{Cite journal |last=Stenberg |first=R. R. |date=1937 |title=Andrew Jackson and the Erving Affidavit |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/30235759 |journal=The Southwestern Historical Quarterly |volume=41 |issue=2 |pages=142–153 |jstor=30235759 |issn=0038-478X}}
  • {{Cite journal |last=Stenberg |first=Richard R. |date=1938 |title=Polk and Frémont, 1845–1846 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3634003 |journal=Pacific Historical Review |volume=7 |issue=3 |pages=211–227 |doi=10.2307/3634003 |jstor=3634003 |issn=0030-8684|url-access=subscription }}
  • {{Cite journal |last=Stenberg |first=Richard R. |date=August 1938 |title=The Jefferson Birthday Dinner, 1830 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2191293 |journal=The Journal of Southern History |volume=4 |issue=3 |pages=334–345 |doi=10.2307/2191293|jstor=2191293 |url-access=subscription }}
  • {{Cite journal |last1=Stenberg |first1=Richard R. |last2=Stockton |first2=R. F. |date=1939 |title=Intrigue for Annexation |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/43466507 |journal=Southwest Review |volume=25 |issue=1 |pages=58–69 |jstor=43466507 |issn=0038-4712}}
  • {{cite journal |last=Stenberg |first=Richard R. |title=A Note on the Jackson-Calhoun Breach of 1830–31 |journal=Tyler's Quarterly Historical and Genealogical Magazine |location=Holderoft, Va. |volume=XXI |date=October 1939 |issue=65 |pages=6–9 |url=https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000500058 }}
  • {{Cite journal |last=Stenberg |first=Richard R. |date=March 1941 |title=Some Letters of the Texas Revolution |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/42865009 |journal=The Southwestern Social Science Quarterly |volume=21 |issue=4 |pages=302–311 |jstor=42865009 |issn=0276-1742}}

See also

References

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=Sources=

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  • {{Cite journal |last=Odom |first=E. Dale |date=1970 |title=A 1934 Attack on Mainstream History and the Establishment |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/42861283 |journal=Social Science Quarterly |volume=50 |issue=4 |pages=941–943 |jstor=42861283 |issn=0038-4941}}
  • {{Cite journal |last=Sellers |first=Charles Grier |date=March 1958 |title=Andrew Jackson versus the Historians |url=https://academic.oup.com/jah/article-lookup/doi/10.2307/1886599 |journal=The Mississippi Valley Historical Review |volume=44 |issue=4 |pages=615–634 |doi=10.2307/1886599|jstor=1886599 |url-access=subscription }}

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Category:20th-century American historians

Category:University of Texas System people

Category:Year of death unknown

Category:Year of birth uncertain

Category:Historians of the United States

Category:Historians from Texas

Category:University of Arkansas faculty

Category:American political historians