Obituaries.

Lance G. Banning, one of the leading interpreters of America's founding generation, died January 31, 2006, at age sixty-four, after complications from lung surgery. Born January 24, 1942, in Kansas City, Missouri, he earned his B.A. at the University of Missouri at Kansas City in 1964 and his M.A. and then his Ph.D. (1971) from Washington University in St. Louis. After a two-year lecturership at Brown University, he moved to the University of Kentucky in 1973, where he found his academic home. There he built a distinguished career exploring how political ideology evolved from the American Revolution through the creation of the Constitution and beyond. He broke new ground in 1978 with his first book, The Jeffersonian Persuasion: Evolution of a Party Ideology (Ithaca), which opened up a new perspective on the critical conflict between Republicans and Federalists in the 1790s. When it came to understanding the intellectual touchstones of the creation of the Republic, Lance had few peers. He grabbed national attention with his penetrating analysis of James Madison. His book The Sacred Fire of Liberty: James Madison and the Founding of the Federal Republic (Ithaca), published in 1995, became a finalist for the Pulitzer prize and won the Merle Curti Award in Intellectual History. In addition to three dozen articles and essays that ranged from meditations on republicanism to the Jefferson-Sally Hemings affair, he published two other books that helped map the intellectual terrain of the early Republic: Jefferson and Madison: Three Conversations from the Founding (Madison, 1995) and Conceived in Liberty: The Struggle to Define the New Republic, 1789-1793 (Lanham, Md., 2004).

Over the years Lance held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Humanities Center, and he was a Fulbright Professor at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. He served as the Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the University of Edinburgh and as a Visiting Scholar at the Liberty Fund. While at Kentucky, Lance won honors as a University Research Professor and a Distinguished Professor in the College of Arts and Sciences. He directed more than two dozen doctoral dissertations and successfully placed many of his students in college and university teaching positions. While all of them showed a telltale love for the history of the founding generation, none became simply a Lance Banning clone. As a mentor, Lance insisted on originality in thinking and style and grace in writing--the very trademarks of his own work. He loved his graduate students, opening his home to them for countless cookouts and his heart to their individual needs.

Known for his wry smile and clever, soft-spoken wit, Lance will be remembered as truly special because of his willingness to tolerate opposing views of the world. Lance was no moral or intellectual relativist--far from it. He was a man of firm, carefully considered convictions. He had a keen analytic mind, which, in part, explains why he so brilliantly understood James Madison. But as certain as he could be about his own interpretations of history or particular positions to take in departmental matters, Lance always courteously granted others the right to disagree. He reveled in the honest give-and-take of ideas. He insisted that we were all entitled, even encouraged, to see things differently. Academic freedom is a frequently invoked mantra on campuses everywhere but rarely lived. Lance lived it. He was a rare colleague, a close friend, and a good person. He will be deeply missed.

Lance is survived by his wife, Lana; son, Clinton; and his mother and brother. Contributions can be made in honor of Lance to the Lance Banning Graduate Research Fellowship Fund in the History Department, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506. [DANIEL BLAKE SMITH, University of Kentucky]

Grady McWhiney, an influential if controversial historian of the American South, died at the age of seventy-seven on April 18, 2006, at his home in Abilene, Texas, after a lengthy illness. He is survived by legions of loyal friends, former students, and honored colleagues who were all proud to have known him as "Doc" or "Mac." His work continues through the programs and initiatives of the Grady McWhiney Research Foundation.

He was born on July 15, 1928, in Shreveport, Louisiana. After attending school in that city, he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps in the last year of World War II. He met and married Sue Baca while in California in 1947 and then returned home after the war. He graduated from Centenary College with a B.S. degree in 1950 and in 1951 earned his M.A. in history from the Louisiana State University studying under the legendary Francis Butler Simkins. He continued his studies at Columbia University in New York, where he was one of the first graduate students to work with the highly respected David Donald. He received his Ph.D. in 1960.

McWhiney made his life's work the study of the Civil War era in the United States, as well as of southern history. His most notable titles include the Civil War best seller Attack and Die: Civil War Military Tactics and the Southern Heritage (University, Ala., 1982), which he coauthored with his doctoral student Perry D. Jamieson, and his narrative biography Braxton Bragg and Confederate Defeat (New York, 1969). His most path-breaking and provocative work was Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South (University, Ala., 1988). McWhiney also wrote hundreds of articles and reviews for scholarly journals. He was a life member of the Southern Historical Association.

Grady McWhiney made an indelible mark on his profession and on the way that Americans, and southerners in particular, view themselves. His life included an interesting mix of devotion, gentility, controversy, and dedication to his craft and to his students. He taught at such diverse colleges and universities as Troy State University, Millsaps College, the University of California at Berkeley, Northwestern University, the University of British Columbia, Wayne State University, the University of Alabama, Texas Christian University, and in retirement at the University of Southern Mississippi and McMurry University. In the course of his forty-four-year career, he trained nineteen Ph.D. students.

Doc was fond of good conversation, excellent food and drink, Irish and southern fiddle music, stylish cars, his friends, and his cats. Almost everyone who met him, though they might not agree with him, recognized him as the quintessential southern gentleman from his chivalrous manners to his snappy attire. Sue Baca McWhiney predeceased him in 2000. For more information on Grady McWhiney's life and work, see www.mcwhiney.org. [DONALD S. FRAZIER, McMurry University]

William H. Seiler, Professor Emeritus of History at Emporia State University, died on January 16, 2006, in McPherson, Kansas, at the age of eighty-seven. Seiler was born on August 21, 1918, in Clinton, Iowa. He earned his B.A. (1940) and M.A. (1941) degrees from the University of Iowa and married Eulalia M. Klingbeil on June 19, 1941. Following one semester as a doctoral student, Seiler enlisted in the U.S. Navy as a lieutenant and served in the Second World War. After the war he resumed his studies and completed his Ph.D. at the University of Iowa in 1948. He then began teaching at Kansas State Teachers College (later Emporia State University), where he remained until his retirement in 1983.

Seiler's professional work focused on the southern colonies. His dissertation, entitled "The Anglican Parish in Tidewater Virginia," yielded three articles, one of which was a seminal work that for years remained required reading in colonial graduate seminars ("The Anglican Church: A Basic Institution of Local Government in Colonial Virginia," Journal of Southern History, 22 [August 1956], 310-37). Although Seiler continued to find inspiration in local studies of the colonial South, as an instructor of future teachers at Emporia State University, his work naturally turned toward pedagogy. He published several reports on effective mentoring and teaching for both high school and university students, an outline and study guide for a comparative European-American history textbook, and a history of the Division of Social Sciences at Kansas State Teachers College. His courses were as wide-ranging as his scholarly interests, and he was known as an exceptional teacher.

Seiler was a member of the executive committee of the Kansas Council for the Social Studies, president of both the Kansas History Teachers Association and the Kansas State Historical Society, and a longtime member of the Organization of American Historians, the Southern Historical Association, and both the First Presbyterian Church and the Outlook Club in Emporia. He edited more than twenty-five issues of Emporia State Research Studies. Seiler's wife preceded him in death in 1990. He is survived by two sons, William H. Seiler Jr. of McPherson, Kansas, and James R. Seiler of Overland Park, Kansas; one brother, James Bristol of Waukon, Iowa; five grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren. Memorial contributions can be made to the William H. and Eulalia Seiler Scholarship Fund at Emporia State University.

[CHRISTOPHER PHILLIPS, University of Cincinnati]