John Spencer Bassett

Who was John Spencer Bassett?

John Spencer Bassett was an American historian. He was a professor at Duke University best known today for the Bassett Affair in 1903 when he publicly criticized racism among Southern elites, and called Booker T. Washington, "all in all the greatest man, save General Lee, born in the South in 100 years." in the face of widespread outrage, the college trustees refused to accept Bassett's resignation by a vote of 18 to 7. In 1906 he became a professor of history at Smith College in Massachusetts. After 1919 he was the long-time secretary of the American Historical Association, and stabilize its finances through an endowment.

As one of the first PhD's trained at John's Hopkins University in Baltimore, introduced new models of scholarship to college education. He wrote numerous books on North Carolina, a major biography of Andrew Jackson, several textbooks, and produced carefully edited editions of important primary sources, most notably his seven volume Correspondence of Andrew Jackson.