Kenneth M. Stampp

Kenneth Milton Stampp , Alexander F. and May T. Morrison Professor of History Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley , was a celebrated historian of slavery, the American Civil War, and Reconstruction. He was a visiting professor at Harvard University, Commonwealth Lecturer at the University of London, Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Munich, and has held the Harmsworth Chair at Oxford University. In 1989, he received the American Historical Association Award for Scholarly Distinction. Then in 1993, came the prestigious Lincoln Prize for lifetime achievement by the Civil... War Institute at Gettysburg College. Stampp was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1912; his parents were of German Protestant descent. His mother was a Baptist who forbade alcohol and strictly observed the Sabbath; his father, a tough disciplinarian in the old-world German style. His family suffered through the Great Depression, "there was never enough money," but Stampp worked a number of small odd jobs as a teen, managing to save enough to afford tuition, first, at Milwaukee State Teachers' College, and then at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
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