James Schouler


James Schouler was an American lawyer and historian best known for his historical work History of the United States under the Constitution, 1789–1865.

Biography

Schouler was born in West Cambridge (now Arlington), Massachusetts. He was the son of William Schouler, who from 1847 to 1853 edited the Boston Atlas, one of the leading Whig journals of New England. He graduated at Harvard in 1859, after which he taught for a year at St. Paul's School. He studied law in Boston and was admitted to the bar there in 1862. In 1869 he removed to Washington, where for three years he published the United States Jurist.
After his return to Boston in 1874, he devoted himself to office practice and to literary pursuits. He was a lecturer at Boston University School of Law between 1885 and 1903, a non-resident professor and lecturer in the National University Law School, Washington, DC, in 1887–1909, and a lecturer on American history and constitutional law at Johns Hopkins University in 1908.
Schouler is best known, however, as an historian. In 1896–1897 he was president of the American Historical Association. He was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1907.
He died in Intervale, New Hampshire on April 16, 1920.

Works

His most important work is History of the United States under the Constitution, 1789–1865 whose components include:
  • v. 1. 1783–1801. Rule of Federalism.
  • v. 2. 1801–1817. .
  • v. 3. 1817–1831. Era of good feeling.
  • v. 4. 1831–1847. .
  • v. 5. 1847–1861. .
  • v. 6. 1861–1865. .
  • v. 7. 1865–1877. History of the Reconstruction Period.
Among his other publications are:
His legal treatises are: