Merrill D. Peterson

Merrill D. Peterson

Merrill D. Peterson, 88, a University of Virginia history professor, former Chair of the History Department and Dean of the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University and noted Jeffersonian scholar, died Wednesday, September 23, 2009, in Charlottesville.

As the author or editor of 37 books, Dr. Peterson explored what he described as the question of "what American thought and experience could contribute to an understanding of American democracy and its future." His work focused on Thomas Jefferson and included studies of what he termed the "second generation of American statesmen and of Lincoln's career in American thought and imagination."

Dr. Peterson gained widespread recognition with his first book The Jefferson Image in the American Mind which focused on Jefferson's influence on the "career of American democracy." This book, which one reviewer called "a major contribution to American intellectual history," was awarded the Bancroft Prize from Columbia University and the Gold Medal of the Jefferson Memorial Association in 1960. Dr. Peterson, however considered his second book, a one volume biography of Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation, to be his best book.

In The Great Triumvirate: Webster, Clay, and Calhoun, Dr. Peterson wrote about the three major players who dominated American history in the period leading up to the Civil War. In Lincoln in American Memory, he explored how six generations of Americans had interpreted the Lincoln legacy. This book, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1995, was described as "richly cataloguing the resounding image, for scholars and civil society alike, of the martyred president."

Dr. Peterson was born in Manhattan, Kansas, and graduated from the University of Kansas in 1943. His mother ran a boarding house for University students to put her three sons through college. After joining the Navy and training at the Harvard Business School, he served as a purser on ships in the South Atlantic, Mediterranean, and Pacific. After his discharge in 1946, he entered the doctoral program in American Civilization at Harvard University with the help of the GI bill.

Early in his career, Peterson taught at Brandeis University and Princeton University. He came to the University of Virginia as the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Professor of History in 1962 and served as Chair of the Department of History from 1966 until 1972. In an interview in 2005, Dr. Peterson noted "Once I got to University of Virginia, I never wanted to leave." He also served as Dean of the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences from 1981 until 1985.

In 1996, at the age of 76, Dr. Peterson joined the Peace Corps, serving in Armenia. On his return, he wrote a book Starving Armenians: America and the Armenian Genocide, 1915 - 1930 and After, describing the American response to the genocide including the unprecedented philanthropic effort to help the Armenian people. He wrote "The wholly unprecedented American humanitarian response to the Armenian genocide, though soon forgotten, merits a permanent place in American memory. It lit a candle before 'the blackest page in history' and sustained the surviving remnant of the Armenian people amid tumultuous waste and destruction."

In 1999, Dr. Peterson wrote a memoir of his early interest in American intellectual thought, which he traced to his reading of the weekly magazine the New Republic. He wrote "I have often reflected that my scholarly destiny, indeed my career, was fixed by the lucky choice of a doctoral dissertation topic. And that, in turn, might have been the result of my early readingover many yearsof the New Republic."

Dr. Peterson traveled widely speaking on Thomas Jefferson and American history. He taught at University College Dublin from 1988 until 1989 and at the Salzburg Seminar in American Studies. In retirement, Dr. Peterson traveled throughout Europe, the American west, and New England, often with his close friend Nini Almy.

Survivors include two sons, Jeffrey W. Peterson, of Falls Church, Virginia, and Kent M. Peterson of Lenexa, Kansas and a grandchild, James W. Peterson. His wife of 51 years, Jean H. Peterson, died in 1995.

Dr. Peterson's awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship (1962 - 1963), Fellowship to the Center of the Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (1968-1969); Fellow to the National Endowment for Humanities and National Humanities Center (1980-1981), L.H.D. Marietta College (1982), Phi Beta Kappa Book Award (1994), Virginia Foundation for the Humanities 20th Anniversary Award (1994), National First Freedom Award (1997), and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Library of Virginia (2005). He also served as Chairperson and Executive Director of the Thomas Jefferson Commemoration Commission in 1994-1994.

Other notable books include Thomas Jefferson: A Profile; Adams and Jefferson, a Revolutionary Dialogue; The Political Writings of Thomas Jefferson; Olive Branch and the Sword: The Compromise of 1833; Thomas Jefferson: Writings; and John Brown: The Legend Revisited.

A memorial service will be held Westminister Canterbury of the Blue Ridge, 2 p.m. Sunday, September 27, 2009, in the Rotunda Room.


This obituary was originally published in the Daily Progress.