Charles Grier Sellers

File:Charles Sellers.jpg

Charles Sellers

For other American historian, see Charles Coleman Sellers.

Charles Grier Sellers (born September 9, 1923 in Charlotte, North Carolina) is an American historian best known for his book The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815-1846, which offers a new interpretation of the economic, social, and political events taking place during the US's Market Revolution.

Life

Descended from a family of “two-mule farmers,” Charles Grier Sellers was born in 1923 in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Sellers earned a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard University in 1945, where he lived in Grays Hall during his freshman year. His graduation was delayed until 1947 by service in the 85th Infantry Regiment of the 10th Mountain Division (the ski troops) of the United States Army. He then received his Doctor of Philosophy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1950.

In 1950-1951, Sellers was an assistant professor in the history department of the University of Maryland, followed in 1951-1958 by Princeton University. In 1958 he moved to the University of California, Berkeley, where he was promoted to Associate and then Full Professor. In 1960-1961 he was honored by the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University. In 1963 he won a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1964 he was a visiting professor at El Colegio de Mexico. In 1967 he won the Bancroft Prize in American History for Volume II of his biography of President James K. Polk, titled James K. Polk: Continentalist, 1843-1846. In 1970-1971 he was the Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University.

Sellers was a member of the Southern Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians (OAH), and the American Historical Association (AHA).

Sellers was arrested in the Jackson, Mississippi airport on 21 July 1961, as a part of the Freedom Rides (profiled in Breach of Peace: Portraits of the 1961 Mississippi Freedom Riders).

Sellers is an avid birder, and in 1937, at age 14 founded the Mecklenburg Audubon Club with Elizabeth Clarkson and Beatrice Potter, which later became the Mecklenburg Audubon Society.

The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815-1846

When it was first published in 1991, Charles Sellers’ book The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815-1846 represented a major scholarly challenge to what had been, until then, one of the central tenets of US history: that of democracy and capitalism marching together, in lockstep, in the US. The book was originally commissioned to be part of the Oxford History of the United States series, but its criticism of the historiographical ideal of consensual, democratic capitalism in the US led Oxford University Press to publish it outside the series. One of the book’s central arguments is that historians have largely ignored “the stressed and resistant Jacksonian majority,” choosing instead to sing the praises of capitalism and ignore the evidence that democracy in the US rose largely in resistance to capitalism, rather than in accord with it. Sellers’ book – which synthesized a wealth of extremely diverse sources to make its case – has profoundly impacted all subsequent debates surrounding the Market Revolution in the United States.

Awards

• 1960-1961. Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University.
• 1963 Guggenheim Fellowship
• 1967 Bancroft Prize in American History for James K. Polk: Continentalist, 1843-1846.

Works

• (Bancroft Prize)
• Charles G. Sellers, "Boom for President," in Charles Sellers, ed., Andrew Jackson: A Profile (New York: Hill and Wang, 1971), 57-80.
• (7th Edition 1992)

External links

• "New Southern Accents", The New York Times, Hodding Carter, September 18, 1960
• "Charles G. Sellers, American Historian"
• Charles Sellers: From the Freedom Rides to the Free Speech Movement
• Breach of Peace: Portraits of the 1961 Mississippi Freedom Riders - book's website