Howard Kennedy Beale, specialist in nineteenth-and twentieth-century American history, was the leader of a revisionist school which worked to rehabilitate the Reconstruction administration of Andrew Johnson. A close friend of Charles A. Beard, he favored the economic interpretation of history, wrote on Theodore Roosevelt's presidency and, before he died, was preparing a definitive biography of Roosevelt. He was an authority on and a tireless crusader for academic freedom, a subject on which he wrote two books, and he was a strong advocate of peace, freedom, and civil rights.

The son of Frank A. and Nellie Kennedy Beale, Howard K. Beale was born in Chicago as the nineteenth century ended. Twenty-two years later, as a member of Phi Beta Kappa, he completed his undergraduate work at the University of Chicago and headed east to study at Harvard University, an institution which had awarded him a fellowship. Harvard's faith in...