James Ford Rhodes

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1848, James Ford Rhodes first built a successful career in the iron, coal, and steel trade. By the mid-1880s he had earned enough to retire from business and turn to the work that made him famous: researching and writing American history.

Rhodes became known for large-scale studies of the United States in the years leading up to the Civil War, through the war itself, and into Reconstruction. His best-known works include the multivolume History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 and History of the Civil War, 1861–1865, the latter winning the 1918 Pulitzer Prize for History.

He was admired in his day for clear, readable narrative history and remained an important public historian of his era. Rhodes died in 1927, leaving behind books that helped shape how many early 20th-century readers understood the Civil War period.