Richard N. Current

He died in Boston, Massachusetts on October 26, 2012 at age 100 of Parkinson's disease, and was buried in Greensboro, North Carolina.

After Gore Vidal published his 1984 novel Lincoln, Current began a running feud in the pages of The New York Review of Books, accusing Vidal of willfully distorting the historical record, misrepresenting Lincoln's views, and "utter ignorance" of the linguistic differences between British English and American English because he did spell "jewelry" and "practice" in the British way. "He is wrong on big as well as little matters", Current summarized. "Vidal simply doesn't know what he's talking about."

His first wife of 45 years Rose Bonar died in 1983, after which in 1984 he married Marcia Ewing, who co-wrote a biography of dancer Loie Fuller with him. His final book, a collection of translations of writings by the Norwegian author Knut Hamsun was published in 2003.

In response, Vidal explained that he used what was then common to agreed-upon American speech, and as a writer of novels was obliged to dramatize his story through someone's consciousness. Vidal asserted that Current never read his book in whole, that he was fault finding, and could not separate a biography from a novel, "getting all tangled up in misread or misunderstood trivia". The real reason for Current's criticism, Vidal maintained, was his portrayal of Lincoln as wanting to colonize the liberated slaves in Liberia, which would go against the political correctness of the 1980s. Ironically, the source of this interpretation according to Vidal was a biography of Lincoln by Current himself.

Current served as president of the Southern Historical Association in 1975. In addition, he was the editor and/or author of introductions in many other works, and published over 250 articles. His papers are in the Rare Book Room of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

His 1963 book Lincoln and the First Shot sought to dispel many myths about Lincoln, including the theory that some of the members of his Cabinet were in on the assassination conspiracy. Current described how Lincoln built a unity of purpose in the Northern states before the Civil War began in earnest, claiming that Lincoln had a more sophisticated knowledge of law, economics, military tactics et al. than earlier historians had believed.

Drawn to what he called the "perpetual timeliness" and "eternal relevance" of Lincoln's life, Current went on to write seven more books about him. One of his most influential books was The Lincoln Nobody Knows (1958), which delved into the seemingly contradictory elements of Lincoln's life and thought, particularly his views on slavery and race, showing how he overcame the narrow thinking of his childhood in the backwoods of Kentucky and Indiana where racist and white supremacist views were common.

Current came late to the study of Abraham Lincoln, having published books on 19th century political leaders Thaddeus Stevens, Daniel Webster, and John C. Calhoun, and the history of the typewriter when he was asked to complete a 4-volume biography of Lincoln begun by his University of Illinois colleague James G. Randall, who had finished three volumes before his 1953 death. Current wrote at least half of the fourth volume Lincoln the President: Midstream to the Last Full Measure (1955), which won the prestigious Bancroft Prize from Columbia University, establishing his reputation.

Born in Colorado City, Colorado, Current graduated in 1934 from Oberlin College with a B.A., in 1935 from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University with an M.A., and in 1940 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a PhD. At Wisconsin, he studied under William B. Hesseltine. His doctoral dissertation was on "Thaddeus Stevens, the Man and the Politician."

Richard Nelson Current (October 5, 1912 – October 26, 2012) was an American historian, called "the Dean of Lincoln Scholars", best known for The Lincoln Nobody Knows (1958), and Lincoln and the First Shot (1963).