Chapter 2

The Era of Libby and Perkins

            The first three decades of the twentieth century perhaps mark the most dynamic period for the Department of History and for the University more broadly.  The retirement of Merrifield in 1909 and the receding influence of the faculty hired in the 19^th century coincided with the arrival of first Frank McVey and then in 1917 Thomas Kane as Presidents of the University.[1]  These men epitomized the new professionalized academic discipline and with varying degrees of success sought to mold a modern university from the varied faculty assembled by Merrifield and his predecessors on the North Plains.  McVey favored faculty with Ph.D.s, created opportunities for research sabbaticals, and increased substantially the pressure on faculty to publish.[2]  He also realized that faculty morale was an important aspect of a healthy university and sought to improve sociability among the faculty and recognized the importance of an open and frank relationship with many of the entrenched faculty leaders.  Kane’s style perhaps, as much as the continued development of the University into a more professionalized academic institution led to more serious difficulties, as L. Geiger ably recounts in his history of the University.  The many of the tumultuous incidents that characterized of the later years of the McVey Presidency and early years of the Kane administration appear today as the growing pains of a complex institution. In particular, McVey and Kane found occasional resistance to their efforts to redefine the responsibilities of the President and his relationship to the faculty.  The tensions often revolved around the qualifications of new faculty members – particularly the desire to hire faculty who had earned Ph.D.s – and the growing desire of faculty to protect their intellectual and academic freedom.

            The tensions and changes found at the University during these decades coincided with a period of significant political and economic tensions within the state.  The so-called Second Boom of the early 20^th century had ended and the difficult economic times of the 1920s and the 1930s presented the University with a new set of challenges.  The economic problems of the state not only led to serious financial difficulties for the University but also fed the rise of powerful political organizations, such as the NPL, that charged many aspects of public life with a political current.[3]  This political current tracing just below the surface infused the sometimes tumultuous discourse of university life with a factional and conspiratorial tone.  Conservatives, in particular, had attacked economist James Boyle and sociologist John Gillette for the political elements of their research in agricultural economics and sociology of the rural poor respectively.  Typical of this moment was the efforts of N.C. Young’s, an avowed conservative and head of the Board of Administration of the University, to oust law school professor Joseph Lewinsohn who was an active supporter of Theodore Roosevelt’s Progressive Bull-Moose Party while on the law school faculty in 1912.  Lewinsohn was not attacked simply on the basis of his involvement in controversial local politics, but also on account of his alleged incompetence as a teacher.[4]  This blending of political motives with allegations of a genuine academic character led several leading members of faculty, including Orin G. Libby and his more progressive friend and colleague, John Gillette, to form a local branch of the American Association of University Professors.  While the A.A.U.P. often remained strangely silent during the turmoil of the late teens and twenties, the great challenges and changes facing both the University and the department frequently played themselves out at the intersection of political, academic, and even pedagogical discourses.

            Throughout this tumultuous period at the University, the discipline of history underwent its own transformation to acquire a very different appearance by the 1930s.  Enrollments steadily increased as did the size of the faculty who tended to possess credentials not dissimilar from those expected of faculty today.  This properly credentialed faculty produced an impressive array of publications, a solid reputation in the state and university, and a group of prestigious and influential alumni.  It is with only a little exaggeration that the department’s faculty of the mid-century looked back on this period of the department’s history as a “golden age”.[5]

            The story of the successes and struggles of the university, department, and its faculty during this period have survived to a relatively remarkable degree in the papers of O. G. Libby.  Libby’s fastidious character ensured that a large quantities of his private papers survived, as did much of his personal and professional correspondence and his annual reports on the Department to the University President.  This material has formed the background for many of the modern studies on Libby’s professional and personal character and contributed to Geiger’s general work on the University.  Libby’s material on the department found complements in the annual catalogue of courses which were updated throughout this period to show not only the courses but also the faculty responsible for them.  For the second half of this chapter, the work of Elwyn Robinson, particular his unpublished autobiography, which I discuss at somewhat greater length at the beginning of chapter 3, provides an insightful guide to departmental affairs.  Counterpoints to the intradepartmental sources appear occasionally in the papers of Franklin McVey and Thomas Kane and rarely in the correspondence of John C. West and William Bek, the longtime Dean of the college of the Arts, Science and Literature.  Despite the increasingly bureaucratized nature of the University during the first third of the 20^th century, the history of the department remains frustratingly fragmentary and L. Geiger’s history must continuously provide support for the numerous interpretive leaps present in this interpretive synthesis.

The Arrival of Libby

Without a doubt Orin G. Libby is the most significant historian and among the most significant scholars to emerge at the University.  While his reputation as the first professor of history at the University perhaps deserves some modification, it is nevertheless clear that his name was synonymous with the Department for at least the first 20 years of his lengthy tenure at the University.[6]  Moreover, his influence extended far beyond the university walls as he played the central role in the development of the State Historical Society of North Dakota, the preservations of archival material from the state’s early history, and the emergence of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association.

It is not my place to chronicle Libby’s legacy at the University, in the State, and in early 20^th century North Dakota society, this task has fallen to Prof. G. Iseminger.[7]  What this second chapter will emphasize is the problematization of Libby’s relationship with the University more broadly with particular attention to his ideas of the how the department should develop in the first two decades of the twentieth century.  It is fair to say that Libby’s vision for the department, while not always in concert with the administration of the University or even the policies ultimately adopted, exerted a significant influence over its development.  In contrast to the work of Woodworth, Libby sought to establish the department’s professional credentials at a time when the professional expectations of the discipline of history remained in considerable flux.[8]  This occurred at the same time as the University itself was undergoing “stresses and strains” as it sought to determine the course for the fitting for the preeminent institution of higher learning in the state.[9]

Libby’s Training

Orin G. Libby received his undergraduate education from River Falls State Normal School in Wisconsin and graduated with a normal diploma in 1886.  He then taught in Wisconsin schools for four years before entering into the undergraduate program at the University of Wisconsin in 1890.  He received a B.Litt. from Wisconsin and then matriculated into their graduate program in history to study under Frederick Jackson Turner.  Turner, as I discussed in Chapter 1, was a relatively newly minted Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins Seminar system.  He was soon joined by the Medievalist Charles H. Haskins, who would specialize in “institutional history,” and the economist Richard T. Ely, both with close ties to Johns Hopkins.[10]  These three men ensure the successful transplant to the Wisconsin of the famed seminary system.[11]  It was in this system that Libby earned his M.A. in 1893 and his Ph.D. in 1895 with a dissertation entitled: “The Geographical Distribution of the Vote of the Thirteen States on the Federal Constitution 1787-1788.”  The University of Wisconsin’s new series on Economics, Political Science, and History, modeled on Johns Hopkins’ series with a similar scope and under the direction of the triumvirate of Hopkins men, Ely, Turner, and Haskins, published this work as its first volume in 1894.   He was one of Turner’s first students and some would argue that Libby was his best student at the University of Wisconsin.[12]

His dissertation, which perhaps stands even today as his most significant work, focused on institutional and constitutional history.  Broadly speaking this kind of scholarship was typical for the day.  Libby’s emphasis on the economic basis for the Constitutional votes, however, while perhaps initially underappreciated, ensured that his work would resonate with the direction of scholarship during the first decades of the twentieth century and become marked as a particularly significant contribution in the field.  It is worth noting that Libby was to present some of his conclusions at the 1893 meeting of the American Historical Association in place of Turner who had begged off.  The AHA, reluctant to allow Libby, then a graduate student, appear on the program, requested that Turner honor his commitment, which he did, presenting a paper entitled “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” and introducing his famous frontier thesis to American historiography.[13]

After graduation, Libby continued to teach at Wisconsin assisting Turner in that growing and dynamic department.  He was largely responsible for classes in European history, which was not particularly uncommon for scholars trained in American history in those days and would remain a standard practice in the Department of History throughout the first half of the 20^th century.  In time, however, he grew to resent having to work in Turners expanding shadow, particularly having to teach almost exclusively outside his specialization and, friction developed between the scholars.  By mid winter 1902, Turner, apparently annoyed by Libby’s relentless ambition, recommended him for the position at the University of North Dakota recently made available by H. B. Woodworth’s move to part time status.[14]

Libby and UND: The Early Years

Turner surely informed Libby of his actions, although it seems that Turner recommended Libby without his consent.  Libby must have expressed considerable reservations to his friend William Schaper, a professor at the University of Minnesota, as early as February 2, 1902.  In response to his concerns, Schaper offered an encouraging letter. “The University of North Dakota is still young and small.  Its future is before it.”[15]  A month later, Libby still equivocating, concerned, apparently that the newness of the University, its small size, and lack of funds would limit his ability to achieve his goals.  Schaper did not mince words, acknowledging that “to go so far west, on the one hand, is a backward step…”[16]  On the other hand, it is also clear that the University lobbied Schaper to attract Libby.  The letter of March 11^th mentions Senator LaValley, who evidently spent time in Minneapolis and worked to recruit Libby through Schaper.  Whatever Libby’s initial reservations – and concerns about resources in particular will arise continually during Libby’s career at the university – by the time then-President Merrifield’s March 10^th letter offering a position arrived, Libby was prepared to accept the position.

With the hiring of Libby, the University had, at last, a professionally trained historian. Merrifield seems to have agreed that Woodworth would retain the title of Professor of History and Libby would assume the title Assistant Professor of History until Woodworth’s retirement.  Their respective salaries, however, reflected the real distribution of responsibilities: Woodworth would earn $1200 and Libby $1000.[17]  Libby carried much of the teaching and administrative load.  In the 1902-1903 academic year Libby provided the majority of the report’s text to the president from the Department and earned a 50% raise to $1500 dollars a year.[18]  By 1903, Libby would write the entire report and receive yet another raise to $1750 a year.[19]  Woodworth, of course, would retire the next year having taught only part time since 1902.

When Libby arrived, the place of history within the requirements of the university had been in some flux over the preceding decade as the university deliberated on how fully they might embrace the “elective” system.[20]  By 1896, the university required one course of history which was a broad survey of Medieval History, English Constitutional History, and American Constitutional History for all degrees. [21]  Over the next few years there were some small changes; for example, in 1902-1903 academic year American history was oddly dropped from the catalogue which instead required only English History and Medieval History.[22]  In 1903, however, the university dropped history as a requirement at all moving to a full elective system which made history courses one of a number of ways of earning a Bachelor of the Art.[23]  During Libby’s first two decades at the University, he largely maintained the central focus of the curriculum on English and U.S. History, and only expanded the number of offerings if part time faculty became available.  The curriculum lost some of Woodworth’s courses – like his Reformation as an European Event – and over time acquired a more traditional appearance with courses offered covering canonical time periods and featuring titles that would still be in place in the departmental catalogue today – the Nineteenth Century, The Reformation, The Renaissance.  Outside of the Seminars, which will be discussed below, perhaps the most innovative class offered by Libby was a course designed for teachers which he team taught by various members of the department.  It is essentially impossible to compare the actual content of the courses offered by Libby to those of Woodworth as almost nothing of Woodworth’s papers or notes survive and the student accounts of him praise him in a generic way, but it is not going too far to suggest that the department under Libby began to resemble the department for the remainder of the 20^th century.[24]   Nevertheless, the Woodworth’s and Libby’s consistent emphasis on constitutional and institutional history more broadly reflected the perceived link between an understanding of constitutional history and the development of civic mindedness in students.[25]

Despite the broad similarities, one should not underestimate the importance of Libby’s most significant addition to the department catalogue and the hallmark of the professionalized historian’s craft: the Seminar.  In 1903-1904, the very year that Woodworth retired, Libby offered the first “seminary” in U.S. History at the University.  Libby finally introduced the Northern Plains to the seminar system which by this period was over 25 years old.  It originated in Germany and came to the United States at Harvard and then more famously at Johns Hopkins before migrating across the nation largely in the hands of Johns Hopkins graduates.  Libby first experienced the seminar at Wisconsin with Turner, a Hopkins graduate, and became a fervent devotee.  Libby’s initial seminar focused on his own research, the constitutional and economic history of the U.S.[26]  In 1905-1906, however, he introduced a seminar on the history of the Northwest focusing on the history of North Dakota and Canada.  These courses apparently met about every other week and attracted 8-15 students. They featured student reports based on the analysis of primary documents and the critique of secondary works.  The seminar environment fostered the kind of competitive and collaborative research that often produced fine quality original research.

With the passion of a convert, Libby’s reports to the president advocated the importance of these courses despite their relatively modest enrollments.  The work of the students in these classes demonstrated Libby’s idea of history for the public good and coincided with his revitalization of the previous moribund state historical society.  Moreover, for the seminar to function at an optimal level it needed access to primary sources for the early history of the state, and as no one had begun the arduous task of collecting this material, Libby took it upon himself.  The results of his work and the work of his students in the Seminar on the History of the Northwest allowed him to boast: “by means of the studies pursued in this course the students have an opportunity to apply the lessons of history in a concrete and practical way to certain problems in the development of the state.”[27]  After the 1907-1908 academic year the most significant papers composed by these students would be published by the State Historical Society in their Collections, the scholarly journal that Libby himself would edit with exacting standards for nearly 40 years.  At the same time that Libby extolled the value of these seminary classes and their importance to the state, he continuously complained about the lack of necessary books, maps, and lantern slides as well as the lack of faculty to expand the offerings of the department.  While Libby’s persistent complaints over the lack of funding would perhaps foreshadow more significant conflicts later in his career, his plaintive voice occasionally brought about the changes that he desired.  For example, by 1910 he was able praise the value of the departments slide lantern, and there was a constant if constantly changing supply of adjunct or visiting faculty and cross listed courses to fill out the departmental catalogue.

Libby’s promotion of the seminar provided the foundation for the development of a graduate course in the Department of History.  In 1908-1909, Libby is proud to report that two graduate students participated in the seminar, and he expected that their thesis work would appear in the Collections.[28]  Over the next 7 years 10 students completed the work for the M.A. degree in the department.[29]  Moreover, Libby collaborated with J.M. Gillette from the Department of Sociology to advise the first Ph.D. from the University, George R. Davies.  Davies would ultimately go on to teach primarily sociology, but he did contribute to the Department of History for several years.  He ultimately resigned his position at UND in 1928 to take a position at the University of Iowa.

The presence of graduate students like Davies contributed to Libby’s ability to expand the offerings in the department.  The expanding curriculum and diverse programs offered in history reflect the growth of the University in general; as the university grew and enrolments increased, Libby sought every opportunity to expand the offerings of the Department of History.  The instructors upon whom Libby relied, of course, ran a range of competence.  G.R. Davies, as we have discussed, was a product of UND, and fixture in the department for most of the second decade of the 20^th century.  He also relied upon figures like Luella Hall who received her M.A. under Libby in 1919, and ultimately would earn a Ph.D. in History from Stanford University and teach in California.  Libby also drew in faculty from other departments around campus.  As we have already noted, Gillette taught on and off in the history department as did James Boyle who had arrived in the Department of Sociology from Wisconsin in 1904 and ultimately went on to a distinguished career at Cornell.  Wallace Sterns also taught during this time in the Department of History.  He received his M.Div. from Harvard Divinity and his Ph.D. from Boston University.  He was a professor of religious history at Wesley College when it relocated to Grand Forks from Whapeton in 1906.[30]  He was rather extensively published including his well regarded Fragments of Greco-Jewish Writers and numerous articles.[31]  Stearns taught Ancient and Medieval History as well as contributing to the seminar.  Sterns ultimately moves on to Fargo College after 1912.  In the late ‘teens G. Hult the long-serving classicist at the University crosslisted some ancient history courses apparently taught in the Department of Greek and Latin with history courses adding further breadth to the curriculum. 

While curriculum changes marked most significantly Libby’s arrival, he also sought to have the department contribute to the rapidly developing intellectual life of the university.  For several years the Department of History led a lecture series which included faculty from across the University and featured talks on historical topics ranging from the Ancient Near East to Native American Culture.  In 1907/1908 the department announced the Winship Scholarship and it appeared regularly in the University Bulletin’s list of awards and prized from 1908-1912.  The award was of $75 funded by George B. Winship the publisher of the Grand Fork Herald for the best paper on American history from the History seminar.[32]  The scholarship required that the paper would be revised and submitted to the Collections of the State Historical Society for publication.  It was, according to Libby, the first scholarship offered by the University (although it was certainly not the first prize, award, or honor), and he clearly conceived of this as an important step toward encouraging the kind of intellectual competition that was the mark of a vital university.[33]  Perhaps the most significant event for the general intellectual life of the University to take place in Libby’s tenure was hosting the meeting of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association in 1908.  This event included not only the regular slate of papers and panels, but also the Pageant of the Northwest, an elaborate play depicting the history of the settlement of the Dakotas.[34]  His leadership in this organization included his election first as Vice President in 1909 and President in 1910.[35]  Over time, Libby tireless efforts to promote his own department allowed him to emerge as a leader on campus as well.  At a time when committee work was hardly expected of faculty, he served voluntarily on the campus War Committee and, after the war, on the Memorial Day observance and Recognition program honoring the veterans, as well.   This willingness to be active, and, indeed, a leader in the life of the university community did not come without risks as would become apparent later in his career.

Libby’s efforts to bring the university to prominence and his own gradual rise among the ranks of professional historians in the U.S. continued to be hampered by what he perceived to be substandard working conditions at the university.  Libby’s plaintiff calls for additional resources become shrill at times as he regularly employed massive and detailed missives that could quickly escalated polite exchanges to a more serious and severe tone.  A good example of this was his clash with President McVey.  In 1916, McVey replied to a typical request by Libby for additional faculty to support the new history requirement of all students with a letter suggesting that the State Historical Society should chip in to provide additional faculty in the department as they have benefited from the university support of the department in the past.  This suggestion hit a nerve with Libby and led him to respond with a scathing two page attack on the suggestion.  Libby’s response was argumentative and led to an increasingly frosty exchange between the two men.  It is unclear whether the exchange influenced the decision of McVey not to fund additional faculty for the department in the next year, but it certainly reflected the kind of hostile exchange with the President of the University that would some years later contributed to Libby’s precarious position at the university.[36] 

The Department in the Crosshairs: Orin G. Libby and Thomas Kane

While numerous aspects of Libby’s career at the University and in the state in general have become legendary, his clash with the President Kane has remained somewhat infamous in Libby lore.  Geiger found the tumultuous early years of the Kane presidency deserving of no less that 13 pages in his general history of the University and assigned Libby pride of place in his description of the clash.[37]  Libby’s character, politics, and understanding of the role of faculty in University life made him particularly vulnerable to attacks from the administration who sought faculty who supported their views or remained detached from the governance of the University. 

The most popular impression of Libby comes through clearly in Iseminger’s portrayal of the man as the “defender of academic standards and university protocol.” This stood in stark contrast to Kane who from his earliest days on campus “consistently took the side of leniency in matters of discipline or academic standards and that he had only casual regard for the university constitution.”[38]  While these characterizations are perhaps fair, in the larger context of the time, matters such as university protocol and academic standards for both faculty and students were hardly fixed points.  In fact, the university constitution had only been implemented a scant few years before Kane’s arrival on campus as one of the last acts of the McVey Presidency, and few precedents had firmly established the extent of its authority.[39]  In this void of de jure policies, men like Libby and Kane with strong personalities held forth expectations that their views would command significant authority.  

Libby’s strong personality gave his independent perspective a particular edge in the politically charged climate of the post-war period.  Most scholars consider the appointment of Thomas Kane as President of the University to be a decidedly political.  More Progressive minded members of the board, some of whom were strong NPL supporters, saw the selection of Kane to the presidency as a victory.  In fact, George Totten, a leading NPL representative on the Board of Administrators famous declared Kane “our man.”[40]  This victory, however, proved illusory as Kane quickly shifted from apparently progressive leanings to a more conservative orientation.  In some ways, Libby, who never wore his politics on his sleeve even in particularly political times, shared Kane’s tendency to straddle positions in political debates.  His involvement with the Campus War Committee, for example, might have suggested conservative leanings.  Conservatives generally touted their patriotism and support for the wars as distinct from members of the NPL who were painted unfair as unpatriotic and at times subversive.[41]  Libby close friendship with J. M. Gillette, however, an active supporter of Progressive causes ranging from Womens’ Suffrage to the NPL domestic agenda, marked him out as an individual with liberal tendencies.[42]  The obscurity of Libby’s political views and seemingly contradictory elements of his behavior limited the support that he received from any one side and left him open to criticism from both. 

Finally, Libby’s views on University life in some ways reflected older traditions of university administration which preserved an important place for the faculty voice in University affairs.[43]  Kane, on the other hand, like McVey saw the president as the ultimate arbiter of all university life.  In this assessment, shared by Geiger in his classic history, the clash between Libby and Kane, while unfortunate for both men, emerged as a key test case in the ongoing process of professionalization of the office of professor at the university.  This, as most of my predecessors have observed, is another aspect of the significant contributions of the Libby to the development of the Department.

            The initial salvo in the clash between Libby and Kane is typically seen as the president’s mismanagement of the Influenza Epidemic on campus in 1918.  In fact, as Iseminger observed, the clash between Libby and Kane might date even earlier to the president’s inaugural address in which Kane, among other things, offered a thinly veiled criticism of Libby’s close friend Gillette’s handling of a disciplinary case against a fraternity.[44]  Such strangely impolitic statements, which nevertheless clearly sought to establish the pre-eminent position of the president on campus as the final arbiter of university affairs, came to characterize Kane’s term as President and predictably clashed with the equally blunt Libby.  In the aftermath of the influenza epidemic in which 20 trainees stationed at the University died, Libby emerged as the spokesman for a group of faculty who blamed Kane for the tragedy.  In 1920, Libby along with four others – including Gillette and E. Ladd – composed a 12 page memo entitled “Memoranda of the Unfortunate Happenings at the University of North Dakota.”  This document blasted President Kane as unsuitable for the office of president and established the basis for their call later that year that Kane be dismissed by the Board of Regents.  As word of the memorandum and Kane’s endangered presidency became know, the controversy escalated drawing in students, the press, and members of the Board of Regents.  In fact, the ruckus had a seriously disruptive effect on campus complete with the student body taking the President’s side.  Such public demonstrations perhaps motivated all parties to come to the table.  Ultimately Libby and his faction negotiated a secret deal with Kane brokered by three members of the Board of Trustees George Totten, R. T. Muir, who were NPL members and appeared to be more or less in sympathy with Libby and his group, and John Hagan.  This agreement became known as the “Hagan Agreement.”  Its contents like the “Memoranda of the Unfortunate Happenings” seem to have been but nevertheless appear to have established the basis for a functional, if not to say peaceful, relationship between Libby’s faction and President Kane.  While the detailed of this controversy have little direct bearing on the history of the Department, the content of the Hagan Agreement framed the relationship between Libby and Kane, and its artificial or negotiated nature provided only the thinnest coating of formal niceties to obscure their deep animosity. 

The second clash with President Kane erupted only a month after the Hagan Agreement came to pass in 1920.[45]  The central point of the controversy regarded the proper procedure for expanding the history department.  From the days of McVey, Libby had sought to expand the department by either adding faculty which only occasionally exceeded Libby and a part-time instructor like R. Davies.  Since 1916 Libby’s requests for additional faculty had become all the more urgent, as the University required that all students take a semester of History and this taxed the limited faculty resources in the department.  In the Spring 1920 Libby became interested in hiring a certain Robert R. Russell who had been teaching at Ottawa University in Kansas.  At the time, Russell only held an M.A. completed at the University of Kansas under Carl Becker and F. H. Hodder, but he was enrolled in the Ph.D. program at the University of Illinois.  Libby regarded Russell as having sufficient teaching experience and, perhaps more importantly, he would soon complete the necessary requirements for eventual promotion to full professor serving alongside Libby as the Professor of European History. 

After meeting with Russell in Minneapolis for what appears to have been an impromptu interview, Libby forwarded a letter to Kane recommending that the University hire Russell.  Kane responded that he did not see any need to hire Russell at present because the classes were being taught by John W. Taylor.  If there was to be a faculty change, Kane would require some justification from Libby to dismiss Taylor and hire someone new.  At the same time, Kane contacted Russell and inquired to his qualifications for the job. In response to Kane’s request, Libby provided a detailed argument regarding the need to hire Russell and a careful enumeration of his qualifications.  Kane in possession of Libby’s recommendation of Russell, regarded this as avoiding the larger question of whether Taylor should be dismissed.  Moreover, he criticized Libby’s plan to expand the department suggesting that the candidate he favored, Russell, was in fact no more qualified than Taylor who Libby evidently deemed inadequate.  Kane, perhaps posturing here, suggested that the department would benefit by hiring a “full fledged man” rather than relying on Taylor or Russell.  Moreover, before any change could be made Kane insisted again that Libby provide evidence for Taylor’s competence (or lack there of) in the classrooms of the Department of History.  Libby steadfastly refused to do this, and this evidently was the sine qua non for any further action For Kane, Libby’s inability to provide grounds for Taylor’s dismissal invalidated Libby’s recommendation that the university hire Russell. 

As this conversation gradually escalated, Kane kept Russell informed of the issues at stake with the appointment of Taylor and the behavior of Libby providing the unsuspecting candidate with quite an insight into the workings of both the department and the administration of the university.  Libby, who had become increasingly impatient with what he saw as Kane’s stalling tactics, finally referred the matter to the Board of Administration.  The board in this instance sided with Kane who in turn created a separate Department of European History and hired Clarence Perkins as a full professor to be the chair of this department.  He had been an Associate Professor at Ohio State University and received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1908.  

The second round of the Kane-Libby controversy, much like the first, reflected the growing pains of the University as new and old faculty and administrators sought to accommodate their personal ideas of how a university should function with growing body of professional standards. Libby, for his part, arrived at the University with sterling professional credentials, a willingness to be active in University life, and an expectation that the faculty’s views be respected in the running of the University.  Moreover, he reinforced this view of faculty’s place on campus through such as activities as founding a Grand Forks branch of the American Association of University Professors.[46]  Nevertheless and perhaps ironically, Libby’s behavior often seemed to represent more traditional approaches to academic life.  It seems likely that Libby’s preference for an individual like Russell who would have been quite junior in status to Libby, would have ensured his continued control over departmental affairs.  Kane’s choice, Perkins’ held qualifications that were certainly more significant than either Taylor or Russell, suggesting that Kane, for all his faults, sought to hire a more substantial scholar than Libby’s choice.  In a sense, then, Kane’s view of the development of the department was perhaps more in keeping with later standards, and Libby, or so it would seem, sought to rely on older models of academic practices more dependent on personal acquaintances and a hierarchy based on seniority and professional prestige.  Furthermore, Libby’s willingness to move Taylor aside without being willing (or perhaps able) to articulate a reason contrasted with Kane’s willingness to support Taylor’s appointment.  Kane’s perspective in this matter was consistent with his ideas of faculty promotion articulated in his inaugural address.[47]  Kane professed his unwillingness to dismiss a successful member of the faculty without clear reasons.  In this sentiment, Kane clearly meant to state his willingness to protect faculty from the arbitrary dismissals that characterized the tumultuous wartime years when some faculty, like Libby’s friend William Schaper at the University of Minnesota had lost their positions due to academic, political, or personal animosities.[48]

The final clash between Kane and Libby occurred in 1922.  The conflicted and confused discourse evident in both Libby’s and Kane’s ideas of professional propriety was again apparent when Kane attempted to force Libby, as well as two other members of the faculty who in a broad sense tended to side with Libby in the tumultuous university politics of the day, to retire.  In a letter dated to May 4, 1922, Kane outlined his grievances against Libby.[49]  Kane accused Libby of being erratic as a teacher and as an administrator.  For Kane this reflected a general “vacillating” attitude that manifest itself in Libby’s shift from being a “patrioteer” during the war to a supporter of the NPL once they had come to power.  In fact, Kane’s charges allege that Libby’s political leanings led him to be a member of “one of the most radical organizations in the state” which apparently had only nine members.  Kane also leveled that Libby frequently interfered with the running of the university including violating the so-called Hagan Agreement of 1920 by contacting George Totten, a member of the Board of Administrators over the course of the Taylor controversy the previous year.  In light of these charges, Kane recommended that Libby retire.  Libby having no desire to retire asked that President Kane follow the University Constitution by bringing the matter before a special Committee of the University Council who would then offer their recommendations to the State Board of Administration.  Kane agreed to this, but noted that he did not consider the University Constitution a binding document as it had not been approved by the present Board of Administration. 

For this meeting Libby prepared a point-by-point response to Kane’s charges in a letter to the committee of the University Council pointing out that many of the charges against him were unfounded, lacked evidence, or preceded the so-called Hagan agreement which stipulated the slate be wiped clean.  Despite a rhetorically thorough refutation of Kane’s position, the Committee of the University Council submitted the recommendation that Kane and the three faculty members could not work together and that the three faculty members, including Libby should retire.  The Board of Administration after considering the report of the committee agreed with its recommendations.  It was only a later injunction by the Board of Administrators that saved Libby’s career at the University.

The final major clash between Kane and Libby shares many characteristics of the earlier clashes. These controversies show a number of important aspects regarding the growth and development of the university as an institution.  First, as much as Libby reflected the new wave of professional academics at the University, his view of the role of faculty in University governance and life developed under President Merrifield who presided over a far more intimate institution in which faculty had come to expect much greater influence.  Kane, in contrast, held the clear idea that the university president had the authority to oust an individual or force him to retire.  In Kane’s view, the position of the faculty was largely a concern of the administration who would have the final say in hiring as well as firing individual faculty members.  Grounds for dismissal need not be gross negligence, but could be tied to being a good citizen – not being part of radical political groups, or being a “Patrioteer” or being vacillating and wavering.  The deep rifts cut in North Dakota society by the contentious politics of the day had created seemingly accepted political pretenses for dismissing or at least challenging the position of an individual in the University.  While Libby’s relationship with Kane over the next decade is difficult to ascertain, there seems to have been a mutual détente which allowed Libby not only to carry on his responsibilities as the head of the Department of American History but to expand its faculty and offerings.

The Twenties

The split of the Department of History into two discrete departments was not necessarily a setback from the department.  The twin departments – the Department of American History and the Department of European History – had twice the faculty and could offer with both an accomplished Americanist and Europeanist twice the courses.  Moreover, maintaining two department required a greater commitment from the administration as both requested additional faculty, library resources, and improved classrooms.  The ability of Perkins, in particular, to attract students ensured that enrolment in the history courses more than doubled, and this clearly contributed to gradual expansion of both departments during even the most difficult years in the history of the University.

Despite his nearly 20 year career at the University, Clarence Perkins remains an ill-defined figure in the history of the discipline at UND.  Despite being overshadowed by his more charismatic and cantankerous colleague, Libby, Perkins played a key role in the expansion and development of the discipline.  Trained at Harvard, he had taught at Ohio State University from 1909-1920 when he was wooed to the University by President Kane.  Affable, jolly, generous, and prone to gossip, there is no evidence that he and the more taciturn Libby got on well.[50]  His specialty was medieval and modern English History, with prominent articles on the Knights Templar in both the American Historical Review (1910) and in the English Historical Review (1909, 1910, 1930) but like scholars of an earlier era he was qualified to teach in almost any European field from Ancient to current affairs.[51]  During the 1920s, he demonstrated his wide ranging competences in publishing a well-regarded high school textbook, The History of European Peoples published by Rand, McNally, and Company in Chicago and stretching to nearly 1000 pages, as well as several study guides for the Ohio State Bookstore in Columbus.[52]  These and other books provided him with some income.[53]  Throughout his career at UND he was a successful teacher and scholar spending time away doing research both in Europe and at major American universities like the University of Texas.

Courses and Students

            Perkins arrival was fortuitous in that it coincided with growing interest in European affairs stemming from American involvement in the First World War.  His first year teaching produced a massive jump in enrolment in history classes.  His courses outperformed Libby’s American history classes and, in contrast to later periods, European history consistently out-enrolled American history for the next decade.  Some of the initial increase in enrolment can surely be attributed to Libby’s reputation as an uncompromising and rigorous instructor and the damage that his reputation sustained during the prolonged wrangling with the administration.  Over the course of the decade, however, the impressive enrollment in European history should mainly be credited to the expanding interest in European history, the slightly larger European history department, and the lack of graduate education in European history freeing their faculty from teaching low enrollment graduate level seminars.  Perhaps more instructive is the increase of enrolment in both Departments at a rate that outperformed the expanding student body at the University.   While it is difficult to compare figures, it is nevertheless remarkable that enrolment in history courses expanded from 294 in 1919 to 1,424 in 1931-1932. 

The twin departments and expanded faculty changed the complexion of the offerings in History.  While the traditional emphasis on Constitutional and Institutional history remained, the new faculty and changing interests in the nation led to the emergence through the 1920s of courses on new regions such as Scandanavia, Canada, Latin America, the Caribbean, the Near East, and the Far East.  Libby’s American History Department continued to offer both advanced undergraduate and graduate level seminars.  Moreover, Perkins shared Libby’s civic mindedness and like his colleague in American History took “especially pains to bring our history down fully to the present time so that students will see the connections between the past and present conditions in Europe.  When a cabinet falls or a strike is called, we expect our students to have the knowledge to interpret and understand these events” Perkins’ faculty managed to offer such a wide range of classes, in part, by varying the number of credits according to the number of hours that the course met.  The European History Department was particularly clever in offering a number of 2 and 3 credit courses such as Greek History or the History of Scandanavia Peoples as well as more intensive 4 or 6 credit course.  This allowed European history not only to offer more courses, but also to enhance their enrolment numbers without necessarily expanding their staff.  Perkins, however, constantly reminded President Kane in his annual reports that this technique allowed for substantial coverage, but did not permit the kind of in-depth study that a fuller faculty would allow.  Despite the limitations on faculty, the two departments of the 1920s presented perhaps the most cosmopolitan slate of courses to be offered in the department of history to that time.

            While it is difficult to evaluate the impact of this expanded slate of classes on graduates, it must have enabled many of them to communicate effectively with the large immigrant communities present in the state.[54]  This would have been particularly important for the many students of the department who during the 1920s and 1930s went on to teach in public schools state.  Perkins in the 1926-1928 annual report noted that 18 students in the School of Education were also taking classes in European History. Graduate education went on during this time, albeit at a slower pace than in the first years of the century.  Libby did produce several significant graduates such as Elmer Ellis.[55]  After spending a year at Fargo College, a small Congregationalist school, Ellis transferred to UND in 1922.  He focused on History, with Libby, and Education, with Joseph Kennedy, for his B.A. and pursed his M.A. with Libby in 1925.  He briefly taught at North Dakota State Teachers College (now Mayville State) before earning his Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in 1930 where Libby served as a visiting examiner alongside a prominent UND alumnus on the Iowa faculty, George R. Davies.  With his Ph.D. in hand the University sought to attract him back to teach history, but, according to his biographer, “Although he serious considered returning to his alma mater, he decided otherwise after the president of that institution [Kane] reluctantly advised him to take an assistant professorship at the University of Missouri which promised greater opportunity for advancement.”[56]  Ellis served the University of Missouri both as a professor in the Department of History, and as an administrator including from 1955-1966 as President of the University.  Louis Geiger, who taught in the Department of History at UND from 1949-1960 and penned the best history of the UND, was one of Ellis’s students at Missouri.  Today, Ellis’s service to the school in commemorated by the Elmer Ellis library at the main campus in Columbia.  Another example of the prestigious alumni produced in the interwar years is Earl Hayter.  Hayter received his M.A. in 1931 and later earned his Ph.D. from Northwestern before going on to a successful teaching career at Northern Illinois University.  He is responsible for the Education in Transition, a history of the University of Northern Illinois and his name graced the UNI Regional History Center.

Faculty

The boom in enrolment during the interwar years was primarily a result of the increase in faculty.  Since the two departments did not regularly share faculty, they were both able to request additional resources, and despite Kane’s difficult reputation, he did endeavor to expand the number of faculty in many programs at the University.  In the early 1920s, it appears that Perkins and his European History received more resources and faculty than Libby’s American History department.  Perkins’s who had far less baggage than Libby with the administration took time to cultivate good relations with the Kane administration.  This better relationship enabled him to hire good quality faculty throughout the 1920s like Claudius Johnson (Ph.D. Chicago in 1927) in 1921, Albert Hyma (Ph.D. Michigan 1922) and Fletcher Brown in 1922, and Clyde Ferrel (Ph.D. Wisconsin) in 1923.  In the later 1920s, Perkins’ department hired Phillip Green (Ph.D. Chicago) and Donald Nicholson (Ph.D. Wisconsin).  American history briefly shared the services of Hyma and added G. P. Hammond (Ph.D. California) and eventually Felix Vondracek (Ph.D. Columbia) in the later 1920s.  Vondracek would go on to teach in the Department for many years.  The new, typically temporary faculty of the early 1920s tended to be relatively well qualified, often hailing from large Midwestern schools like Ohio State, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Chicago.  Libby and Perkins often relied on personal connections with colleagues to find capable professors for their departments.  Wilkins opined that Perkins sought candidates who were likely to be comfortable at the University and over time became less inclined to ask the advice of colleagues at more established East Coast institutions.[57]  Despite the relatively good credentials held by many of the faculty members of the 1920s, their appointments in the Departments did not necessarily coincide with their increasingly specialized training.  For example, Felix Vondracek, a specialist in Central European history found himself teaching the Survey of American history in the American history department; Phillip Green, in contrast, a specialist in American history, primarily taught European history in Perkins’ European History Department. Notwithstanding the odd assignments, the faculty of both Departments tended to be productive with not only Libby and Perkins producing books and articles, but also many of the temporary members as well.  Perkins, in particular, took pains to note the accomplishments of his faculty in his annual reports to the president.[58] 

Perkins was, nevertheless, particularly concerned with the difficulty in retaining qualified faculty, a problem characteristic of the university as a whole and reflected in the Departments of History.  While Geiger considered “the chief cause of the turnover was the uneasy relations between the president and the faculty.”[59]   It is unsurprising that this particular factor does not appear in the Departmental reports to the President.  Perkins stressed in his reports throughout the 1920s that the pay for faculty was too low if the University hoped to compete with Eastern colleges which regularly paid as much as 50% more than UND.[60]  In practice, it was not just eastern universities that hired away qualified faculty from UND; G. P. Hammond, for example, was hired to teach Latin American History at the University of Arizona.  A. Hyma moved on to teach at the University of Michigan.  The willingness of faculty to move on for better financial and professional opportunities surely reflects the growing professionalization of the discipline which may have weakened faculty ties to specific universities and strengthened their ties to the discipline or even their own careers.  Despite these changes, by the late 1920s and early 1930s there was sufficient continuity that Green and Nicholson, for example, had been promoted from Instructors to Assistant Professors presumably on the completion of their Ph.D.s.   Full-time faculty appointments with correspondingly improved pay undoubted contributed to Nicholson staying at UND for over 10 years, Green for close to twenty and Vondracek for much longer. 

            The depression of the 1920s in North Dakota played an important role in the low level of salaries and the limited resources available to departments.[61] Perkins and Libby both regularly noted the lack of material in the library and the lack of journals, magazine, and newspapers for the seminar room.  Perkins optimistically begged the administration to invest $1000 a year for books on European history in the library.[62]  Libby continued to ask for better maps and lantern slides for his seminar rooms and in the late 1920s began discuss the building of a history museum.  It seems that some of these requests were honored and other cases they were ignored.  The greatest boon to the department during was the erection of Merrifield Hall which opened in 1930.  Designed by Joseph Bell DeRemer, a well-known architect, its blend of Art Deco and College Gothic style has made it a landmark building on campus and an attractive, if sometimes ill-fitting home of the department for over 75 years.

The Thirties

The 1930s were a difficult and ultimately transformative time for the University and the Department.  The uneven fortunes of the state throughout the 1920s, however, ironically softened the blow of the depression at first as the University already existed in an economizing mode.  Nevertheless, by 1933, the University began to make very difficult decisions as the amount appropriated to the university could not actually be met from nearly empty state coffers.[63]  Kane determined that it would be necessary to terminate some faculty.[64]  Moreover, in 1933 the administration discontinued some of its publications, in particular the Quarterly Journal which had been published for many years from the University; the state discontinued North Dakota Historical Quarterly (the successor of the Collections of the North Dakota Historical Society) that year as well cutting off another key outlet for scholarship.  Another dramatic peripheral effect of the worsening depression in the 1933s was the resignation of President Kane.  While many had suspected that Kane was to retire in 1933 at his seventieth birthday, Kane hoped that  his resignation in 1933 amidst the controversy and difficulties facing the University’s appropriations might secure a more favorable treatment for the university among the state’s lawmakers.[65] 

John C. West replaced Kane as university President.  He was the Superintendent of Grand Forks’ City School and had received his Ph.D. under John M. Gillette in the Department of Sociology.  Apparently, when Kane announced that he would resign, the state sought Gillette for the office of President of the University.  Gillette declined the offer, but met with a group of faculty who had met regularly to discuss concerns regarding the university administration.  Libby, who continued to garner some respect particularly among his senior colleagues, along with Dr. Simpson, and Dr. Wheeler from Biology, were members of this group and they discussed the various potential candidates.  This group failed to decide upon a suitable candidate, but they did, in general, support Gillette’s judgment when he recommended his former student West for the post.

Unlike Kane, West considered himself a politician who sought to bring together factions within the faculty and make the university more popular with the state in general.[66]  Continuing a trajectory initiated by the McVey hiring in 1909 and then Kane, West represented the most administratively adept of the presidents of the University of North Dakota.  In fact, bore very little in the way of academic qualifications, with the exception of a Ph.D., and came from an almost purely administrative background of the state’s public schools.  Consequently, some faculty felt that he tended to have closer ties to faculty who had experience in the public schools than faculty with traditional academic backgrounds.[67]  The lack of close ties with all members of the faculty, however, did not undermine West’s ability to guide the university through the difficult times of the 1930s.  West’s political maneuvers in the 1930s did much to improve University’s meager funding allocation.  He sought federal funds to help students attend the university and actively courted such programs as the WPA and CCC to assist with university upkeep. 

Despite West’s well-meaning efforts, salaries were slashed and many of the faculty member who could sought employment elsewhere as a result.  The excessively low salaries exacerbated the revolving door of both departments of history course of the 1930s.[68]  An instructor or even Assistant Professor was unlikely to earn over $2000 a year.  Salaries from the mid-1930s through the early 1940s stood below the levels of the turn of the century, and while jobs were scarce throughout the U.S. many of the better qualified junior faculty were able to obtain positions elsewhere.  Perkins understood this reality, and admitted as much to President West in a letter when he conceded “I believe it is far better to get men good enough to move and have them stay only two or three years here than to land mediocrities who stay indefinitely.”[69]  In the European History department, Nicholson left in 1935, Reginald Lovell the same year for Willamette College in Oregon, Clarence Matterson in 1939 left for Iowa State University at Ames where he would eventually become department head, Charles Morely left for Ohio State in 1942.  In the American History department, John Pritchett soon after being promoted to Associate Professor left for Vassar College in 1935 and Charles Centner in 1941 for Tulane.  Robinson in his autobiography referred to these people as “only camping.”[70]

It is perhaps a testimony to the importance and popularity of history as discipline that many of the vacated positions were filled quickly.  Pritchett’s resignation, for example, opened a position on the faculty that Libby filled with Elwyn B. Robinson.  Libby had contacted Robinson’s advisor Arthur C. Cole at Western Reserve University with whom Libby had worked on the Mississippi Valley Historical Review.  Cole suggested Elwyn Robinson would be a suitable candidate for the vacancy in his Department of American History.  Robinson contacted Libby in early August of 1935 and by mid August he was on his way to Grand Forks.  Robinson became a fixture in the department of history for over 35 years and influenced by Libby’s example, published The History of North Dakota, which remains the standard history of the state.  The Elwyn B. Robinson Department of Special Collections stands as a testimony to his service to the University.

The Later Years of Libby and Perkins

Despite Robinson’s later prominence, the two history Departments of the 1930s and early 1940s remained dominated by Perkins and Libby.  Libby continued to teach most of the upper division courses and the occasional survey.  Moreover, he had worked to ensure that other departments like sociology and School of Commerce required American history classes.  This helped enrolment numbers stay stable in the 1930s even as total enrollment in the university declined.  Robinson, nevertheless, was critical of Libby’s teaching.  He viewed the texts that Libby employed to be outdated and intimated that Libby continued to use them simply because they reflected his views.  Moreover, Robinson thought that Libby’s “question-and-answer” technique of teaching was better suited for high-schools than for college.  Robinson sought to encourage more extensive reading by his classes, even at the survey level, and to create a more natural and fluid atmosphere in class which student presentations, lectures, and discussions.  Libby, for his steadfast commitment to his own method of teaching, did nothing to prevent Robinson from transforming the survey classes to incorporate both new techniques and newer scholarship.

Libby remained active in his efforts collect material for the history of the state.  During the Depression, he drew upon the resources made available by such federal programs as the WPA to fund an ambitious project to use unemployed “white collar” workers to gather historical information from the many living 19^th and early 20^th century settlers who continued to live throughout the state.[71]  The project was managed by Russell Reid, the superintendent of the State Historical Society, Libby, its longtime secretary, Edward A. Milligan (a former student of Libby’s at the University).  Libby and his colleagues at numerous field offices gave the individuals employed by the project instructions on collecting data and simple forms to fill out detailing both basic biographical data and stories about the earliest settlers.  The project ran from 1936 to 1941 when its funding expired before having completed the survey of every North Dakota country.  Nevertheless a considerable reservoir of material was collected and deposited into the storerooms at the State Historical Society in Bismarck.  In the end, the data collected was uneven rendering results that were perhaps not as impressive as the organizers hoped owing in large part to the uneven qualifications and aptitude among the men on the work-relief rolls in North Dakota.  The work of Libby on this project does emphasize the continued activity of the department in the development of formal historical research in the state.  Moreover, Libby efforts to continue to work of both the department and the Historical Society even during the most difficult days of the Depression reflected his commitment to his research and historical study in the state. 

By the 1930s, Libby’s scholarship, however, began show the strains of time.  An effort to write a college level history textbook met with what must have been a disappointment Libby’s American history textbook suffered harsh criticism at the hands of reviewers at various presses who considered it out of date in both argument and presentation.[72]  His two major scholarly outlets, the North Dakota Historical Quarterly and the Quarterly Journal had been discontinued for budgetary reasons in the 1930s.  He struggled to get his work on topics other than North Dakota history to press.  The Mississippi Valley Historical Review rejected a major article on “The Technic of the American Revolution” forcing Libby to send it to The United States Law Review, a journal far less suitable for the topic.[73]  The work was never published.  It is a testimony to Libby persistence and diligence that as late as 1941 Libby was applying for a Guggenheim Fellowship to continue work on his doctoral thesis on the geographical distribution of votes in the colonial period.[74]   Libby’s standing in national professional organizations, like the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, had declined as well owing in large part to the rise of a new generation of professionally trained scholars. 

When Robinson was hired in 1935 Libby met him at the bus station and assisted him in finding an apartment affordable on his meager salary. Libby also showed genuine interest in Robinson as an individual in their initial correspondence inquiring as to his marital status and denominational preferences.  Robinson also makes clear, however, that Libby’s standing among his colleagues had declined by the late 1930s.  While in the early 1930s his friendship with John Gillette made him a significant player in the selection of a new President, by the later 1930s “Libby’s voice was not an influential one in meetings of the faculty.”[75]  Nevertheless, Libby remained active on faculty committees into the 1940s.[76]  One could imagine how Libby’s stiff, formal style and his strong opinions regarding his colleagues would make him a difficult man to work with, but his willingness to pursue university service set him apart from many of his colleagues. 

In contrast, the affable and “jolly” Perkins seems never to become fully engaged in University affairs as Libby had in the first decades of the century.  From the correspondence in his file in the President’s Paper, it is clear that he had a close relationship with President West, and the several short and collegial letters intimated that he offered assistance with various university matters.  Perkins did not, however, get along with Dean William Bek, the long serving dean of the College of Liberal Arts (later the College of Science, Literature, and Arts).  Among students, he was a popular teacher, who Robinson argued sought to entertain as much as educate.  Throughout the 1930s he continued to publish significant textbooks like Man’s Advancing Civilization (1934 and 1937), and Ancient History (1936).  In 1940 he published  Development of European Civilization  with two former colleagues at UND, Clarence Matterson and Reginald Lovell.[77]  These books provided him and in some cases his colleagues with considerable income during the darkest years of the depression.

Conclusions

From Libby’s arrival at the University in the early days of the 20^th century to the twin-departments of Libby and Perkins, the men associated with the study of history at the University established the basic character of their discipline.  The departments featured individuals of substantial academic credentials who consistently produced sound scholarship, a commitment to the development of history within the state, and the ability to produce a small, but successful group of undergraduate and graduate alumni.  Despite these positive trends, this period also saw established several recurring problems for the discipline of history at the University.  High turn-over of faculty would remain a characteristic feature of the department for years to come.  In particular, many, but certainly not all, of the better qualified faculty in the department took advantage of opportunities to move on to better positions at more prestigious and centrally located institutions.  The lack of resources would plague the ability of the department to maintain a truly national reputation, and likely contributed to the widespread interest among long term faculty members in the department to cultivate interests in local and state history.  While much of this was high quality work, Libby’s research, for example while in some cases exceedingly particularistic, built a sound foundation for all subsequent research in North Dakota, it had the effect of removing the members of the department from issues of interest to the broader historical community. 

The trends emerging from the department over the course of the first half of the 20^th century continue in some form for the next thirty year even after the retirement of Libby in 1945 and Perkins suddenly death in 1946.  Libby had been on the faculty since 1902 and Perkins since 1920.  Both men had guided the split department of history through its best days, during the 1920s, and the tumultuous times in the 1930s and had not only ensured that the department continued to serve the needs of the university and the state, but, in fact, expanded to take a dynamic and nearly modern form.