John Spencer Bassett was the author of the first scholarly biography of Andrew Jackson and editor of the seven-volume Correspondence of Andrew Jackson (1926-1935). Among historians he is often noted as the central figure in an academic freedom struggle in North Carolina in the early twentieth century. He was one of the first generation of professionally trained historians who, imbued with "scientific" methods of investigation, were to bring about a revolution in the field of historical inquiry in the South. The careful objectivity and even-handed fairness that he brought to his work made A Short History of the United States (1913), which went through three revisions and numerous replications, a standard American-history college text for over thirty years.

Bassett was born in Tarboro, North Carolina, and was the second child of Richard Baxter and Mary Jane Wilson Bassett. His father and paternal grandfather were Methodists and Virginians who had...