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James G. Randall was an American historian, specializing on Abraham Lincoln and the era of the American Civil War. He taught at the University of Illinois, where David Herbert Donald was one of his students and continued his traditions. Born in Indiana, he took a B.A. degree from Butler College, and a Ph.D. in history at the University of Chicago. Randall was known for his systematic, scientific methodology based on thorough study of primary sources, his mastery of constitutional issues, and his neutrality regarding North and South. His multi-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln remains a major resource for scholars. He was president of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association 1939-1940. His wife Ruth P. Randall wrote Mary Lincoln: Biography of a Marriage. His The Civil War and Reconstruction was for many years the most important history of the era.
Randall, a devout Methodist who was horrified by the carnage of World War I, believed the Civil War was a terrible mistake, caused by the failure of the political system to find a compromise. It was a "needless war," an interpretation that won widespread assent before World War II. Along with Avery Craven, Randall, watching the rise of fascism in Europe, concluded the American Civil War did not emerge from the conflicting material interests of economic classes, as Charles A. Beard said. Instead, Randall believed it was brought about by fanatics, like the abolitionists in the North and the fire-eaters in the South. These fanatics, with very little material at stake, raced each other into war.
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