Goldwin Smith - Regius Professor

Regius Professor

He held the regius professorship of Modern History at Oxford from 1858 to 1866, that “ancient history, besides the still unequalled excellence of the writers, is the ‘best instrument for cultivating the historical sense.” As a historian, indeed, he left no abiding work; the multiplicity of his interests prevented him from concentrating on any one subject. His chief historical writings — The United Kingdom: a Political History (1899), and The United States: an Outline of Political History (1893) — though based on thorough familiarity with their subject, make no claim to original research, but are remarkable examples of terse and brilliant narrative.

The outbreak of the American Civil War proved a turning point in his life. Unlike most of the ruling classes in England, he championed the cause of the North, and his pamphlets, especially one entitled Does the Bible sanction American Slavery? (1863), played a prominent part in converting English opinion. Visiting America on a lecture tour in 1864, he received an enthusiastic welcome, and was entertained at a public banquet in New York. In 1868 he threw up his career in England and settled in the United States, where he held the professorship of English and Constitutional History in the Department of History at Cornell University for a number of years. Goldwin Smith Hall, which is located in Cornell's Arts Quad, is named in his honour. In 1871 he moved to Toronto, where he edited the Canadian Monthly, and subsequently founded the Week and the Bystander, and where he lived the rest of his life living in The Grange manor.