Douglass Adair - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

Adair was born in 1912 in New York City, but grew up in Birmingham and Mobile, Alabama. He attended the University of the South, where he received his B.A. in English literature; he later earned his M.A. degree at Harvard University, and his Ph.D. degree at Yale University; he was awarded his doctorate in 1943 for his dissertation, "The Intellectual Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy: Republicanism, the Class Struggle, and the Virtuous Farmer." This dissertation rejected the economic determinism associated with the highly-influential historical work of Charles A. Beard; indeed, the dissertation's title responded directly to the title of Beard's 1915 book, The Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy. Adair insisted that historical actors such as James Madison, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton were guided by their education and creative interaction with ideas derived from the evolving Atlantic intellectual tradition. These ideas -- particularly the cluster of ideas, assumptions, habits of thought, and interpretative principles known as republicanism -- played a crucial role in the early development of the United States. Though the dissertation remained unpublished for decades, the list of those who borrowed it from Yale's library is described as a "who's who in early American history."