Document Type

Book

Source Publication Title

The Walter Prescott Webb Memorial Lectures; no. 3

Abstract

The third series of the Walter Prescott Webb Memorial Lectures was held April 16, 1968, in Texas Hall of The University of Texas at Arlington. Departing slightly from the previous pattern, three of the lectures were by members of the faculty at Arlington, Sandra L. Myres, Robert L. Williamson, and Blaine T. Williams, while the fourth was delivered by a distinguished visiting historian, Ray A. Billington. Dr. Billington, who recently has been involved in writing a biography of Frederick Jackson Turner, took this occasion to note the similarities in background, training, and personality that set Webb and Turner apart from the journeyman practitioners of the art of historical writing. Perhaps the preface to this volume on the American West is an appropriate place to note that Walter P. Webb was not a Western historian per se. He was born in Texas and educated in Texas, but his mind ranged freely over both time and space. The Great Plains was not so much a study of the West as a discussion of the impact of geography on the tools and institutions that shape men's lives. The Great Frontier looked at the total sweep of Western civilization. Webb associated the opening of free good virgin lands with the development of democracy, free enterprise, voluntarism in religion, and individual rights before the law. It was only in his last years that Webb undertook to write a book on the American West, but he gave it up and published an essay in Harper's Magazine, "The American West, Perpetual Mirage," which immediately aroused the ire of politicians and professional Westerners from Denver to Washington. The Webb Lectures are dedicated to the memory of Walter Prescott Webb, the universal historian. Like him, they are not limited to the West or the South, or even the Americas. They seek to honor his memory by boldly seeking to understand historical processes without regard to time or place. We can only hope that he would be pleased by the results. HAROLD M. HOLLINGSWORTH SANDRA L. MYRES

Disciplines

Arts and Humanities | History

Publication Date

1-1-1969

Language

English

Comments

Introduction by Otis A. Singletary

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