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Vol. 25:3 ISSN 0160-8460 Fall 1997
John Niven
John Niven, editor of The Salmon P. Chase Papers and a nationally known scholar in the fields of Jacksonian and Civil War history, died on August 14, 1997, of cancer. He was 75. Dr. Niven was Professor Emeritus of American History at Claremont Graduate School, where he had chaired the department of history. He leaves a wife, Elizabeth Thomson Niven; a son, Drake, and a daughter, Katherine; and two grandsons, Ethan and Alec.
Born in Brooklyn, NY, on October 26, 1921, he graduated from the University of Connecticut in 1943, after which he received a commission in the United States Navy, serving in both the European and the Pacific theaters of operations during World War II. After the war, he undertook graduate studies at Columbia University, from which he received his master's degree in 1947 and his doctorate in 1955. His revised dissertation was published as Connecticut for the Union (1965).
From 1951 to 1960, he worked for Electric Boat Company and General Dynamics Corporation in New York, serving as Director of Publications for General Dynamics, in which capacity he co-authored Dynamic America: A History of General Dynamics Corporation and Its Predecessor Companies (1960).
He then accepted an appointment as professor of history at Claremont Graduate School. Over the following 35 years, he produced a number of outstanding biographies of prominent figures in American history. These include Gideon Welles: Lincoln's Secretary of the Navy (1973), Connecticut Hero: Israel Putnam (1977), Martin Van Buren: The Romantic Age of American Politics (1983), John C. Calhoun and the Price of Union: A Biography (1988), and Salmon P. Chase: A Biography (1995). Dr. Niven also wrote The American President Lines and Its Forebears, 1848-1984: From Paddlewheels to Containerships (1987) and The Coming of the Civil War, 1837-1861 (1990).
Dr. Niven initiated the NHPRC-funded project to publish the papers of Salmon P. Chase, which produced four volumes of documentation between 1993 and 1997. He was editing the fifth and final volume of Chase correspondence at the time of his death.
