FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Feb. 5, 2007

Kathleen McPartland
530-898-4260
Robert Tinkler,
Department of History
530-898-6054

Early American Historian To Deliver Cowden Lecture

Alan Taylor, history professor at UC Davis, will deliver the sixth annual Joanna Dunlap Cowden Memorial Lecture at California State University, Chico on Thursday, Feb. 8. The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will be held at 7 p.m. in Ayres 106.

Taylor's lecture, "The Late Loyalists: Migration and Counter-Revolution on the Northern Border of the American Revolution," will illuminate efforts by British officials during the 1790s to attract American settlers to the new colony of Upper Canada (essentially modern Ontario). That policy might have backfired, given the hostilities between the Americans and the British. But, as Taylor has written, Governor John Graves Simcoe of Upper Canada "devoutly believed that the American states were filled with closet Loyalists who longed to escape from republicanism. Inevitably, the arrival of these 'Late Loyalists' during the 1790s and early 1800s created complications for both the United States and the British Empire, giving shape to their conflict, known as the War of 1812."

Taylor is a specialist in early American history, the American West and the history of Canada. He is the author of numerous articles and five books. His "William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic" won several major awards, including the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for History. He is the immediate past president of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, an international organization of scholars dedicated to exploring the events and meaning of United States history between 1776 and 1861.

The Joanna Dunlap Cowden Memorial Lecture was established by the family, friends, colleagues and students of Joanna Dunlap Cowden to honor her memory. During her 25-year career at CSU, Chico, Professor Cowden specialized in the antebellum and Civil War history of the United States. She served on numerous faculty committees and as chair of the history department. She was known for her dedication to advancing the life of the mind and quality teaching. Shortly before her death on April 19, 2001, her book "Heaven Will Frown on Such as This: Six Democrats Who Opposed Lincoln's War" was published.

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