The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 92, July 1988 - April, 1989 Page: 26
682 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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26 Southwestern Historical Quarterly
facts and ideas like a prosecuting attorney, taking into his mind any in-
formation that would support his thesis. He was writing a tract with all
the intensity of an Old Testament scholar trying to sell God to the
unsaved.
The result, The Great Plains, appeared in 1931 and was damned re-
peatedly by critics. The Austin American-Statesman, not noted as a liter-
ary organ, dismissed it in two short paragraphs as having been culled
from secondary sources and adding nothing that wasn't already known.
The review, written by a friend in the Department of Journalism at UT,
appeared just as Webb was leaving to drive to Durham for a summer at
Duke University. In Durham, Webb picked up a copy of the New York
Times Book Review, which gave a laudatory review of The Great Plains the
cover position.4 When at the end of 1950 every agency seemed to be
assaying the best of this and that in the first half of the twentieth cen-
tury, a poll of professional historians chose The Great Plains as the most
significant book by a living historian.
Back in Austin, Barker proposed to the senior members of the de-
partment that they give Webb a doctorate without waiting for him to do
any more course work or finish his dissertation on the rangers, an
honor-if that is what it is-extended to only one other former gradu-
ate student, the late Herbert P. Gambrell, biographer of Mirabeau B.
Lamar and Anson Jones. Unless attitudes change dramatically, I doubt
such gift doctorates will ever occur again. As Webb would often remark
in later years: "I came along at exactly the right time. Today I would
never have been hired. If by some accident I had been hired, I never
would have been kept. And if I had been kept, I never would have been
promoted."
As he was stumbling along toward his first book, his dissertation, his
doctorate, and a reputation beyond the forty acres of the UT campus,
Webb was being serviceable to his department, his university, and the
cause of history. His idol, Fred Duncalf, was editing a small pamphlet
for teachers of history. When in the early x192os Duncalf decided he
had labored long enough as an editor without glory, he resigned. Webb,
specializing in the teaching of history in the public schools, was the logi-
cal choice to succeed as editor. In Webb's words, "I conceived the idea
of having local history written by school students and I persuaded Cliff
Caldwell of Abilene to give $1ioo for use in prizes in the first con-
test .. . ." Webb continues:
4New York Times Book Review, Sept. 6, 1931.
J. Frank Dobie to Fred R. Cotten, Nov. 3, 1961 (copy in possession of the author). Caldwell
was the grandfather of Chlifton Caldwell, recent past president of the Association. Obviously an
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 92, July 1988 - April, 1989, periodical, 1989; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101212/m1/53/: accessed April 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.