David Potter

David Morris Potter (December 6, 1910–February 18, 1971), president of the American Historical Association and Coe Professor of History at Stanford University, died of cancer on February 18, 1971, at the age of sixty-one. At the time of his death he was also president of the Organization of American Historians. On his desk was the nearly completed manuscript of his study of the coming of the Civil War, which was intended for publication in the New American Nation series and on which he had been working for over a decade.