Sloane, William Milligan

Sloane, William Milligan,

1850–1926, American historian. After serving as secretary to George BancroftBancroft, George,
1800–1891, American historian and public official, b. Worcester, Mass. He taught briefly at Harvard and then at the Round Hill School in Northampton, Mass., of which he was a founder and proprietor. He then turned definitively to writing. His article (Jan.
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 and studying under DroysenDroysen, Johann Gustav
, 1808–84, German historian. A member of the Frankfurt Parliament, he was a leading proponent of German unification under the leadership of his native Prussia. His Geschichte der preussischen Politik [political history of Prussia] (14 vol.
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 in Germany, he was professor of history at Princeton (1883–96) and then Columbia. He wrote on the French Revolution, religious reform, American party government, the Balkans, the French in Africa, and modern democracy as well as a biography of Napoleon. Sloane's 1911 address as president of the American Historical Society showed disillusionment with Darwinian and evolutionary thought as applied to history, and with the concept of scientific history generally. He was one of the founding members (1894) of the International Olympic Committee and a founder (1894) of what became the United States Olympic Committee.