Lance Banning

Lance Banning (24 January 1942 – 31 January 2006) was an American historian who specialized in studying the politics of the United States' Founding Fathers. He taught mostly at the University of Kentucky.

Life

Banning was a native of Kansas City, Missouri. He graduated from the University of Missouri, and from Washington University in St. Louis with a master's and PhD.

He taught at Brown University, and University of Kentucky. He served as the Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the University of Edinburgh. In 1997, he taught at the University of Groningen.

He was among the scholars who was commissioned by the newly formed Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society in 1999 to review materials about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, after the 1998 DNA study was published indicating a match between the Jefferson male line and a descendant of Eston Hemings, the youngest son. The commission thought there was not sufficient evidence to conclude that Jefferson was the father of Hemings' children, and proposed his younger brother Randolph Jefferson, who had never seriously been put forward until after the 1998 DNA study.

Legacy and honors

• 1997 Merle Curti Award for his Sacred Fire of Liberty: James Madison
• 1997, Fulbright Fellowship at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.
• National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship
• 1979 Guggenheim Fellowship
• National Humanities Center

Works

External video
Booknotes interview with Banning on The Sacred Fire of Liberty: James Madison and the Founding of the Federal Republic, February 11, 1996, C-SPAN

Criticism

• "A review of "Negro President": Jefferson and the Slave Power, by Garry Wills", The Claremont Institute, August 31, 2004