Richard E. Ellis

Richard E. Ellis (1938-2009) was a professor and chair of the Department of History at the University at Buffalo, where he taught from 1974 until 2009. He was the author of several books and essays on the political history of the Jeffersonian and the Jacksonian periods, including The Jeffersonian Crisis: Courts and Politics in the Young Republic and The Union at Risk: Jacksonian Democracy, States′ Rights, and the Nullification Crisis.

Ellis was a noted authority on the United States Constitution and taught early American constitutional and political history on the UB faculty since 1974. He received SUNY Continuing Faculty Development awards in 1993 and 1995, and an undergraduate Student Association Teaching Award in 1987. He also served on the advisory council of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic and was an associate of the Institute of Early American History.

Ellis held fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 1972-73, he was a Charles Warren Fellow at Harvard University.

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Andrew Jackson Censured for a “High Crime”, February/March 2021 | Vol. 66, No. 2

The censure of Andrew Jackson for replacing his secretary of Treasury raised the question of a president's authority to control the actions of his cabinet members.

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