David Thomson, Ph.D.

David Thomson is a historian of the 19th century United States with a special focus on the history of capitalism in the Civil War era. Thomson received his Ph.D. from the University of Georgia and joined the faculty at Sacred Heart in the fall of 2016. He teaches both halves of the United States history survey as well as electives on the American Civil War, Reconstruction, American Capitalism, and United States Foreign Policy.

Thomson's recent book, "Bonds of War," examines United States debt during the American Civil War and specifically how the federal government paid for the conflict. Drawing on archives in nine countries and a dozen states, Bonds of War is the most comprehensive study of American bonds from this era. Funding for this project has been provided by Harvard Business School, the Harvard Center for History and Economics, the Huntington Library, the Library Company of Philadelphia, the New York Public Library, the Gilder Lehrman Institute, the University of Georgia, Indiana University, Sacred Heart University, and the Rothschild Archive. Thomson's writing on the subject has appeared in The Journal of the Civil War Era as well as the New York Times, Bloomberg, and the Washington Post.