William W. Freehling (born 1935) is an American historian, and Singletary Professor of the Humanities Emeritus at the University of Kentucky. Freehling has written several well-respected works on the American South during the antebellum era and on the American Civil War, most notably Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina, which won the 1967 Bancroft Prize, and a two volume work on the antebellum period, Road to Disunion.
1965 Allan Nevins Prize of the Society of American Historians
1967 Bancroft Prize
Senior Fellow at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities
2007 Louis R. Gottschalk Lecture
"Arthur Schlesinger Jr: William W. Freehling Remembers", OUP blog
The Road to Disunion: Volume I: Secessionists at Bay, 1776-1854. Oxford University Press. 1991. ISBN 978-0-19-507259-4.
The Road to Disunion: Secessionists triumphant, 1854-1861. Oxford University Press. 2007. ISBN 978-0-19-505815-4.
The reintegration of American history: slavery and the Civil War. Oxford University Press. 1994. ISBN 978-0-19-508808-3.
William W. Freehling, Craig M. Simpson, eds. (1992). Secession debated: Georgia's showdown in 1860. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-507945-6. CS1 maint: Uses editors parameter (link)
Prelude to Civil War: the nullification controversy in South Carolina, 1816-1836. Oxford University Press. 1992. ISBN 978-0-19-507681-3.
Francis G. Couvares, Martha Saxton, eds. (2000). "The Civil War: Repressible or Irrepressible". Interpretations of American History: Through Reconstruction. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-0-684-86773-1. CS1 maint: Uses editors parameter (link)
William W. Freehling, Craig M. Simpson, eds. (2010). Showdown in Virginia: The 1861 Convention and the Fate of the Union. University of Virginia Press. ISBN 978-0-813-92991-0. CS1 maint: Uses editors parameter (link)
The South vs. the South: How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War. Oxford University Press, 2001
