Joseph Rayback

Joseph G. Rayback (d. 1983) was a professor of history in the United States. For many years, he was a professor of history at Penn State University. In 1966, he was appointed professor of history at Temple University.

The focus of Professor Rayback's work was American politics from 1830 to 1860. He was particularly interested with federal politics of the slavery issue, and the rise of the Republican Party. As a corollary to this work, Rayback also became a noted scholar of early immigration policy in the U.S.

In 1959, Rayback wrote a history of the American labor movement. The work was criticized for being episodic and lacking in focus, but became a staple of undergraduate history courses for several years.

Rayback was working on a major biography of president Martin van Buren when he died in 1983. The half-completed work was expanded and finished by Jerome Mushkat, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Akron.

Published works

*Mushkat, Jerome and Rayback, Joseph G. "Martin Van Buren: Law, Politics, and the Shaping of Republican Ideology." DeKalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois University Press, 1997. ISBN 0-87580-229-X
*Rayback, Joseph. "Free soil: The Election of 1848." Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky, 1971. ISBN 0-8131-1222-2
*Rayback, Joseph G. "A History of American Labor." Rev. and exp. ed. New York: MacMillan Publishing Co., 1974. ISBN 1-299-50529-5