David H. Wheeler

David H. Wheeler

David Hilton Wheeler was a 19th-century American academic, newspaperman and college president, and also served as the US ambassador to Italy under the Lincoln administration. Active in politics, he was a fierce advocate of public education, which was then a core part of the Republican party platform. In the 1850s, he taught at Cornell College in Iowa and Shimer College in Illinois. He later taught at Northwestern University, where he served as interim president from 1867 to 1869. He subsequently became president of Allegheny College, serving from 1883 to 1888 and again from 1890 to 1893. In addition to his educational and political work, he was known for his writings on Italian history, incl