Mark Renfred Cheathem is an American historian and editor of the presidential papers of Martin Van Buren. The papers consist of 13,000 documents of Van Buren's life and presidential administration; the papers project is a joint initiative of Cumberland University, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, the Tennessee General Assembly, and the University of Virginia. Cheathem is a professor of history at Cumberland University in Lebanon, Tennessee. His writing focuses on 19th-century American political history. His 2013 Andrew Jackson, Southerner draws on his observation that most extant Andrew Jackson biographies failed to examine the importance of Southern plantation culture in influencing his life choices and worldview. His 2018 book The Coming of Democracy was awarded a Phi Alpha Theta History Honors Society book award. The election of 1844 book argues that James K. Polk's narrow victory accelerated the coming of the American Civil War.
Cheathem did undergrad at Cumberland, a master's degree at Middle Tennessee State University, and earned his Ph.D. at Mississippi State University. His thesis at MSU became the biography of Andrew Jackson Donelson.
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