Merrill Daniel Peterson (March 31, 1921 – September 23, 2009) was an American historian and professor at the University of Virginia. He was the editor of the Library of America edition of the selected writings of Thomas Jefferson. Peterson wrote several books on Jefferson, including The Jefferson Image in the American Mind (Oxford University Press, 1960; reprinted with new foreword, University Press of Virginia, 1998), and Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation (Oxford University Press, 1970). Other works include Lincoln in American Memory (Oxford University Press, 1994), John Brown: The Legend Revisited (2002), and most recently Starving Armenians: America and the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1930 and After (Univ. of Virginia Press).