Born and raised in North Alabama, Gene grew up on a small farm that grew cattle, corn, and soybeans. With such a background it was no surprise that he wanted to be a veterinarian. Fortunately a college course in chemistry put him on the path to becoming a historian. Gene completed both his undergraduate (BA 1984) and graduate training (MA 1987, PhD 1991) in history at Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama. Studying early American history and specializing in Jeffersonian politics and military policy, he wrote a dissertation on the politics of the Jeffersonian gunboat program, and then spent three years teaching at Montana State University-Billings. Since arriving at TCU in the fall of 1994, Gene has been teaching U.S. survey history and undergraduate and graduate level courses on early American history. He is currently serving as the Director of the Center for Texas Studies.

Gene's major publications include the following books:  A British Eyewitness at the Battle of New Orleans: The Memoir of Royal Navy Admiral Robert Aitchison, 1808-1827 (Historic New Orleans Collection, 2004); Thomas ap Catesby Jones: Commodore of Manifest Destiny (Naval Institute Press, 2000); a revised and updated edition of Arsène Lacarrière Latour's, Historical Memoir of the War in West Florida and Louisiana, 1814-15: With an Atlas (The Historic New Orleans Collection and the University Press of Florida, 1999); Filibusters and Expansionists: Jeffersonian Manifest Destiny, 1800-1821, with Frank L. Owsley, Jr., (University of Alabama Press, 1997); Iron and Heavy Guns: Duel Between the "Monitor" and "Merrimac", (McWhiney Foundation Press, 1996); and, "For the Purpose of Defense": The Politics of the Jeffersonian Gunboat Program (University of Delaware Press, 1995). He is presently working on several smaller projects dealing with the War of 1812, including a study of African American combatants, as well as co-authoring an American military history textbook. Additionally, Gene has received internal research awards from Montana State University-Billings and TCU, as well as fellowships from the Henry E. Huntington Library, the Virginia Historical Society, the U.S. Department of the Navy, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Gene is an active member of several organizations, most notably the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic-currently acting as the organization's Treasurer-the Gulf South Historical and Humanities Association, and the North American Society for Oceanic History. Since 1998 Gene has been co-editor of the University Press of Florida's book series New Perspective on Maritime History and Nautical Archaeology.