His parents met on board ship when emigrating to the United States, settling in Beardstown, Illinois.

David McLaughlin was a merchant and civic leader in Muskegon, MI, where a school and street are named for him.

He was selected to be the first director of the Department of Historical Research at the newly created Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C., a post he held for two years.

In 1914 he was named president of the American Historical Association, becoming an advocate for historians giving guidance on world events, touring the United Kingdom in 1918 to support its efforts in World War I, lecturing on the causes that had led the United States into the war.

McLaughlin's first major book Confederation and Constitution, 1783–1789 (1907) was a volume in the American Nation series, planned and edited by Albert Bushnell Hart of Harvard University.