[1][3] His maternal grandfather, Landon Garland, was a slaveholder who served as the second president of Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia, from 1836 to 1846, the third president of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, from 1855 to 1865, and the first chancellor of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, from 1875 to 1893.

[2][3] He took a hiatus to serve as a colonel in the United States Army during World War I in 1918,[1][3] and returned to academia, teaching at Indiana University from 1919 to 1922.

[1][2][4] Fulton taught the courses about William Shakespeare and Charles Lamb as well as Mississippi poet Irwin Russell.

"[1] He edited the writings of Theodore Roosevelt, who served as the 26th president of the United States from 1901 to 1909, and Pat Garrett's biography of Billy the Kid.

He edited a history of New Mexico and two volumes of Josiah Gregg's diary and letters with Paul Horgan.