Big idea from Daniel Boorstin reading:
The Therapy of Distance
• Distance created opportunities that were absent
in Britain
– Self-government
– Growth of trade
• Role of Space in the New World –
– Land, new ideas, new religions -
• Breaking away from monopolies that existed in
Britain
– Lawyers, physicians, military (this will come in handy
fro the Rev)
School of thought : Noted
Historians
Historic Context the school was
born in
Arguments / ideas
Traditional, first recording
18th century
Struggle of liberty vs. tyranny
American exceptionalism
Imperial School
Early 1900s
constitutional crisis
Progressive School
Beard, Schlesinger, Becker
Early 1900s
revolution was driven more by social &
economic factors
Consensus /conservatives
Daniel Boorstin, Richard Hofstader
Post WWII
Orthodox, patriotic, American
exceptionalism
Neo-progressives
Nash
1960s
Revolution was about profound
economic & social dislocations
New Left
Nash
1960s
Revolution was about profound
economic & social dislocations
Social Historians
1970s/1980s
“forgotten Americans”
Name: ____________________
Historiography 101- The Civil War
Traditional
• The first historians to
write about the
event(s)
Progressive (and/or Marxist)
Consensus
• Early 20th century
• Impacted by the
Progressive movement
of the early 1900s.
• Often looked at the
economic causes of
events or the economic
disparities at play
during a particular era
• Post WW2 - 1940s-50s
• Aimed to look at areas
of unity and strength in
American history as
opposed to highlighting
our differences
Historiography
New Left (and/or Social
historians)
• Began in 1960s amid
Social unrest (Civil Rights
Mvmt, Vietnam)
• Much like the
Progressives rejected the
Traditional
interpretations, the New
Left rejected the
Consensus
interpretations.
• Often looked at groups
that were often ignored:
women, African
Americans, American
Indians, gays,
• Seen as more political
active
How would a ______ historian
interpret each of these events?
Traditional
or
Nationalist
Progressive and/or
Marxist
(Beard)
Consensus
or Neonationalist
(Wood)
New Left and/or Social
Historian
(Zinn, Foner)
The Causes of the Civil War
Reconstruction
James Ford Rhodes
Slavery was the cause of the war (inevitable)
the war ended slavery and preserved the union
Dunning
- Sectional conciliation, influenced by theories of black
racial inferiority (These guys were racists…don’t use
them in your writing!!!)
- Reconstruction was forced by self-interested
Northern Radical Republicans
- Reconstruction failed bc inept people were in charge
Charles and Mary Beard
War was a deeply rooted economic struggle btw
industrial North and agrarian South
“2nd American Rev”
Vast implications in class relations – solidifies power
of industrialists
Beale
- Radicals exploited Southern labor resources, and their
“concern” for freedman was really just in their own
interest
- Radicals profited politically by forcing black suffrage in
the South
Nevins and Potter
- Unavoidable conflict between 2 societies: slave and
free
- Moral, social, political, cultural & economic ties
eroded btw sections of the country
REVISIONIST
Stampp
- Noble attempt to extend American principles of
equity,
- Rad Reps and carpetbaggers are heroes – Johnson a
racist who resisted progress
Eric Foner
- North and South BOTH had a paranoid fear of
disrupting their “way of life”
- North - Free labor movmt (Disliked slavery bc it could
replace free labor – NOT bc slavery was “wrong”))
- South - Viewed nature of factory system as inhuman
Holt (Ethnocultual)
- Erosion of 2 party system meant consensus existed over
EVERYTHING else – BUT SLAVERY
New Left:
Benedict and Letwik
- Rad Reps were not that radical, and that orgs like
Freedman’s bureau merely allowed white planters to
maintain dominance over politics and the economy
(sharecropping, Jim Crow)
Social
Foner
- Reconstruction was radical, and radically different
from other former slave societies – but still limited
- Blacks did form political orgs, churches and vote
- Full application of Constitutional principles- did not
happen until the “2nd Reconstruction” in the Civil
Rights era
Another way to talk about historiography can be more broad… without using the schools of
history, but still recognizing the varying interpretations of events
What were the consequences of the Civil War?
Some historians have
argued…
(James McPherson)
Civil War expanded the role of the Federal govt:
- 13th, 14th amendments
- Federal taxation
- Printing $
- Nat’l bank
- Army
- Freedman’s Bureau = first social welfare program
While others have
argued…
The Civil War was not a “watershed”
- Racial inequality
- Industrialization started in the Jackson era – not Post-war
era
- Regional difference persisted, even til today!
Still others have
concluded…
Cochran: Civil War actually slowed down industrialization
“New Western” History
(1980s & 1990s)
Patricia Nelson Limerick, A
Legacy of Conquest: The
Unbroken Past of the American
West (1987)
Richard White, The Middle
Ground: Indians, Empires &
Republics in the Great Lakes
West was not just won, it
was conquered
Western society
consisted of a rigid racial
and class hierarchy with
limited social mobility
Region, 1610-1815 (1991)
Democracy, where it
appears, is racist, Nativist,
and exploitative
Donald Worster, Rivers of
Empire: Water, Aridity & The
Growth of the American West
(1985)
Westward development
involved the wholesale
exploitation and, in some
cases, destruction of the
natural environment
Traditional
Consensus
- Progressive reformers were simply heirs to the
Jeffersonian-Jacksonian-Populist reform crusades
- Oppressed, downtrodden common folk
-
Middle class
Threatened from above by power of new corporate
elites
Threatened from below by restless working class
New Left
“Organizational School”
-
-
-
Progressives were dominated by established
business leaders who directed “reform” to
conservative ends (Fed, FTC, Meat Inspections)
Limited cut throat competition, Stabilized markets
-
Recent/Feminist
-
Stressed role of women in social reform
Gendered activity inspired by a “female dominion”
of social workers and “social feminists”.
In contrast to European labor seeking social welfare
for the working class – American female reformers
focused on welfare for women and children
Progressives were members of the rapidly emerging
new social class possessed by the new techniques of
scientific management and organizational “knowhow”
Effort to rationalize and modernize many social
institutions by introducing the hand of govt.
regulation