US History

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US History

• General Historiography
• Historiography the study of the study of
  History
• Interpret this quote Every true history is
  contemporary history. Benedetto Croce

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Puritans

• 17th century
• Focus on God, Gods actions/concerns, religious
  justification of New England settlements

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Patricians

• 18th-19th c
• George Bancroft - History of the United States
• Enlightenment, secular over religiousbut God
  favors American systems/institutions
• History is about progression of mankinds growing
  liberties
• US has mission to spread liberty/democracy

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Professional

• Gen 1 Mid to late 19th c
• Frederick Jackson Turner The Significance of
  the Frontier in American History
• Frontier defines America(ns)
• Ours is a history of successive crossing of
  frontiers and breaking of barriers
• Adaptation to frontier defines our values
  rugged individualism, materialism, pragmatism,
  egalitarianism

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Progressives

• Late 19th c WWII
• Charles Beard An Economic
  Interpretation of the Constitution
• Reform minded liberal interp of past
• History is a series of conflicts rich v. poor,
  East v. West, aristocracy v. democracy
• History is a struggle of people/groups to
  maintain democracy

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Neoconservative

• Post WWII Vietnam
• Daniel Boorstin - The Genius of American Politics
• Am hist is about consensus
• Our institutions, principles, character, middle
  class values bond us
• Private property, limited govt, natural rights
  of man, natural law
• Any Conservative v. Liberal fight in America is
  silly Americans were born free

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New Left

• 1960s-70s
• Howard Zinn A Peoples History
  of the United States
• Attempts bottom up history
• Focus on social and economic conflict rather than
  political aspects (no more dead white guys)
• Critical of conservative approach for being too
  narrow should look at the marginalized,
  disenfranchised, etc.

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• The makers of the Constitution represented the
  solid, conservative, commercial, and financial
  interests of the country not the interests
  which denounced and proscribed judges in Rhode
  Island, New Jersey and North Carolina, and stoned
  their houses in New York. The conservative
  interests, made desperate by the imbecilities of
  the Confederation and harried by the state
  legislatures, roused themselves from the
  lethargy, drew together in a mighty effort to
  establish a govt that would be strong enough to
  pay the national debt, regulate interstate and
  foreign commerce, provide for the national
  defense , prevent fluctuations in the currency
  created by paper emissions, and control the
  propensities of legislative majorities to attack
  private rights.The radicals, however, like
  Patrick Henry, Jefferson, and Samuel Adams, were
  conspicuous by their absence from the Convention.
• Beard, Econ Interp of Const

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• The Founding Fathers found that by creating a
  nation, symbol, a legal entity called the United
  States, they could take over land, profits, and
  political power from favorites of the British
  Empire.
• Zinn, A Peoples History

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• We have not conceived American history to be
  primarily political or economic, or as a series
  of problems, but as the story of the evolution of
  a free society.
• Nevins and Commager, The History of the United
  States

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• Now the peculiarity of American institutions is
  the fact that they have been compelled to adapt
  themselves to the changes of an expanding people
  to the changes involved in crossing a
  continent, in winning a wilderness, and in
  developing at each area of this progress out of
  primitive economic and political conditions of
  the frontier into the complexity of city life.
• Frederick Jackson Turner, The Significance of
  the Frontier in American History

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• The history of the American Revolution is in part
  a history of the years of action following
  Lexington, but much more of it is the history of
  the Americans search for principles. That
  search brought them to Lexington and to war in
  1775, but it did not end there. Throughout the
  years of fighting, it continued and finally
  culminated in the adoption of the federal
  Constitution. It was a noble search, a daring
  search, and by almost any standards, a successful
  search.
• Edmund Morgan, The Birth of the Republic