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Political history in the United States covers the historiography or the methods used by political historians, political scientists, and other scholars in analyzing the history of politics in the United States.
Around 1880-1920 wide-ranging non-academic historians such as George Bancroft and James Ford Rhodes focused on durable institutions, especially the presidency, Congress, and the two main political parties. Traditional political history focused on major leaders and long played a dominant role beyond academic historians in the United States. The popularity of these writers was due to their literary style, storytelling abilities, and their willingness to draw lessons from history for the reader. They examined constitutions, platforms, rhetoric, and legislation to determine what was good or bad for the country. They excelled at biography and revealed the strengths, passions, and fatal flaws of historical figures. Modern scholarship is hesitant to make judgments about what "should" have been done at critical moments, and those who do base their judgments on the values of historical actors rather than specific actions.
Starting with Edward Channing at Harvard in the early 20th century, the new university departments of history adopted much of the old style. What was new was a demand for finished PhD dissertations, a deemphasis on drama and color, and an insistence on using primary sources, as tracked through footnotes. The academics wrote for each other, with tenure as a reward, not for sales to a popular audience. These studies of U.S. political history accounted for about 25% of all the scholarly books and articles written by American historians before 1950, and about 33% into the 1960s, followed by books and articles on diplomacy. [1]
Political biographers tended to be more inclined towards moralizing judgments compared to other political historians. However, before the mid-1920s, scholarly biography was not a widely popular genre in the United States. [2] It wasn't until Allen Johnson, Dumas Malone, and the editorial board of the Dictionary of American Biography enlisted hundreds of academic historians to write brief articles on notable figures that scholarly biography gained momentum. Allan Nevins, a prominent contributor to the Dictionary, wrote prize-winning full-length biographies and also initiated a successful series of political biographies in the 1930s. The title of Nevins' most outstanding work, Grover Cleveland: a Study in Courage, epitomized the moralizing tendency of the genre, while arguing that heroes had to be understood in their deeper historical context. [3] By the late 1940s numerous accomplished scholars had launched multi-volume biographies of significant political figures, intending to illustrate how men maintained a balance between power and responsibility, rather than describing the moral essence of politics. [4]
Political scientists have very largely avoided biography. [5] However in their studies of leadership, especially presidents and prime ministers, they have given some attention to the careers and political skills of leaders. [6] [7]
By the 1950s, Beard's economic interpretation of history had fallen out of favor; only a few prominent historians held to his view of class conflict as a primary driver in American history, such as Howard K. Beale and C. Vann Woodward. Still, as a leader of the "progressive historians", or "progressive historiography", Beard introduced themes of economic self-interest and class conflict regarding the adoption of the Constitution His study of the financial interests of the drafters of the United States Constitution ( An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution ) seemed radical in 1913 since he proposed that it was a product of economically-determinist landholding Founding Fathers. He saw ideology as a product of economic interests.
The historian Carl L. Becker's History of Political Parties in the Province of New York, 1760–1776 (1909) formulated the progressive interpretation of the American Revolution. He said that there were two revolutions: one against Britain to obtain home rule and the other to determine who should rule at home.
Beard argued in his works An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (1913) and An Economic Interpretation of Jeffersonian Democracy (1915) that the Constitution was set up by rich bondholders against farmers and planters. According to Beard, the Constitution was designed to reverse the democratic tendencies unleashed by the Revolution among the common people, especially farmers and debtors. Beard's interpretation was challenged by historians who argued that economic interests were decisive but that Beard had misinterpreted the economic interests involved. Instead of two conflicting interests, critics identified dozens of different economic interests operating at cross purposes, which forced the delegates to bargain. [8]
By the 1950s, Beard's economic interpretation of history, which emphasized economic self-interest and especially class conflict as drivers of historical events, was rejected by the great majority of historians. [9] By the 1980s it was replaced chiefly by the notion that a new idea republicanism swept the colonies and caused the Patriots to reject rule by the British monarchy and aristocracy. [10]
The arrival in the 1960s and 1970s of a new interest in social history led to the emergence of the "new political history" which saw young scholars put much more emphasis on the voters' behavior and motivation, rather than just the politicians. [11] [12] It relied heavily on quantitative methods to integrate social themes, especially regarding ethnicity and religion. [13] The new social science approach was a harbinger of the fading away of interest in Great Men.
The eclipse of traditional political approaches during the 1970s was a major shock, though diplomatic history fell even further. It was upstaged by social history, with a race/class/gender model. The number of political articles submitted to the Journal of American History fell by half from 33% to 15%. Patterson argued that contemporary events, especially the Vietnam War and Watergate, alienated younger scholars away from the study of politicians and their deeds. Political history never disappeared, but it never recovered its dominance among scholars, despite its sustained high popularity among the reading public. [14] Some political historians made fun of their own predicament, as when William Leuchtenburg wrote, "the status of the political historians within the profession has sunk to somewhere between that of a faith healer and a chiropractor. Political historians were all right in a way, but you might not want to bring one home to meet the family." [15] Others were more analytical, as when Hugh Davis Graham observed:
According to Michael Kazin, in the 21st century scholars have moved away from solely studying the American side of US politics and instead have adopted a "transnational" perspective, challenging the idea that the US is disconnected from global political trends. Historians now apply a broader definition of politics, including popular ideology, social movements, war, education, crime, sexuality, and the reciprocal influence of mass culture. Scholars from other fields, such as political science and law, have also shown an increasing interest in American history, and books about past presidents and politics are popular. [17]
According to historian Stuart M. Blumin Americans show a long history of antiparty sentiment from the Constitution's ratification to the 21st century. Initially, the Founding Fathers criticized the idea of organized competitive political parties. Such parties contradicted classical republican principles of virtuous leaders acting in the public interest rather than selfish gain. Nevertheless, parties emerged in the mid-1790s in the form of the Federalist Party led by Alexander Hamilton, versus the Republican Party led by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Scholars call it the First Party System. After 1800, the Federalist steadily weakened, especially in the west and South, while the Republicans, or Democratic - Republican Party- became increasingly dominant. By the 1830s and 1840s, the Second Party System became dominant, with the new Democratic Party showing a small advantage over the new Whig party. Anti party partisan sentiment was a strong factor among the Whigs, while the Democrats emphasized loyalty to the party standard and rewarded compliance. However, the growing emphasis on patronage eroded the republican character of each party, leading to political corruption which stimulated anti-party sentiments. In the 21st century conventional anti-party themes remain compelling in political discourse, with a growing trend towards independent voter registration and nonpartisanship. [18]
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Historiography is the study of the methods of historians in developing history as an academic discipline, and by extension is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiography of a specific topic covers how historians have studied that topic by using particular sources, techniques, and theoretical approaches. Scholars discuss historiography by topic—such as the historiography of the United Kingdom, that of WWII, the pre-Columbian Americas, early Islam, and China—and different approaches and genres, such as political history and social history. Beginning in the nineteenth century, with the development of academic history, there developed a body of historiographic literature. The extent to which historians are influenced by their own groups and loyalties—such as to their nation state—remains a debated question.
In historiography, historical revisionism is the reinterpretation of a historical account. It usually involves challenging the orthodox views held by professional scholars about a historical event or timespan or phenomenon, introducing contrary evidence, or reinterpreting the motivations and decisions of the people involved. The revision of the historical record can reflect new discoveries of fact, evidence, and interpretation, which then results in revised history. In dramatic cases, revisionism involves a reversal of older moral judgments.
Political history is the narrative and survey of political events, ideas, movements, organs of government, voters, parties and leaders. It is closely related to other fields of history, including diplomatic history, constitutional history, social history, people's history, and public history. Political history studies the organization and operation of power in large societies.
Henry Steele Commager (1902–1998) was an American historian. As one of the most active and prolific liberal intellectuals of his time, with 40 books and 700 essays and reviews, he helped define modern liberalism in the United States.
Charles Austin Beard was an American historian and professor, who wrote primarily during the first half of the 20th century. A history professor at Columbia University, Beard's influence is primarily due to his publications in the fields of history and political science. His works included a radical re-evaluation of the Founding Fathers of the United States, whom he believed to be more motivated by economics than by philosophical principles. Beard's most influential book, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (1913), has been the subject of great controversy ever since its publication. While it has been frequently criticized for its methodology and conclusions, it was responsible for a wide-ranging reinterpretation of early American history.
The Frontier Thesis or Turner's Thesis is the argument advanced by historian Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893 that a settler colonial exceptionalism, under the guise of American democracy, was formed by the appropriation of the rugged American frontier. He stressed the process of "winning a wilderness" to extend the frontier line further for U.S. colonization, and the impact this had on pioneer culture and character. A modern simplification describes it as Indigenous land possessing an "American ingenuity" that settlers are compelled to forcibly appropriate to create cultural identity that differs from their European ancestors. Turner's text follows in a long line of thought within the framework of Manifest Destiny established decades earlier. He stressed in this thesis that American democracy was the primary result, along with egalitarianism, of a lack of interest in bourgeois or high culture, and violence. "American democracy was born of no theorist's dream; it was not carried in the Susan Constant to Virginia, nor in the Mayflower to Plymouth. It came out of the American forest, and it gained new strength each time it touched a new frontier," said Turner.
Richard Hofstadter was an American historian and public intellectual of the mid-20th century.
Joseph Allan Nevins was an American historian and journalist, known for his extensive work on the history of the Civil War and his biographies of such figures as Grover Cleveland, Hamilton Fish, Henry Ford, and John D. Rockefeller, as well as his public service. He was a leading exponent of business history and oral history.
Prosopography is an investigation of the common characteristics of a group of people, whose individual biographies may be largely untraceable. Research subjects are analysed by means of a collective study of their lives, in multiple career-line analysis. The discipline is considered to be one of the auxiliary sciences of history.
The values and ideals of republicanism are foundational in the constitution and history of the United States. As the United States constitution prohibits granting titles of nobility, republicanism in this context does not refer to a political movement to abolish such a social class, as it does in countries such as the UK, Australia, and the Netherlands. Instead, it refers to the core values that citizenry in a republic have, or ought to have.
An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States is a 1913 book by American historian Charles A. Beard. It interpreted the early history of the United States from the lens of class conflict, arguing that the Constitution of the United States was structured to financially benefit the Founding Fathers.
Forrest McDonald, Jr. was an American historian who wrote extensively on the early national period of the United States, republicanism, and the presidency, but he is possibly best known for his polemic on the American South. He was a professor at the University of Alabama, where, together with Grady McWhiney, he developed the hypothesis that the South had been colonized by "Anglo-Celts," rather than the British Protestant farmers who populated the North.
William Archibald Dunning was an American historian and political scientist at Columbia University noted for his work on the Reconstruction era of the United States. He founded the informal Dunning School of interpreting the Reconstruction era through his own writings and the Ph.D. dissertations of his numerous students. Dunning has been criticized for advocating white supremacist interpretations, his "blatant use of the discipline of history for reactionary ends" and for offering "scholarly legitimacy to the disenfranchisement of southern blacks and to the Jim Crow system."
Historiography examines how the past has been viewed or interpreted. Historiographic issues about the American Civil War include the name of the war, the origins or causes of the war, and President Abraham Lincoln's views and goals regarding slavery.
Herbert Hoover's tenure as the 31st president of the United States began on his inauguration on March 4, 1929, and ended on March 4, 1933. Hoover, a Republican, took office after a landslide victory in the 1928 presidential election over Democrat Al Smith of New York. His presidency ended following his defeat in the 1932 presidential election by Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Howard Kennedy Beale was an American historian. He had several temporary appointments before becoming a professor of history at the University of North Carolina in 1935. His most famous student was C. Vann Woodward, who adopted the Beard-Beale approach to Reconstruction. He went to the University of Wisconsin in 1948, where he directed many dissertations. He specialized in nineteenth and twentieth-century American history, particularly the Reconstruction Era, and the foreign policy of the early 20th century. He was a noted civil libertarian and advocate for academic freedom.
The historiography of the United States refers to the studies, sources, critical methods and interpretations used by scholars to study the history of the United States. While history examines the interplay of events in the past, historiography examines the secondary sources written by historians as books and articles, evaluates the primary sources they use, and provides a critical examination of the methodology of historical study.
Consensus history is a term used to define a style of American historiography and classify a group of historians who emphasize the basic unity of American values and the American national character and downplay conflicts, especially conflicts along class lines, as superficial and lacking in complexity. The term originated with historian John Higham, who coined it in a 1959 article in Commentary titled "The Cult of the American Consensus". Consensus history saw its primary period of influence in the 1950s, and it remained the dominant mode of American history until historians of the New Left began to challenge it in the 1960s.
The historiography of Canada deals with the manner in which historians have depicted, analyzed, and debated the history of Canada. It also covers the popular memory of critical historical events, ideas and leaders, as well as the depiction of those events in museums, monuments, reenactments, pageants and historic sites.
The historiography of the United Kingdom includes the historical and archival research and writing on the history of the United Kingdom, Great Britain, England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. For studies of the overseas empire see historiography of the British Empire.
