[x]

I don't know. There are a lot of scholars working on the Progressive era who view it in terms of the Progressives attempt to get every more control over society. The left and right critiques tend to get melded together, and you get people analyzing Jim Crow and empire as facets of the progressive program. But in recent years academics have shyed away from the big names like TR or Wilson and focused on much smaller and more local topics.

It's hard to think of good things to say about the progressives. They're too centralizing and power-oriented for the Right and too White, Protestant and moralistic for the Left. But looking at how the reputations of Hamilton, Adams, and the Federalists have been rising and rising in the last ten years or so, it's likely that somebody will try to bring the Progressives back into fashion.

One question about Wilson is just how strong Black support for him was in 1912. It looks a lot like a Northeastern academic and professional phenomenon, a gravitation to Wilson by African-Americans who fit the profile of Progressivism and considered themselves and Wilson cut from the same cloth. What they expected was far beyond what White Americans would allow at the beginning of the 20th century, and that's a common failing of intellectuals in politics: they pick up on the main theme of the day, but miss the troubling and contradictory details.

I wonder why DuBois, William Trotter didn't go with TR. Were Trotter and DuBois expecting to become king makers by throwing Black support to the Democrats? Or were they taken in by Wilson's academic manner, so much closer to what they valued themselves than TR's bluster? If they weren't rather more radical than most Americans in the day, one might think of them as Black Mugwumps. There's a strongly anti-Wilson article here.

BTW, James Pinkerton has a Bush-Wilson column this week.

[nicollo]

But in recent years academics have shyed away from the big names like TR or Wilson and focused on much smaller and more local topics.

I guess that's why I feel like there's nothing new in books. I can point to articles, but no books. They've cut history into pieces. Is it to stay away from the big names, as you say, or just easier ways to put things in print by splitting logs?

Good remarks there about the progressives. I'm inclined towards Taft for, while he was a progressive among progressives, he alone among the major figures was willing to say "enough!" I think under Roosevelt Taft was quite taken away by the man, as were so many others, but once in power Taft took head-on that distinction between words and acts -- and consequences, which always follow acts, something TR never enjoyed. TR's legacy was like the Celubra Cut: the mud flowed behind it.

I have yet to properly visit with Dubois and Trotter in 1912, so I can't speak to their views on Wilson other than the general distaste in their movement for the Republican primary and the Republican and Progressive conventions, which were wholly abusive, on all sides, of racial politics in patronage and delegates. My first guess is that Wilson seemed an alternative route, and not a destination.

Thanks for your words, and thanks for the links!