Posted on 01/30/2021 7:00:16 AM PST by ProgressingAmerica
In the mid-1940s, Edmund S. Morgan, a mild-mannered young historian, was teaching at Brown and making a name in the quiet field of early American studies. Having published a slim, well-received collection of essays on the New England Puritans, he might have seemed the very model of the unassuming scholar at the outset of a modest career, satisfied to refine the work of great forebears in a narrow field. That wasn’t Edmund Morgan. The Second World War was over. The United States was developing an energetic vision, which would come to fruition in 1960 with the election of John F. Kennedy, of its new global leadership role. In keeping with that vision, Morgan launched a bold new interpretation of the nation’s founding.
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The answer lies in the nature of the hidden war that Morgan was fighting. He had two big targets to take down. One target was progressive history, as it was then known. The historian Charles Beard, born in 1874, had developed a critique of the elite economic interests that, he said, were the true engines behind the creation of the United States Constitution. To a degree possibly surprising to modern schoolchildren taught about the Founders’ fealty to high-minded principles inspired by the Enlightenment, Beard’s and other progressive historians’ focus on the Founders’ economic elitism and the lower classes’ struggle for equality was widely accepted, not only in the academy but also by the public, when Morgan was coming up.
His other target was, in the context of the day, conservative. The first half of the twentieth century had seen a lot of British-friendly scholarship of the founding crisis. That work presented Parliament’s changing policies of the 1760s and ’70s as more or less reasonable.
(Excerpt) Read more at newrepublic.com ...
Desperately seeking citizen historians who will stand up and answer the call. Far too many are distracted by the shiny candy of modernity.
Typical academic tempest in a teapot. Gadzooks, how many of these I endured during my dozen years in Cambridge. Would spoil a dinner party if you accidentally invited the wrong combination of Hahvud/MIT types. It all came down to who achieved ascendancy on the track to departmental chairmanships.
“The tricks endowed at least two generations of thinkers, overwhelmingly white and male, with unearned authority and influence. Fairness would dictate that members of groups not overwhelmingly white and male get a turn at practicing the same tricks, for the same rewards.”
The article starts with clichéd Kennedy worship and then rambles on cryptically for pages until it finally gets to the second quoted statement one paragraph from the very end.
Does one need to remind the author that it is well known that the winning margin in the Kennedy election was provided by fraud? And the white privilege statement at the end basically leaves one wondering what the motivation for the entire article actually was? At times the author is being critical of the New York Slimes “1619 Project” which I suppose makes him an ally in through the enemy of my enemy is my friend principle?
BUt is this anything more significant than the author whining about other historians that is meaningful to a very select few “intellectual elites”?
Thank you for the best description possible.
Well said.
Geo Washington Carver invented the flush toilet, the mouse trap, the internet, Depends , and the Li’l Rabbit vibrator.
Thas history!
bump
Sounds like a underestimation of the problem. These are the people driving the narrative, this isn’t just a few “select intellectual elites”.
Everybody laughed at Charles Beard and his little tempest until he dominated and was replaced by Howard Zinn.
Everybody laughed at Howard Zinn and his little tempest until he dominated and was replaced by The 1619 Project.
The laughing has ended. In a sane world there would’ve been a 1776 Project to respond to Charles Beard in 1913 and that would’ve stalled the 1619 Project by probably 50 years. But instead we are where we are.
The time for making jokes has passed and the time to fight these people is now. The historians are every bit the problem to be dealt with as the journalists are, yet the historians don’t have nearly the opposition that the media has. With that in mind, that makes them all the more dangerous. Especially when you consider that parents surrender their children directly to them.
It is a convoluted mishmash of whiny complaints against other historian's points of view that only a very select few are going to understand. Yet he parrots the liberal white privilege line and claims that the Kennedy administration was some sort of turning point? Please explain why you chose this article to post and what you believe what it's significance is.
The real history is everything but what the left says it is.
I think the article seeks to bolster the 1619 Project. It makes that goal clear. The significance of the article isn’t so much in its own towering achievement, but rather to play its’ part in a much larger machine.
These are progressives, who are collectivists. So they’ll keep on and on and on, and meanwhile persons such as yourself and I who engage actively in the field of history are far and desperately few inbetween.
Most don’t even touch history, so to that end I thank you for your presentations and displays. Just out of curiosity, what are some of the major points of your displays or perhaps the items that are in them? I just mean general highlights if you’d prefer not to go too far.
My wife is from a military family and has a very large collection of military and service uniforms such as the Red Cross, etc. and artifacts. She sets up displays at museums, schools, state and local government offices, and other locations that are loaned to them typically for around 6 months. During that time she often gives presentations where she talks about the specific veterans who wore the uniforms and what they did during the time that they were serving.
The collection covers the time period from the civil war until current times. Her presentations are always well received and her goal is to put an actual face on history. Some of her presentations feature live models wearing the uniforms. We sometimes have veterans who accompany us and talk about their service.
She is an amazing speaker and presenter... one time we went to a high school and there were hostile students who said that they were offended that we brought “war stuff” to their school. Some of what she talks about is heart warming, some is very sad, and some is very inspiring. By the end of the day after multiple presentations to difffernt groups, she had a following of students and even some of those who were hostile to begin with appologized to her. She has also done presentations and assemblies at grade schools and also has set up multiple displays at a museum run by a local school with various ages.
I was not clear to me what the author was trying to accomplish. Thank you for your explanation.
It seems that yours and my individual efforts at historical preservation might have an overlap. It’s been some years since I concluded the recording of this, but you might find it useful.
https://librivox.org/the-colored-patriots-of-the-american-revolution-by-william-cooper-nell/
Some of these written about served in a military assignment of one form or another.
Very nice! Thank you. My wife spent a lot of years interviewing the veterans and others that she speaks about in her presentaions.
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