Progressive historians
The Progressive historians were a group of 20th century historians of the United States associated with a historiographical tradition that embraced an economic interpretation of American history.[1][2] Most prominent among these was Charles A. Beard, who was influential in academia and with the general public.[1]
History
From 1910 to the 1940s, "Progressive" historiography was dominant, especially in political studies. It stressed the central importance of class conflict in American history. Important leaders included
In covering the Civil War, Charles and Mary Beard did not find it useful to examine nationalism, unionism, states' rights, slavery, abolition or the motivations of soldiers in battle. Instead, they proclaimed it was a:
social cataclysm in which the capitalists, laborers, and farmers of the North and West drove from power in the national government the planting aristocracy of the South. Viewed under the light of universal history, the fighting was a fleeting incident; the social revolution was the essential portentous outcome.... The Second American Revolution, while destroying the economic foundation of the slave-owning aristocracy, assured the triumph of business enterprise.[5]
References
- ^ OCLC 4983475.
- ISBN 978-1-5017-1514-3, retrieved 2023-04-26
- ^ John Higham, History: Professional Scholarship in America (1965) pp 171–211
- ^ Paul Buhle, ed., History and the New Left: Madison, Wisconsin, 1950–1970 (1990)
- ^ Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard, The Rise of American Civilization (1927) vol 2 pp 54, 166
- ^ Schlesinger, Age of Jackson (1945) p 521.