A PANORAMA OF U. S. SOCIAL HISTORY
Hesseltine, William B.
A Panorama Of U.S. Social History All The Facts But No Integrated Pattern ' A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LIFE. Edited by Arthur M. Schlesinger and Dixon Ryan Fox. 12 volumes. Macmillan. $30. Reviewed...
...Some decades ago—even, perhaps, as far back as 1883 when the first volume of McMaster's History of the People of the United States appeared—a revolt began against Freeman's dictum...
...Allan Nevins, in The Emergence of Modern America, 1865-1878 discusses the social and economic consequences of the war and traces the growth of Northern industry in an economic revolution which set the stage for the new nation...
...More integrated and less encyclopedic than these is C. R. Fish's Rise of the Common- Man 1830-1850—a balanced collection of essays which manages to penetrate the surface far enough to suggest that new methods of organization—corporations, societies, and associations— were making significant alterations in American life...
...The History of American Life was designed to be as scholarly as the one and as popular as the other...
...Prof...
...ALTOGETHER, these volumes contain a wealth of material on the educational, religious, scientific, literary, and technological aspects of American life...
...The usual American history textbook, to whose dull pages the students of high school and college are assigned, is a political history, retelling governmental events, remapping political and military campaigns, and reciting the deeds of illustrious statesmen and lustreless politicos...
...The 12 volumes are still mere chapters appended to the main story—even the division dates derive their validity from political rather than from social history...
...The authors have presented a strangely static series of "still" pictures: it isn't a "movie," and the bums and strumpets —caught here in "candid" shots—aren't going anywhere...
...The volume is almost out of place in a series whose main theme is life in the United States...
...The series begins with H. I. Priestley's The Coming of the White Man, 1492-1848 which deals with the Spanish, French, and Dutch settlements, and discusses the religious and economic institutions of New France, New Spain, and New Amsterdam...
...Politics—the succession of electoral campaigns, the changes of administrations, the maneuvers of legislators, executives, and judges—made the framework of history and about it historians centered their stories and wrote their books...
...He does, however, show the Civil War in terms of its impact on the common soldier and the common civilian...
...PROF...
...The most misnamed volume of the series is Arthur C. Cole's The Irrepressible Conflict, 1850-1865 which evaluates the different social and economic systems of North and South, discusses reform movements, and surveys the cultural scene, but never demonstrates that the Civil War was inevitable...
...SEVENTEEN years ago this movement for giving social history its rightful place came to a head with the publication of 4 volumes of a new, 12 volumed History of American Life...
...History is not solely past politics, but past politics is certainly a part of the history of American life...
...History deals with meaningful events...
...But, taken altogether, the series does not present an integrated, coherent, and unified picture of American social development...
...Reviewed by William B. Hesseltine f t-r TISTORY is past politics," said the learned Free-JLJ- man in a dictum which has been oft-repeated and sometimes derided...
...And it would, as Editor Fox gleefully quoted a hostile critic as saying, replace "drum and trumpet" history with "bum and strumpet" history...
...Two volumes, Ida M. Tarbell's The Nationalizing of Business and A. M. Schlesinger's The Rise of the City, deal with the concentration of wealth and the concentration of people between 1878 and 1898...
...For a long time, historical scholarship in the United States followed this dictum, exploring the acts of politicians and narrating the deeds of government...
...J. T. Adams traces the evolution of this society from 1690 to 1763, pointing directly to the growing stratification of social classes and the increasing divergence of eastern and western men...
...Two more volumes complete the series...
...Part of the defect of this series lies in the deliberate exclusion of political history...
...The facts are here, but no cohesive element, no interpretative synthesis weaves them into a convincing patterns...
...Harold U. Faulkner, in The Quest for Social Justice 1898-1914, relates how big business grew bigger and labor more belligerent, assesses the role of the automobile on society, discusses the movements for women's and children's rights, diagnoses the ills of life and discusses the cures which were prescribed...
...Finally, P. W. Slosson's The Great Crusade and After, 1914-1928 shows the changes in public opinion before America's entry into the first World War, notes the impact of the war on the American way of life, and the consequences of the war in nationalism, prohibition, and the new, fictitious prosperity of the 1920's...
...Following this, John A. Kraut and D. R. Fox describe the American scene during the next 40 years under the caption: The Completion of Independence...
...This major theme begins with the second volume, T. J. Wertenbaker's The First Americans, 1607-1890, which shows how climate, soil, and geography conspired to transform transplanted Englishmen into a new people...
...The facts of immigration, architecture, and agriculture are here presented, and vice, prostitution, and drunkenness are here as well...
...E. B. GREENE'S The Revolutionary Generation, 1763-1790 surveys the American colonies at the close of the French and Indian war, observing especially the business and religious structure, but giving more than passing attention to such "political" matters as the British imperial system, and the new constitutions of the states and the United States...
...Miss Tarbell concerns herself with industry, railroads, trusts, the tariff, and labor and farmer movements...
...It's not enough for the historian to narrate past facts: he must search for, analyze, and present the eause-and-effect relationships between the facts...
...Social history—the life of the people, their amusements, their houses, their tools, their modes of travel, and their means of making a living—was more significant than political, and constitutional, and military history...
...There are pertinent illustrations, careful footnotes, and critical bibliographies in each volume...
...A Provincial Society grew from the foundations laid in this first century...
...More and more historians began to insist that politics wasn't the whole story: wasn't in fact, even the main part of the story...
...At intervals, the authors interrupt their narrative with a summary catalog of "social" events: religion and the church, economic factors, home life, literature, and the fine arts...
...But it is obvious that the authors are mentioning these matters only through a sense of duty...
...From time to time the several volumes have appeared, until, in recent months, the volume on the years 1790-1830 completed the series...
...Under the able editorship of D. R. Fox and A. M. Schlesinger, and with the advice of A. H. Thorndj'ke and Carl Becker, 12 scholars undertook to write a comprehensive account of America's social development...
...The series is a reference work of rewarding richness...
...Despite the earnest belief of authors and editors in the importance of social history, they have treated their material still as if it were trivia to be mentioned hurriedly and passed over quickly...
...Schle-singer portrays the complexities of life in the urban centers...
...This is the third great, multi-volumed, cooperative series on American history to be published in the last 40 years: The American Nation: A History contained 27 volumes, while the more popular Yale Chronicles had an even 50 titles...
Vol. 9 • April 1945 • No. 15
