Historians against history; the frontier thesis and the national covenant in American historical writing since 1830

206 Pages·1965·10.1 MB·English

by  David W Noble

DAVID W. JVOBLE
HISTORIANS
against HISTORY
The Frontier Thesis and the
National Covenant in
American Historical Writing
since 1830
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRESS
Minneapolis
© Copyright 1965 by the University of Minnesota. All rights reserved
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AT THE
LUND PRESS, MINNEAPOLIS
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 65-22811
PUBLISHED IN GREAT BRITAIN, INDIA, AND PAKISTAN BY THE OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS, LONDON, BOMBAY, AND KARACHI, AND IN CANADA BY
THE COPP CLARK PUBLISHING CO. LIMITED, TORONTO
Second Printing
FOR LOIS
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PREFACE
1 WOULD like to think that this book expresses a growing tradi-
tion among a community of scholars working in the history of ideas. My
first interest in the history of historical thought came from the teaching
of E. Harris Harbison and my reading in the writings of Carl Becker. I
was further influenced by Herbert Butterfield's analysis of English his-
toriography and Paul Farmer's research in French historiography. My
concept of the American climate of opinion began to take shape at the
end of the 1940's, influenced by the historians Eric Goldman, Stow Per-
sons, Merle Curti, and Ralph Gabriel and by the literary students of
American culture Leslie Fiedler, Lionel Trilling, and Henry Nash Smith.
Since 1950, I have learned much from a younger group of scholars,
Richard Hofstadter, David Levin, Charles Sanford, Leo Marx, John
Greene, John William Ward, Marvin Meyers, Henry May, Rush Welter,
Loren Baritz, Robert Berkhofer, Jr., Gushing Strout, and many others.
I thank them all for making this study possible. I have special thanks for
my close friends in American cultural history, Arthur A. Berger, Hyman
Berman, and Joseph Kwiat. I am very grateful to Jeanne Sinnen for
her excellent editing of the manuscript. I cannot adequately express my
debt to my wife whose help was absolutely indispensable to the accom-
plishment of this project.
D. w. N.
June 1965
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
1 FLIGHT FROM FEUDALISM: THE NEW WORLD AND
THE PURITAN COVENANT 3
2 GEORGE BANCROFT: NATURE AND THE
FULFILLMENT OF THE COVENANT 18
3 FREDERICK JACKSON TURNER: THE MACHINE
AND THE LOSS OF THE COVENANT 37
4 CHARLES A. BEARD: INDUSTRIALISM AND THE
COVENANT RESTORED 56
5 CARL BECKER: EUROPE AND THE ROOTS OF THE
COVENANT 76
6 VERNON LOUIS PARRINGTON: THE COVENANT
AND THE JEFFERSONIAN JEREMIAD 98
7 BEARD: THE COVENANT THREATENED BY
INSTITUTIONAL POWER 118
8 BECKER: THE COVENANT REPLACED BY
CIVILIZATION 139
9 DANIEL BOORSTIN: BLACKSTONE AND THE
CONSERVATION OF THE AMERICAN COVENANT 157
10 THE END OF THE COVENANT AND THE BEGINNING
OF AMERICAN HISTORY 176
NOTES 179
INDEX 189
Historians against History