Immersed in Great Affairs Immersed in Great Affairs Allan Nevins and the Heroic Age of American History GERALD L. FETNER S U N Y P TATE NIVERSITY OF EW ORK RESS Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 2004 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior written permission in writing of the publisher. For information, address State University of New York Press, 90 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, N.Y., 12207 Production by Diane Ganeles Marketing by Michael Campochiaro Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Fetner, Gerald L. Immersed in great affairs : Allan Nevins and the heroic age of American history / Gerald L. Fetner. p. cm. Includes bibliographical reference (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-7914-5973-X (acid-free paper). 1. Nevins, Allan, 1890–1971. 2. Historians—United States— Biography. 3. United States—Historiography. 4. Journalists— United States—Biography. I. Title. E175.5.N48F47 2004 973'.07'202—dc21 [B] 2003045655 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For Leslee Aman of puckish wit and inexhaustible vitality, of superb courage and old-fashioned Scottish virtues, a captive to the fast vanishing Puritan ethos, Allan was no ivory tower academician. He immersed himself in great affairs. —Tribute by Richard Morris at a Memorial Service for Nevins, 11 October 1971, St. Paul’s Chapel, Columbia University . . . I have an intense, almost a passionate conviction that in a great democracy like ours, making way through most troubled waters, history has a broad democratic function to discharge as teacher, guide, and inspirer. —Allan Nevins to Evarts Greene, 17 February 1939 The affairs of men are far too complicated for safe generalizations— except that generalization—and we must step from tuft to tuft through the morass. —Learned Hand to Allan Nevins, 12 September 1951 Contents Preface ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction: Color and Light 1 1. Progressive-era Values and Influences (1890–1917) 9 2. Journalism in Its “Higher Walks” (1913–31) 25 3. Crossroads of American History (1913–27) 45 4. Biography in the “Victorian Manner” (1927–45) 67 5. The Temper of Modern Times (1929–39) 89 6. Capitalism, Power, and the Historian (1934–40) 113 7. America, “Projected into World Leadership” (1940–68) 131 8. History, “Broader, Deeper, and More Mature” (1946–71) 155 Afterword: A“Public Enthusiasm for History” 177 Notes 179 Bibliography 215 Index 235 vii Preface My interest in Allan Nevins as a subject of a biography began in a rather ordinary way. As a graduate student, I had read his study American States During and After the Revolution(1924) and found for the first time an explanation of what was taking place in the newly formed states and commonwealths following the declaration of American independence. Before the Revolution, American history was focused on the thirteen colonies. After the Revolution, historians shifted toward a nationalist perspective, focusing on the weaknesses of government under the Articles of Confederation, the formation of the Constitution, and the creation of the American Republic. Text- book writers seemed little interested in the internal development of the thirteen states. Nevins’s John D. Rockefeller: The Heroic Age of American Enterprise(1940) also engaged my interest as a graduate student because of the wealth of information he provided about the rise of big business and the response of government, themes that fit- ted in with my work in American legal and constitutional history. In both instances, however, I did not connect these studies to any purpose other than that Nevins was recording valuable infor- mation about events and people. But American States was written against the background of the Progressive movement. It was in the states, which served as laboratories of change during the teens and the twenties, as Justice Brandeis remarked in his famous dissenting opinion in New State Ice Company v. Liebmann(1927), that some of the most meaningful reforms were taking place. Nevins showed that similar efforts had been undertaken by the states in the 1780s to work out new models of constitutional, political, economic, and social organization, some of which would find expression in the Constitu- tion and in the policies of the new republic. Similarly, when I read John D. Rockefeller, I did not comprehend the extent to which Nevins was engaged not just in presenting a thesis, but in serving as Rockefeller’s defense attorney, exonerating him for the abuses of the ix
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