John Clark Ridpath, a Case Study

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A Plea for a New Appreciation of Popular History: John Clark Ridpath, a Case Study

Chris Smith*

Baseball buffs, older Americans, and a surprising number of historians often refer nostalgically to the Chicago Cub combination, Tinker to Evers to Chance. Even the most traditional scholars, although they may not be conversant with specific terms or teams, admit that baseball is an integral and influential part of the nation’s heritage and popular culture; and in- creasing numbers of academics and critics hold that the conceptual beliefs of a popular culture must be analyzed and studied in order to understand better a particular age in history. Popu- lar culture, of which baseball is a small segment, penetrates American bones; it surrounds the lives of American citizens even when they are abroad. Norman Podhoretz, editor of Com- mentary, saw the marrow of America in the Fulbright scholars who studied in Europe in the 1950s. After weeks of living “pure” in another culture, the scholars gathered together, ad- mitted mutual passions, and shared in a thousand guilty Amer- icanisms: “the Shadow, and the Green Hornet, . . . James Cag- ney . . . and Glenn Miller, ‘Did You Ever See a Dream Walk- ing?’. . . .”l Professional American historians, however, have been slow to take note of the interest in popular culture that has grown so explosively since the 1950s, when the ideas of Marshall McLuhan began to surface, and slow to realize the potential for serious research in the cultural area. Many historians perhaps listened too long to cues from Van Wyck Brooks who posited only low brow and high brow cultures and from pundits such as

* Chris Smith is assistant professor of history, Arizona State University, Tempe. The Arizona State University Faculty Grant-in-Aid Program helped to support the research for this article, and Carol Lee Smith, Kristina Valaitis, Roberta Bender, Michael Stewart, Paula Wolfe, Joan Jensen, and Margaret Finnerty helped with earlier versions. Norman Podhoretz, Making It (New York, 1967), 85-86. 206 Indiana Magazine of History

Dwight MacDonald and Edmund Wilson who dictated that anything “widely disseminated must be esthetically inferior.”2 Still, a few historians did change their perspective. Quite early in the 1950s George H. Palmer wrote that a better perspective of an age was gained by studying not the literary geniuses but the writers of lesser quality. The geniuses “tell of past and future as well as the present. They are for all times. . . . But in the sensitive, responsive souls of less creative power, current ideals record themselves with ~learness.”~As early as 1967 Donald R. McCoy urged that American historians utilize “underdeveloped sources” for writing about the nineteenth century. He did not use the term “popular culture,” but he pleaded for historians to make use of “religious tracts, weekly newspapers, pulp novels, posters, handbills, burlesque, social and business clubs, cartoons, comic strips, sermons and speeches’’ as e~idence.~Radical and social historians in the 1960s, such as Jesse Lemisch and Herbert G. Gutman, urged the understanding of “the inarticulate” in history and the need to write history from the “bottom up.”5 Although a number of scholars have questioned such ideas, if followed they would certainly help to chronicle the totality of human experience, surely the goal of all democratic historians.6 To approach history from this point of view scholars would have to consider evidence and

* Ray B. Browne, Larry N. Landrum, William K. Bottorff, eds., Challenges in American Culture (Bowling Green, Ohio, 1970), xiv. The work of the Popular Culture Association at Bowling Green has been outstanding in developing a national journal (now in its sixteenth volume) and attracting such renowned scholars as Russel B. Nye, Northrup Frye, and Leslie A. Fiedler to serve in administrative positions. On other developing programs in popular culture areas-although they are very few in history-see John Cawelti, “Popular Culture Programs,” in Ray B. Browne and Ronald J. Ambrosetti, eds., Popular Culture and Curricula (Bowling Green, Ohio, 1970). Quoted in Arthur Mann, Yankee Reformers in the Urban Age (Cambridge, Mass., 1954), 240. * Donald R. McCoy, “Underdeveloped Sources of Understanding in Amer- ican History,” Journal of American History, LIV (September, 1967), 255-70. Some of the writer’s conceptual indebtedness is to this school. For a basic understanding of their theses see Jesse Lemisch, “The American Revolution Seen From the Bottom-Up,” in Barton J. Bernstein, ed., Towards a New Past: Dissenting Essays in American History (New York, 1968), 3-46;Jesse Lemisch, “Listening to the ‘Inarticulate’: William Widger’s Dream and the Loyalties of American Revolutionary Seamen in British Prisons,” Journal of Social History, 111 (Fall, 19691, 1-29;Herbert G. Gutman, “The Worker’s Search for Power: Labor in the Gilded Age,” in H. Wayne Morgan, ed., The Gilded Age: A Reappraisal (Syracuse, 1963), 38-69. David Hackett Fischer, Historians’ Fallacies: Toward A Logic of Histori- cal Thought (New York, 1970), 208; Jack Kirby, “Early American Politic-the Search for Ideology: An Historical Analysis and Critique of the Concept of ‘Deference,’” Journal of Politics, XXXII (November, 1970). 831. Plea for a New Appreciation of Popular History 207 artifacts from all components of American popular culture; yet, despite these new suggestions an obvious and neglected compo- nent of popular culture has been ignored. It is one that affects historians directly: the importance of popular history and popular historians. In their analysis of American historiography of the years 1870-1920, historians have always paid due homage to the double-play rhythm of George Bancroft to Frederick Jackson Turner to Charles E. Beard.’ Perhaps these scholars are “for all time,” but they were not the only influential historians of their respective generations.s Consider a combination less familiar to the students of American historiography, that of Benson J. Lossing to John S. C. Abbott to John Clark Ridpath. These best-selling historians were household names in their day, and since their works were “popular,” their histories may have come closer to recording clearly the historical consciousness of their respective times than do the works of honored historians. If knowledge of the past is important for everyone, then all kinds of interpretations, written and oral histories alike, will help a people know themselves: who they are, what their rela- tionship to their world is, and of what races, institutions, and nations they are comprised. Some current scholars suggest that the collective meaning of history for a people consists of individuals developing a consciousness of themselves in historical time.g If this can be accepted, then the importance of popular histories and popular historians can no longer be ignored, and popular historians such as Lossing, Abbott, and Ridpath have been kept on the bench too long. The popular writers of history were not always overlooked or denigrated. Young Abraham Lincoln read and reread Parson Weems’s Life of Washington. Later in life he believed also that

See for example Richard Hofstadter, The Progressive Historians: Turner, Beard, Parrington (New York, 1968); Michael Kraus, The Writing of American History (Norman, Okla., 1953); Robert Allen Skotheim, American Intellectual Histories and Historians (Princeton, N.J., 1966); Harvey Wish, The American Historian (New York, 1960). 8 Of the well-known historians George Bancroft sold the most copies of his books, but even his sales were not outstanding in comparison to the popular histories. See Russel B. Nye, George Bancroft: Brahmin Rebel (New York, 1945). Even the so-called popularizers of ideas, such as E. L. Godkin’s Nation, had actually a very small circulation. See Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines (3 vols., New York, 1938), 111, 337. W. Stull Holt, “Who Reads the Best Histories?” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XL (March, 1954), 613-19, clearly reveals shockingly low sales of the so-called “best histories” of the twentieth century. Bruce Mazlish, The Riddle of History (New York, 1966), 8. See also John Lukacs, Historical Consciousness; or, the Remembered Past (New York, 1968). 208 Indiana Magazine of History the writings of Herbert Spencer and Charles Darwin were entirely too heavy for the ordinary mind to digest.1° Throughout most of the nation’s first century, average Americans learned about history from the popularizers and from various components in the popular culture. The historic images of Washing- ton, for example, were everywhere in the culture.ll After the Civil War, however, a process of modernization and professionalization began to change all aspects of American life including the historical discipline.12 The American Histori- cal Association was founded in 1884 with only forty or forty-one charter members. As did other new professional organizations, it struggled for its existence and for recognition and cam- paigned for new exacting standards derived mainly from the ideas of American scholars trained in Germany.13 In order to survive, the AHA enticed to membership and high office many of the old filiopietistic historians such as George Bancroft, Ed- ward Eggleston, Captain Alfred T. Mahan, and Theodore Roosevelt, but there was much internal and external bickering between the new and old interpreters of Clio. Roosevelt, for example, eventually termed the AHA “a preposterous little organization” filled with “painstaking little pedants.”14 The end result was a shift in professional standards. A new generation of scholars, trained in graduate schools such as the one that developed at Johns Hopkins University, learned the great dictum that “history is past politics.” The popular historians’ repu- tations faded, and the reading public suffered. Finley Peter Dunne, an astute Chicago newspaperman and the creator of the famous Mr. Dooley, understood a good portion of the problem; the new histories were dull. Dooley said:

lo Richard Current, ed., The Political Thought of Abraham Lincoln (New York, 1967), xxix. IlTwo valuable books survey the intricate process of the interaction of American society and history for parts of the nineteenth century. David Van Tassel, Recording American Past (Chicago, 1960), actually begins with the Puritans and ends with the founding of the American Historical Association in 1884. George H. Callcott, History in the United States, 1800-1860: Its Practice and Purpose (Baltimore, 1970), surveys historical themes in all facets of Amer- ican life. Both are fine surveys, but like all surveys they leave open for further investigation many questions about the average person’s conceptualization of history. This change is best followed in detail in Robert H. Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877-1920 (New York, 1967). Samuel P. Hays, The Response to Indus- trialism, 2885-2924 (Chicago, 1967), earlier sketched out the basic thesis. l3 On the impact of German scholarship see Jurgen Herbst, The German Historical School in American Scholarship (Ithaca, N.Y., 1965). l4 Eking E. Morison, ed., The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt (8 vols., Cam- bridge, Mass., 1951). 111, 707. Plea for a New Appreciation of Popular History 209

I know histhry isn’t thrue, Hinnessy, because it ain’t like what I see ivy day in Halsted Sthreet. If any wan comes along with a histhry of Greece or Rome that’ll show me th’ people fightin’, gettin’ dhrunk, makin’ love, gettin’ married, owin th grocery man an’ bein’ without hard coal, I’ll believe they was a Greece or Rome, but not befure . . . histhry is a post-morten examination. It tells ye what a counthry died iv. But I’d like to know what it lived iv.15 In addition, a new elite class of editors and journalists emerged. Their judgments helped to define further just who were historians and to exclude from consideration popular ones such as Ridpath and Abbott. E. L. Godkin, for example, said of Abbott-a historian with fifty-four volumes and an immense circulation to his credit: I single out Abbott for special hostility, not because I think he is himself or his books worth a half page, but because his histories are fair specimens of a kind of literature of which an immense quantity are issued every year and which the half-educated look on as “solid reading.” I suppose neither you nor I have any idea of the enormous number of respectable people who think his histories solid works and it is sickening to see him treated in the newspapers with great deference as Abbott the historian.I6 Godkin further complained in the same letter of “quack poets, quack novelists and quack historians.” John Clark Ridpath, one of Abbott’s most popular col- leagues, also deserves to be remembered more respectifully today. He was probably the best-known historian of his time, bridging the gap between Parson Weems and Samuel Goodrich of the pre-1860 period and H. G. Wells in the 1920s. Ridpath published six major works of history in over nineteen volumes, nearly every one in excess of five-hundred, often double- columned pages. The scope and breadth of Ridpath’s works, like those of other popular historians, are so vast that the present- day academic historian would not dare to undertake them. One work was simply The Great Races of Mankind in four volumes; another was the History of the World: Being an Account of Principle Events in the Career of the Human Race from the Beginnings of Civilization to the Present Time, Comprising the Development of Social Institutions and the Story of all Nations in nine volumes. Ridpath obviously was not afraid to tackle large subjects. Monographs, biographies, and textbooks num- bered an additional eight volumes; and his published articles, coauthored books, and editorships of “People’s’’ encyclopedias

Finley Peter Dunne, Obseruatwns by Mr. Uooley (New York, 1906), 271. I6 William M. Armstrong, ed., The Gilded Age Letters of E. L. Godkin (Albany, N.Y., 1974), 20-21. 210 Indiana Magazine of History fill a several page bibliography.” Low estimates of the sale of Ridpath’s works credit him with a total of 2,225,000 copies by 1920.18 Considering that part of that total included multivolume works listed as one sale, an awesome number of Rid- path histories were available to the average reader. His name was a household word; mail merely addressed to “Ridpath, the Historian” reached him.ls Ridpath was a product of the Indiana frontier and spent nearly all his years (1840-1900) in Greencastle, Indiana. He served for sixteen years, from 1869 to 1885, as professor of history and belle lettres and later as vice-president at his alma mater, Indiana Asbury (later DePauw) University.2o During this time he published three books, the most important of which was his Popular History of the United States of America, which was intended for the average American: for the man of business who has neither time nor disposition to plod through ten or twenty volumes of elaborate historical dissertation; for the practical man of the shop, the counter, and the library of the poor. It is inscribed to the father, the mother, the son, and the daughter of the American family. If the father, mother, son and daughter shall love their country better-if they shall understand more clearly and appreciate more fully the founding, progress and growth of liberty in the New World-the author will be abundantly repaid.z1 In 1886 Ridpath resigned from the faculty at Indiana As- bury, probably because he did not receive the presidency of the university, and devoted the remainder of his life to his popular histories. Very late in his life, in 1896, Ridpath was an unsuc-

l7 For the most complete Ridpath bibliography see Louis Christian Smith, “John Clark Ridpath-US. Popular Historian: A Social and Intellectual Biog- raphy and an Examination of a Genre of Literature” (Ph.D. dissertation, De- partment of History, University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, 1972). 365-75. lBThis statement is based on a collection of evidence. See, for examples, some specific figures cited in William C. King, ed., Portraits and Principles of the World‘s Great Men and Women with Practical Lessons on Successful Life by over Fifly Leading Thinkers (Springfield, Mass., 1899), 529. Also many newspaper clippings in the Ridpath scrapbook, some with no date and no paper named, give various estimates. These clippings were from newspapers that announced lectures by Ridpath. Ridpath Scrapbook, Freebairn Collection of Manuscripts (Mrs. Virginia Freebairn, 4134 North Pennsylvania, Indianapolis, Indiana). This writer, searching unsuccessfuly for exact figures, has corresponded with all the extant publishers. Obituaries located in the Freebairn Collection also give various estimates. Is See correspondence in the Freebairn Collection. zOAlbert Shaw, “John Clark Ridpath: A Typical Man of the Ohio Valley and Old Northwest,” American Review of Reviews, XI (March, 1895), 294-96. 21 John Clark Ridpath, A Popular History of the United States ofAmerica . . . (New York, 1876), iii. Plea for a New Appreciation of Popular History 211

Reproduced front page of a publisher's pamphlet hp., n.d.1; courtesy Chris Smith. 212 Zndiana Magazine of History

RESIDENCEOF JOHNCLARK RJDPATH, INDIANAASBURY UNIVERSITY, GREENCASTLE

Courtesy Archives of Depauw University and Indiana United Methodism. Greencastle.

cessful candidate for Congress, was active in the Populist movement and party, and served almost two years (1897-1898) as a reform editor of The Arena magazine in Boston. His major contribution, however, stemmed from the influence of his popular writings on the historical consciousness of the average American. The New York Times mourned Ridpath’s death in 1900 and labeled his total sales figures as “immense.” The Times further asserted that the historian’s influence upon the multitude was not “less wholesome and intellectually stimulating because Dr. Ridpath’s literary repute was not positively great among the cultivated few.” It praised Ridpath‘s ability to think clearly, speak fluently, and “write elegantly.” The newspaper added that “thousands and thousands” had derived “immense satis- faction from Ridpath” while “Gibbon, Hume, Freedman, Froude, Parkman, Bancroft, McMaster,” and others remained “but names.’’22

22 New York Times, August 1.4, 1900. Two obituaries appeared, one on the day of death and the other in the Review of Literature on the following Satur- day. Plea for a New Appreciation of Popular History 213

Ridpath’s publishers built his massive sales records almost entirely by subscription, as did most of the other popular historians of his era. The story of the subscription trade indicates that subscription selling was a key factor in the diffusion of knowledge during the nineteenth century. Everett Dick’s classic Sod House Frontier, 1854-1890 makes this point: Subscription books, with the elegant bindings and gold-edged leaves, caught the eye of many who were hungering for knowledge on the intellectually starved frontier. A longing to have a pretty volume in the home or to give the children advantages which parents never had, influenced others to part with their hard-earned cash. Ridpafh’s Hisfory of fhe US. sold in the [eighteen] seventies for prices varying from $5 to $12 according to bindingsz3 Histories like Ridpath’s then, were widely available for the growing number of literate but nonliterary residents of rural and small-town America. For these people, the book agent, who wandered the country roads and small towns taking orders for educational volumes, classics, travel accounts, religious works, and, in many cases, for subscriptions to histories including those of Ridpath, Lossing, Abbott, and Joel T. Headley, repre- sented a major cultural force.24 Christopher Morley told the tale of the subscription book peddler who called on the farmer to suggest a new year’s supply of reading and received the farmer’s comment that he had not yet finished last year’s twenty volumes on Funeral Orations. He stated that it was difficult reading but added that he would be well prepared for any funeral oration he might be requested to The nineteenth-century subscription publishers and book agents had more than a touch of the confidence man in them. Their motto was “Get the Prospect Seated and Keep Talking.” Certainly there were sad financial consequences for the poor

23Everett Dick, The Sod House Frontier (New York, 1938), 487. 24 Walter Sutton urged the importance of studying subscription literature. See his The Western Book Trade: Cincinnati as a Nineteenth Century Publrsh- ing and Book Trade Center (Columbus, 1961), 233. Marjorie Stafford’s thesis is not analytical but does mention the four best-selling historians who sold the overwhelming majority of their works by subscription. See her “Subscription Book Publishing in the United States, 1865-1930” (M.A. thesis, Department of Journalism, University of Illinois, 1943). 91. Also on subscription books see Frank E. Compton, Subscription Books (New York, 1939). which is merely a printing of an after-dinner speech on encyclopedias. A colorful but superficial article on the book agent is Gerald Carsen, “Get the Prospect Seated and Keep Talking,” American Heritage, IX (August, 1948). 38-42. On Lossing see David R. Van Tassel, “Benson J. Lossing: Pen and Pencil Historian,” American Quar- terly, VI (Spring, 1954), 32-44. 25 Christopher Morley, Parnassus on Wheels (New York. 1955). 47-49, 71-72. 214 Indiana Magazine of History family that scrimped to buy the four-volume Ridpath history, believing it to be a better family learning and resource center than the one-volume edition. They did not realize that the publishers only decreased the margins, changed the size of the print, and filled in fancy blank leaves. Larceny also extended to higher ranks than that of the typesetter; volume nine of a revised Ridpath History of the World ended in 1909. Ridpath died in 1900. As do studies of the subscription business and its problems, the work of popular historians of the nineteenth-century as well as that of the current practitioners of the art form need serious scholarly analysis. For close to a century many professional historians have acted as guild masters for the historical discipline. Like Godkin, they continue to speak of popular history as uncritical, superficial, merely colorful, or they label it, with the ultimate dismissal, as being “journalistic.”26They criticize Ridpath and others for not having formal training in the historical discipline. Unlike Bancroft, Ridpath did not have the opportunity to attend a German university; however, what Theodore Mommsen said years ago has special validity when applied to Ridpath’s history: “History is one of those academic subjects which cannot be directly acquired through precept and learning. . . . history is in some measure too easy and in some measure too difficult. The elements of the historical discipline cannot be learned, for every man is endowed with them.”27Carl Becker in the 1930s agreed that “every man is his own historian,” and Daniel J. Boorstin’s recent advice is also pertinent: “I would like to persuade my fellow Americans today that they, too, are primary sources. The trivia of our daily experience are evidence of the most important questions in our lives: namely what we believe to be Popular history, then, should be approached without preconceived professional notions to dis- miss its importance at the first stubbed footnote.2g Popular history can be accepted as history, for it is not solely the province of historians to decide who should be designated a “historian.” In fact, the American people collectively by their

26 Almost any current professional journal contains examples of this attitude. See also Fischer, Historians’ Fallacies, 70-73. Fischer does acknowledge, however, that popular history “is much too serious a business to be left to pop historians and businessmen.” 27 Quoted in Lukacs, Historical Consciousness, 262. Daniel J. Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo Events in America (New York, 1962). 265. Ridpath himself practically abolished the footnote as a scholarly weapon, using it only a few times in thousands of pages of writing. Plea for a New Appreciation of Popular History 215 reading, buying, and listening preferences have an important role in defining just who are the historians and what are their influences. One of the outstanding qualities of popular histories was their amazing ability to remain in print and on bookshelves in the home. Ridpath’s first book appeared in 1874, and the last major edition of his work appeared in 1941. It is dificult to determine the influence of popular books beyond studying the sales figures that established their availability. A works impact on the untold thousands, including the farmer waiting for his day at the funeral podium, can only be presumed, but research concerning the readership of the Ridpath volumes can establish that diverse Americans received historical lessons by reading Ridpath or by personal contacts with him. Among prominent individuals who state their intellectual debt to Rid- path are politicans Huey Long of Louisiana, Albert Beveridge of Indiana, Carl Hayden of Arizona, Governor Frank Lowden of Illinois, President Grover Cleveland, Jefferson Davis, William Jennings Bryan, and the famous populist pamphleteer Coin Harvey. Reformers influenced include Ida M. Tarbell and David Graham Phillips. Literary figures who praised Ridpath include Thomas Wolfe, James Whitcomb Riley, Jesse Weik, and Gen- eral Lew Wallace. Even the founder of the modern John Birch Society, Robert Welch, has acknowledged his interest in Rid- path.30 What did these diverse individuals find in popular history?

30Albert J. Beveridge, David Graham Phillips, and Jesse W. Weik were honor students of Ridpath’s when he was teaching at Indiana Asbury Univer- sity. Weik later would write with William H. Herndon the famous study of Abraham Lincoln that crepced so many of the historical myths around Lincoln. On Ridpath as a teacher see Smith, “John Clark Ridpath,” 101-43, 201-25. Riley, a longtime friend of Ridpath, once said of Ridpath’s scholarly efforts: “his laurel crown should weigh a ton, its every leaf wrought out of the rarest emerald and dewed with dripping diamonds.” James Whitcomb Riley to John Clark Ridpath, April 9, 1892, James Whitcomb Riley manuscripts (Lilly Li- brary, Indiana University, Bloomington). On Huey Long see T. Harry Williams, Huey Long (New York, 1969), 21, 34, 77; and Huey Long, Every Man a King: The Autobiography of Huey P. Long (Chicago, 1964), 339-40. For a study of Carl Hayden see Oren Arnold, “Close-Up: Hayden,” Point West, IV (February, 1962), 18. On Coin Harvey see Richard Hofstadter’s essay, “Free Silver and the Mind of ‘Coin Harvey,’’’ in Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays (New York, 1965), 301. Ida Tarbell’s and Governor Frank Lowden’s endorsements are mentioned in Mark Sullivan, Our Times: The United States, 1900-1925 (6 vols., New York, 1927), 11, 51-55; Andrew Turnbull, Thomas Wolfe: A Biography (New York, 1967), 1-10; on Robert Welch see Peter Schrag, “America’s Other Radicals,” Harper’s Magazine, LCXLI (August, 19701, 38-43. Other glowing endorsements of Ridpaths scholarship can be found in a publisher’s pamphlet entitled America’s Greatest Historian: John Clark Ridpath (n.p., n.d.), which is in the possession of the author. Many educators including the presidents of Smith and Amherst colleges and Brown and Michigan uni- versities are quoted in this pamphlet. 216 Indiana Magazine of History

Popular historians like Ridpath synthesized, often very accurately, the mood of the country. As the American nation in 1876 began to heal the real and psychological wounds of the Civil War, Ridpath published in his Popular History of the United States one of the first historical explanations of the causes of the Civil War that avoided the immediacy and moralism of the slavery issue. Ridpath’s synthesis indicated five general causes of the war: (1) “The different construction put upon the national constitution by the people of the North and South.” (2) “The different system of labor in the North and South.” (3) “The want of intercourse between the people of the North and South and the publication of sectional books.” (4) “The evil influence of demagogues.” (5) “Statesmanship at a low ebb.”31 Ridpath was not necessarily correct in these views; but he does indicate that the country was getting ready psycho- logically to negotiate the Compromise of 1877, and he does quite amazingly anticipate many of the later arguments in Civil War historiography. In regard to other major American historiographical themes, Ridpath in some books seemed at least partially to anticipate Turner’s frontier thesis of 1893. Ridpath wrote that “on the border of the primeval forests” in the primitive frontier farmhouses and settlements, “the spirit of liberty pervaded every breast.” The American frontiersmen’s love of freedom was most “intense,” and “hostility to tyranny” was ‘Edward Eggleston, popular writer, novelist, Hoosier superb, and historian, has only recently achieved the recognition he deserves as father of American social history.33 Ridpath, too, wrote interesting and vital social history. According to Ridpath, history was simply “the movement of the human race inter- preted . . . the facts and events of human life arranged on the

31 John Clark Ridpath, Popular History of the United States (Cincinnati, 1876), 486-87. Sylvia Daughty Fries, “The Slavery Issue in Northern School Readers,” Journal of Popular Culture, IV (Winter, 1971), 723. Fries used Rid- path’s schoolbook edition as one of the several in her survey, and she noted his handling of the causes of the Civil War in a general way but failed, rather surprisingly in view of the place of publication, to realize the ramifications for the popular mind of a book like Ridpath’s. 32 Ridpath, Popular History of the United States (New York, 1876), 229. 33 Merle Curti, Human Nature in American Historical Thought (Columbia, Mo., 1968), 62. Plea for a New Appreciation of Popular History 217

lines of the causes that produce them.”34All events of the hand and mind were important, from the building of “ice huts . . . to poetry.”35 He devoted long detailed chapters, particularly in his multivolume works, The History of the World and Great Races of Mankind, to the daily life of the people. Science, often neglected as a subject for historians, received necessary attention. The impact of important inventions were discussed. In Rid- path’s histories of the United States long chapters on the Cen- tennial celebration at Philadelphia and on other world’s fairs showed the author’s devotion to events that had captured the imagination of the American people. Ridpath even prepared a special edition of a history of the United States for the Chicago World Fair in 1893. It seems evident that he and other popular historians were writing “new history” long before James Har- vey Robinson’s famous call to the profession at the beginning of the twentieth century.36 The great value of taking popular history seriously lies simply in the insights gained about the popular mind and broad intellectuality of the period. The popular historians gen- erally, and Ridpath certainly, were given to verbosity and could not avoid filling pages with their own obiter dicta, which in themselves provide insights. For example, Aryanism was rampant in Ridpath’s writings. He felt that the Aryan had “the noblest achievements” and was the prime “discoverer of causes.”37 The Chinese, however, a favorite Ridpath target, stood “dazed” before ma~hinery.~~He further accused Chinese science of assigning the center of intelligence to the stomach. Finally, Ridpath warned missionaries that their children should not remain in the East too long or they might develop slanted eyes. Sexist statements abounded in popular history as well as in professional history. Henry Northrup’s Life and Deeds of General Sherman announced that Sherman “formed

34 John Clark Ridpath, “Is History a Science?” The Arena, XVIII (Novem- ber, 1897), 695. 35 Ibid. Daniel J. Boorstin, The Americans: The National Experience (New York, 1965), certainly agrees with this approach. See particularly pages 10-20 and the section “Search for Symbol,” 327-90. 36 Callcott, History in the United States, 83-107. John Clark Ridpath, United States: A History (Columbian Edition; New York, 1893). Also James Harvey Robinson, The New History: Essays Illustrating the Modern Historical Outlook (New York, 1912). 37 John Clark Ridpath, Great Races of Mankind: An Account of the Ethnic Origin, Primitive Estate, Early Migrations, Social Evolution and Present Condi- tions and Promises of the Principal Families of Men, Together with a Prelimi- nary Inquiry on the Time, Place and Manner of the Beginning (4 vols., Cincin- nati, 1893), I, 253. 381bid., IV, 184. 218 Indiana Magazine of History impressions as rapidly as a woman.”39 Ridpath’s populist re- formism showed often and vividly; he called the House of Lords “a dilapidated roost for croaking birds of the middle ages.”40 Popular history often anticipated later concerns of historians. Violence, for example, has only recently received much deserved attenti~n.~~Popular history certainly dealt with violence. Such works as Our Country in War, Kings of the Battlefield, Military Heroes of the United States, The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World are only a small sample of the many that showed the fascination with war and violence that may have helped their readers prepare themselves for the wars and violence of the twentieth century.42 Ridpath was also con- cerned with violent episodes, especially those in military history. He devoted pages to obscure battles and encouraged in his readers a worship of heroic, military figures. Ridpath’s descrip- tion of General James A. Garfield’s wild ride to join General George H. Thomas’s forces at Chickamauga was classic.43 Complete books on assassinations and assassins were rushed into print. Ridpath did one on Charles Guiteau, and his Gar- field has over one hundred pages of macabre medical bulle- tin~.~~All of this suggests the emotional impact of events on a

38Henry Davenport Northrup, Life and Deeds of General Sherman (Waukesha, Wis., 1891), 125. 40 John Clark Ridpath, Life and Times of William E. Gladstone . . . (New York, 1898), 10. For the most complete treatment of American violence see Hugh Davis Graham and Ted Robert Gunn, eds., The History of Violence in America: Historical and Comparative Perspectives (New York, 1969). Also Richard Max- well Brown, Strains of Violence: Historical Studies of American Violence and Vigilantism (New York, 1975) is an excellent study. Murat Halstead, Our Country in War and Our Relations with all Nations (n.p., 1898); W. Sanford Ramey, Kings of the Battle Field; Comprising a Series of Biographical Sketches of the Most Distinguished Military Leaders, of Europe and America, Who Have Contributed Their Life Services to Establish and Perpe- trate the Freedom of Their Fellow-Men and the Sacred Honor of Their Country (Philadelphia, 1884); Hartwell James, Military Heroes of the United States from Lexington to Saratoga (Philadelphia, 1899). Edward S. Creasey, The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World . . . (New York, n.d.). 43 John Clark Ridpath, The Life and Work of James A. Garfield (Cincin- nati, 1881), 155-57. Allan Peskin’s Garfield (Kent, Ohio, 1978), 208-209, still relies heavily on Ridpath’s account. It is the most recent and scholarly biography of Garfield. 44 See John Clark Ridpath, The Life and Trial of Guiteau the Assassin: Being a Sketch of His Early Career; His Dastardly Attack upon the President; the Conduct of the Murderer in Prison; His Autobiography; the Strange Drama of the Court Room; the Testimony of Experts and Celebrated Witnesses; the Progress of Judicial Proceeding; Striking Scenes and the Trial and the Verdict and THE SENTENCE OF DEATH (Cincinnati, 1881); Ridpath, Life and Work of James A. Garfield, 517-639. Plea for a New Appreciation of Popular History 219

society. The human experiences that are distilled in the reac- tions of a populace to a war, to important diplomatic changes, or to assassinations need to be studied. By ignoring the spate of popular history books issued after a prominent death-for example, after the Garfield and William McKinley assassinations-r after imperialistic ventures or major wars, historians overlook avenues of insights into the mass mind. These volumes were particularly evident around the time of the Spanish American War and the rise of the American empire.45 Sources such as these would be particularly valuable for those trained in psychohistory. Along with other popular historians of the nineteenth century, Ridpath anticipated the interest of contemporary society in charismatic leadership. For example, he indicated that history “sent out her tallest and best sons to explore the line of march, and to select the spot for the next camping ground.”46 In another instance Ridpath quoted: When some great work is waiting to be done, And Destiny ransacks the city for a man To do it; finding none therein, she turns To the fecundity of Nature’s woods, And there, beside some Western hill or stream She enters a rude cabin ~nannounced.~~ According to Ridpath, this particular Destiny found its “Mother of the Future”-Mrs. Garfield! With all the Ridpath talk of Destiny, it is no wonder that a young Huey Long, who was a book agent for the Ridpath volumes, developed a life-long fascination for Ridpath‘s rea- sonings and interpretation^.^^ Secretary of State John Hay’s remark about the cosmic tendencies of the American nation has been noted by many, but the popular historians such as Rid- path inculcated a generation with cosmic causations. Ridpath explained: “There is certainly an irresistible cosmic force which draws men to the West.”49 Also, long after Bancroft’s death and

l5See, for example, Trumbull White, Our New Possessions (n.p., 1898); Murat Halstead. The Life and Achievements of Admiral Dewey from Montpelier to Manila (Chicago, 1899); Samuel Fellows, Life of William McKinley, Our Martyred President (Chicago, 1901). 46 John Clark Ridpath, James Otis, the Pre-Revolutionist: A Brief Znterpre- tation of the Life and the Work of a Patriot (Chicago, 1898), 8-9. 47 Ridpath, Life and Work of James A. Garfwld, 11. 48 Long, Every Man a King, 339-40. See Williams, Huey Long, 21, 34, for an account of the Long family’s reading of the Ridpath history volume by volume. 49 Ridpath, History of the World, 11, 399. 220 Indiana Magazine of History after the new scientific historians scorned such interpretation, the popular historians continued to insist that a benevolent and virtually American God directed the nation’s destiny and progress. In regard to style, the subscription histories and writings made literary padding almost a tradition. The rule was the longer the book, the larger the price. Mark Twain, who sold most of his books by subscription and felt any other way was intended merely for private circulation, complained of the agony necessary to expand a 300-page idea to a 600-page Ridpath’s memorial biography of James G. Blaine did not really need to say that “the sea is full of inspiration and grandeur,” nor was it vital to know that Blaine’s coffin rested on beds of roses, violets, ferns, and appropriately arranged palm leavess1 Nevertheless, Ridpath’s age and readers demanded a flowery style and many digressions, and he responded eagerly. Socrates was described as having a “magnificent ugly face” but one with “eyes that darted their Promethean fire into souls of mystery and scorched the wings of falseho~d.”~~Ridpath’s con- temporaries praised his style. The Terre Haute Express said: There is recognized in all his writings a high plain of purity and fascination which must be appreciated and indeed it has been remarked by not a few that his use of language is simply phenomenal in that it commands the whole attention of the ripest scholar, and yet is so simple in style that the average reader or school child cannot fail to be attracted and fas~inated.~~ Popular history also made use of illustrations, drawing on the new printing technology which had been available since the Civil War. Although their major purpose was to enhance the attractiveness of the volumes, the pictures themselves reveal a great deal about the readers for whom they were intended.54 Ridpath’s books sometimes contained hundreds of illustrations per volume, all of which reflected the violence of history, the cult of heroic leadership, and the minutiae of daily life; and in an age of Victorian repression of sexuality, Ridpath frequently managed to titillate his audiences with pictures of bare- breasted women. Thomas Wolfe in his autobiographical Look Homeward, Angel perhaps best reveals the effects of Ridpath’s use of illustrations:

~~ ~ Justin Kaplan, Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain (New York, 1966), 62. st John Clark Ridpath, General Seldon Connor, and other eminent friends of Mr. Blaine, Life and Work of James G. Blaine (Philadelphia, 1893), 220, 229. 52 Ridpath, History of the World, 11, 588. 53 Terre Haute Express, clipping in Ridpath’s scrapbook, Freebairn Collec- tion. 54 An interesting work along this general line is Richard Rudisill, Mirror Image: The Influence of the Daguerreotype on American Society (Albuquerque, 1971). Plea for a New Appreciation of Popular History 221

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The books he delighted in most were three huge calf-skin volumes called Ridpath’s History of the World. Their numberless pages were illustrated with hundreds of drawings, engravings, wood-cuts: he followed the progression of the centuries pictorially before he could read. The pictures of battle delighted him most of all. Exulting in the howl of the beaten wind about the house, the thunder of great trees, he committed himself to the dark storm, releasing the mad devil’s hunger all men have in them, which lusts for a darkness, the wind, and incalculable speed. The past unrolled to him in separate and enormous visions; he built unending legends upon the pictures of the kings of Egypt, charioted swiftly by soaring horses, and something infintely old and recollective seemed to awaken in him as he looked on fabulous monsters, the twined beards and huge beast-bodies of Assyrian kings, the walls of Babylon. His brain swarmed with pictures-Cyrus directing the charge, the spear-forest of the Macedonian phalanx, and splintered oars, the numberless huddle of the ships at Salamis, the feasts of Alexander, the terrific melee of the knights, the shattered lances, the axe and the sword, the massed pikemen, the beleaguered walls, the scaling ladders heavy with climbing men hurled backward, the Swiss who flung his body on the lances, the press of horse and foot, the gloomy forests of Gaul and Caesarian Although popular historians and their histories influenced many Americans, criticism of the genre abounds. The most negative evaluations center on the accusations that popular historians were not original scholars, that they borrowed too heavily from others, that they failed to use their sources criti- cally, and that they put too little emphasis on the use of primary sources. Some were undoubtedly guilty, as some professional historians were and are, but Ridpath, along with Los- sing and others, made diligent use of primary sources. Ridpath, for example, read Latin and Greek, and his History of the World shows careful attention to the ancient sources. Like Lossing, Ridpath traveled widely to many historic and geo- graphic areas throughout the world searching for records, and in some areas of methodology he was something of a pioneer. In his biographies of Garfield and Blaine, long before the vogue for oral history, Ridpath made use of interviews with partici- pants in historical events;56 and in his article, “The Mixed Populations of Chicago,” for the Chautauquan in 1891 Ridpath showed immaginative uses of census data and an awareness of ethnicity in history. Further, the article broke new ground in stressing the role of the city in history at a time when most

55 Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel: A Story of a Buried Life (New York, 1929), 61-62. 56Ridpath, Life and Work of James A. Garfield, and Ridpath, Life and Work of James G. Blaine. 226 Indiana Magazine of History historians were following the dictum of the Johns Hopkins school that history was merely past politi~s.~’ Along with other prominent historians, such as Francis Parkman and John Bach McMaster, Ridpath might be accused of plagiarism by modern scholars. As George H. Callcott notes in his History in the United States, however, a reliance on accepted authorities and/or literary masterpieces was the com- mon procedure among many popular writers. Scholars whose investigations attempt to prove nineteenth-century plagiarism often stop with the plagiarized fact and show themselves not sufficiently understanding of the literary tenor of the times.5s That some plagiarism existed should not prevent the study of popular histories, particularly as valuable social evidence for understanding various eras in American history. An eventual complete survey of popular history and historians will support, and possibly add a dimension to, Henry Nash Smith’s analysis of the fusion of “concept and emotion,” a technique Smith used in understanding myth and symbol in literat~re.~~The general reading public often accepted any historical writing as complete truth because of its factual base. The study of myths that were vividly portrayed in popular history as fact might help to account for the depths of Anglo-

57 John Clark Ridpath, “The Mixed Populations of Chicago,” Chautauquan, XI1 (January, 1891), 483-93. 581t is an obvious and easy point to prove Ridpath’s over-reliance on Edward Gibbon, both in conceptual matters and in detail. For a classic example see almost any of Ridpath’s volume 111 of his History of the World (9 vols., Cincinnati, 1910), which deals with Rome. Specifically, see Ridpath, History of the World, 111, 314, and Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (3 vols., New York, 1948), I, 82-83.In this case Ridpath manufactures a few flourishes to Gibbon’s already exciting details. For example, Ridpath adds five additional gladiator contests for the dissolute Commodus and implies that people loved to see their emperor in combat. (This would perhaps reflect the “waving the bloody shirt” tendency of post-Civil War American politics and help ready a populace for Theodore Roosevelt’s bellicosity.) Gibbon says the populace was disgusted. On other exposes of plagiarism Eric Goldman’s John Bach McMaster: American Historian (Philadelphia, 1943) is perhaps the only one that is justified. McMaster’s career lasted well into the twentieth century when the forms of literary plagiarism were not acceptable. Articles such as Richard C. Vitzthum, “The Historian as Editor: Francis Parkman’s Recon- struction of Sources in Montcalm and Wolfe,” Journal of American History, LIII, (December, 19661, 471-87,seem to miss the point that literary and stylis- tic borrowings were acceptable practices in the nineteenth century. Callcott’s History in the United States seems to take the right attitude by looking beyond plagiarism as part of the literary tenor of popular writers to the messages the writers imparted. 59Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth (Cambridge, Mass., 1950), particularly chapters on dime novels, pp. 99- 135. Plea for a New Appreciation of Popular History 227

Saxonism, Social Darwinism, sexism, antisemitism, anti- orientalism, and other emotion-charged thought patterns in the American culture of the era. The stereotyping and mythic cre- ation of archetypal figures and institutions as history, which certainly occur in Ridpath’s work, must have had some influence on popular beliefs and public opinion; and other historians have called attention to the importance of myths, such as America as the Garden of Eden and America as the redeemer nation, in their writings.6o However, little or no attempt has been made to explain satisfactorily the methods by which these ideas reached the popular mind, if they did, or how they might have been changed and transformed in the process by popular writers.61 Numerous other insights could be gained by recognizing the importance of popular history as a source of information about the culture. Lossing, Headley, and Abbott await biog- raphers; other practitioners such as Edward Everett Hale and Murat Halstead, who have been studied in modern time, need further analysis concerning their histories. Popular magazines, such as Henry Dawson’s Historical Magazine (1857-1875) and Magazine of Western History (1884-1893, need study, as do the historical accounts often found in the daily and weekly papers of the period 1870-1920. A thorough history of the subscription book trade would contribute much. Analyses of the quantity and type of books sold by subscription with reference to some of the techniques of the sociology of literature would be valuable. Travel accounts by various domestic and foreign commentators,

6u See, for example, Richard W. B. Lewis, The American Adam: Innocence, Tragedy, and Tradition in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago, 1955); Ernest Lee Tuveson, Redeemer Nation: The Idea of America’s Millennia1 Role (Chicago, 1968); David W. Noble, The Eternal Adams and the New World Garden (New York, 1968). 61 For example, one of the best explanations of Social Darwinism, Richard Hofstadter’s Social Darwinism in America (Philadelphia, 1944), does not really delve into the popular mind. Other concerns in addition to the study of Amer- ican myths might benefit from a thorough survey of popular history. For example, William A. Williams, The Roots of the American Empire (New York, 1969). which delineated an open marketplace theory in an attempt to explain the midwestern and American imperial attitudes of the late nineteenth century, needs to be placed in a societal framework. The rising popularity of volumes of History of the World, History of Civilizations, Story of the Great Races of Mankind, History of Empires, and so on, which poured from the nation’s presses, particularly from the midwestern publishing centers of Cin- cinnati and Chicago, might partially explain how the “distended society,” to use Robert Wiebe’s term for the era, might have begun to develop a world view and consciousness. This newly aware society, then, could begin to understand the concept of a world marketplace if Williams’s findings are correct. 228 Indiana Magazine of History always popular in American reading tastes, contained much historical speculation. One good example is the work of John L. Stoddard whose volumes were often the only contact in many homes of anything of a historical nature.62 Considering the popularity and tremendous numbers of nineteenth-century almanacs, which hung on a hook in almost every kitchen, little research has been done on them as literature, particularly in regard to the historical data and stories found in them.63 A synthesis of the social and historical ideas expressed in the extremely popular county histories should be possible for each state. Concerning the populist movement, a wealth of “People’s” encyclopedias and titles in “People’s” literature provide an ave- nue to a literary populism that seems ignored. All of these pertain to the years from 1870 to 1920. Other eras have the same unlimited possibilities. Future results of these investigations should provide historians with greater depth and ob- jectivity when they discuss various components of the American culture and that elusive concept of a national character. Ridpath and other popular historians of the late nineteenth century construed their roles as historians in a broad and societal manner, and most of them were free from the strictures of institutions. Ridpath was a teacher, reformer, orator, politician, editor, and journalist, and he believed that the historian’s most important duty was to engage in a dialogue with the American people. He believed in the intellectual importance of the average American. The role of the historian is often construed much more narrowly today by professional American

62 John Lawson Stoddard, John L. Stoddard‘s Lectures; Illustrated and Embellished with Views of the World’s Famous Places and People (10 vols., Boston, 1905). 63 Much work has been done with colonial almanacs and, of course, with the famous Farmer’s Almanacs. See, for example, Marion Barber Stowell, Early American Almanacs: The Colonial Weekday Bible (New York, 1976), and George L. Kittredge, The Old Farmer and His Almanack: Being Some Obser- vations on Life and Manners in New England a Hundred Years Ago (Boston, 1904). James Harvey Young in The Toadstool Millionaires: a Social History of Patent Medicine in America before Federal Regulation (Princeton, 1961) used nineteenth-century patent medicine almanacs extensively but did not analyze them as popular literature. In addition to the Farmer’s Almanac, there were hundreds of others. Sixteen million copies of Ayer’s Almanac sold in one year. See Milton Drake’s extensive bibliography, Almanacs of the United States (New York, 1962). Russel B. Nye, a distinguished scholar of American popular culture, says almanacs were “the most widely-distributed medium of general information and until the spread of journalism, the most influential.”Russel B. Nye, The Unembarrassed Muse: The Popular Arts in America (New York, 1970). 92. Plea for a New Appreciation of Popular History 229 historians and seems to allow for less diversity.64 Oscar Handlin worried in 1971 that the historical discipline was “in crisis” and had surrendered history to what he called prop- agandists, television commentators, politicians, dramatists, social engineers, novelists, and journalist^.^^ What Handlin and others did not understand is that American society and the American people today continue to help decide just who are the historians.66 Popular historians of the mass media, such as Alex Haley and Gerald Green, have important messages and should not be ign~red.~’Their following in the mass audience also demonstrates that the need for history in society still remains large, as large as it was for the subscription audiences of the nineteenth-century popular histories. New generations of historians, assisted but not dominated by the new social sciences, must be urged to keep humanistic visions in their histories. Walt Whitman said it simply in the nineteenth century: Who are you indeed who would talk or sing to America? Have you studied out the land, its idioms and men? Are you really of the whole People? Have you vivified yourself from the maternity of these states?“s In the present age, Ralph Ellison’s “invisible man” shouted in the midst of a race riot an important question in an age of

The conceptualization of the roles of historians has changed from the days of FranCois Voltaire through Leopold von Ranke to those of the institu- tional professionals of the twentieth century. Perhaps attention should be given again to George Bancroft’s delineation of three types of scholars. The lowest kind sought only personal advancement; a higher group, the “scholar- politician,” sought to advance nations. In a broad and deep sense these can be called popular historians. The highest scholars according to Bancroft were the ones of genius who unfolded “truths of universal importance.” These genuises will always survive and prosper whether they be the William Faulkners, the Charles and Mary Beards, or the Karl Marxes. Unfortunately, institutionalism in the twentieth century has forced many toward the first category. The best discussion of this belief is in Nye, George Bancroft, 93-94. On historians in politics see Walter Laqueur and George L. Mosse, eds., Historians in Politics (London, 1974). 65 Oscar Handlin, “History: A Discipline in Crisis,” American Scholar, XL (Summer, 19711, 447-65. =Daniel J. Boorstin about the same time wondered if the nation had “wandered out of history.” Daniel J. Boorstin, “A Case of Hypochondria,” Newsweek, LXXVI (July 6, 1970), 28. ST A good article that concentrates on television history is William H. Cohn, “History for the Masses: Television Portrays the Past,” Journal of Popu- lar Culture, X (Fall, 1976), 280-90. 68 Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (New York, 19651, 349. 230 Indiana Magazine of History professionalization: “Where are the historians today?”69Popular history and popular historians, past or present, can no longer be ignored. In them is found the richness of new material and the power of the “whole people.”

BsRalph Ellison, Invisible Man (New York, 19721, 332.