History in the United States, 1800-1860 Callcott, George H. Published by Johns Hopkins University Press Callcott, George H. History in the United States, 1800-1860: Its Practice and Purpose. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1970. Project MUSE. doi:10.1353/book.67850. https://muse.jhu.edu/. For additional information about this book https://muse.jhu.edu/book/67850 [ Access provided at 26 Sep 2021 02:06 GMT with no institutional affiliation ] This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. HOPKINS OPEN PUBLISHING ENCORE EDITIONS George H. Callcott History in the United States, 1800–1860 Its Practice and Purpose Open access edition supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities / Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program. © 2019 Johns Hopkins University Press Published 2019 Johns Hopkins University Press 2715 North Charles Street Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363 www.press.jhu.edu The text of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. CC BY-NC-ND ISBN-13: 978-1-4214-3063-8 (open access) ISBN-10: 1-4214-3063-0 (open access) ISBN-13: 978-1-4214-3064-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-4214-3064-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-1-4214-3104-8 (electronic) ISBN-10: 1-4214-3104-1 (electronic) This page supersedes the copyright page included in the original publication of this work. History in the United States 1800—i860 History in the United States 1800-1860 Its Practice and Purpose George H. Callcott The Johns Hopkins Press Baltimore and London Copyright © 1970 by The Johns Hopkins Press All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America The Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, Maryland 21318 The Johns Hopkins Press Ltd., London Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 74-88115 Standard Book Number 8018-1099-X Contents Preface vii I. The Intellectual Origins of Romantic History The Enlightenment Heritage European Romanticism 6 The American Tradition 13 The New History 19 11. The People Discover the Past 25 Art and Literature Historical Societies 35 Journals, Government, Genealogy, and Preservation 45 III. History Enters the Schools 55 The New Curriculum 55 Methods of Teaching History 62 IV. The Writers of History 67 Who They Were 67 Why They Wrote 72 V. The Subject Matter of History 83 United States History 86 vi CONTENTS Universal History 90 Ancient, Medieval, and Modern History 93 Biography 97 Political, Military, and Social History loi VI. Antiquarianism in the Age of Literary History 109 VII. Methods of Historical Writing 121 Scholarship and Honesty 121 Scholarship and the Quotation Mark 128 Style 139 Feeling 147 VIII. Interpreting the Past 151 Essence and Causation 153 Morality 156 National Character /66 IX. The Social Uses of History 175 In Support of Principles 177 Morality, Religion, and Patriotism 18o Memorializing the Worthy 189 X. The Personal Uses of History 193 In Quest of Pleasure 193 Ingredients of Pleasure 198 XI. History as Ultimate Reality 205 XII. The Decline of Romantic History 215 The Problem of Contradiction 217 The Problem of Law 219 Biographical Note 227 Index 233 Preface In this book I have tried to explain the remarkable rise of his­ torical consciousness in the United States during the early nine­ teenth century, to define the standards by which history came to be judged, and to analyze the reasons men of that generation turned to the past. Relying much on biographies and critical analyses of leading historians which have appeared in recent years, I have attempted to venture a step beyond, to explain the meaning of the past itself rather than the contents of particular works. In part, then, this is intellectual history, the anatomy of the idea of history; and in part it is social history, a study of men’s need for the past and their use of it. · Americans have always been strangely preoccupied with the future and fascinated with the past. Especially from about 1800 to around i860, as the future glowed especially bright, a surge of interest in the past swept the young nation. An extraordinary portion of the nation’s creative energy went into writing history, but equally important was the sudden prominence of history in the schools, the rise of historical societies, the movement for preservation of historical sites and documents, the fashion for genealogy, and the prominence of historical themes in architec­ ture, painting, sculpture, the theater, fiction, poetry, and oratory. America was finding its identity in history— in the classical and V ili PREFACE aboriginal past as well as in its own colonial heritage. Even more, the country’s first generation with leisure for sustained cultural activity was finding personal fulfillment in history. Out of this regard for the past developed a highly coherent set of subjects, themes, methods, and uses of history which reflected the preoccupations and aspirations of the nation. The American idea of history combined Hegelian philosophical assumptions and Romantic literary techniques with immediate concerns about morality, God, liberty, progress, and the national mission. Ameri­ cans were especially convinced of the utility of history, its social use in supporting accepted values, its personal utility in extend­ ing human experience, and its philosophical utility in pointing men toward an ultimate reality which was closely akin to melan­ choly. The idea of history possessed a unity which helped give the Romantic period coherence. However, when the structure weakened at any one point— when historical controversy ap­ peared— the entire edifice collapsed together. Many people have aided me. Professor Herman Ausubel of Columbia University stimulated my interest in historiography, and Professor Fletcher M. Green of the University of North Carolina guided me in developing this topic as a dissertation. Among the many colleagues who have offered valuable criticism, I am especially indebted to Professor David H. Flaherty of the University of Virginia] The Southern Fellowships Fund and the General Research Board of the University of Maryland provided financial assistance. Portions of this work in earlier form have appeared in the New England Quarterly, the Historian, the American Quarterly, and the American Archivist. Most of all, for their helpful criticism and aid, I am grateful to my parents, Professor and Mrs. W. H. Callcott, and to my wife, Peggy. G. H. C. University Park, Maryland History in the United States 1800-1860 The Intellectual Origins of Romantic History u r i n g the first decade of the nineteenth century Americans were gradually maturing a set of attitudes toward the past Dwhich paved the way for the great historians they so eagerly awaited. In part the new attitudes developed from the Enlighten­ ment, in part from Romantic currents which were sweeping in from abroad, and perhaps in largest part from developments in America itself. By the 1830’s the young nation was confident of its approach to the past and immensely proud of its rising histo­ rians— George Bancroft, Washington Irving, John Lothrop Motley, William H. Prescott, Francis Parkman, Jared Sparks, and scores of others. The Enlightenment Heritage Eighteenth-century philosophers established history as a mean­ ingful form of knowledge, formulated a scholarly method, and introduced the concept of progress. Enlightenment historians, putting this philosophy into practice, established history as a majestic literary expression. Most important of the philosophers, at least in retrospect, was the Italian rationalist, Giambattista Vico. Though almost unknown in the United States, Vico’s principles filtered into the country through the familiar works of 2 INTELLECTUAL. ORIGINS OF ROMANTIC HISTORY Montesquieu, Voltaire, Condorcet, David Hume, William Rob­ ertson, and Edward Gibbon. Vico argued that history was meaningful only when historians broke away from mere annals of events to describe the essence of a society. When the historian grasped the totality of man’s achievement— his laws, manners, institutions, and culture— then the past became understandable and historical knowledge useful. Vico called upon historians to cultivate a self-conscious method — a “scientific” method— for arriving at truth about the past. The method really only amounted to a conscious effort at ob­ jectivity. The historian must ask whether a fact were reasonable, if it were relevant to a larger truth, if witnesses were reliable; he must be aware of his own biases and his own standard of judg­ ment.1 Vico’s theory of history as the essence of society objectively described found its best application in Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws (1748), and in Voltaire’s Age of Louis XIV (1751), both widely read in America. Boldly, Voltaire subordinated details to the significant essence of the whole culture. “After having read the descriptions of three or four thousand battles,” he wrote, “I do not find myself one jot wiser than when I began; because from them I learn nothing but events.” He promised his readers “only that which deserves to be known: the spirit, manners and customs of the principal nations.” 2 Although Voltaire only partially measured up to his promise, and eighteenth-century American chroniclers like Thomas Hutchinson and David Ramsay fell even farther behind, at least they had established an ideal for the nineteenth century. Still, while essence history was a great contribution to historical thinking, its limitations stimulated subsequent Romantic thinkers 1 Thomas Goddard Bergin and Max Harold Fisch, trans, and eds., The New Science of Giambattista Vico (New York, 1961); Benedetto Croce, The Philos­ ophy of Giambattista Vico, trans. R. G. Collingwood (New York, 1913), espe­ cially pp. 268-78; Pardon E. Tillinghast, Approaches to History (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1963), pp. 117-46. “Cited in Trygve R. Tholfsen, Historical Thinking: An Introduction (New York, 1967), pp. 102-3.