The historiography of the United States refers to the studies, sources, critical methods and interpretations used by scholars to study the history of the United States. While history examines the interplay of events in the past, historiography examines how historians do this, and looks at the "methodology of historical study", according to one course description.[1] When historians examine a subject such as the United States, historiography studies what framework of analysis is used, how historians are interpreting results, as well as which historical journals and approaches are used.[2] Historiography is an examination of the subject of history and historians in a critical and philosophical manner.[3]
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The historian Peter Kolchin, writing in 1993, noted that until recently historians of slavery concentrated more on the behavior of slaveholders than on slaves. Part of this was related to the fact that most slaveholders were literate and able to leave behind a written record of their perspective. Most slaves were illiterate and unable to create a written record. There were differences among scholars as to whether slavery should be considered a benign or a “harshly exploitive” institution.[4]
Kolchin described the state of historiography in the early 20th century as follows:
During the first half of the twentieth century, a major component of this approach was often simply racism, manifest in the belief that blacks were, at best, imitative of whites. Thus Ulrich B. Phillips, the era's most celebrated and influential expert on slavery, combined a sophisticated portrait of the white planters' life and behavior with crude passing generalizations about the life and behavior of their black slaves.[4]
Historians James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton described Phillips' mindset, methodology and influence:
His portrayal of blacks as passive, inferior people, whose African origins made them uncivilized, seemed to provide historical evidence for the theories of racial inferiority that supported racial segregation. Drawing evidence exclusively from plantation records, letters, southern newspapers, and other sources reflecting the slaveholder's point of view, Phillips depicted slave masters who provided for the welfare of their slaves and contended that true affection existed between master and slave.[5]
The racist attitude concerning slaves carried over into the historiography of the Dunning School of Reconstruction era history, which dominated in the early 20th century. Writing in 2005, the historian Eric Foner states:
Their account of the era rested, as one member of the Dunning school put it, on the assumption of “negro incapacity.” Finding it impossible to believe that blacks could ever be independent actors on the stage of history, with their own aspirations and motivations, Dunning et al. portrayed African Americans either as “children”, ignorant dupes manipulated by unscrupulous whites, or as savages, their primal passions unleashed by the end of slavery.[6]
Beginning in the 1930s and 1940s, historiography moved away from the “overt” racism of the Phillips era. Historians still emphasized the slave as an object. Whereas Phillips presented the slave as the object of benign attention by the owners, historians such as Kenneth Stampp emphasized the mistreatment and abuse of the slave.[7]
In the portrayal of the slave as victim, the historian Stanley M. Elkins in his 1959 work “Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life” compared the effects of United States slavery to that resulting from the brutality of the Nazi concentration camps. He stated the institution destroyed the will of the slave, creating an “emasculated, docile Sambo” who identified totally with the owner. Elkins' thesis was challenged by historians. Gradually historians recognized that in addition to the effects of the owner-slave relationship, slaves did not live in a “totally closed environment but rather in one that permitted the emergence of enormous variety and allowed slaves to pursue important relationships with persons other than their master, including those to be found in their families, churches and communities.”
Robert W. Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman in the 1970s, through their work Time on the Cross, portrayed slaves as having internalized the Protestant work ethic of their owners.[8] In portraying the more benign version of slavery, they also argue in their 1974 book that the material conditions under which the slaves lived and worked compared favorably to those of free workers in the agriculture and industry of the time. (This was also an argument of Southerners during the 19th century.)
In the 1970s and 1980s, historians made use of archaeological records, black folklore, and statistical data to describe a much more detailed and nuanced picture of slave life. Relying also on 19th-century autobiographies of ex-slaves (known as slave narratives) and the interviews conducted with former slave interviews in the 1930s by the Federal Writers' Project of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, historians described slavery as the slaves experienced it. Far from slaves' being strictly victims or content, historians showed slaves as both resilient and autonomous in many of their activities. Despite their exercise of autonomy and their efforts to make a life within slavery, current historians recognize the precariousness of the slave's situation. Slave children quickly learned that they were subject to the direction of both their parents and their owners. They saw their parents disciplined just as they came to realize that they also could be physically or verbally abused by their owners. Historians writing during this era include John Blassingame (Slave Community), Eugene Genovese (Roll, Jordan, Roll), Leslie Howard Owens (This Species of Property), and Herbert Gutman (The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom).[9]
Important work on slavery has continued; for instance, in 2003 Steven Hahn published the Pulitzer Prize-winning account, A Nation under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration, which examined how slaves built community and political understanding while enslaved, so they quickly began to form new associations and institutions when emancipated, including black churches separate from white control. In 2010, Robert E. Wright published a model that explains why slavery was more prevalent in some areas than others (e.g. southern than northern Delaware) and why some firms (individuals, corporations, plantation owners) chose slave labor while others used wage, indentured, or family labor instead.[10]
After the American Civil War, northerners and southerners argued as to what the Civil War actually meant. A group of Southern historians, led by former General Daniel Harvey Hill, sought to recast the Civil War, portraying the South as virtuous and the North, especially Abraham Lincoln as hypocritical.
The Turnerians were led by historian Frederick Jackson Turner, who was a historian in late 19th century America. Turner and others saw the history of the United States as progressive rather than cyclical. He also saw the frontier (which Turner noted disappeared around 1890) as crucial to the history, as it was a place of renewal.
The Beardians were led by Charles A. Beard, who wrote a book called An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, and his wife Mary Ritter Beard. Whereas Turnerians tended to believe in geographic determinism, Beardians tended to believe in economic determinism, seeing events as the product of the clash of economic forces.
As part of relief programs to put historians and social scientists to work, historians and social scientists were sent into the field to interview ordinary people. During the Great Depression, the first major attempt to codify slave narratives was made, even though the remaining former slaves were very advanced in age at the time.
During the 1960s and 1970s, historians started to be less interested on "great man" history, and more on social and cultural history. One of the more influential books in American social and cultural history was A People's History of the United States by the historian Howard Zinn. This reflected the disaffection many Americans felt after such events as the Vietnam War and Watergate.
Another important element of American history at this time was the application of critical race theory to historical studies. Many historians of this period saw the history of the United States not as being driven by geography (as with Turner) or by economics (as with Beard), but as a struggle over race and rights. These historians saw American history as a quest to make the ideals put forth in the Declaration of Independence a reality for all Americans. Many of these historians also felt that the inherent racism by white people against people of color was at work in aspects of history all the time.