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History Wars: The Declaration of Independence

July 27, 2026
by Peter Feinman
Declaration of Independence by John Trumbull

History is a battleground. By history, I am not referring to simply an abstract concept of an academic discipline. I am referring to people, buildings, and artifacts which are the physical manifestations of history. The people involved include historians, archivists, librarians, preservationists, archaeologists, teachers, museum curators and their organizations, and cultural heritage among others.

The attack from without comes from Donald Trump, President of the United States. He launched his assault in March 2025. It continues to this very day such as with his direct attacks on the Smithsonian and his indirect attack on historic buildings and landscapes through revisions to Section 106.

This history is always in a reactive state. It never knows when Trump will attack, where, and in what way. Its position is a little like that of an abused victim waiting for the next assault by the abuser.

The war from within the history community derives from Christian Nationalism and the Woke.

I propose to write about the history wars in a series of blogs.

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

This series begins with the Declaration of Independence, the birth certificate of the Country.There is a disconnect between what the general public knows about the Declaration and the American Revolution and what teachers teach about it. In the space here, I will examine two recent books.

The Greatest Sentence Ever Written by Walter Isaacson (2025)

The focus of this book is the second line of the Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

Isaacson calls that sentence “the mission statement for what the country can be.” He wants people “to have a slightly deeper appreciation for a sentence most of us know almost by heart, but haven’t reflected on what each word means and how we can live up to the aspiration.”

Franklin replaced Jefferson’s “sacred” with “self-evident” to “create a new type of nation in which rights were based on rationality, not on the dictates of dogma or religion.” When Adams added “endowed by their Creator,” we can serve the balancing act between the role of divine providence and rationality in the creation of our rights.

He claims the Founders knew the phrase “all men are created equal” was aspirational.

Unspoken is the reality of the need to compose a document that would pass.

Later these words (and Lady Liberty) became a vision of this country that drew millions to it. They became the basis of what is called the American Dream.

(Quotations are from an interview in the Harvard Gazette, November 21, 2025).

The American Revolution and the Fate of the World by Richard Bell (2025)

The American Revolution and the Fate of the World by Richard Bell

This book won the Book of the Year award at the annual conference of SHEAR (Society for Historians of the Early American Republic) (July 18,2026). I attended to conference and award presentations.

Frequently American historians refer to the I-95 or Accela Corridor American Revolution. In the public mind the events from Lexington and Concord (MA) to Yorktown (VA) define the geographic range of the war. In scholarship that range has expanded first to Atlantic history, then to Continental history including the southeast and western United States, and finally to global history.

Bells deliberate choice to use the world “global” is intended to expand the consciousness of Americans. The American Revolution included events in India and the Indian ocean even after Yorktown. The Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution provided some of the inspiration for the Indian revolt against British imperialism.

Indeed the ripple effects of the American Revolution impacted the British, French, and the Spanish empires. He cites the work of David Armitage who identified over 100 nations who have had declarations of independence in some form. The United States led the way in insurrections against imperial powers and we were successful one.

SHEAR CONFERENCE

At the SHEAR conference, the opening session on July 17, 2026, was “ Roundtable: The American Revolution Around the World.” Bell was a participant in the session.

Zara Anishanslin, University of Delaware, used the famous painting of Washington Crossing the Delaware as a way to teach the American Revolution precisely because of its inaccuracies. In other words, there is a gap between what people think they know about the American Revolution and what the scholars think. Therefore there is a need to bridge the gap between the popular images and the academic understandings.

One could add Trumbull’s painting of the ratification of the Declaration which culminated a more raucous setting than the stiff sedate painting shows.

I asked her if anyone had produced a book compiling the different paintings that define the American Revolution to the general public. She said, “No.” Here is where there is an opportunity for SHEAR: to have monthly webinars for teachers and the public on the famous paintings that create the popular images of the American Revolution.

Tom Cutterham, University of Birmingham (Great Britain) observed that many people in England didn’t simply support the American Revolution, they wanted one to transform England as well.

The final session of the conference on July 19, 2026, was “Roundtable: Writing about the Declaration of Independence 250 Years Later.” Here five scholars spoke about their recent books on the Declaration of Independence. During the free-flowing conversation, one of them observed that large swaths of the American people do not hold the Founding Fathers or the document they created in high regard. As an example consider this exchange from the Democratic Senate primary campaign on July 29, 2026

Just before the Fourth of July, Abdul El-Sayed, the son of Egyptian immigrants and a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Michigan, looked out at a few hundred people at a rally at a community college in Detroit and talked about the country’s momentous birthday.

“We’re on the cusp of our 250th anniversary,” he said.

“Boo,” someone scoffed from the front of the crowd, and Dr. El-Sayed stopped to make clear his disapproval.

“We don’t boo,” he said. (“Michigan Progressive in Senate Race Thrills and Rattles Democrats,” Michael Kruse, The New York Times, 7/29/26.)

Here we may observe the dilemma the history community in reaching out so Americans don’t boo but cheer.

Ignore everything about the Declaration of Independence being an inspiration to the world.
Sally Hemings. The Founding Fathers were hypocrites. The United States is a racist, imperialist genocidal country.

Ignore everything about the Declaration of Independence being an inspiration to millions of immigrants.
Sally Hemings. The Founding Fathers were hypocrites. The United States is a racist, imperialist genocidal country.

Ignore everything about Abraham Lincoln redefining the country based on what had happened four-score and seven years ago.
Sally Hemings. The Founding Fathers were hypocrites. The United States is a racist, imperialist genocidal country.

Sally Hemings alone negates everything that was written above about the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence as forces for good in the world.
America is a racist, imperialist, genocidal country. Case closed.

Here we see the challenge to the history community to speak out to the general public and teachers about the global impact of the Declaration of Independence as a force for good in human history. Is it up to the challenge?

 

 

American History Literacy in a Time of Historic Change

March 19, 2025
by Peter Feinman

Recently the subject of history literacy was raised. I don’t recall the exact circumstances or by whom. Every day I delayed in posting this blog, it seems as if another moment in history had occurred. Thinking about these historic times was the impetus for a need to organize my thoughts and not approach everything piecemeal. I needed to develop a blueprint for the coming weeks and months ahead to help me organize my thought and create order out of chaos. So here is my plan for future obviously subject to change and ignoring “non-historic events.”

TEACHING SOCIAL STUDIES

Blog #1 The AHA 2020-2022 study on the teaching of social studies
Blog #2 The presentation at the AHA conference in January 2025 on the study
Blog #3 The Executive order on the teaching of patriotic history (Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling)
Blog #4 The reaction to #3

Other items may pop up during this time period. These include

1. The Christian nationalism curriculum in Oklahoma
2. Jan. 6 in the curriculum in Oklahoma
3. The demise of the Department of Education and its staffing
4. The impact of the Gulf of America in the classroom – an AP reporter was kicked out of White House briefings because the AP uses Gulf of Mexico. What does this mean for textbooks and teaching? Think of how successful the Woke have been on banning the use of “Indian.” Think of the Palestinian maps that don’t show Israel.
5. The decline in reading scores
6. The inability to read a book
7. The revival of such Gilded Age terms and personalities as manifest destiny, tariffs, the Panama Canal, William McKinley, and Teddy Roosevelt. For the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (SHGAPE) we are entering what should be a banner year strangely enough.
8. The centennial of the Scopes Trial, the subject of the book Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial that Riveted a Nation by Brenda Wineapple.
9. The bicentennial of the Erie Canal with Wedding of the Waters in New York harbor on November 4, 1825.
10. The bicentennial of the diluvial decade when there was a vigorous and robust search for proof of Noah’s flood. The Erie Canal became part of that search
11. The separation of powers

This is a very fluid situation. How are social studies teachers supposed to keep up when current events are historical? How is the American public supposed to keep up?

THE AMERICAN SEMIQUINCENTENNIAL

Blog #1 2024 Year-end report on the national and state (New England and New York), and New York City
Blog #2 developments since the beginning of the year and planed for the rest of the year. The new year has seen a veritable explosion of activity. !775 marks the year when things begin to happen that are remembered. With the Second Continental Congress, the capture of Fort Ticonderoga, the failed attempt to make Canada the 14th colony, the Knox Expedition transporting cannons to Boston with the Lafayette Bicentennial of his arrival at Bunker Hill, there is a lot going on besides Paul Revere and Lexington and Concord.
Blog #3 The Executive Order Celebrating America’s 250th Anniversary recognizing that any funding likely is too late for 2025 and probably will be restricted to July 4, 2026 and trying to determine its relationship to the existing U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission.

ACADEMIC ORGANIZATIONS AND THE 250th

Blog #1 AHA conference in January
Blog #2 The winter issue of the Journal of the Early Republic by SHEAR dedicated to the 250th
Blog #3 OAH conference in April
Blog #4 Scholarship on the American Revolution including geographical, chronological, imperial, and cultural debates – this is a mushrooming topic within the academic community which highlights the disconnect between what scholars and the general public are talking about. This is a huge topic to say the least. One lesson concerns what these history organizations are and are not doing to bridge the gap between the general public, teachers, and the professional historians.
Blog #5 Kathleen DuVal – So far she has had a banner year. On January 6, 2025, at the opening of the annual conference of the AHA she had an op-ed piece in the New York Times entitled “Enough with the Land Acknowledgement’s.” At the conference she was a panelist in the session “Why You Can’t Teach American History without American Indians: Films and Resources for the Classroom.” I had not yet read the op-ed piece so I could not ask her about it. Now she has been awarded a Bancroft Prize for her 752-page book Native Nations: A Millennium in North America.

CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS NON-250TH 

I am only able to attend the AHA and OAH conferences and later SHEAR in July. I realize that there may be other national conferences of interest (NCHE, NCPH).

CIVICS AND NEWSPAPERS

My local weekly paper recently closed. There are too many newspaper deserts in the country making people dependent on social media and national cable stations. I feel the loss right now with the upcoming mayoral and trustee elections in the Village. This closure has created a gap in the social fabric as was mentioned by several of the candidates in the LWV forum held this week. Ironically, one of the candidates and eventual winner is the former editor of the newspaper. Trying to keep track of the ten candidates without the newspaper is a bit of a challenge.  This blog will examine what is going in the world of vanishing newspapers including what some high schools are doing.

HISTORY IN THE NEWS

These blogs reflect when history becomes part of the national political conversation. Since this is a history blog these political blogs will not necessarily be distributed to the IHARE history list although they will be on the IHARE website.

This blueprint is a very ambitious one and the odds are I will not fulfill it. It is difficult to keep track of all the developments. My newspaper clippings are a chaotic mess. The plan is more organized and structured on the computer screen than its actual implementation. In any event, it should keep me busy for months to come.

The Semiquincentennial: End of the Year Update (Part I)

December 27, 2024
by Peter Feinman
Wikipedia (By Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv)

The America 250th is already upon us. As previously reported 1774 was the year of the First Continental Congress. It was the year when Americans began to take sides as Loyalist or Rebel. The vote for the selection of delegates to the First Continental Congress marked the beginning of America’s first civil war as well.

Now we are moving into the anniversary of 1775. It was the year of the Second Continental Congress beginning in May also in Philadelphia. This time the Congress followed the confrontations at Lexington and Concord. The battle was engaged.

One might think that the planning for the commemorations of these events would be in full swing. The national commission chartered by Congress would be going full blast to lead America in a discussion of where people stood just as it would have done in 2024. I guess one could say the presidential election served the same purpose. As to what in the incoming president will do in 2025 or in the subsequent years remains to seen.

In the meantime, here is a snapshot of where things stand.

Part I

At the national level

At the regional level in New England

Part II: At the state level in New England:

Connecticut

Maine

Massachusetts

Rhode Island

Vermont

Part III:

New York State

New York City.

Many local municipalities are planning events, too. There are too many to list here. I am confining myself to my own state and region and where I receive email notifications about what is going on even if I cannot attend them. Some states are doing a terrific job like Connecticut and others are abysmal like New York. And the less said about New York City the better.

American Association for State and Local History (AASLH)

Join us for 250 Con, a galvanizing and unifying moment for the history field as we enter the final year of planning for the upcoming 250th anniversary of the United States!

With less than two years to go, now is the time for history doers to finalize plans for the 250th, an occasion that could transform both our field and society. Major initiatives are already underway across the country, but the Semiquincentennial will only be as impactful as the strength of our collaboration. Attend 250 Con to learn about national and state planning opportunities, identify actionable ways to participate, and join your peers in generating enthusiasm for this once-in-a-generation event.

250 Con kicks off with a keynote conversation featuring the leaders of the Library of Congress, the National Archives and Records Administration, and the Smithsonian Institution. The two-day event will also include “lightning rounds” of presentations about major 250th initiatives, breakout sessions for networking and learning, and a virtual meet-and-greet with state 250th commissions.

AMERICA250

The federal commission still exists with another 18 months or so. So far it has not had much discernible effect on the local level. And since the American Revolution continues until November 25, 1783, Evacuation Day, at this point history organizations can expect no support for events after the July 4, 1776 celebration. Still it keeps plugging away now that its internal problems appear to have been resolved even if funding is limited.

America250 and United States Conference of Mayors Launch Task Force Recruiting Cities for 250th Anniversary Planning

Washington, D.C. –  America250, the official nonpartisan entity charged by Congress with planning the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the Semiquincentennial, today announced the addition of the United States Conference of Mayors (USCM) to its cohort of America250 National Resource Partners. Charged with engaging mayors to participate in Semiquincentennial efforts, USCM has launched the America250 Task Force to recruit America250 Cities and expand 250th anniversary planning at the local level.

Through the America250 Task Force, led by Chair and Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker, America250 and USCM will invite cities across the country to officially become “America250 Cities” and commit to celebrating and commemorating the 250th anniversary. The Task Force will also convene mayors to participate in planning sessions to discuss programming for the 250th-anniversary celebration. USCM Task Forces are created by the President of the Conference to address individual issues requiring the immediate attention of a select group of mayors.

Currently, 54 states and territories have announced Semiquincentennial Commissions, which are entrusted with planning statewide commemorative activities. Bringing USCM on board as a National Resource Partner and launching the America250 Task Force to establish America250 Cities is part of a concerted effort to engage more Americans at the local level.

“To plan the largest and most inspiring celebration and commemoration, reaching as many Americans as possible, we need the help of our cities and State and Territory Commissions,” said America250 Chair, Rosie Rios. “The United States Conference of Mayors’ America250 Task Force will serve as our boots on the ground, helping with planning and programming at the local level. I’m thrilled to welcome the United States Conference of Mayors as a National Resource Partner. I look forward to working together to establish America250 Cities to amplify our efforts and engage communities nationwide in a unified commemoration of this historic milestone.”

“The U.S. Conference of Mayors is pleased to be a national resource partner as we prepare to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence,” said Tom Cochran, CEO and Executive Director of The U.S. Conference of Mayors. “We look forward to working closely with the Commission to bring communities across the country together to celebrate this pivotal moment in our nation’s history.”

National Resource Partners are a select group of expert nonpartisan, nonprofit organizations tasked with helping to elevate and scale America250 programming. As a National Resource Partner, the United States Conference of Mayors will serve as an extension of America250, convening and activating cities across the country in a coordinated, unified effort to build up to the 250th. Other America250 National Resource Partners include Meridian International Center, National Women’s History Museum, American Association of State and Local History (AASLH), iCivics, More Perfect, National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), Washington National Cathedral and Points of Light.

Remembering the American Revolution at 250 (Journal)

In 2026, the United States will celebrate both the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the formal start of the American Revolution. There will be a host of events throughout the country to commemorate these momentous milestones, but also deep soul searching about the meanings of the revolution, independence, and liberty, and the proper way to commemorate these events. To participate in these conversations, Remembering the American Revolution at 250 is bringing together historians, public historians, and other practitioners from around the world to consider this moment in American history in an ongoing collection of research essays, reflective essays, and lesson plans.

For the first issue click here

National Park Service

The National Park Service is accepting applications for the fourth round of funding for the Semiquincentennial Grant Program. This grant program was created by Congress in 2020 to support the preservation of sites and structures listed on the National Register of Historic Places that commemorate the founding of the nation. Grants support the physical preservation of a broad variety of cultural resources associated with the country’s semiquincentennial (250th anniversary).

Diplomatic History (Journal of)

CFP: 1776 in Global Context: Diplomatic History

To mark the 2026 Semiquincentennial of the American Revolution, the journal Diplomatic History seeks article proposals that engage with any aspect related to the international, transnational, transimperial, continental, or global dimensions of the American Revolution, including its origins or aftermath. The articles will be published in a special forum in 2026.

Society for Historians of the Early American Republic (SHEAR)

The current issue of the Journal of the Early Republic is dedicated to the Sesquicentennial. It is intended as a resource for teachers, students, and the general public. Left unclear is how that audience would even know about this journal and what SHEAR will be doing to disseminate this information. I mentioned these concerns to the President Elect when I saw her at the annual conference of the American Historical Association (which will be the subject of a future blog).

New England Museum Association

NEMA Annual Conference 2024

We the Museum: Toward a ‘More Perfect’ Vision for our Changing World

November 6th – 8th, 2024 Newport, Rhode Island

As we approach America’s 250th anniversary, now is a time to reflect on both the origin of America’s museums, and consider the field not only in its current state, but where it has grown from the past, and what it can be in the future. While museums predate the United States by thousands of years [sic], it is important for us as museum professionals to take stock of the developments in our field and plot a course of action for positive change. Just as America was by no means perfect at its inception, neither was the museum field. While the U.S. Constitution seeks a “more perfect union,” how can we work towards a “more perfect” museum world? How can we be better, if perfection is out of reach?

 This year, NEMA asks you how we can become ‘more perfect’ in a rapidly shifting landscape? What does it take to do this work well? How can museums help change and perfect our worldview? Who are the players? What is at stake? What do we as professionals, as a society, as an audience, as individuals require to carve out a vision for museums that supports the world we inhabit?

The next blog will survey the developments in the individual New England States.

Hold a Mock First Continental Congress

June 4, 2024
by Peter Feinman
One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind (https://constitutioncenter.org)

We are in the midst of the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution but one would hardly know it. While people remain fixated on the big pre-1776 events like the Battle of Lexington and Concord, specific actions leading to July 4, 1776, already were happening. Specifically, for example, the Orangetown Resolutions passed on July 4, 1774. How’s that for a coincidence.

The Orangetown (NY) Resolutions were part of a widespread movement of town and county protests of the Intolerable Acts passed by the British Parliament in 1774. The very event that precipitated what became the First Continental Congress, initiated grassroots efforts that helped define 1774 as the year when America’s First Civil War began. People (adult, white, males) were asked to take a stand as Loyalists or Patriots. Once having done so the die was cast although no one knew it yet.

The text of the Orange Town Resolutions reads as follows:

At a meeting of the Freeholders and inhabitants of Orangetown and Province of New York, on Monday, the fourth day of July, 1774, at the house of Mr. YOAST MABIE in said town, the following resolves were agreed upon and passed, viz:

1st, That we are and ever wish to be, true and LOYAL subjects to his Majesty George the Third, king of Great Britain.

2nd, That we are most cordially disposed to support his MAJESTY and defend his crown and dignity in every constitutional measure, as far as lies in our power.

3d, That however well disposed we are towards his majesty, we cannot see the late acts of PARLIAMENT imposing duties upon us, and the act for shutting up the port of Boston, without declaring our ABHORRENCE of measures so unconstitutional and big with destruction.

4th, That we are in duty bound to use every just and lawful measure to obtain a REPEAL of acts, not only destructive to us, but which, of course, must distress thousands in the mother country.

5th, That it is our unanimous opinion that the STOPPING of all exportation and importation to and from GREAT BRITAIN and the West Indies would be the most EFFECTUAL method to obtain a speedy repeal.

6th, That it is our most ardent wish to see concord and HARMONY restored to England and her colonies.

7th, That the following gentlemen, to wit: COLONEL ABRAHAM LENT, JOHN HARING, Esquire, Mr. Thomas OUTWATER, Mr. GARDNER JONES, and PETER T. HARING, may be a committee for this town to correspond with the City of NEW YORK, and to conclude and agree upon such measures as they shall judge NECESSARY in order to obtain a REPEAL of said acts.

A copy of the Orange Town Resolutions was sent to me in the spring 2024 Orangetown Crier of the Orangetown Historical Museum and Archives. It will sponsor a reading of the resolutions on
July 4 2024 at the ‘76 House, the still-standing restaurant from the American Revolution, along with the Tappantown Historical Society and the Historical Society of Rockland County.

Here is an example of what one community is doing at the grassroots level on the anniversary of events in 1774. The people were still loyal to the king but were in opposition to the duties imposed by Parliament.

Similar events must have occurred in multiple communities throughout the land although not necessarily on July 4 1774. What are you doing about them?

Here is where historical organizations and American Revolution scholars can take the lead. We know that the federal commission and national organizations working on the 250th are of limited use here. If you are fortunate enough to be in a state with a state commission, perhaps the commission is taking the lead in promoting 1774 events leading up to the First Continental Congress. If your state commission is not taking any action, perhaps your county 250th commission is. In this case a town, there only are six in Rockland County, and the county history organization are the one’s taking the lead. This celebration will require some research to determine exactly when and where something comparable occurred in your community and who were the people who were involved.

THE MOCK CONTINENTAL CONGRESS

It would be nice if a mock Continental Congress was held in Philadelphia in 2024. That would be a big undertaking and would raise problems about all the current states which were not colonies back then.

One alternative is to hold a mock Continental Congress in the legislative chambers of your state. It is quite possible that there already is some high school civics program that brings high school students to the capitol from throughout the state. That infrastructure could be built on to create a mock Continental Congress next fall during the new school year.

Mary Beth Norton, the author of 1774, has suggested three topics of debate for such a congress:

1. how to resist Britain that is whether to use nonimportation or not, and then non-exportation as well. Those are two different issues and people voted differently on them,

2. the other thing I would say would be how to enforce any agreement that the continental Congress makes. In short, whether to set up special committees or not, or whether to rely on existing governmental organizations.

3. Another debate topic that could be good would be to have them debate whether the colonies would have any possibility of fighting GB successfully if war started. There’s some excellent loyalist writing in that point they could draw on.

I offer these as guidelines for such a mock congress.

If getting access to the state legislative chambers in the fall is not feasible, perhaps a college could serve as well … or multiple colleges to involve as many students as possible.

If you do wish to hold such a mock congress, then now is the time to contact the schools in your area. If you first approach them in September for an event in October, then it will be too late. Plant the seed now.

The way things are going, 1774 is going to pass by without any national or statewide activities as if the First Continental Congress didn’t exist. Yes, the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic (SHEAR) will have roundtable of July 19 on the First Continental Congress at the semiquincentennial for the scholars in attendance at its annual conference. Yes it will follow with a private tour on July 20 of Carpenter’s Hall where the First Continental Congress was held.. But these are hardly national events. Mock congresses where students debate on being a Loyalist or a Patriot in October when the 2024 Presidential election heats up surely will bring home the mood and atmosphere of the First Continental Congress more than any academic paper, journal article, or book will. Imagine televising those debates.

The 1824 Bicentennial: The Four Party System

May 21, 2024
by Peter Feinman
1824 Elections (Wikipedia)

I first raised the issue of the 1824 bicentennial in a blog from 2016:

The Presidential Election of 1824: Lessons for Today September 9, 2016

I was writing about the annual SHEAR conference (Society for the Historians of the Early American Republic), July 21-24, 2016, in New Haven. The specific reason was a session on the book 1824 RECONSIDERED: A ROUNDTABLE ON DONALD RATCLIFFE, THE ONE-PARTY PRESIDENTIAL CONTEST: ADAMS, JACKSON AND 1824’S FIVE-HORSE RACE. Depending on how you count the candidates this time around, we have exceeded that number although of the candidates may be considered minor.

In the Q&A period, I asked what SHEAR’s plans were to commemorate the bi-centennial of the election of 1824 given the disarray/collapse of the current two-party system. I ended the blog with:

Maybe for the bicentennial of 1824 we should have a presidential election where candidates are entitled to their own facts and a public that doesn’t know better or how to think. Come to think of it, why wait?

At that time, I had not anticipated COVID, the COVID vaccine, or the stolen election. Nor did I realize that the 2024 election would be part of our Third Civil War and battle to determine whether we continued our journey/experiment to the 250th anniversary of the birth of the country. Still, all in all, I correctly anticipated that now defines the House of Representatives and the declaration by one candidate that if he loses again there will be another insurrection….and if he wins there will be divine retribution.

THREE-PARTY SYSTEM (Is America Ready for a Three Party System?)
December 5, 2022

The unsung 1824 Bicentennial is fast upon us. Soon it will be only a year away. The year has been a personal favorite of mine. It has been the subject of blogs since 2016.

The year marks the transition from the First Party System to the Second Party System. It was the end of the Virginian-dominated American Revolution era and start of the Jacksonian dominated one. The Federalists and the Republicans were out and the Whigs and Democrats would be in. The new system would last until the demise of the Whigs and the emergence of the Republicans under Lincoln. It also was a time of Senate giants like Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, and Daniel Webster.

Putting aside all the talk about the Civil War today, the squabbling over the Speaker position in the House of Representatives suggests we may be in for a de facto three party system in the next session of Congress.

America is not designed for a three-party system. In Europe and Israel, multiple parties are par for the course. After every election, the jockeying for power begins by the various parties. Which one can form majority? That is not the American way where the two-party system is sacred.

Until now. Right now the House of Representatives beginning in January is divided into three groups:

213 Democrats
182 Republicans
40 Freedom Party.

No one of the groups has the magic 218 votes needed to form a majority and elect a speaker. There has been talk of multiple ballots in an unprecedented situation. Perhaps Kevin McCarthy will deal for the position he has coveted. Perhaps he will drop out when he realizes he cannot win and a host of new candidates will emerge. Perhaps cross-party deals will be made. We are in uncharted waters.

Voters are concerned about jobs, inflation, the economy and the threat to democracy. By contrast the Freedom Party agenda consists of:

Relitigating the 2020 election
Investigating Hunter Biden
Investigating the House Select Committee
Impeaching Joe Biden.

None of these issues are on the radar of the Real Republicans.

In other words, even if McCarthy wins the battle to become Speaker, his problems are only just beginning.

All in all, this blog from 2022 has proved to be quite accurate. McCarthy did win the battle but his problems were just beginning. Soon he would be out not only as Speaker in the House of Representatives but out of the House all together.

The MAGAs would vigorously pursue their investigation agenda. So far they have nothing to show for it except looking like idiots. But never say never, they keep trying and will continue to do so since they have no sense of shame.

Now the governing of the House has become one where Democrats and Real Republicans have joined together to get things done. Through various mechanisms and procedural tricks of the trade, they have banded together to pass legislation. They even saved the position of the current House speaker to the chagrin of Marjorie Taylor Greene. Her attempt to chastise the wayward Republicans and remove Mike Johnson only revealed the limitation of power of the crazy wing of the Republican Party. Each time Real Republicans and Democrats band together it becomes easier for the next time.

The next result, the remainder of this Congressional term should be smooth sailing except perhaps in some committees/subcommittees.

THE FOUR PARTY SYSTEM

The current three party system obscures the existence of a four party system. I live in the 16th Congressional District of New York, ground zero for the war between Regular Democrats and Woke or Progressive Democrats.

Full Disclosure: I have known George Latimer for many years. He has helped arranged funding for the education programs in IHARE. Most recently he declared August 18, 2024, Lafayette Day in Westchester County at my request for the bicentennial of Lafayette’s return visit to the United States in 1824-1825 which included one day in Westchester.

The primary battle between the incumbent Representative and the incumbent County Executive who seeks the position of the former has been hot and heavy. I am not going to cite chapter and verse of the positions of the two candidates on October 7 and the war against Hamas. I do, however, note, its importance to the primary confrontation. It is expressed in the language of political discourse, the funding for the two candidates, and the switch of voters from independent and Republican status to Democrat to vote in the Democratic primary.

Latimer is a traditional Democrat who rose up through the ranks in local, county, and state positions before assuming an executive position instead of a legislative one. During these times he has been practically everywhere at events and meetings and touts his personal experience as an Irish-Italian kid in a Black neighborhood in Mount Vernon where he grew up.

Bowman, by contrast, was a middle school principal from the Bronx who had no previous political experience before defeating a Democratic incumbent himself. He is a frequent guest on MSNBC which also differentiates him from his opponent.

This battle between the Regular Democrat and the Woke Democrat should not be viewed as the one and only battle between the Progressives and the Real Democrats. Given the time and money being spent to defeat Bowman in the primary, a victory by him would signify that the times they are a changing in this reliable Democratic district. And even if Bowman loses, one may anticipate more and more fissures in the Democratic Party in the House of Representatives if the Democrats prevail in the November elections.

In November, it will not only matter which party wins, but which wing wins: Regular Democrats, Regular Republicans, Woke, or MAGA. Even if there is no formal separation, the days of the two-party system in the House may be over.

History Scholars versus David McCullough: The American Revolution

January 30, 2022
by Peter Feinman

The post continues the examination of the multi-authored section of the Journal of the Early Republic (JER 41 Summer 2021) dedicated to David McCullough’s The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West. This new feature called Critical Engagements represents an attempt by the Society of Historians of the Early American Republic (SHEAR), the publisher of the journal to determine:

1. how his book would fare if it had been written as an academic book subject to peer review
2. what can academic historians learn from authors of such popular “airport” or “(white) Fathers’ Day” books about how to reach a larger audience.

In the previous post, I presented:

1. guidelines for general public speaking by Connecticut State Historian Walt Woodward
2. an example of the way to alienate the general public by telling (white) people their ancestors were monster.

Before delving into the analysis conducted by JER of McCullough, I would like to turn to a topic that highlights some of the issues involved – the American Revolution.

YOUR COUNTRY IS ILLEGITIMATE

Lately we have heard a lot about our President being illegitimate. The loser of the election claims that the winner stole the election. This is an ongoing news story and may well be until the bicentennial of the election of 1824.

In the meantime, the legitimacy of the country itself is not at stake in the political machinations. Such considerations are not always true in the academic arena. It is not unusual for people to describe the United States as a country born in sin, perhaps, even two sins. Here one may observe the clash between wanting to alienate the general public versus wanting it to repent (and make amends).

Let me begin by going to the wayback machine for a post about a conference in 2013 called “The American Revolution Reborn.”  The post is from my blog Rebirthing the American Revolution (November 29, 2016) citing another publication about it:

The interview on October 27 was by senior editor Samuel Hughes. It appears in the November/December issue of The Pennsylvania Gazette and follows.

The question from the audience bordered on the subversive. It came during “The American Revolution Reborn,” a 2013 conference organized by Michael Zuckerman C’61, emeritus professor of history, and Patrick Spero G’04 Gr’09, librarian and director of the American Philosophical Society, which hosted the event. (The conference also yielded a book of the same title, co-edited by Spero and Zuckerman and published last month by the University of Pennsylvania Press.)

“Somebody—clearly one of the non-academics—got up and said, ‘Look, all of you are full of nuance, full of contradictions of prevailing wisdom, but what do you really think? Was the Revolution a good thing or a bad thing?’” Zuckerman recalls. “He was sensing that the mood was overwhelmingly disenchanted, anti-heroic, anti-nation-building, and he was getting a distinctly negative, sour take on the Revolution. He wanted to know, ‘After all this, do you think we shouldn’t have done it?’”

Eventually Pulitzer Prize-winning Harvard historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich offered a response, but she “refused to give a bottom-line judgment—said it was the wrong kind of question—and left him hugely unhappy.”

The disagreement continued after the conference ended. Peter Feinman … reported on it extensively in his New York History Blog.

“Peter’s a thoughtful, critical guy but ultimately a high-powered patriot,” says Zuckerman. “He was saying [meaning not my actual words], ‘We’ve got to save the Revolution. It’s an inspirational thing—and you guys are not helping the cause.’ He took the side of the person who had asked the question and accused the historians of pussyfooting, and said that’s why they don’t have any clout and why we have nothing to say to people beyond our own cloister. And people weighed in—most of them attacking Peter, because they were scholars, but everybody was quite righteous.”

A smile plays across Zuckerman’s face. “It was a great brawl, with no resolution.”

Zuckerman anticipated some of the very issues and concerns expressed by the JER editors.

Here is what I actually wrote about that incident in a blog shortly after the conference:

The issue of leadership became a crucial one in the conference proceedings at least as far as I am concerned. Non-academic J.F. Gearhart asked one group of commentators if they thought the American Revolution was a good thing. Is the world a better place because the American Revolution occurred? The pained look on their silent faces spoke volumes. The anguished mental gymnastics of the three visibly uncomfortable academics was reminiscent of an American President coming up with “What is ‘is.’” Finally Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Harvard University, managed to say (and I am paraphrasing), “There were some good things which came out of the American Revolution and some bad things.” Gearhart pressed her to provide a “net-net” rendering on the Revolution. She declined to do so and laughingly noted that her students want her to do the same. (American Revolution Reborn: Missing New York July 10, 2013)

The conference, without meaning to, exposed two critical issues. First how did 19th-century Harvard American historian George Bancroft become 21st-century Harvard American historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich? When did elitist Americans change from being proud to be Americans to looking like deer frozen in the headlights when asked if the American Revolution was a good thing?

MICHAEL HATTEM I

As Michael Zuckerman reported, there was a response to my blog. Here is the comment by Michael D. Hattem, Associate Director of the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute, a co-founder of “The Junto: A Group Blog on Early American History, author of Past and Prologue: Politics and Memory in the American Revolution, and currently working on Memory of ’76.

I think you misjudged her reaction, which was less that of a “deer caught in the headlights” than of mild bemusement. I also think that you have totally misinterpreted the audience’s reaction, as well. The vast majority of the audience, who were academics, did not have their breath taken away by Ulrich’s pause or her response. Rather, they were stunned that such a simplistic and impertinent question would even be asked at a conference like that and they were silent because they were waiting to see how Ulrich would address it. To her credit, she addressed it quite diplomatically and respectfully (more so than I suspect some in the room would have done). As she said, it was the kind of question that is asked by undergraduates with little to no experience with academic history as a discipline. The first thing an undergraduate learns in a college-level history class is to avoid such generalizations because they can never convey the actual complexity of history. Think of how simplistic and unfair the perception is that anyone who won’t come right and make such a generalized statement as “The American Revolution was good” as being “apologetic anti-American” or having an apologetically “anti-American” view of American history. Now you didn’t make that claim but you described the public perception and I would hope you could see why historians would react in that way to such an anti-historical and anachronistic perspective. I think many academic historians (especially of early America) acknowledge the need for historians to expand their audience among the general public but not by prostrating ourselves at the altar of American exceptionalism or nationalism.

Hattem did not write in boldface. Notice the putdowns of the questioner and me. Notice also how somehow saying the American Revolution is a net good becomes prostrating oneself at the altar of American exceptionalism or nationalism. Hattem continued:

If you want a sanitized, nationalist view of the Revolution and an endless stream of hagiographies of the founders, you can read McCullough, Ellis, Brookhiser and the dozens of others who have cashed in on the reading public’s desire for this Whiggish view. However, if you want to understand the Revolution more deeply outside of a small handful of elites and high politics and to understand how it affected groups of people differently, and how people on the ground actually experienced the Revolution, then you need the academics that were in that room at the APS, because they don’t choose topics or write books based on potential sales. Your instrumentalist and utilitarian view of history is completely at odds with the modern profession, the notion of which is reinforced by your expectations of the conference, which, like most academic conferences, wasn’t meant to provide a thorough narrative of the topic but specialized analyses of important themes. Historians are more concerned with what the Revolution meant to the people who lived through it and its immediate aftermath than what it means to people today. The former is history, the latter is politics. Either knowing or consciously shaping contemporary meanings of the Revolution is beyond the purview of historical inquiry for early American historians.

How does Hattem know that my expectations for the conference were for it to provide a thorough narrative of the topic? There is nothing in the conference schedule that even remotely suggests such an outcome.  Since his current work is on the memory of the American Revolution over time and timed for the 250th anniversary of it, the idea that early American historians are not hoping to shape contemporary meanings of the American Revolution is suspect at best. I suggest his answer provides a casebook example of why academic historians may be regarded as elitists and of the challenge to be overcome to stop alienating the general public.

MICHAEL HATTEM II

In this regard, it is interesting to note the change in the tone by Hattem a mere eight years later. On January 27, 2021, He was the speaker in a virtual discussion at the American Philosophical Society (APS) on the topic of his book “Past and Prologue: Politics and Memory in the American Revolution. During the Q&A portion, I posed a question and he responded as posted on the APS website.

Q: I just received my copy of the current American Historical Review roundtable of Jill Lepore’s These Truths. This follows on the release of the 1776 Commission report by one president and cancellation by the incoming president. How do we go about creating a new national narrative today? (Peter Feinman)

A: I have thought about this question a lot in thinking about the contemporary relevance of my work and thinking about national memory [apparently no longer beyond the purview of early American historians]. My current project looks at the history of the memory of the Revolution in the 19th and 20th centuries and what I’ve found is that American history became politicized in a distinctly partisan way after 1800 and has been that way ever since. There has never been a time outside the window of the 1790s and early 1800s when there were not competing national narratives and memories. In other words, I do not think it is possible to create a new national narrative that could be widely accepted. Of course, one of the challenges there is that doing so would have to contend with the very powerful resilience of the Cold War-era memory that many American adults grew up with. All that said, I think we are currently in an important moment in the history of the memory of the American Revolution. Conflict over American history seems to ebb and flow along with the degree of political division in the country. Not unlike in the 1760s and 1770s, many Americans today are reconsidering the meaning and legacy of the Revolution. What is somewhat new is that many are calling for it to have no place in our collective civic and political cultures. I do not know if there is a way to create a national narrative with broad appeal in the present but I think that if it were possible it would require avoiding the two extremes we see so often currently of either seeing the Revolution as all good or all bad. What makes American history so interesting to me as a historian is its complexity and both of those extremes tend to flatten American history into two dimensions.

So he is thinking about it a lot … and providing a thoughtful answer. He recognizes the new phenomenon that there are Americans (Woke?) who think the American Revolution should have no place in our collective civic and political cultures. He rejects the view that the American Revolution should be seen as all good or all bad.

According to my notes, Hattem also was asked about what to do today given The New York Times Project 1619 and the (previous) White House 1776 Commission. He replied that he is not as indignant as he used to be [see his answer above from 2013]. He characterized both the 1619 and 1776 reports not as history but as memory construction. For Hattem, the American Revolution is part of the common inheritance for all Americans. We need to find a balance for this shared history which includes both horrible aspects and things which should be celebrated.

His answer reminds me a new development, not quite a trend, in these virtual presentations. I call it the 42 Minute Syndrome. After 42 minutes of being critical of the American Revolution, the speaker notes that there actually were some good things worth celebrating.  For example, consider the virtual discussion held December 20, 2021, at the Wilson Center on Thirteen Clocks: How Race United the Colonies and Made the Declaration of Independence by Robert G. Parkinson. At the end of his opening remarks, Parkinson showed a slide saying:

REVOLUTIONARIES MADE MAJOR CHANGES TO COLONIAL POLITICS/LIFE

NO ARISTOCRACY, NO ESTABLISHED CHURCH, RELIANCE ON WRITTEN CONSTITUTIONS, TRANSFORMED MEANING OF REPRESENTATION AND CONSENT
THEY ALSO THREW AWAY THE CONCEPT OF MONARCHICAL SUBJECTHOOD & EMBRACED REPUBLICAN CITIZENSHIP

Parkinson noted what hadn’t happen before was any effort to make a new nation and new republican regime on a very different theory of citizenship. It sounds like he was saying these were good things even though his talk was not about them.

As Liz Covart summed up in her Ben Franklin’s World podcast discussion with Hattem on July 20, 2021, the new nation and political entity needed a new history to which all the different ethnicities could belong. Our familiar historical narrative originated in the effort to unite the populace into one people by creating a shared sense of the past.  Exactly right.

Let me close with my closing words about the American Revolution Reborn conference

There is a difference between challenging America to be great and simply constantly condemning it for its shortcomings. Academics haven’t learned to speak the language of patriotism when criticizing America. They should champion the journey the Founding Fathers began, rather than only criticizing them for failing to meet their 21st century moral standards.

Yes, the American Revolution was a good thing, but we can’t rest on our laurels.

Yes the American Revolution was a good thing, but there is more that needs to be done.

Yes, the American Revolution was a good thing, and with your help the journey the Founding Fathers began can be renewed for the 21st century.

Historians vs. David McCullough – The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West

January 27, 2022
by Peter Feinman

David McCullough and academic historians generally do not mix. Historians derisively refer to books by McCullough and his ilk as “airport books.” These are the kinds of books one buys in an airport and not at a history conference or from an academic press. Another derogatory term is (white) Father’s Day Gift.

Therefore it was a surprise to see a multi-authored section of the Journal of the Early Republic (JER 41 Summer 2021) dedicated to this author and this book. The editors announced it as a new feature called Critical Engagements. The section will appear from time to time in the journal. It will allow the history community represented by JER “to participate in conversations of great interests to scholars of the early American republic and the general public.”

For the first foray into this venture, the editors chose The New York Times #1 bestselling history book in 2019 herein called The Pioneers. The time period covered in the book directly coincides with the purview of the Society of Historians of the Early American Republic (SHEAR), the publishers of the journal. Its conferences have been the subject of previous posts here.

SHEAR CHAOS: A Culture Wars Train Wreck for a History Organization
August 19, 2020

Universities and the Legacy of Slavery (SHEAR Session)
September 22, 2016

Teaching Slavery: A SHEAR Perspective
September 12, 2016

“The Year without Summer” (1816): When Republicans Recognized Climate Change Existed (SHEAR CONFERENCE)
August 24, 2016

The General Public and the Early Republic Historians (SHEAR Conference)
August 23, 2016

In the session in this last blog, “THE PUBLIC AND THE EARLY REPUBLIC: A ROUNDTABLE ON IN AND BEYOND THE ACADEMY,” I wrote about the presentation by Connecticut State Historian Walt Woodward:

[He] gives about 75 public lectures per year. His experience has shown him that there is a tremendous public interest in Connecticut for history. He strongly advocates for historians to leave the ivory tower and venture out into the public arena. Walt generously provided some guidelines to be followed if you are so inclined [in my words].

Don’t speak academic or undergraduate-lecture style jargon to the general public.
Don’t assume prior knowledge (or that they read the assignment before the lecture).
Complexity is not clarity.
Nuance can be mind-numbing.
Park your biases at the door – leave out the progressive politics. You are there to share your presumed expertise in the past, not to indulge in being a know-it-all on a TV talk show.
Don’t be arrogant – you aren’t the god’s or goddess’s gift to humanity where the little people should bask in the aura of your greatness and be thankful that you have chosen to enlighten them.

The public audience loves history and wants to hear from people who knew it well and can communicate to them in an effective manner.

From the Q&A, I wrote: Walt is critical of the elimination (or reduction) of history in a STEM world. The history community is doing a poor job of communicating to the general public of history’s importance. There is a need to intervene in creating the k-12 curriculum.

In his session wrap-up, Commentator Peter Onuf, University of Virginia observed (in my words):

If students don’t care about history, then the professors need the skills of the public historian who has the job of reaching out to a general audience and then to apply those skills in the classroom to reach the students.

At least orally, Woodward seemed to be practicing some of the same techniques McCullough probably is in reaching out to the general public. Possibly public historians (I would include historians at state and national parks) do as well. How about academic historians?

The JER editors noted both the public attention and “stinging scholarly criticism” McCullough’s book received when it was first released. The objective of the editors in reviewing this book was clearly stated:

Given the reach of popular histories such as McCullough’s and the book and musical Hamilton, can we use such histories that reach and fascinate large audiences to show those hungry for exposure to the past how to think about history further and in new and more necessarily challenging ways? Can we as scholars engage with popular and less scholarly historical works beyond just pointing out their limitations? No matter how warranted or cathartic that reaction is, it often has the effect of alienating the public that enjoyed the book—not just from our critical reviews, but from our scholarship and even our methods and questions altogether. How can we reach that audience and build from the interest that propelled them to read McCullough’s book? How can our interventions offer a richer, more complicated picture?

Or, can we do what Woodward advised us to do at the SHEAR conference?

In this paragraph, the JER editors have expressed laudable goals as well as an awareness of the problem and perhaps the stakes. They are aware of the current controversies involving The New York Time Project 1619, another publication outside the academic arena. They are aware of the greater reach to the general public of these two non-academic and opposing publications. They also are aware of their own inability to reach out to the general public in a way that does not alienate or patronize them but instead serve as a necessary corrective. To some extent, this new feature represents a stab in addressing that need … subject to the fact that the audience for the section is the academic historians and not the general public who will never read this journal and probably not even aware of its existence.

Before delving into the reviews by five scholars on particular aspects of The Pioneers and the two scholars who reflected on the entire initiative, let me offer some thoughts about the approaches to the public taken by academic historians. Due to the length, this will require two blogs.

YOUR ANCESTOR IS A MONSTER

Genealogical research is a popular pastime in America. If you work in a library, archives, or museum (pre-COVID), then you are very familiar with people who are searching for information about their ancestors. They scroll through rolls of microfilm; the turn page after page of newspapers and other print sources; they search through databases. They are quite dedicated in the time they devote to the quest. They also are quite willing to share with others the results of their work. The work can be quite collaborative with multiple Facebook and other social media sharings.

And when they find something, truly it is a joyous moment. They may not quite run through the library in righteous exaltation with tears of happiness streaming down their face, but they are doing that mentally. Finding a never-before-known relative or a never-before-known action done by a known relative counts as blessing. Look what I found!

There are even “Hallmark-like” commercials dedicated to this phenomenon. A three-generation family may be seen wandering through giant displays of their ancestors’ lives. There are blowups of photographs and documents. Maybe a birth certificate. Maybe a census record. Maybe a naturalization notice. Whatever the image, there are the grandparents and parents proudly pointing to the next generation of the record documenting the life of an earlier generation, perhaps someone the child never knew personally but only heard about at family gatherings.

Rarely do you see someone jumping for joy to have learned that their ancestor was a monster. Given all the people searching for ancestors and all the ancestors there are in three, four, five, ten generations or more, someone at some point will come across someone they rather would not have as an ancestor. For example, there are people today who have learned that their ancestors owned other people. There also have been touching reunions based on that knowledge such as with the 1619 people.

Still people do not want to be told again and again that their ancestors were monsters. How many statues of Robert E. Lee does it take to cause a person to be stressed? How many times do you tell someone their ancestors were monsters before you have alienated them?

By these comments, I am not suggesting that academics in the public presentations (mainly virtual now) constantly berate and harangue their audience. After all it is not the ancestors of the members of the audience who have chosen to hear the academic speaker who are the monsters! But there are people based on race, location, and politics who well may be the descendants of monsters or be monsters themselves. And they do not need to be college graduates to understand that you are telling them their ancestors were monsters and they are too unless they repent their ancestors’ actions.

These considerations go the challenge of creating a national narrative for the 21st century. McCullough does it piecemeal through his books including about the American Revolution. For academic historians that effort is more problematic as will be discussed in the next blog on this initiative by JER: the message historians deliver on the legitimacy or illegitimacy of a country born in sin.

SHEAR CHAOS: A Culture Wars Train Wreck for a History Organization

August 19, 2020
by Peter Feinman
SHEAR Conference 2020 (New Mexico Central Railroad train wreck, ca. 1912 reddit.com)

When a history organization makes the front page of the Arts Section of The New York Times, that is big news (“Clash of the Historians Over Andrew Jackson,” July 27, 2020, print). It wasn’t because of some exciting new archival discovery. It wasn’t because of some exciting new archaeological discovery. It wasn’t because of some exciting new book or article that provided new insight into an historical puzzle. Instead it was because of a good old-fashioned knock-down culture wars encounter. As the NYT put it:

[I]t set off a firestorm that led within 72 hours, to set off the ouster of the group’s president, as well as the publication of open letters denouncing the talk and counterletters protesting the ouster. It also caused debate over whether the distinguished academics society was experiencing an overdue reckoning with racism or abandoning its commitment to robust scholarly debate in the face of a Twitter mob.

When the history of the culture wars is written, this incident is likely to be an episode in it.

SHEAR

SHEAR is the Society for Historians of the Early Republic. It was formed in 1977 to provide a focused venue or scholars concentrating on the Early Republic. As the name suggests, the starting point for the time period was the aftermath of the American Revolution. The period that comes to mind is the First Party System, the time of Federalists and Republicans, of presidents from Virginia and Massachusetts. Gradually it became a society of the Second Party System as well, the time of the Whigs and the Democrats. There was no real fixed endpoint. SHEAR drifted into the Jacksonian years and the ante bellum period but not the Civil War. It really ended wherever the roughly 600 members decided their interests took them and that no other history organization claimed.

I am not a member of SHEAR. I have attended some of the annual conferences and written about them.

The General Public and the Early Republic Historians (SHEAR Conference) August 23, 2016

“The Year without Summer” (1816): When Republicans Recognized Climate Change Existed (SHEAR CONFERENCE) August 24, 2016

Teaching Slavery: A SHEAR Perspective September 12, 2016

Universities and the Legacy of Slavery (SHEAR Session) September 22, 2016

The American Revolution: An Academic Perspective October 31, 2019.

I very well might have attended this year’s conference in geographically accessible Philadelphia if it had been held. Obviously, it too was a victim of the coronavirus.

SHEAR ONLINE CONFERENCE

With the cancellation of the in-person conference, SHEAR then had some decisions to make.

1. One Online Session

The first decision was to have one and only one online session. This decision can be questioned. Other conferences have been cancelled and/or rescheduled as virtual events without such a drastic reduction. Conferences can be held over multiple days and involve multiple sessions. SHEAR originally preferred to have multiple sessions. The now-former president of SHEAR expressed this hope:

When the 2020 program was postponed until July 2021, we wished to sponsor a few events to demonstrate that we remain a vital and important organization, even in this troubled time.

How did “a few events,” became one? The new president who normally takes office when the in-person conference concludes added some information.

At the time, we brainstormed about offering a few virtual events over the conference weekend, including the much-loved Second-Book Writers’ Workshop, and a graduate student meet-and-greet (both of which were, thanks to their organizers, great successes). We also asked the chairs of the 2020 Program Committee to recommend panels accepted for the conference that might not feel fresh a year from now. President Egerton approached the organizers of several such panels, but among them, only Professor Daniel Feller agreed to present his panel virtually.

So it was not the original intention to have one and only session. In effect, it was the SHEAR membership (panel organizers) that drove the decision. Given only one positive response, another option would have been to have no online sessions at all.

2. Which One?

At this point if SHEAR wanted to have an online session, it had only one possibility. That one topic seemed most appropriate. The now-former president of SHEAR explained:

The accepted panel on Donald Trump’s efforts to identify with Andrew Jackson struck some members of the program committee as a most timely panel, and one which may not be as relevant after the November elections. This was a stand-alone panel, and not the opening plenary, which remains scheduled for July 2021.

The new president added some information.

Although I was not privy to the specifics of this or any other proposed panel, I endorsed the plan to present it to the membership because I thought it was a timely topic and something that you, the membership, would appreciate. This was a mistake.

Exactly why is was a mistake in the mind of the new president is not clarified. Was it a mistake to have only one session? Was it a mistake to have this session? Was it a mistake to have this session with this presenter? Was it a mistake to have this session in this format? Should this person resign s one person suggested? It would help to know what the new president thinks the mistake in deciding to have this session was.

THE SESSION: JACKSON IN THE AGE OF TRUMP

The abstract for the session was:

Daniel Feller, Professor of History, Distinguished Professor in the Humanities, and Editor/Director of The Papers of Andrew Jackson at the University of Tennessee will present his [pre-circulated] paper, “Jackson in the Age of Trump,” which focuses on Donald Trump’s embrace of Andrew Jackson as his presidential model and how this has made Jackson a centerpiece for debate. Jackson has become, on both sides of the current political divide, in effect a stand-in for the American historical legacy. One side celebrates him as the progenitor of full-throated nationalism and insurgent populism, while the other condemns him as the archetype of American xenophobia, bigotry, and racism.

Neither of these portraits has much connection to the real presidential Jackson. Both reduce him to caricature not only by stripping off subtlety and nuance, but often by propagation of naked error. While Trump celebrates Jackson for purportedly raising tariffs and rattling sabers, critics decry him for originating Indian genocide, conducting public policy as personal vendetta in the Bank and nullification controversies, and propounding a uniquely vicious and virulent racism.

In short, we are now waging a public debate about Jackson—and, through him, about American history and character at large—premised upon a set of facts that are drastically oversimplified and even demonstrably untrue. Politicians and pundits have taken the lead in this distortion of the record, but historians have been acquiescent and sometimes directly complicit. Yet if we believe that the manipulation of history for presentist ends—even ones we agree with—is misguided and potentially dangerous, we should make it our business to speak out in defense of the integrity of our discipline, regardless of our present political sympathies.

This description does not match the words of the former president noted above: “The accepted panel on Donald Trump’s efforts to identify with Andrew Jackson.” Quite the contrary, the abstract posits a double dosage of Jackson misinterpretations by both sides of the culture wars.

The scope of the abstract is fairly ambitious…especially for one paper! Given the range of topics within the overall abstract, it would have made more sense to divide it into manageable parts. Each individual would have addressed one aspect of how Jackson has been used and abused by both sides of the culture war and what SHEAR should do about it. That is not what happened.

The initial portion of Feller’s presentation was on a book on Jackson by Walter Mead. Through Steve Bannon, this two-dimensional book portrait of Jackson was conveyed to Trump. At this point I thought about writing a blog on Jackson and Hamilton, Mead and Chernow, Bannon and Manuel-Miranda, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson and Hamilton, Trump and Obama. That probably would have made for a better session than the food fight that followed.

But the presentation didn’t stop there. My favorite response to the presentation is by the person who three times insistently asked online about Jackson and slavery. What are the odds that the president who thinks Canada burned the White House during the War of 1812, the flu pandemic in 1917 ended World War II, and who only recently learned that Lincoln was a Republican, was familiar with Jackson’s position on slavery? This question is an example of how the session spun out of control. Instead of being descriptive about what happened in last decade it became a fight over Jackson himself. I really didn’t tune in to hear people go on and on about his use of the word “pet.”

As reported by the NYT, a firestorm erupted after the session. A president stepped down. The new one apologized. The plenary speaker retired. His replacement intends to start a diverse advisory committee for people of multiple races, ethnicities, genders, and sexual preferences who share an antipathy towards Jackson perhaps with a token admirer. [I admit I could be wrong on this.] The organization that provides the free internet communication for SHEAR now is requesting a name change from H-SHEAR to something else. The notice of the change stressed the importance of moderated messages with identification of the message sender. This advisory may have contributed to the decision for the name change:

The Society for Historians of the Early American Republic’s virtual plenary was the most exciting thing to happen on Academic Zoom since COVID. Read about the controversy.

As for SHEAR, it intends to have “a second, follow-up virtual panel in the coming weeks” to salvage the situation though “salvage” is not the word used. Here are some thoughts for sessions.

1. Andrews Jackson and the Culture Wars (2000-2020)

This topic apparently was the basis for the session in the first place.

1. How have people used Jackson positively in support of their current political agendas?
2. How have people used Jackson negatively in support of their current political agendas?
3. How can SHEAR contribute to a full understanding of Jackson beyond caricature and cliché?

2. Trail of Tears: What Should Jackson Have Done?

This topic generates a great deal of passionate reaction. One of the comments in the plenary was:

As a historian of Indian removal, I can assure Feller that we know it wasn’t all Jackson’s fault; historians have for over a century traced the roots of removal policy to Jefferson’s administration, or even further, to the nation’s founding documents. More recent historiography on removal has amply demonstrated how a host of other actors – from territorial governors to missionaries to land speculators – helped build the policy that Feller seems to want us to reconstruct from Jackson’s papers alone.

Here we have the possibility of an excellent session that would be of value to the American public during these culture wars by going beyond the simple-minded vituperation he receives today.

1. What was the historical context in which the Trail of Tears occurred?
2. What could have been done instead? [No kumbaya suggestions, please, real world only.]
3. What does the recent Supreme Court decision mean for understanding the Trail of Tears?

3. The Scotch-Irish and the English Weren’t Both Just Whites Then

Our racist classification system obscures the reality of life two centuries ago. Today the Scotch-Irish and the English are just white people. That combination would have made no sense in Great Britain. These two folkways brought their tensions with them to America. Jackson’s victory at New Orleans wasn’t only as an American versus Great Britain but as a Scotch-Irishman versus the English. This topic wasn’t addressed in the session. One comment alluded to it.

Is there a danger among historians — most of us liberals when it comes to racial and gender issues — of underestimating AJ’s appeal to the “working man”: just as Americans today underestimate Trump’s appeal to a similar demographic? Thereby driving that demographic into the arms of the radical right?

English elites then loved to put down the Scotch-Irish as backwards and inferior much as elites-bicoastal elites-politically-correct-people love to mock them and their kin today. As it turns out people don’t like to be relentlessly denigrated. A session on how America’s first flyover people gained the White House would be beneficial.

4. The Torch Has Been Passed to a New Generation: The Need for Heroes

During the session, Feller mentioned Jackson as a military hero for America, the first one since Washington. People needed heroes. People need larger-than-life people who fulfill that role. It’s not enough to have Hollywood super-duper heroes on the screen. They are needed in real life as we have been reminded during Covid-19 and the nightly banging of pots. Jackson filled that role for many people. Two founding father heroes died simultaneously in 1826 on the fiftieth anniversary of the experiment they had created, the journey they had started. Who would replace them? Would the next generation measure up? Would the journey continue? I don’t recall hearing much of a discussion at the SHEAR session about this topic and Jackson’s role in it.

5. The Jacksonian Age of Art, Geology, Literature, Religion

There should be more to a SHEAR conference than politics, gender, and race. The Jacksonian Age witnessed a new and unique confluence of art, geology, literature, and religion before they became divided into separate “ologies” each with their own organizations, journals, and conferences. At the 2016 conference, I asked Daniel Walker Howe about the absence of the Hudson River School in his book What Hath God Wrought covering 1815 to 1848. There should be a place for culture at SHEAR.

SHEAR has the opportunity to rise to the occasion. True, it is a volunteer organization of people scattered mostly at various colleges throughout the land. It has no particular skill or experience that I am aware of in taking a leadership position in the national conversation during a culture war. That’s not what it was commissioned to do when it was founded in 1977 after the Bicentennial. That is what America needs it to do as we approach our 250th.

If You Are a Native New Yorker, Are You a Native American?: The Weaponization of “Native” and the Culture Wars

August 4, 2019
by Peter Feinman
Bronx and Queens Natives (https://medium.com)

The Cherokee Nation is in the news. No, not for the Trail of Tears, but to fulfill a centuries old treaty pledge. The Treaties of Hopewell (1785) and New Echota (1835) contained the right of the Cherokee Nation to send a delegate to the House of Representatives. Now the Cherokees are poised to act upon the pledge and name a delegate.

This action reminded me that I needed to complete the discussion about Columbus Day versus Indigenous Peoples’ Day. It began when three states self-righteously “dumped” and “ditched” the former in favor of the latter (Columbus Day versus Indigenous Peoples’ Day: A Lose-Lose War). That blog was followed by an examination of the role of Columbus and Columbia in American history (Columbus Day versus Indigenous Peoples’ Day: Part II – Columbus and America). The next blog in the thread focused on the weaponized use of the term “indigenous” and the calamitous effect the now bogus term would have if it were applied in the global arena outside the elitist college environment where it originated. Its effects would be truly devastating especially to Moslems and Arabs if the nations of the world adopted this American invention as their own policy (Columbus Day versus Indigenous Peoples’ Day: Part III- The Meaning of “Indigenous”).

In this blog, I wish to address the weaponization of the term “native.” Consider the following examples. They are not the result of an internet search. They are not a scientific sample. Instead they simply are the examples I happen to come across while reading the printed version newspapers and magazines I receive.

March 15 New York Times op-ed on billionaires and prostitutes: “A professional escort (or even just a native, English-speaking one)…” In other words, instead of patronizing Chinese natives at Orchids of Asia Spa in Florida, why not use a native? Presumably this English-speaking native might be black or white or even an American Indian but one might infer from the op-ed that the author intended the use of “native” to refer to white people.

May 10 New York Times wedding article: “[The groom] met [the bride}, a native New Yorker.” Based on the bride’s photograph and last name, the native New Yorker probably was of Chinese descent or East Asian. The music of Barry Manilow was played during the reception.

Note – It is important here to remember the distorted use of the term Asian-American. It does not actually mean people from anywhere in Asia. In a description of the movie “Always Be My Maybe,” (New York Times, June 2, 2019), the author notes the involvement of “a pair of Asian-American stars” and “an Iranian-American female director.” So whereas Iran (Persia) was part of Asia for more than two millennia, now it no longer is. Geography teachers should be notified of this change.

May 12 New York Times book review by Nancy Foner, a prominent person in immigration issues: “An astounding 77 percent of adult Indian immigrants in 2015 had a bachelor’s degree or higher compared with 29 percent of all immigrants and 31 percent of native-born adults.”

May 15 Journal News: Iona College Names Bronx Native as New President (headline).

August 5 Time on Iceland’s Prime Minister: “Many cultures have native words for unique experiences.” The native cultures presented to illustrate the point are Iceland, Germany, and Spain. I think it is fair to say that these native cultures consist of white people.

All of these examples of the use of the word “native” are normal traditional uses without any awareness or belief that such usage might be improper. One suspects these natives of the Bronx, New York, Florida, and the entire country all consider themselves American natives.

Of course, it is no secret that Native Americans are not actually native to America. The idea that people from the Greek-based word Asia crossed over into the Italian-based word America is not new. Scholars debate exactly when the people crossed over, exactly how, and in exactly how many waves. There is unanimity among them that people did leave the eastern hemisphere for the western hemisphere millennia ago.

Lately due to advances in deciphering of DNA evidence, scientists have been able to develop a more detailed understanding of these people were who undertook the journey. Here is the title of one such article from Science Magazine (online, June 5) on the subject:

Closest-known ancestor of today’s Native Americans found in Siberia.

Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn’t the title mean the people are Native Siberians who emigrated to America? The first sentence adds to the linguistic confusion.

Indigenous Americans… descend from humans who crossed over an ancient land bridge connecting Siberia in Russia to Alaska tens of thousands years ago.

Under normal circumstances, one would expect the editor to correct the writer to say that indigenous Siberians crossed over to Alaska, but these are not normal times and the meanings of words are distorted.

The article describes multiple movements by multiple peoples not all of whom remain extant today.  As a result of this DNA analysis,

It’s the closest we have ever gotten to a Native American ancestor outside the Americas.

Can you imagine someone saying the following about DNA analysis fro a people who migrated west into Europe?

It’s the closest we have ever gotten to a Native Italian ancestor outside Italy.

In the New York Times (June 11, 2019), the teaser on the front page of Science section states “A lost people in Asia may be ancestors of Native Irish.”  I am sorry, I mean a lost people in Siberia may be ancestors of Native Americans. The article provides more details than did the Science Magazine one. It refers to an article just published in the journal Nature about new clues “to the migrations that first brought people to the America.” Presumably if you migrate from England, France, Spain, or Holland on ships instead of by land to America, once you arrive here you become a Native America just as if you come from Siberia. Right?

According to the article, these geneticists have learned that people who live in a place today often have little genetic connection to those who lived there thousands of years ago. Is that even legal?

Wait. It gets worse. As the geneticists traced the various combinations of peoples over extended periods of time who mixed and mingled, they discovered an unexpected participant.

The story gets more complicated. Shortly after that split [24,000 years ago of the ancestors of the Native Americans and Ancient Paleo-Siberians], the ancestors of Native Americans encountered another population with genetic ties to Europe.

 FAKE NEWS!!!!!!! HOW DARE THEY PRINT THAT!!!!

 All living Native Americans carry a mixture of genes from these two groups.
                The new study can’t pinpoint exactly where Native Americans emerged from the meeting of these two peoples.

So not only are Native American not native to America, they have genetic ties to a people from Europe!

MORE FAKE NEWS!!!!!!!

So what then should these people be called?

In 2018, a professor posted a query on H-Early-America, one of numerous H-Net discussion groups which have been created in the academic setting. The question raised was “Help with ‘Native American’ terminology.”

I recently submitted a proposal for a new course that I will teach in our first year seminar program in the fall.  It entails two Reacting to the Past games:  Forest Diplomacy, 1756-1757 and Greenwich Village 1913: Suffrage, Labor, and the New Woman.  My question is about the former.  In the “official” description of the course, the author uses the word “Indian.”   This is the comment I got from the committee that approved my course:  “The committee would like to note that Native Americans are called “Indians” in the description. We are curious about this word choice (when a more accurate/ politically agreed upon way to describe this population these days is Native American). Perhaps this is how historians talk about the past. But it is worth raising as a question and as feedback.” I chose not to engage immediately since I was simply happy that they approved the course.  But now I’m curious–and would like to respond to the committee since they chose to raise it as an issue.  Is it indeed a settled issue among historians that we don’t use the term Indian and instead used Native American?  I’ve always understood that it is NOT settled and that “Indian” is an acceptable term, but I could certainly be educated by the experts in the field. 

Here we have a classic example of the thought police at an elitist college gently showing the history professor sinner the error of her ways without appearing to be too zealous. The answers to the query help shed light on the present situation.

I wanted to respond since I’ve had almost the exact same conversation regarding my “Imagining American Indians in Film” course. First of all, stick to your guns, as the committee is, in perhaps overly-simplistic terms, incorrect. It is a terminology in flux.

With that in mind, here are some concrete ways to respond.

I start by framing the conversation around the right of groups to choose their own terminology. This is written into the inclusive language policy at my institution, so I make sure to point to that.

In that sense, I always use national/tribal names when possible, deferring to the term preferred by the nation itself. For example, Dine rather than Navajo or Haudenosaunee rather than Iroquois. In moments when I need to refer to people more broadly, I use American Indian. On this I turn to a number of sources to defend that position. The first are American Indians themselves. While the opinion is not unanimous, high-profile individuals have made the case for keeping American Indian. Sherman Alexie is a particularly popular one. There are also larger connections to the history of American Indian activism that many Indian people want to preserve. Finally, there is a legal case for continuing to identify as American Indian, as this is the term enshrined in case law.

Note the use of the term “nation.”

A lengthy comment reiterated these points while offering an interesting take on how once again American Indians are victims of white cultural imperialism.

It is my experience since becoming a historian in my second career that American Indians prefer to be called “American Indians” (after their tribal identification, of course). This comes from asking members, especially when I was a historian with the National Park Service and worked on many projects with tribal historians and other tribal members, as well as in my own research and writing, and the overwhelming response I received was “American Indian” was preferred almost to a man and woman. I am no longer with the NPS, but I understand the agency conducted a survey before compiling its style guide a few years ago, and the respondents overwhelmingly preferred “American Indian.” While some answered “either” was “acceptable,” many more expressed the view that they felt “Native American” was offensive, paternalistic and racist.

When I asked a Cherokee colleague in @ 2003 or 2004, who had been the tribal historic preservation officer before coming to NPS, he said, “if you were born here, you’re a native American.” Then he said “those who prefer ‘Native American’ generally fall into one of three categories: (1) those who work for the government; (2) those who work on university campuses; and (3) white people who claim to be 1/32 Cherokee.” When I was working on the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Commemoration, 2004-2006, I attended a national conference on the topic, and the presenters were divided in their usage. All the Indian historians called native peoples INDIANS; while the only ones who used “Native Americans” were white academics. I understand the Associated Press style guide has recently dropped its insistence that “Native American” is the preferred term in light of other recent surveys.

Something similar may be observed in the comments about the proposed Cherokee delegate to the House of Representatives consistent with these comments. Chuck Hosin Jr., chief of the Cherokee Nation, said:

Because this is such a historic and unprecedented action by an Indian nation, I think the delegate will have a broader responsibility to help to be a voice for all Indian Country. I’ve seen the power of the tribes collaborating and standing in solidarity on issues. It is my expectation that Ms. Teehee [the proposed delegate] will be mindful of broader issues in all of Indian Country.

Charles Gourd, the director of the Cherokee National Historical Society, commenting of the benefit of the change, said:

Right now what you have to have to do is hope there’s a friendly congressperson that has a staffer that knows anything about Indian issues at all.

Dan Lewerenz, Iowa Tribe, said:

The treaty doesn’t say anything about the Cherokee being a stand-in for other tribes.

How come these people are not using politically correct terminology?  Where is the Thought Police when you need them?

At the recent conference of the Society for Historians of the Early Republic (SHEAR), the opening plenary session included a presentation on the Cherokee. The historian consistently referred to these people by their proper name. Similarly other Indian peoples mentioned in the talk, the Creeks, Chickasaws, and Choctaws, also were referred to by proper noun name. Collectively they were Indian Nations. Again, note that term “nation.” It is easy to overlook the importance placed by American Indians on being recognized as a nation. They recognized that England and the United States were nations and saw themselves as comparable political entities. “Nativizing” them strips them of this identity. The academics who work with the American Indians know that these people are entitled to the same respect one would show European peoples: use their name and recognize their “nationess.”

American Indians recognize that the term “Native Americans” was created by white people based on the needs of white people. These white people have a lot of power and can be relentless in imposing their will. Eventually the American Indians may have no choice but to submit to the power of the politically correct. One should recognize therefore that weaponization of “native” and “indigenous” did not arise from a grassroots need. American Indians had no objection to being called American Indians until white people told them they should. The use of these terms should be understood as part of the culture war within white people where American Indians are a pawn to be used to fit a white agenda.

Why would white people do this?

What should be done about it?

[This blog was revised September 2, 2019, due to the Cherokee Nation request to seat a delegate]

“The Year without Summer” (1816): When Republicans Recognized Climate Change Existed (SHEAR CONFERENCE)

August 24, 2016
by Peter Feinman

The Society for Historians of the Early American Republic (SHEAR) held its annual conference in New Haven from July 21-24. I was only able to attend the weekend sessions on the last two days. Below is my summary and comments on the second session I attended on Saturday, July 23.

“The Year without Summer” (1816) and Climate Change: Perspectives on the New Climate History from the Early Republic

Tambora

Mount Tambora Caldera, Sumbawa, Indonesia

(Jialiang Gao/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 3.0)

Sherry Johnson, Florida International University

Johnson spoke as a Latin American historian. Her initial investigation sought to uncover connections between the United States and the Caribbean involving the summer of 1816. She called that effort Plan A and found no documentation to support her first hypothesis. When hurricanes had increased in the 1770s, there were food shortages in the Caribbean. As a result, the Spanish authorities turned to Philadelphia to trade for food. The environment forced Spain to make this effort and she wondered about the political impact at that time. However, she found no evidence of crisis in food production in 1816 contra to the Plan B hypothesis. Turning to Plan C, she hypothesized that some areas reaped benefits from crises elsewhere. The Year without Summer ended up being a null event for the Caribbean as it was still able to obtain the food needed from the United States.

Sam White, Ohio State University

White spoke as an environmental historian. He began with the observation that climate history has not generated much traction yet. In the United States, geography departments carry less prestige than they do elsewhere in the world. The focus here tends to be on what people have done to the environment, more reflective of American values. The emphasis here is on human agency rather than on the environment in its own right. The wilderness legacy in American culture looms large in academic studies.

In addition to these more general comments, White did speak on a more technical basis on the environmental issues related to the Year without Summer but it would be inappropriate of me to comment on that aspect of his presentation. It was his general observations that he may have hoped would have a more volcanic impact on the scholarship paradigm. Whether his conference eruption will generate such a seismic shock remains to be seen.

Sean Munger, University of Oregon

Munger examined the more traditional elements one associates with historical scholarship – what effect did the wild weather have on the economy, psychology, and religion of America. He averred that people applied the science of astronomy as they it knew to bring order to the chaos that they experienced. The summer had a universal [meaning global] dimension to it in addition to the local impact that one could detect with one’s own senses.  He posited a dual-layered environmental view in response. At the local level, people dealt with the immediate issues of home, farm, and harvest. At the cosmic level, people looked skyward for answers to explain what was happening on earth. Astrology, theology, and science all were brought to bear.

As a result of the volcanic dust suspended in the air following the volcanic eruption, people gained a different view of the sun than in normal times. Sun spots became more visible. It wasn’t that the sunspots were a new phenomenon or that they had increased in number, but that people could see more of them now. One consequence was the newspaper coverage incorrectly attributing the weather change to the increased sunspots. Naturally, sooner or later, such cosmic changes led to the prediction that the world was coming to an end. Sure enough on July 8, 1816, an “astronomer” prophesized precisely such an event. I wondered if William Miller had been aware of such prophecies and if they contributed to his own more scientific calculation of when the world would come to an end.

John Brooke, Ohio State University (Presiding)

Brooke mentioned the comparatively recent explorations by Van Humboldt in South America and their impact on the grappling with the events of 1816. Through what theological framework could people make sense of what was happening? He reminded us that the War of 1812 had recently concluded and also had impacted American life.

Alan Taylor, University of Virginia (Commentator)

Taylor reiterated the points made about historians needing to place closer attention to climate in their studies, but he concluded that the Year without Summer was not a pivotal event in American history. There was a drive to systemize thinking at that time even if it is not convincing to us. People then [as now] seek to discern patterns to explain the world they are experiencing. Today, we are not as quick to attribute climate as an independent entity willfully impacting human life. Taylor recognized the internal discussion within the discipline on landscape acting on human history versus human agency. The latter preference is consistent with the American narrative of the power of people over nature.

I have a note that political events of the War of 1812 and post-Waterloo trumped the concern over climate change but I am not sure how much of that derived from Alan’s comments, my own thoughts, or both.

In the Q&A, the topic was raised of the challenge to integrate the information presented in the session to the traditional American narrative of human agency.

In looking back on this session and reading my notes, it occurs to me that the session, or at least the notes I took, may have veered off its original intention. I don’t know what was submitted to SHEAR [shouldn’t abstracts and session descriptions be posted on the SHEAR website?]. The initial paper by Johnson illustrated an historian at work at her craft, proposing an hypothesis, testing it, and then going back to the drawing board to try again.  But the tenor of the presentations, particularly what was of interest to me, addressed larger issues which go beyond the specific event of 1816. In hindsight it seems that some of the issues raised warrant their own sessions or discussions. Left unmentioned in the presentations was the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-1812. How could any attempt to impose a pattern on the events in nature omit such a recent disturbance or combine both of them? These same years marked Methodism’s arrival as the leading religion in America. How did they interpret these events? In any event, the session stimulated additional thinking on my part so in that sense it was a successful one.