American History II

There are many different sometimes contradictory views about the discipline of History. The English writer George Orwell, probably best known for his bleak view of the future in his seminal 1948 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four once said that "whoever controls the present controls the past, and whoever controls the past controls the future." The 18th-century French humanist Voltaire, although a much more optimistic fellow than Orwell, toward the latter part of his life described "History as a pack of lies mutually agreed upon." Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., one of America's better known contemporary historians, has written that "Man is generally entangled in insoluble problems: History is consequently a tragedy in which we are all involved, whose key note is ANXIETY and FRUSTRATION, not progress and fulfillment."

Happily, as one of the better U. S. historians, in recently discussing the writing and teaching of American History, asserted correctly that during the past decade "U.S. history has been remade." And while there is a great deal of truth in what those who dish History have to say, U. S. History has been remade and for the better. I certainly do not teach the U.S. History I was taught as an undergraduate in the 1950s. That history had no place for race, class, or gender--that is minorities, workers, women. And it also had a not too hidden anti-Catholic bias.

What we will deal with is not absolute truth, but it is a kaleidoscopic view of the United States since the end of Reconstruction in the 1870s. It is important to know more or less what has happened in the last 125 years plus so that you cannot be lied to by somebody who would wish to control your future.

The aim of this course like History in general (if its practiced well) is to enlarge our picture of what happened and why, to present a coherent and perhaps innovative way of looking at things about which you may have known little or cared less. History is not and should not be merely a recitation of facts, but it iS important to have an accurate chronological frame. Theodore Roosevelt was not President during Reconstruction (and if he had been probably it would have been very different). And it is important to date and understand the differences between the First and Second Reconstruction.

American History II
History 1302BB
Fall 1997
Daniel J. Leab