The Uses of Early American History

Abstract

FOR THE PAST FOUR YEARS I have been living in two centuries. To the twentieth century I have given perhaps three-fifths of my time, for I am a teacher of political science at the college level. To the eighteenth century I have given the rest of my time, for I have been writing a history of early American political ideas. It has been an unsettling experience for several of my colleagues to watch me poaching so busily on the preserve of the historians. Is it right, they have asked, for a political scientist who is being paid to teach about the I952 elections and Eighty-second Congress to spend all that time in old newspapers and documents? My answer is that it was not only right but extremely profitable. I feel, in all humility, that my approach to modern America-my grasp, analysis, and presentation of the facts and trends of our society, culture, economy, and politics-has been improved markedly by this deep plunge into the past. It is impossible for me to document this feeling to the satisfaction of all my colleagues, but I would like to set down several truths, or at least measured opinions, that I arrived at while writing this book. Some of these are old opinions that I found strengthened by this experience. Others are opinions that I hold for the first time. All of them are now factors in my teaching about contemporary America.