Henry Steele Commager
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Henry Steele Commager (1902–1998) was an American
historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the stu ...
. As one of the most active and prolific
liberal Liberal or liberalism may refer to: Politics * a supporter of liberalism ** Liberalism by country * an adherent of a Liberal Party * Liberalism (international relations) * Sexually liberal feminism * Social liberalism Arts, entertainment and m ...
intellectuals of his time, with 40 books and 700 essays and reviews, he helped define
modern liberalism in the United States Modern liberalism in the United States, often simply referred to in the United States as liberalism, is a form of social liberalism found in American politics. It combines ideas of civil liberty and equality with support for social justice an ...
. In the 1940s and 1950s, Commager was noted for his campaigns against
McCarthyism McCarthyism is the practice of making false or unfounded accusations of subversion and treason, especially when related to anarchism, communism and socialism, and especially when done in a public and attention-grabbing manner. The term origin ...
and other abuses of government power. With his
Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
colleague
Allan Nevins Joseph Allan Nevins (May 20, 1890 – March 5, 1971) was an American historian and journalist, known for his extensive work on the history of the Civil War and his biographies of such figures as Grover Cleveland, Hamilton Fish, Henry Ford, and J ...
, Commager helped to organize academic support for Adlai E. Stevenson in 1952 and 1956, and
John F. Kennedy John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination ...
in 1960. He opposed the
Vietnam War The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...
and was an outspoken critic of Presidents
Lyndon B. Johnson Lyndon Baines Johnson (; August 27, 1908January 22, 1973), often referred to by his initials LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. He had previously served as the 37th vice ...
,
Richard Nixon Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...
, and
Ronald Reagan Ronald Wilson Reagan ( ; February 6, 1911June 5, 2004) was an American politician, actor, and union leader who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 ...
and what he viewed as their abuses of presidential power. His principal scholarly works were his 1936 biography of
Theodore Parker Theodore Parker (August 24, 1810 – May 10, 1860) was an American transcendentalist and reforming minister of the Unitarian church. A reformer and abolitionist, his words and popular quotations would later inspire speeches by Abraham Lincol ...
; his
intellectual history Intellectual history (also the history of ideas) is the study of the history of human thought and of intellectuals, people who conceptualize, discuss, write about, and concern themselves with ideas. The investigative premise of intellectual histor ...
''The American Mind: An Interpretation of American Thought and Character Since the 1880s'' (1950), which focuses on the evolution of liberalism in the American political mind from the 1880s to the 1940s, and his intellectual history ''Empire of Reason: How Europe Imagined and America Realized the Enlightenment'' (1977). In addition, he edited a widely used compilation, ''Documents of American History''; ten editions were published between 1938 and 1988, the last coedited with Commager's former student, Milton Cantor.


Background

Commager was born Henry Irving Commager on October 25, 1902, in
Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...
,
Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...
, the son of James Williams and Anne Elizabeth (Dan) Commager. Orphaned at the age of ten, he grew up with his maternal grandfather in Toledo,
Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...
, and
Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...
,
Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolita ...
. He attended the
University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
and earned degrees
Bachelor of Philosophy Bachelor of Philosophy (BPhil, BPh, or PhB; la, Baccalaureus Philosophiae or ) is the title of an academic degree that usually involves considerable research, either through a thesis or supervised research projects. Unlike many other bachelor's ...
(1923),
Master of Arts A Master of Arts ( la, Magister Artium or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA, M.A., AM, or A.M.) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Tho ...
(1924), and
Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common Academic degree, degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields ...
(1928). He lived in
Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...
for a year researching his dissertation on
Johann Friedrich Struensee Lensgreve Johann Friedrich Struensee (5 August 1737 – 28 April 1772) was a German-Danish physician, philosopher and statesman. He became royal physician to the mentally ill King Christian VII of Denmark and a minister in the Danish governmen ...
and the reform movement in
Denmark ) , song = ( en, "King Christian stood by the lofty mast") , song_type = National and royal anthem , image_map = EU-Denmark.svg , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark ...
. Commager married Evan Carroll (born February 4, 1904; died March 28, 1968) of
South Carolina )''Animis opibusque parati'' ( for, , Latin, Prepared in mind and resources, links=no) , anthem = " Carolina";" South Carolina On My Mind" , Former = Province of South Carolina , seat = Columbia , LargestCity = Charleston , LargestMetro = ...
, on July 3, 1928. The couple had three children, Henry Steele Commager Jr. (1932–1984), known as Steele Commager, who became a classicist at Columbia University and wrote one of the leading books on the Roman poet
Horace Quintus Horatius Flaccus (; 8 December 65 – 27 November 8 BC), known in the English-speaking world as Horace (), was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). The rhetorician Quintilian regarded his ' ...
; Elizabeth Carroll Commager; and Nellie Thomas McColl Commager (now Nell Lasch, wife of the historian
Christopher Lasch Robert Christopher Lasch (June 1, 1932 – February 14, 1994) was an American historian, moralist and social critic who was a history professor at the University of Rochester. He sought to use history to demonstrate what he saw as the pervasiven ...
). Evan Commager wrote several books, including ''Cousins'', ''Tenth Birthday'', ''Beaux'', and ''Valentine''. On July 14, 1979, Commager married the former Mary Powlesland, a professor in Latin American studies, in Linton, England. Commager died of
pneumonia Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of productive or dry cough, chest pain, fever, and difficulty breathing. The severity ...
at the age of ninety-five on March 2, 1998, in Amherst.


Career

Commager originally studied Danish history, and wrote his PhD dissertation on the Danish
philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...
Johann Friedrich Struensee Lensgreve Johann Friedrich Struensee (5 August 1737 – 28 April 1772) was a German-Danish physician, philosopher and statesman. He became royal physician to the mentally ill King Christian VII of Denmark and a minister in the Danish governmen ...
, a major reformer during the Enlightenment. Under the influence of his mentor at Chicago, the constitutional historian
Andrew C. McLaughlin Andrew Cunningham McLaughlin (February 14, 1861 – September 24, 1947) was an American historian known as an authority on U.S. Constitutional history. Background McLaughlin was born in Illinois and received his bachelor's and law degrees from the ...
, Commager shifted his research and teaching interests to
American history The history of the lands that became the United States began with the arrival of the first people in the Americas around 15,000 BC. Numerous indigenous cultures formed, and many saw transformations in the 16th century away from more densely ...
. Another of his mentors was the colonial American historian Marcus W. Jernegan, for whom he later co-edited a
festschrift In academia, a ''Festschrift'' (; plural, ''Festschriften'' ) is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during their lifetime. It generally takes the form of an edited volume, containing contributions from the h ...
(with William T. Hutchison), ''The Marcus W. Jernegan Essays in American Historiography'' (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1937). Commager taught at
New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, the ...
at
Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
from 1936 to 1956, and at
Amherst College Amherst College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts. Founded in 1821 as an attempt to relocate Williams College by its then-president Zephaniah Swift Moore, Amherst is the third oldest institution of higher educatio ...
in
Massachusetts Massachusetts (Massachusett language, Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut assachusett writing systems, məhswatʃəwiːsət'' English: , ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is the most populous U.S. state, state in the New England ...
from 1956 to 1992. He retired in 1992 from the John Woodruff Simpson Lectureship, and died, aged 95, in Amherst, Massachusetts. Commager emphasized to his generations of students that historians must write not only for one another but for a wider audience. Commager's first solo book was his 1936 biography ''Theodore Parker: Yankee Crusader'', a life of the Unitarian minister, transcendentalist, reformer, and abolitionist
Theodore Parker Theodore Parker (August 24, 1810 – May 10, 1860) was an American transcendentalist and reforming minister of the Unitarian church. A reformer and abolitionist, his words and popular quotations would later inspire speeches by Abraham Lincol ...
; it was reissued in 1960, along with a volume edited by Commager collecting the best known of Parker's many writings. Two characteristic books were his 1950
intellectual history Intellectual history (also the history of ideas) is the study of the history of human thought and of intellectuals, people who conceptualize, discuss, write about, and concern themselves with ideas. The investigative premise of intellectual histor ...
''The American Mind: An Interpretation of American Character Thought Since the 1880s'' and his 1977 study ''The Empire of Reason: How Europe Imagined and America Realized the Enlightenment''. Commager was principally an intellectual and
cultural historian Cultural history combines the approaches of anthropology and history to examine popular cultural traditions and cultural interpretations of historical experience. It examines the records and narrative descriptions of past matter, encompassing the ...
; he was influenced by the literary historian Vernon L. Parrington, but also worked in the fields of constitutional and political history. His work on this subject includes his 1943 series of controversial lectures, ''Majority Rule and Minority Rights'', which argued for a curtailed scope for
judicial review Judicial review is a process under which executive, legislative and administrative actions are subject to review by the judiciary. A court with authority for judicial review may invalidate laws, acts and governmental actions that are incompat ...
, pointing out on the history of the
US Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point of ...
's uses of judicial review to strike down economic regulatory legislation in the first decades of the twentieth century. Later, Commager espoused the use of judicial review by the Supreme Court under the leadership of Chief Justice
Earl Warren Earl Warren (March 19, 1891 – July 9, 1974) was an American attorney, politician, and jurist who served as the 14th Chief Justice of the United States from 1953 to 1969. The Warren Court presided over a major shift in American constitution ...
to protect racial and religious minorities from discrimination and to safeguard individual liberties as protected by the
Bill of Rights A bill of rights, sometimes called a declaration of rights or a charter of rights, is a list of the most important rights to the citizens of a country. The purpose is to protect those rights against infringement from public officials and pri ...
and the Fourteenth Amendment.


Textbooks and editing

Commager was coauthor, with
Samuel Eliot Morison Samuel Eliot Morison (July 9, 1887 – May 15, 1976) was an American historian noted for his works of maritime history and American history that were both authoritative and popular. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1912, and ta ...
, of the widely used history text ''The Growth of the American Republic'' (1930; 1937; 1942; 1950, 1962; 1969; 7th ed., with William E. Leuchtenburg, 1980; abridged editions in 1980 and 1983 under the title ''Concise History of the American Republic''). His anthology, ''Documents of American History'' (1938), reaching its tenth edition (co-edited with his former student Milton Cantor) in 1988, half a century after its first appearance, remains a standard collection work of primary sources. His two documentary histories, ''The Blue and the Gray'' and ''The Spirit of Seventy-Six'' (the latter co-edited with his longtime friend and Columbia colleague Richard B. Morris), are comprehensive collections of primary sources on the Civil War and the American Revolution as seen by participants. With Richard B. Morris, he also co-edited the highly influential New American Nation Series, a multi-volume collaborative history of the United States under whose aegis appeared many significant and prize-winning works of historical scholarship. (This series was a successor to the American Nation series planned and edited at the beginning of the twentieth century by the Harvard historian Albert Bushnell Hart.) At Columbia, Commager mentored a series of distinguished historians who earned their PhD degrees under his tutelage, including
Harold Hyman Harold Melvin Hyman (born July 24, 1924) is an historian of the American Civil War and the Reconstruction Era at Rice University. He is emeritus William P. Hobby professor at Rice. Hyman has a bachelor's degree from the University of California ...
, Leonard W. Levy, and William E. Leuchtenburg. They joined together in 1967 to present him with a festschrift, or commemorative collection of essays, dedicated to him, titled ''Freedom and Reform'' (New York: Harper & Row, 1967). When he moved to Amherst, an elite undergraduate college, he no longer mentored PhD candidates, but he mentored undergraduates, including R. B. Bernstein, who later became a historian of the U.S. Constitution and a specialist in the era of the
American Revolution The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revolut ...
.


Liberalism

Commager felt a duty as a professional historian to reach out to his fellow citizens. He believed that an educated public that understands American history would support liberal programs, especially internationalism and the
New Deal The New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1939. Major federal programs agencies included the Civilian Cons ...
of
Franklin D. Roosevelt Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...
. Although he was skilled at scholarly research and analysis, he preferred to devise and expound sweeping interpretations of historical events and processes, while also making available primary sources so that people could study history for themselves. Commager was representative of a generation of like-minded historians widely read by the general public, including
Samuel Eliot Morison Samuel Eliot Morison (July 9, 1887 – May 15, 1976) was an American historian noted for his works of maritime history and American history that were both authoritative and popular. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1912, and ta ...
,
Allan Nevins Joseph Allan Nevins (May 20, 1890 – March 5, 1971) was an American historian and journalist, known for his extensive work on the history of the Civil War and his biographies of such figures as Grover Cleveland, Hamilton Fish, Henry Ford, and J ...
,
Richard Hofstadter Richard Hofstadter (August 6, 1916October 24, 1970) was an American historian and public intellectual of the mid-20th century. Hofstadter was the DeWitt Clinton Professor of American History at Columbia University. Rejecting his earlier historic ...
,
Arthur Schlesinger Jr. Arthur Meier Schlesinger Jr. (; born Arthur Bancroft Schlesinger; October 15, 1917 – February 28, 2007) was an American historian, social critic, and public intellectual. The son of the influential historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. and a spe ...
, and C. Vann Woodward. Commager's biographer Neil Jumonville has argued that this style of influential public history has been lost in the 21st century, because political correctness has rejected Commager's open marketplace of tough ideas. Jumonville says history now features abstruse deconstruction by experts, with statistics instead of stories, and is comprehensible now only to the initiated, with ethnocentrism ruling in place of common identity. Commager was a liberal interpreter of the
Constitution A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organisation or other type of Legal entity, entity and commonly determine how that entity is to be governed. When ...
and
Bill of Rights A bill of rights, sometimes called a declaration of rights or a charter of rights, is a list of the most important rights to the citizens of a country. The purpose is to protect those rights against infringement from public officials and pri ...
, which he understood as creating a powerful general government that at the same time recognized a wide spectrum of individual rights and liberties. Commager opposed
McCarthyism McCarthyism is the practice of making false or unfounded accusations of subversion and treason, especially when related to anarchism, communism and socialism, and especially when done in a public and attention-grabbing manner. The term origin ...
in the 1940s and 1950s, the
war in Vietnam The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...
(on constitutional grounds), and what he saw as the rampant illegalities and unconstitutionalities perpetrated by the administrations of
Richard Nixon Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...
and
Ronald Reagan Ronald Wilson Reagan ( ; February 6, 1911June 5, 2004) was an American politician, actor, and union leader who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 ...
. One favorite cause was his campaign to point out that, because the budget of the
Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
is classified, it violates the requirement of Article One of the Constitution that no moneys can be spent by the federal government except those specifically appropriated by Congress.


Essays

Commager wrote hundreds of essays and opinion pieces on history or presenting a historical perspective on current issues for popular magazines and newspapers. He collected many of the best of these articles and essays in such books as ''Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent''; ''The Search for a Usable Past and Other Essays in Historiography''; ''Freedom and Order: A Commentary on the American Political Scene''; ''The Commonwealth of Learning''; ''The Defeat of America: War, Presidential Power and the National Character''; and ''Jefferson, Nationalism, and the Enlightenment.'' He often was interviewed on television news programs and public-affairs documentaries to provide historical perspective on such events as the
Apollo XI Apollo 11 (July 16–24, 1969) was the American spaceflight that first landed humans on the Moon. Commander Neil Armstrong and lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin landed the Apollo Lunar Module ''Eagle'' on July 20, 1969, at 20:17 UTC, and ...
moon landing and the
Watergate The Watergate scandal was a major political scandal in the United States involving the administration of President Richard Nixon from 1972 to 1974 that led to Nixon's resignation. The scandal stemmed from the Nixon administration's continual ...
crisis. Benjamin W. Cramer states:


Civil rights

Although at first Commager was not deeply concerned with race, he became an advocate for civil rights for African Americans, as he was for other groups. In 1949 he fought to allow the African-American historian
John Hope Franklin John Hope Franklin (January 2, 1915 – March 25, 2009) was an American historian of the United States and former president of Phi Beta Kappa, the Organization of American Historians, the American Historical Association, and the Southern Histo ...
to present a paper at the
Southern Historical Association The Southern Historical Association is a professional academic organization of historians focusing on the history of the Southern United States. It was organized on November 2, 1934. Its objectives are the promotion of interest and research in Sou ...
and agreed to introduce him to the group. In 1953 the
NAACP Legal Defense Fund The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (NAACP LDF, the Legal Defense Fund, or LDF) is a leading United States civil rights organization and law firm based in New York City. LDF is wholly independent and separate from the NAACP. Altho ...
asked Commager for advice for their argument before the
Supreme Court A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts in most legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, apex court, and high (or final) court of appeal. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...
for the case of ''
Brown v. Board of Education ''Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka'', 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segrega ...
'', but at the time he was not persuaded that this litigation would succeed on historical grounds, and so advised the lawyers.


Declaration of Interdependence

In 1975 Commager wrote a
Declaration of Interdependence There have been a number of documents designated as the Declaration of Interdependence since at least the 1930s. Overview US Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace used the term in relation to the Farm Act of 1933 in a radio address broadca ...
, and presented it to the World Affairs Councils of Philadelphia on October 24, 1975. It was signed in a ceremonial signing on January 30, 1976, at
Congress Hall Congress Hall, located in Philadelphia at the intersection of Chestnut and 6th Streets, served as the seat of the United States Congress from December 6, 1790, to May 14, 1800. During Congress Hall's duration as the capitol of the United State ...
,
Independence National Historical Park Independence National Historical Park is a federally protected historic district in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania that preserves several sites associated with the American Revolution and the nation's founding history. Administered by the National P ...
, Philadelphia, by several members of Congress. It was also "endorsed" by a number of
non-governmental organization A non-governmental organization (NGO) or non-governmental organisation (see spelling differences) is an organization that generally is formed independent from government. They are typically nonprofit entities, and many of them are active in h ...
s and
United Nations specialized agencies United Nations Specialized Agencies are autonomous organizations working with the United Nations and each other through the co-ordinating machinery of the United Nations Economic and Social Council at the intergovernmental level, and through th ...
. The document stressed the importance of
international law International law (also known as public international law and the law of nations) is the set of rules, norms, and standards generally recognized as binding between states. It establishes normative guidelines and a common conceptual framework for ...
, conservation of natural resources, disarmament, the world's oceans, and the peaceful exploration of outer space, among other things. When drafting the document Commager was assisted by an "Advisory Committee" including
Raymond Aron Raymond Claude Ferdinand Aron (; 14 March 1905 – 17 October 1983) was a French philosopher, sociologist, political scientist, historian and journalist, one of France's most prominent thinkers of the 20th century. Aron is best known for his 19 ...
,
Herbert Agar Herbert Sebastian Agar (29 September 1897 – 24 November 1980) was an American journalist and historian, and an editor of the ''Louisville Courier-Journal''. Early life Herbert Sebastian Agar was born September 29, 1897 in New Rochelle, New Yor ...
,
Leonard Woodcock Leonard Freel Woodcock (February 15, 1911 – January 16, 2001) was President of the United Auto Workers (UAW) and the first US ambassador to China after being the last Chief of the US Liaison Office in Beijing. Early life Woodcock was born in ...
, Archibald MacLeish, and others.


Criticism

Commager and his co-author
Samuel Eliot Morison Samuel Eliot Morison (July 9, 1887 – May 15, 1976) was an American historian noted for his works of maritime history and American history that were both authoritative and popular. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1912, and ta ...
received vigorous criticism from African-American intellectuals and other scholars for their popular textbook ''The Growth of the American Republic'', first published in 1930. (Although Morison was responsible for the textbook's controversial section on slavery and references to the slave as "Sambo", and Commager was the junior member of the writing team when the book was first published and always deferred to Morison's greater age and academic stature, Commager has not been spared from charges of racism in this matter.) The textbook was attacked for its uncritical depiction of slavery in America and its depiction of African-American life after emancipation and during
Reconstruction Reconstruction may refer to: Politics, history, and sociology *Reconstruction (law), the transfer of a company's (or several companies') business to a new company *'' Perestroika'' (Russian for "reconstruction"), a late 20th century Soviet Unio ...
. The original editions of the textbook published between 1930 and 1942 echoed the thesis o
''American Negro Slavery''
(1918) by
Ulrich Bonnell Phillips Ulrich Bonnell Phillips (November 4, 1877 – January 21, 1934) was an American historian who largely defined the field of the social and economic studies of the history of the Antebellum South and slavery in the U.S. Phillips concentrated on t ...
and the scholarship of
William Archibald Dunning William Archibald Dunning (12 May 1857 – 25 August 1922) was an American historian and political scientist at Columbia University noted for his work on the Reconstruction era of the United States. He founded the informal Dunning School of inter ...
, relying on the one-sided personal records of slaveowners and portraying slavery as a mainly benign institution. As the historian Herbert Gutman said, this scholarship focused on the question: "What did slavery do for the slave?" Its answer was that slavery lifted the slaves out of the barbarism of Africa, Christianized them, protected them, and generally benefited them. In 1944, the
NAACP The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E.&nb ...
launched criticism of the textbook; by 1950, under pressure from students and younger colleagues, Morison, denying any racist intent (he noted that his daughter had been married to
Joel Elias Spingarn Joel Elias Spingarn (May 17, 1875 – July 26, 1939) was an American educator, literary critic, civil rights activist, military intelligence officer, and horticulturalist. Biography Spingarn was born in New York City to an upper middle-cla ...
, a former President of the NAACP), reluctantly agreed to most of the demanded changes. Morison refused, however, to remove repeated references to the anti-abolitionist caricature of "Sambo", which he claimed were vital in understanding the racist nature of American culture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, an era when even the most enlightened progressive thinkers routinely explained many aspects of human behavior as being a result of innate racial or ethnic characteristics. August A. Meier, a young professor at a black southern college,
Tougaloo College Tougaloo College is a private historically black college in the Tougaloo area of Jackson, Mississippi. It is affiliated with the United Church of Christ and Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). It was originally established in 1869 by New Yo ...
, and a former student of Commager, corresponded with Morison and Commager at the time, in an effort to get them to change their textbook; he reported that Morison "just didn't get it" and in particular did not understand the negative effects that the Sambo stereotype was having on young impressionable students. On the other hand, Meier found that Commager, although at first woefully unaware of black history, was openminded on the subject and willing to learn and change. Morison did not agree to remove Sambo until the fifth edition, which appeared in 1962. On June 22, 1953,
Whittaker Chambers Whittaker Chambers (born Jay Vivian Chambers; April 1, 1901 – July 9, 1961) was an American writer-editor, who, after early years as a Communist Party member (1925) and Soviet spy (1932–1938), defected from the Soviet underground (1938), ...
, an intellectual leader on the right, ridiculed Commager as suffering "the liberal neurosis" for stating that America is suffering repression "more violent, more reckless, more dangerous than any in our history."


Selected publications

* ''Oxford History of the United States'' (New York: Oxford University Press, 1930). 7th ed.: ''The Growth of the American Republic'' (1980) (with
Samuel Eliot Morison Samuel Eliot Morison (July 9, 1887 – May 15, 1976) was an American historian noted for his works of maritime history and American history that were both authoritative and popular. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1912, and ta ...
). Revised and abridged edition: ''A Concise History of the American Republic'' (Oxford University Press, 1980; rev. 1983) (with Samuel Eliot Morison and William E. Leuchtenburg) * ''Documents of American History'' (1934 and later editions through 1988) * ''Theodore Parker: Yankee Crusader'' (1936) * ''The Heritage of America: Readings in American History for High Schools'' (1939) (with
Allan Nevins Joseph Allan Nevins (May 20, 1890 – March 5, 1971) was an American historian and journalist, known for his extensive work on the history of the Civil War and his biographies of such figures as Grover Cleveland, Hamilton Fish, Henry Ford, and J ...
) * (1943) * ''The American Mind: An Interpretation of American Thought and Character Since the 1880s'' (1950) * ''Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent'' (1954) * ''The Standard Building of Our Nation'' (1955) (with Eugene Barker and Walter Prescott Webb) * ''The Spirit of Seventy-six: The Story of The American Revolution as Told by Participants'' (1958) - two volumes * ''The Search for a Usable Past and Other Essays in Historiography'' (1965) * ''Freedom and Order: A Commentary on the American Political Scene'' (1966) * ''The Defeat of America: War, Presidential Power, and the National Character'' (1974) * ''Jefferson, Nationalism, and the Enlightenment'' (1975) * ''The Empire of Reason: How Europe Imagined and America Realized the Enlightenment'' (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press / Doubleday, 1977, and later reprintings) * ''Commager on Tocqueville'' (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1993)


See also

*
Herbert Baxter Adams Prize The Herbert Baxter Adams Prize is an annual book prize of the American Historical Association. It is awarded for "a distinguished first book by a young scholar in the field of European history", and is named in honor of Herbert Baxter Adams, who ...


References


Citations


Works cited

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Further reading

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External links

*
1967 St. Louis Literary Award Recipient

Amherst College: Henry Steele Commager Project



Henry Steele Commager Official Site (2013 archive)
Copyright 2000-2013 - Mary Commager *
review of Neil Jumonville, Henry Steele Commager: Midcentury Liberalism And The History Of The Present
at
H-NET __NOTOC__ H-Net ("Humanities & Social Sciences Online") is an interdisciplinary forum for scholars in the humanities and social sciences. It is best known for hosting electronic mailing lists organized by academic disciplines; according to the o ...
* * http://www.mlfilms.com/productions/m_and_i ''Memory and Imagination: New Pathways to the
Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...
'' Documentary] {{DEFAULTSORT:Commager, Henry Steele 1902 births 1998 deaths 20th-century American essayists 20th-century American historians Academics of the University of Cambridge American male essayists American Unitarians Amherst College faculty Columbia University faculty Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Professors of American History Historians from Pennsylvania Historians of the American Civil War Historians of the United States New York University faculty University of Chicago alumni Writers from Pittsburgh 20th-century American male writers Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters