Arthur Meier Sr. Schlesinger (1888–1965)

The Foreword by the author's son, explains that the pater work was concerned with "redefining the scope of American history", so as to "emancipate" scholarship from the Victorian conviction that "history is past politics", and showing the vitality of nonpolitical forces. The work is the ripended summation of the effect of social factors, such as immigration, the city, the voluntary associations, food, and currents from the globe. Clearly the Schlesingers take up the duty of historians to "rate" Presidents.

Schlesinger begins with Crevecoeur's question, posed in the last years of the Revolution: "What them is the American, this new man?" Consider that the "great bulk" of the settlors came from the poorer classes. And as Tawney taught, "Calvinism was the first dogmatic body of religious teaching which can be said to recognize and applaud the economic virtues. It neatly fitted the glove of divine sanction to the hand of prudential conduct, thereby giving a sense of personal rectitude to the business of getting ahead in the world". [6]

In addition, while resorted to initially to keep from starvation, "Farming was the primary occupation". Most of the Revolutionaries tilled the soil. Emerson spoke of the influence of farming through 1844. He notes, ironically, the fact that the early settlers long struggled with starvation -- while the woods abounded with native sources of food, game was plentiful, and the rivers teemed with fish.[7] A typical New Englander was also a jack-of-all-trades. A tory governor described one Francis Makemie as "a Preacher, a Doctor of Physick, a Merchant, an Attorny, and worse of all, a Disturber of Governments".[8]

What elements of national character are attributable to the agrarian environment? First, the habit of work. Laws passed in Virginia in 1619 ordered the slothful to be bound over to compulsory labor. The Massachusetts Bay Company instructed their governor that "now idel drone bee permitted to live among us".[9] A magazine caricature of the 1890;s pictures a foreigner saying to his American hostess, "It's a defect in your country, that you have no leisured classes". "But we have them", she replies, "only we call them tramps".

The cult of beauty was ignored, as impractical. One result was architectural monotony and ugliness.

The farmer's life was also complex and afforded unexcelled training in mechanical ingenuity. Only Americans invented machines to do things that had been done by hand for millenia.[12]

A tradition of wasteful living, bred by an environment of plenty. And for centuries there was a constant cry for "girls wanted". Women were paid a deference and accorded a status unknown in older societies. [14]

Constantly moving. In 1888, an observer from Europe noted that in no State is there a population fixed in its residence; in many "it is almost nomadic". [14] Because of slavery, however, an exception emerged in the South. Denying infusions of fresh blood, Southerners lived increasingly to themselves, exalting their peculiarities over the traits they had in common with others.

The "locomotive tendencies of the Americans" never abated. The pursuit of happiness became the happiness of pursuit. [15]

An individualistic bias sometimes defied government. The tendency to violence so generated has continued to condition the national mentality. Thoreau, the philosopher of individualism, saw no reason to reliquish conscience to any legislator.

Many gems. And one can see how closely the father and son Schlesingers influenced each others' historical work. I would place the father as one of the American founders of the Annales movement.… (mehr)