The Founding Fathers: Young Men of the Revolution
Washington, DC: Service Center for Teachers of History, 1962. Presumed first edition/first printing. Wraps. [2], 28, [2] p. 23 cm. Occasional footnotes. Selected Bibliography. This was Publication Number 44. It was provided as a service of the American Historical Association. This pamphlet is a restatement, with some variations, of an article that originally appeared in the Political Science Quarterly, Vol. LXXXVI, No. 2, June 1961. The material was intended to be later incorporated in somewhat altered from in a Harper Brothers volune on nineteenth-century America. From Wikipedia: "Stanley M. Elkins is the Sydenham Clark Parsons Professor Emeritus of history at Smith College. Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life (1959), based on Elkins' doctoral dissertation at Columbia University, was theoretically innovative and enormously influential in the years after its publication, although its arguments are largely rejected today. Elkins made two major, and controversial, arguments in Slavery. The first was that American abolitionists undercut their own effectiveness by their insistence on ideological consistency and purity, and their refusal to compromise with the slave system. Elkins contrasted them with British abolitionists who, he argued, were more pragmatic and therefore more politically effective; he noted that Britain had abolished slavery without war. Elkins's second argument was that the experience of slavery was psychologically infantilizing to slaves, making them follow what he controversially called the "Sambo" model. He based his arguments on then-recent sociological and psychological research by Bruno Bettelheim and others on inmates of Nazi concentration camps during World War II, showing that the totalitarian environment systematically destroyed their ability to resist, to plan, and to form positive relationships with one another. Elkins speculated that antebellum slavery was a similar environment and instilled an infantilized, dependent personality pattern. One implication, only partially spelled out in Elkins's account, was that this personality pattern might persist in his own time, a century after the end of slavery. Elkins' views were influential during the late 1960s when Daniel Patrick Moynihan supported Affirmative action programs in order to counteract the lingering effects of slavery on black culture. Thirdly Elkins argued that slavery in North America was strikingly different than in Latin America, a theme originated by historian Frank Tannenbaum regarding Brazil. That is, the Sambo model did not appear in Brazil. The Age of Federalism, 1788-1800, co-authored by Elkins and Eric McKitrick, was described as a "dazzling book, " featuring an "elegant and penetrating pen portrait of Hamilton." The Age of Federalism won the Bancroft Prize. The book explores the history of the Federalist party, discusses the relationships among key players, among them Thomas Jefferson, John Jay, and Alexander Hamilton, and analyzes the administrations of George Washington and John Adams. Initially Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life was heralded by the black community as an important and positive contribution, but subsequently the comparison of black slavery and Nazi concentration camps was considered offensive by many descendants of both oppressed groups. The controversy is discussed by Ann Lane in her 1971 compilation: The Debate Over Slavery, Stanley Elkins and His Critics. Other historians began challenging Elkins's thesis, particularly John W. Blassingame's The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South (1972)." From Wikipedia: "Eric Louis McKitrick (July 5, 1919 Battle Creek, Michigan-April 24, 2002 New York, N.Y. ) was an American historian. He graduated from Columbia University in 1949, an M.A. in 1951 and a Ph.D. in 1959. He taught at the University of Chicago and at Rutgers University's Douglass College in the 1950s, and Columbia University from 1960 to 1989. He retired as an emeritus professor of history. He reviewed for The New York Review of Books." Condition: Good. Highlighting/underlining. Cover has some wear and soiling. Ink mark near left edge of title page. Three lines of yellow hightlighting noted on page 19,
Keywords: American Revolution, Founding Fathers, Charles A. Beard, Richard B. Morris, Merrill Jensen, Forrest McDonald, Cecelia Kenyon, Constitutional Movement
[Book #67654]
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