Born in Portage, Wisconsin, in 1861, Frederick J. Turner was
graduated from the State University in 1884, and six years
later he received his Ph. D. from Johns Hopkins. Meantime he
had spent some of the years in teaching in his Alma Mater. He
was made full professor of history in 1892, which position he
held until 1910, when Harvard University called him.
Few men on "The Hill" were more beloved by the students than
"Freddie" Turner. His courses were crowded, and his lectures
were exceedingly popular. Perhaps if his students had known
that from 1885 to 1888 he served as tutor in rhetoric and
oratory at Wisconsin, they would not have wondered so much at
the eloquence of his lectures.
But eloquence was not the main feature of his lectures, nor
yet the quality he most desired in the recitations of his
students. Woe betide the young man who had spent too little
time upon the "constitutional period," and who tried to give
this argus-eyed instructor the impression of deep and careful
study. The bubble was sure to be pricked, and the
discomfiture of the ambitious one was, while frequently
laughable, always unmistakable. One never knew when he was
going to be "quizzed" in "Freddie's" class. But one thing was
certain: that was that he would be asked a question, and when
that question came it was best, from every point of view, to
be able to do good, clear, straight thinking, based on a fund
of religiously acquired information. One quality that
Professor Turner exacted of himself and others was that
assertions must be backed up by evidence. Perhaps that is not
the least important reason why the article from which a
selection is here made created as profound a change in the
general attitude toward American history as any single word
on that subject that has ever been spoken.