the history student. Morning and afternoon there will be conferences
at Columbia University upon special historical topics. In the morning
the following conferences will be held: Ancient History, Prof.
Westerman, of Wisconsin, chairman; Medieval History, in join session
with the American Society of Church History, Prof. Emerton, of Harvard,
chairman; American History, in joint session with the Mississippi
Valley Historical Association, to discuss the Westward movement, Prof.
Paxson, of Michigan, chairman; Conference of Archivists, Prof. Ames,
of Pennsylvania, chairman. In the afternoon the conferences will be
continued: Modern European History, with Prof. Robinson, of Columbia,
chairman; American History, Ethnic Elements in United States History,
Prof. Greene, of Illinois, chairman; Conference of State and Local
Historical Societies, Prof. Sioussat, of the University of the South,
chairman.
Historical conferences will be held also on Friday morning as follows:
American History, the Contributions of the Romance Nations to the
History of America, Prof. Shepherd, of Columbia, chairman; History
in the Secondary Schools, with reports upon history in French and
German schools, and preliminary report of the Committee of Five, Prof.
Salmon, of Vassar, chairman; History in the Grades, with discussion
of the report of the Committee of Eight, Prof. James, of Northwestern
University, chairman. The program for each of these conferences has
been carefully outlined and a series of short papers will be presented
followed by a general discussion. In addition to these meetings for the
discussion of historical subjects proper, many allied topics will be
treated in the sessions of the other associations.
Prof. Johnson, of Teachers’ College, Columbia University, is directing
an exhibition of aids to the visualization of history, mentioned in
another part of this number of the MAGAZINE which promises to be one of
the features of the meeting. Columbia University Library will exhibit
plans for libraries, and architectural plans of interest to members of
State and local historical societies.
But, after all is said about the scientific and technical conferences,
it must be admitted that the greatest value of the annual meetings
is to be found in the personal friendships formed and renewed, and
in the purely social features of the meetings. In this respect New
York is preparing to give the members of the associations a most
hearty welcome. The headquarters of the associations will be in the
Waldorf-Astoria, and many of the meetings will be held in the several
assembly rooms of the hotel. On Monday luncheon will be tendered
the members by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company; on Tuesday,
Columbia University will give a luncheon, and Tuesday evening a club
dinner will be given at the University Commons, and later in the
evening a smoker. On Wednesday there will be a breakfast for members
at the Waldorf-Astoria; a tea at the residence of Mrs. Clarence
W. Bowen, and in the evening a reception and entertainment at the
Waldorf-Astoria by the Ladies’ Reception Committee of New York, Mrs.
Robert Abbe, chairman, at which a number of historical tableaux will be
presented. On Thursday, Teachers’ College will entertain the members at
luncheon, and in the evening Mr. and Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt will
give a reception at their residence. In addition to these features of
entertainment of all the associations, there will be luncheons and
social meetings for many of the smaller groups composing the larger
societies.
From a scientific, a popular, and a social standpoint the New York
meetings should be a marked success. The several local committees
have worked unremittingly upon the many details of program and
entertainment; and with metropolitan zeal and generosity they have
outlined the most interesting program the associations have known.
American History in the Secondary School
ARTHUR M. WOLFSON, PH.D., Editor
THE CONSTITUTION--ITS ANTECEDENTS, ITS FORMATION, AND ITS ADOPTION.
The study of the Constitution of the United States involves two more or
less distinct processes. If the student is to comprehend it perfectly,
he must consider it, first, as an historical document, studying its
antecedents, the process of its creation, and the method of its
adoption; second, he must consider it as it exists at present, the
ground plan upon which our national institutions have been reared, and
under which the Government of the United States is still being operated.
A generation ago the opinion was almost universally received that our
present constitution was the result of the superhuman skill of the
two or three score men who sat and deliberated in the State House in
Philadelphia from May 25th to September 17th, 1787. Even Gladstone,
whose knowledge of history and politics should have taught him better,
seems to have lent himself to this theory, for in contrasting the
English and the American Constitutions, he declares that, “As the
British Constitution is the most subtle organism which has proceeded
from progressive history, so the American Constitution is the most
wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose
of man.” To-day this theory has been entirely abandoned. For this
reason, the student must be brought to consider the Constitution as
an historical as well as a political document, seeking its origins
in the institutions of England and the English colonies, acquainting
himself with the personality and the theories of the men who sat in the
Convention, following the debates and the newspaper discussions which
in every State were the preliminary steps to its ratification.
For the boys and girls who have studied their English history and their
Colonial history with care and intelligence, only a brief review of
the antecedents of the Constitution will be necessary. Nevertheless,
this review should not be neglected. Once more the teacher should
insist upon the fact that the roots of American civil and political
institutions are to be found in English soil. Transplanted to America
in the seventeenth century, these institutions were affected and
modified by local conditions, but in their origin they were essentially
English. The study of the Constitution should therefore begin with
a brief reconsideration of the English system of government, its
origin and development, especially in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. Far more important than the system of government, however,
was the system of law and the theory of the right of the individual to
freedom from unjust impositions by the government which the colonists
inherited from the mother country. Not until the student is able to
state again, and accurately, the fundamental principles of Magna Carta,
of the Petition of Rights and of the Bill of Rights should the teacher
proceed to the consideration of other subjects, for the very language
of these documents will appear again in the first nine amendments to
our present Constitution.
Next, the teacher should review with his students the history of
the establishment of the various groups of colonies, their forms of
government, the various methods of colonial legislative, executive, and
judicial procedure, the rights and duties of the governor, the method
of election and the powers and functions of both houses of the colonial
assemblies, the rights and duties of the judiciary: one and all, these
served as models which were freely studied and adopted by the members
of the Constitutional Convention.
Most important of all precedents, however, were the colonial forms
of union. Beginning with the process of amalgamation which is
to be observed in the history of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and
Massachusetts, proceeding through the history of the New England
Confederation, “a consociation for mutual help and strength in all
their future concernments,” through the history of the Albany Plan,
the acts of the Stamp Act Congress, the Committees of Correspondence,
the Continental Congress, and the Articles of Confederation, the
student should be made to see that the Constitution of the United
States is but the last step in a century and a half of political
development. In the Articles of Confederation of the United Colonies of
New England (Article 8), for instance, is to be found the germ of the
constitutional provision for mutual rights of citizenship and for the
return of fugitive slaves and criminals. In the Albany Plan we find at
least two provisions which in later days were to be incorporated in the
Federal Constitution: (1) that a single officer should be charged with
the general administration of the affairs of the union, and (2) that
representation should be proportional, not equal, among the members of
the union.
The study of the Articles of Confederation should, of course, be
thorough and exhaustive. Too many teachers are content to leave their
pupils with a hazy notion of the form of government submitted to
the States in 1777 and finally adopted in 1781. Because so much is
regularly said about the defects of the Articles, so much about the
perfection of the Constitution, the teacher must be warned and warned
again against the almost universal custom of belittling the importance
of this instrument of government. With all its imperfections, it is
nevertheless true, considering the troublous times during which it
was in operation, and the spirit of separatism which existed among
the States, that this earliest bond of union among the States served
as a strong link without which the present Constitution would never
have come into existence. Under these Articles, the States severally
entered into “a firm league of friendship with each other for their
common defense, the security of their liberties and their mutual and
general welfare.” They guaranteed that “the free inhabitants of each
of these States ... shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities
of free citizens in the several States”; “that full faith and credit
shall be given in each of these States to the records, acts, etc.,
of every other State.” The provisions of the Articles concerning the
three departments of government should also receive careful attention,
especially the executive and judicial departments, because it is
here that most high school students are left with exceedingly vague
and inaccurate conceptions. A thorough analysis of the document will
show that while there were abortive provisions for the creation of
a separate executive and an attempt to establish a limited national
judicial department, all real power was vested in the Congress.
Congress gathered to itself all the active functions of government,
and yet even it could take no definite action unless the delegates
from at least nine of the States consented, and none of its acts could
be enforced except through the good will and the active coöperation
of the separate States. In these two circumstances and in one other,
namely: that Congress had no power to regulate interstate commerce, lay
the serious, the fatal weakness of the Articles of Confederation. Nor
did there seem to be any way of remedying conditions, for no amendment
could be made to the Articles unless every State consented. Three times
the attempt was made, but each time it failed, and the experiment of a
union among the States seemed doomed to failure.
Then, in 1786, upon the invitation of Virginia, delegates from five
of the States met at Annapolis to consider the subject of interstate
trade without consulting the members of Congress. Instead of taking
any action, however, this convention issued an address to the States
inviting them to send delegates to a convention to meet in Philadelphia
May, 1787, “to devise such further provisions as shall appear to them
necessary to render the constitution of the Federal Government adequate
to the exigencies of the Union.” Though many States still hesitated,
as a result of this address, delegates from all the States except
Rhode Island met at the appointed time in what came to be known as the
Constitutional Convention.
Having led his pupils thus far in the study of the history of the
Constitution, the teacher is now prepared to discuss with them the
second stage of its story. First he will need to insist, and that
unrelentingly, that they become acquainted with the names and the
personality of at least the most prominent members of the Convention:
Washington and Madison and Randolph, from Virginia; Franklin and
Wilson and Gouverneur Morris, from Pennsylvania; Hamilton and Lansing,
from New York; Gerry and King, from Massachusetts; Ellsworth and
Sherman, from Connecticut; the two Pinckneys, from South Carolina; and
Patterson, from New Jersey. The personality of these men, their plans
and preparations, are all of profound importance; each contributed
something, positive or negative, to the new instrument of government.
The history of the convention itself falls roughly into three stages:
during the first month the delegates were busy presenting their plans
of union, each party attempting to enforce its will upon the minds of
the others. Then followed a month during which the parties gradually
came to an agreement, each waiving some of the things which it regarded
as essential in return for concessions upon the part of the others.
Finally, during the third month, though the debates still went on, they
were occupied mainly with the settlement of details, none of which was
of primary importance. If this threefold division of the work of the
Convention is kept in mind, the teacher will find it comparatively easy
to bring order out of the apparent chaos of the deliberations of the
three and a half months’ session at Philadelphia.
Taking each period in its order, we find that during the first month
there were two radically opposed opinions in the Convention. On the
one hand, were those who believed that a strong central government
should be established; on the other, those who believed that all that
was necessary or proper was that the Articles of Confederation should
be amended by giving to Congress more power, and by creating a strong
executive and a judicial department. The plans of the first party were
set forth in the Virginia Plan, which was probably drawn up by Madison
and presented to the Convention by Randolph; those of the other in the
New Jersey Plan, which was presented by Patterson. Each of these plans
should be carefully and thoroughly studied. Beside them, the student
will do well to acquaint himself also with the proposals laid before
the Convention by Hamilton and by Pinckney.
After a month of debating propositions and counter-propositions, the
differences narrowed themselves down to the single question of what
should be the method of representation in Congress. For a time it
seemed as though no agreement could be reached upon this subject. Then
came the compromise offered by Ellsworth and Sherman, of Connecticut,
which the Convention finally adopted--the first great compromise
of the Constitution. Next followed the debate between the Northern
States and the Southern States upon the question as to what should be
the basis of representation. This, too, was finally settled by what
is known as the second compromise of the Constitution. Finally there
remains to be studied the debates over the questions of the slave
trade, and foreign and interstate commerce. Here again the Convention
divided on sectional lines, till the difference was settled by the
third great compromise of the Constitution.
Now the Convention entered upon its third stage. Debates and
differences of opinion were still frequent, but they related almost
entirely to questions of detail, not to fundamental principles, so
that by September 17th the Convention was able to adjourn after having
transmitted the Constitution to the Congress of the Confederation for
action.
With the work of the Convention behind us, there remains the third
stage of the history of the Constitution to be studied. Instead of
acting finally upon the document, after a brief period of deliberation,
Congress on September 29th submitted it to the States for ratification.
This ratification was not accomplished without difficulty. Opposition
to the new form of government was active, often virulent. The grounds
for this opposition should be carefully studied. Unless we understand
it clearly, we shall be in no position to understand the basis of
the constitutional strife which raged in the United States for the
next seventy years, which culminated when the eleven Southern States
finally seceded from the Union. The objection to the new Constitution
was based first upon the feeling that the central government outlined
in the Constitution was too strong and would ultimately overshadow
and destroy the State governments; second, upon the fact that the
Constitution contained no Bill of Rights, and that therefore the sacred
rights of the people for which they had fought in the Revolution might
be interfered with. The first objection was finally overcome by the
argument and by the feeling among the people that life in America would
soon be impossible unless a stronger federal government than then
existed could be established; the second, by the promise that a series
of amendments embodying the principles known as the Bill of Rights
would speedily be adopted. Thus the Constitution was finally ratified,
and in April, 1789, the new government went into operation.
The further history of the Constitution belongs to a later period of
American history and is therefore outside the limits of this article.
It remains only, then, to indicate to the teacher the sources where
he may profitably seek further information on this subject. For
the story of the development of the English Constitution, specific
references can hardly be given, any one of the half dozen standard
text-books on English history should be adequate for the study of this
subject. The three great charters of English liberty may be found in
any of the source books of English history, such as, for instance,
Kendall’s or Colby’s or Lee’s; while, for the history of colonial
institutions, the student is referred to the works on colonial history
already mentioned in previous articles. The basis for the study of
the work of the Convention is to be found (1) in the “Journal of the
Convention,” published in Elliot’s “Debates,” and, especially, (2) in
Madison’s “Notes,” which are much fuller and much more satisfactory.
Of the secondary histories of the period, only some half dozen need be
mentioned: (1) Fiske’s “Critical Period,” (2) Curtis’s “Constitutional
History,” Vol. 1; (3) McLaughlin’s “The Confederation and the
Constitution,” (4) Walker’s “Making of the Nation,” (5) Landon’s
“Constitutional History,” and (6) Hart’s “Formation of the Union.”
There are others, of course, but these are more than sufficient for the
ordinary student.
TRANSITION, 1788-1789.
The period of transition, 1788-1789, is one of much interest for the
student and the teacher of American history. After the Constitution
had been ratified by the requisite number of States there remained
many details to be attended to before the new government could be put
into operation. Hasty generalizations have been made respecting this
period; and many a student has found his queries upon the precise
mode of transfer to the new government unanswered. Frank Fletcher
Stephens, Ph.D., has published in the “University of Missouri Studies”
a monograph, which covers this transitional period. Treating first the
action of the old Congress, Dr. Stephens follows the action of each
of the States upon the election of senators, of representatives, and
of presidential electors, closing with the determination in 1789 of
relations between the national government and the State governments.
While the chapters upon the first elections for national officers
are of value, the closing chapter upon federal and State relations
is particularly so. The author shows how the United States revenue
system took the place of the State tariffs, and how the change was made
successful by appointing to the national offices many of the customs
officials trained in the State service. Other subjects over which the
authority of the new government was paramount were admiralty matters,
naturalisation, and paper money; and upon each of these the authority
of the national government superseded the action of the States.
Respecting pensions and light-houses, we have a voluntary surrender
to the nation of the obligations incurred by the States in caring for
their veterans or in promoting commerce. The monograph throws much
light upon a neglected period of our history. E. K. Y.
European History in the Secondary School
D.C. KNOWLTON, PH.D., Editor.
THE RENAISSANCE.
What Was the Renaissance?
Before opening the discussion with the class there should be a clear
conception in the mind of the teacher as to what the Renaissance really
was. Is it to be regarded, for example, as an era, embracing within
its limits the Babylonian Captivity and the Great Schism, the Hundred
Years’ War, the struggle for Italy and the rise of Spain, and ending
finally with Luther’s attack on the Church in the sixteenth century;
or is it to be restricted to a narrower field, marked largely by a
revival of art, literature, and science and followed by an age of
discovery? “The period of the Renaissance,” says one writer, “in its
proper and most comprehensive meaning, may be regarded as the age in
which the social and political system of the Middle Ages came to an
end, in which medieval restrictions upon liberty of thought and inquiry
were abolished.” He then proceeds to explain that it includes all
the events which lie between 1273 and 1494, or, in other words, two
centuries and a quarter of European development. A little further on,
however, he refers to the “two movements with which the Renaissance has
been preeminently and sometimes exclusively associated--the revival of
letters and the revival of art,”[2] and discusses it from this second
point of view, showing how even with this narrower conception of the
movement it may properly include the reform of religion, the extension
of geographical knowledge and new discoveries in the realms of science,
both these conceptions were evidently before the minds of the committee
of the New England History Teachers’ Association as they framed their
syllabus. The efforts of the secondary teacher must of necessity be
confined to the Renaissance as a revival of letters and art. This does
not preclude the teacher from regarding the events from 1273 to 1494
as symptoms of changes which were bringing the Middle Ages to a close
and inaugurating a new era. In fact, these events may serve as an
introduction to the Renaissance proper, as has already been shown.[3]
The simple question, “What was the Renaissance?” will serve to open
the subject, and the various answers which may be drawn from the
students can be made to fit the teacher’s conception of the movement;
or, better still, the questions may be so framed as to draw from the
students themselves the teacher’s preconceived notion of what is to be
understood by the term. At the close of the discussion, the teacher’s
definition or conception, framed in simple language and dictated to the
class will fix it clearly in the student’s mind and serve as a guide
to further study and discussion. The following conception, which is
made up of statements borrowed from several sources, will serve as
an illustration: “The Renaissance was an intellectual and scientific
transformation of Europe, a great and fundamental change in thought and
taste, in books, buildings and pictures, for which the world had long
been preparing and in which we still participate.”
When Was the Renaissance?
This question suggests a second. “When did this movement begin and
when did it end?” This question may be treated separately or regarded
as a fundamental part of the first query. If an English and a German
Renaissance are to be recognized, as well as an Italian Renaissance,
care must be taken to select the dates accordingly. Following the plan
of some of the text-books, it might be well in this connection to point
out the fact that, although the movement began in Italy in the middle
of the fourteenth century and lasted there until about 1550, its dates
for England were approximately 1500 to 1600, and for Germany, 1450 to
1520.
Where Did It Begin and Why?