Bull Market in U.S. History?

Should U.S. history be revised--upwards? Have U.S. historians been selling the U.S. short? These were the questions 200 teachers and historians were discussing last week at the annual meeting of the Institute of American History. The Institute was started ten years ago by Stanford's Edgar E. Robinson, who wanted to get scholars and teachers together. Last week, the teachers got a ringing earful from Columbia's Historian Allan Nevins. It's about time, said Nevins, that U.S. historians changed their tune.*

"We have become, first a great world power, and now, the great power. We must view the past, therefore, through this changed perspective . .

"In the cynical '20s and '30s, our men of strength and stature were described as pygmies. The elder Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie . . . Henry Ford were treated as archetypes of greed . . . Historians have underestimated their constructive work.

"In future histories, our industrial leaders will stand forth as the great builders of our industrial might . . . Coming historians will realize that this era ... is one of the great hours in the history of the U.S. and English-speaking peoples, and may be invested with the heroic radiance of the Elizabethan period or the Age of Pitt . . ."

* One new tune needed, said Librarian of Congress Luther Evans, is more military history. "As one of my colleagues at Columbia once said: 'In abandoning the drum-and-trumpet school of history, we adopted the bum-and-strumpet school.' "

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.