History of the United States

History of the United States
by
Charles A. Beard and Mary R.
Beard

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Title: History of the United States
Author: Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
Release Date: October 28, 2005 [EBook #16960]
Language: English
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HISTORY
OF THE
UNITED STATES
BY
CHARLES A. BEARD
AND
MARY R. BEARD

New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1921
All rights reserved
COPYRIGHT, 1921,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1921.

Norwood Press
J.S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
NORWOOD, MASS., U.S.A.

PREFACE

As things now stand, the course of instruction in American history in
our public schools embraces three distinct treatments of the subject.
Three separate books are used. First, there is the primary book, which is
usually a very condensed narrative with emphasis on biographies and
anecdotes. Second, there is the advanced text for the seventh or eighth
grade, generally speaking, an expansion of the elementary book by the
addition of forty or fifty thousand words. Finally, there is the high
school manual. This, too, ordinarily follows the beaten path, giving
fuller accounts of the same events and characters. To put it bluntly, we
do not assume that our children obtain permanent possessions from
their study of history in the lower grades. If mathematicians followed
the same method, high school texts on algebra and geometry would
include the multiplication table and fractions.
There is, of course, a ready answer to the criticism advanced above. It
is that teachers have learned from bitter experience how little history
their pupils retain as they pass along the regular route. No teacher of
history will deny this. Still it is a standing challenge to existing
methods of historical instruction. If the study of history cannot be made
truly progressive like the study of mathematics, science, and languages,
then the historians assume a grave responsibility in adding their subject
to the already overloaded curriculum. If the successive historical texts
are only enlarged editions of the first text--more facts, more dates, more
words--then history deserves most of the sharp criticism which it is
receiving from teachers of science, civics, and economics.
In this condition of affairs we find our justification for offering a new
high school text in American history. Our first contribution is one of
omission. The time-honored stories of exploration and the biographies
of heroes are left out. We frankly hold that, if pupils know little or
nothing about Columbus, Cortes, Magellan, or Captain John Smith by
the time they reach the high school, it is useless to tell the same stories
for perhaps the fourth time. It is worse than useless. It is an offense
against the teachers of those subjects that are demonstrated to be
progressive in character.
In the next place we have omitted all descriptions of battles. Our

reasons for this are simple. The strategy of a campaign or of a single
battle is a highly technical, and usually a highly controversial, matter
about which experts differ widely. In the field of military and naval
operations most writers and teachers of history are mere novices. To
dispose of Gettysburg or the Wilderness in ten lines or ten pages is
equally absurd to the serious student of military affairs. Any one who
compares the ordinary textbook account of a single Civil War
campaign with the account given by Ropes, for instance, will ask for no
further comment. No youth called upon to serve our country in arms
would think of turning to a high school manual for information about
the art of warfare. The dramatic scene or episode, so useful in arousing
the interest of the immature pupil, seems out of place in a book that
deliberately appeals to boys and girls on the very threshold of life's
serious responsibilities.
It is not upon negative features, however, that we rest our case. It is
rather upon constructive features.
First. We have written a topical, not a narrative, history. We have tried
to set forth the important aspects, problems, and movements of each
period, bringing in the narrative rather by way of illustration.
Second. We have emphasized those historical topics which help to
explain how our nation has come to be what it is to-day.
Third. We have dwelt fully upon the social and economic aspects of