The Power of History & Historians

My study of history has become meta. In an effort to manage my research project on the Articles of Confederation, I committed to thinking and writing about one piece of the historical puzzle I'd like to solve: How did the Articles of Confederation become the United States' forgotten constitution?

My strategy for answering this first question involves investigating the history of the early histories of the American Revolution and early United States. At the moment, it's a two-part investigation:

Part one: See whether the early histories mention the Articles of Confederation and if so, what they have to say about it.

Part two: Attempt to better understand why the historians who authored these early histories wrote them the way they did. How did their methodology help determine the inclusion, exclusion, and interpretations of the Articles?

This second part has led my study of history to become meta.

History as Identity

I'm fascinated by American identity. Americans don't have just one identity, they have many. At one level they are American: members and citizens of the United States. At another level Americans are regional. Americans aren't just Americans, they're New Englanders, New Yorkers, Pennsylvanians, Californians, Texans, Southerners, Midwesterners, etc. And you can further subdivide these regional identities into smaller cultural groups.

My scholarship is driven by a desire to figure out how Americans can be at once the same and yet so very different. How do Americans navigate and negotiate their identities as members of local cultural groups and regional communities--identities that often stand at odds with each other across cultural and regional lines-- to also include a national, American identity that unifies them?

History stands as a BIG part of the answer to that question. History builds and sustains nations and people. It's an important part of the glue that holds people and culture together. Along with other humanistic fields such as language and literature, history helps disparate people build and sustain a national identity. History is so important to national identity that the European Union is funding the work of historians to create a national, European history.[1]

In the United States, we've had a nationalistic history from the start and it developed for three reasons:

1. In the 18th-century, Americans and Europeans viewed history as practical. History served as a tool that demonstrated how philosophical teachings worked on the ground, in real life.

2. Early Americans turned to history to explain the American Revolution and War for Independence. How did thirteen colonies rise up and improbably defeat Great Britain? Americans who lived through the events had a hard time understanding the answer to this question so they turned to history to work out and explain what had happened.

3. Early historians used history to affect their agenda: Encourage the next generation to take a stand a build a nation.

The Power of History & Historians

Early historians of the United States used the past to shape the future. They shaped the future of their nation by depicting Americans' stand against Great Britain as a united one and by stressing the need for Americans to unite and remain united as they built their new nation. The historians' projected a clear message: Victory in the War for Independence demonstrated that when Americans stand united they can achieve great feats and accomplish the improbable, like defeating the greatest imperial army and navy in the world.

Early historians achieved their message by glossing over and omitting the thousands of Americans who remained loyal to Great Britain and the thousands more who tried to maintain a neutral position during the Revolution. They also largely passed over the infighting and squabbling that took place within Congress and among the different states, which one can clearly see if they explore the history of the Articles of Confederation.

The selective history of these early historians has had great staying power. The idea that Americans stand united more often than they stand divided is a myth. But it's a powerful myth that helped explain the Revolution and heal the nation after its violent and divisive war.

I have a lot more work on early American histories and historians to do. But my first foray into this small study makes a convincing case that history and historians are powerful. The historians who wrote the first histories of the American Revolution and United States recognized that a people without a common past cannot be a people with a common present.[2] So they took it upon themselves to give their fellow Americans a common history, a history that would propel them forward to build a new nation and hopefully a better future.

Notes

[1] Historians Alix Green (University of Central Lancashire), Markus Putsch (European Parliament), Betty Koed (U.S. Senate Historical Office), Louis Kyriakoudes (Albert Gore Research Center, MTSU), and Paul Pittman (U.S. State Department, Office of the Historian) discussed the need for and the efforts of the European Union to develop a national history to keep the union from collapsing at the 2016 National Council on Public History annual meeting in Baltimore, MD. The title of the panel: "Europe at the Crossroads? Navigating History and Memory at the Sharp Edge of Policymaking"

[2] Milton Klein, "Clio Ascendant: The Writing of American History in the Eighteenth Century," New York History, Vol. 68, No. 1 (January, 1987), pgs 4-26, pg 17.

The National Archives and America's Founding Documents

Have you heard of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon? It's also known as the frequency or recency illusion. It's the phenomenon when you hear or see something unusual and then hear and notice that something repeatedly.

Last week, I noticed that the earliest histories of the American Revolution virtually omitted the Articles of Confederation. Now, I see the omission of the Articles from nearly every place where I would expect to read and find more information about them, like the National Archives' website.[1]

The National Archives holds, conserves, and preserves the founding documents of the United States. When you visit its website, a menu bar at the top of the homepage prominently displays a link to "America's Founding Documents."

Click the link and you will find pictures for and links to the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.

The Articles of Confederation is conspicuously absent from the page.[2] In fact, it isn't even a sidebar or bottom-page link away. In this digital representation of "America's Founding Documents," the Articles of Confederation doesn't exist.

The National Archives houses the original, signed copy of the Articles of Confederation. But to find its digital copy, you have to search for it. And the first link you will find, "Welcome to OurDocuments.gov," takes you to a completely different website, which has a far inferior display and web view for documents compared to the Archives' "America's Founding Documents" page.[3]

Archives and History

Archives shape the way we view and interpret history. It's something Jennifer Morgan and Peter Drummey reminded me of during our conversations for the "Doing History: How Historians Work" podcast series and something Karin Wulf talks about in her tweets and blog posts.

The National Archives plays a large role in how we view our nation's written record and what we view as historically important in that record. According to its interpretation, the Articles of Confederation is not a significant document. Therefore the document is hard to find on the National Archives' website--a casual browser would not find it--and the Archives has omitted it from the digital pantheon it created to highlight "America's Founding Documents."[4]

Of course, I disagree with the National Archives.

The Articles of Confederation is one of "America's Founding Documents." In fact, it shares the same lineage as the three documents the National Archives includes within its "Charters of Freedom."

The "America's Founding Documents" Family Tree

The Second Continental Congress agreed to draft articles of confederation on the same day it moved to draft a declaration to declare the colonies' independence from Great Britain.[5]

The fact that the Articles of Confederation placed too much sovereignty in the states caused the Constitutional Convention to convene and draft a new constitution in 1787. The Articles of Confederation directly informed the Constitution of 1787.

The Articles of Confederation also informed Madison's Bill of Rights. For example, Article 2 of the Articles of Confederation states that "Each State retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled."[6]

Amendment X of the Bill of Rights: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."[7]

Project Direction

The ultimate goal of my research into the drafting and ratification of the Articles of Confederation is to produce a multimedia/multi-platform book. In the poetic words of Robert Frost, I have "miles to go before I sleep/And miles to go before I sleep"; I am years away from realizing this goal.[8]

One of the mistakes I made with my dissertation was I waited too long to start writing. Therefore, I'm thinking about writing an article. I have so much research to conduct for this project. Pursuing an article would both direct the directions I go in my research and ensure that I start writing sooner rather than later.

I have two article projects in mind. One article would explore the omission of the Articles of Confederation from histories of the American Revolution. I imagine the article would investigate the early histories of the American Revolution, why the Articles do not fit neatly within those nationalist interpretations of American history, and how the historiography of the Revolution has rarely looked back at the Articles since those early histories.

The second article would be to explore the settlement of the boundary between New York and Massachusetts. The article would explore issues over western land, cultural differences, and how Article 9 of the Articles of Confederation operated. I've wanted to write this article since grad school and I already have a fair amount of the research for it in my files. But I'm not sure I should write it. The article would deal with issues that affected the drafting and ratification of the Articles of Confederation, but it's not a piece I see fitting within a multimedia/multi-platform book focused on how the Second Continental Congress drafted and ratified the Articles.

Notes

[1] Alan Taylor's American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804, is one place I expected to find the Articles of Confederation mentioned and it appeared. Taylor devoted three pages (pages 337-339) to summarizing the Articles  and the challenges the Second Congress experienced in drafting and ratifying them.

[2] The Articles of Confederation are also absent from the National Archives online gift shop. For the record, I would purchase a facsimile of the Articles to hang on my wall if one existed.

[3] A bit more searching and you will find the National Archives' wonderful high-resolution images of the signed copy of the Articles of Confederation.

[4] The National Archives also omits the Articles of Confederation from its physical pantheon to the United States' founding documents: the Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom.

[5] Richard Henry Lee's Resolution, June 7, 1776.

[6] It's important to note the importance of Article 2. It appears after Article 1, which states "The Stile of this confederacy shall be, "The United States of America." Transcript of the Articles of Confederation, OurDocuments.Gov.

[7] U.S. National Archives, "The Bill of Rights: A Transcription."

[8] Robert Frost, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"

Was My Dissertation Just a Dissertation?

Over the last couple of years, I've read many blog posts wherein authors discuss their successes and struggles with turning their dissertations into publishable book manuscripts. I've enjoyed, sympathized with, and benefited from these posts because I too have been trying to turn my dissertation into a book manuscript. However, there's one type of post on this subject that I haven't yet seen: How to know if your dissertation is just a dissertation.

This thought has been churning in my mind for most of this year.

Is My Dissertation A Book?

By all accounts, I should be able to turn my dissertation into a book.

I was fortunate and privileged in my graduate education. I attended a good, funded doctoral program where I worked with one of the best historians and writers in the profession. Ever practical in his outlook, my advisor does not direct his students' dissertations, he directs first drafts of their books.

This means my dissertation never had a literature review. Most of the references I made to other scholars occur in my notes, not the main text. And while not perfectly written, my dissertation conveys its ideas with clear writing and active verbs.

This is not to imply that I wrote a dissertation ready for publication as a book. My dissertation has some serious flaws.

First, it purported to trace how the people of Albany, New York created first Dutch, then British, and finally American identities. That's a false claim. My first chapter provided a very brief overview of Albany and its people during the Dutch and early English periods. Chapter two begins in 1750.

Second, chapter four implies that the fighting of the War for Independence ended right after the Battle of Saratoga in 1777. In reality, fighting carried on in vengeful, civil war-like manner until 1784. Albany and its people played a big role in this fighting. Chapter five begins in the 1780s.

Third, I didn't think broadly enough when I framed my dissertation. My work speaks to an important local and small piece of the historiography. However, the events, politics, and interactions I explored and interpreted could have added valuable insight to the larger story of American and United States history, but they don't because I didn't frame and situate them properly.

Plus, there are instances when I did not consider my sources carefully enough. Further consideration would have changed parts of my argument.

These are all flaws that I can fix, and in some cases, I've already fixed them. If I had to guess, I would say that my book manuscript needs somewhere between 6-12 months worth of work before I could send it to a publisher for consideration.

So why have I been thinking about the question "how do you know if your dissertation is just a dissertation?"

Is My Dissertation Just a Dissertation?

One year ago this week, I shelved my book manuscript. I didn't want to put it aside; I was making great progress. However, good issues and problems due to the quick growth of Ben Franklin's World had piled up and required my attention before they hurt the podcast. I made the decision to set aside my book project and work on the podcast full-time for a month or two.

Here we are one year later. I've made almost no progress on my book since I set it aside. My lack of progress is not for lack of trying. What I thought would be a one or two month leave of absence turned into a six-month hiatus.

I attempted to return to the project in February. I wasn't sure where I wanted to jump back in, so I took chapters one and three with me on a week-long, distraction-free retreat. Chapter one is a new chapter. The binder I took with me consisted of an outline for the chapter and the research I needed to write it. Chapter three is an old chapter that needs some slight reframing and good editing. I thought having two different chapters in two different states of being would allow me to pick and choose how I wanted to wade back into my project.

I didn't make much progress. I tried for hours and days to get back into my project. I tried free writing, editing on my computer, editing with pen and paper, the Pomodoro technique to encourage short bursts of progress, and long walks to generate ideas and think my material through--nothing worked. 18th and early 19th-century Albany, places which had once seemed so familiar to me now seemed like foreign countries.

Because I'm stubborn, I've been trying on and off to get back into my project as time has allowed. It's been six months since February and I haven't made much progress.

Part of my inability to get back into my project could be that my podcast work doesn't allow for more than a few hours of book time a week. (Some weeks it doesn't even allow for that.) Therefore, dedicated focus has been a problem. Subject-matter fatigue could be another factor. I've been working on this project since 2004.

Moving On

Regardless of what is causing my block, it's time to stop being stubborn about it. It's not productive and it's not fun. I've decided to stop trying to force myself to work on the project. I'm moving on.

I'm starting work on my next long-term research project: The Articles of Confederation. Over the last year and a half, I've been mining footnotes and steadily accumulating books about the subject. No one has undertaken a serious study of the Articles since Merrill Jensen in 1950.

In the current historiography, the Articles appear as one of the most maligned aspects of the Revolution. Many scholars treat them as a mere stepping stone to the Constitution of 1787. I intend to look at the creation of this government within the context of the American Revolution. I'm curious about how the Continental Congress drafted them, what regional issues accelerated or hindered their drafting, and whether their creation and ratification fostered a sense of national identity.

I'm really excited about my new project. But saying "hello" to the Articles of Confederation means I need to say "goodbye" to Albany, at least for now.

Will I return to this project and see it into the great book I know it could be? I wonder.

I hope the opportunity to read and think deeply about a different aspect of early American history will somehow reconnect me with Albany.

But it may turn out that my dissertation was just a dissertation.

Finding Your Next Book or Where Do Ideas Come From?

Where do book ideas come from? As a first and second year graduate student, I was obsessed with this question. I spent an inordinate amount of time wondering how my professors came up with great article, book, and dissertation topics.

On numerous occasions I asked them where they got their ideas and they all replied: "you read.”

Needless to say, their answer left me unsatisfied. I felt like I read a lot, but no fantastic ideas seemed to come to me.

Still, I accepted their answer and moved my mental energies on to research papers, exams, and my dissertation.

In this post, you will discover how I finally began stumbling upon ideas and how my second journal article topic has turned into my second book topic.

Spoiler Alert: I came to my newfound ideas by reading.

Cuyler, Gansevoort & Co.

I volunteered at the Albany Institute of History and Art during my last few years of dissertation work. I spent my time in the library where I answered visitor/researcher questions and created finding aids for collections.

One of the collections I created a finding aid for had never been used by another scholar. (Exciting, I know!) The collection had come from an old Albany family who had moved to the island of St. Croix. The papers had been mouldering in an attic and contained family and business papers and correspondence from the Ten Eyck family. I found the correspondence of Cuyler, Gansevoort & Co among these papers.

Cuyler, Gansevoort & Co. opened a mercantile firm in Albany in 1783. It comprised a partnership between Jacob Cuyler and his brother-in-law Leonard Gansevoort. The firm exported New York lumber, ashes, and naval stores and imported West Indian produce. They sold their imports wholesale to country traders.

Cuyler, Gansevoort & Co. experienced many problems. They couldn’t collect debts—foreign or domestic—and they experienced difficulties accessing and prospering in the Atlantic marketplace.

These merchants' letters fascinated me, but I could not fit the story they told into my dissertation. Unable to let the story of Cuyler, Gansevoort & Co. rest, I wrote a conference paper for the American Historical Association annual meeting (2013) and then turned my paper into a journal article.

The article, “Trade, Diplomacy, and the Consequences of American Independence: Cuyler, Gansevoort & Co. and the Business of Trade During the Confederation Era” will appear in the July 2015 issue of The Journal of Early American History.

Confederation Period Vexations

Turning my conference paper into an article did not prove to be an easy feat. The letters I found clearly depicted the trials and tribulations American merchants experienced during the Confederation Era, but I had a hard time locating secondary sources that could help me contextualize my story.

Nearly all of the available literature on early American history covers the colonial period, the American Revolution, and then fast-forwards from the Revolution to the new nation under the Constitution of 1787.

There is a dearth of information about American life and the economy of the new United States between 1783 and the mid-1790s.

There is also a gap in the literature about American government under the Articles of Confederation.

If scholars mention or discuss the Articles of Confederation at all, they do so because they see it as a steppingstone to the Constitution. This interpretation bothers me. The framing of the Constitution was not inevitable.

When the Continental Congress drafted the Articles of Confederation in 1777 and the states ratified them in 1781, Americans did not know that they would write the U.S. Constitution in 1787.

It took a lot of hand wringing and “Why hasn’t anyone written about this?!” screams inside my head before I recognized that I hadn’t just stumbled upon a hole in the historiography, I had found a chasm.

As I polished my article, I realized that my brain isn't going to let me leave this topic alone: It wants to help close this historiographical fissure.

My next book project will be on the Articles of Confederation.

It will be the first book to seriously look at the United States’ first government since Merrill Jensen’s [simpleazon-link asin="0299002047" locale="us"]The Articles of Confederation: An Interpretation of the Social-Constitutional History of the American Revolution, 1774-1781[/simpleazon-link] (1940) and [simpleazon-link asin="0930350146" locale="us"]The New Nation: A History of the United States During the Confederation, 1781-1789[/simpleazon-link] (1950).

Finding Your Next Book Project

It took me five or six years to realize that my professors had been right: You get new project ideas by reading. As you read primary and secondary source documents and become more well-versed in a particular period of historic study you realize what makes an interesting story and where opportunities to contribute to the literature exist.

Honestly, I thought my second book project would be about one of the other four or five other ideas that I have written down over the last few years. All of my ideas have come from primary sources and my inability to contextualize them with the existing secondary source literature.

I am excited about my next book project and I am champing at the bit to continue the work I began with my article. However, before I can start my second book, I really need to finish my first one.

I am using my desire to get back into the archives and investigate a new aspect of the American Revolution as motivation to finish AMERICA’S FIRST GATEWAY.

Until I finish, Merrill Jensen’s books will continue to “burn holes" in my desk.

Share Your Story

Have you found reading the best way to come up with new research project ideas? Has some other activity inspired you?