American History in the Secondary School

ARTHUR M. WOLFSON, PH.D., Editor.

Dignity of the Course.

American history in the secondary schools is, we feel safe in assuming, the crown of a course extending over at least three or more years. Students approach it after having devoted time and thought to an elementary course in American history—possibly even a course in English and European history—to a secondary course in some one or more phases of European history and to a course in English history. The teacher who undertakes to lead a class in American history in the secondary school should, therefore, approach this subject with higher ideals and broader purposes than he would set in any other history course in the curriculum. Here, if ever, the teacher may hope to train his students in the use of judgment and reasoning in the examination of facts.

From the beginning, the teacher should assume that his students have a fair knowledge of the elementary facts of American and of European history. The teacher will waste time if he attempts to teach the mere facts of American history without attempting to relate them one to another. American history in the secondary school should be a study of the relations of American history to the history of the rest of the world, and of the steady development of American political, social, and economic institutions. What we mean by this we trust will become clear as we go on in this work.

Text-Books.

As to the methods by which these ends should be accomplished, it is our firm conviction that each teacher can best work these out for himself. Certain broad generalizations may, however, be of value. First, no text-book is so perfect that it can be accepted as a complete, an infallible guide. Of necessity, every text-book will approach the subject from the point of view of a single individual. The teacher, at least, should therefore be acquainted with the point of view of several other writers on the same subject. Again, because it is designed to meet the needs of many different minds, it will inevitably contain many facts that the teacher will want to omit; it will omit some things that the teacher may want to include. Finally, it will often present facts in an order or in a way that the teacher may desire to change. For these reasons, while we believe that a single text-book should be in the hands of every pupil, the teacher should insist from the beginning that the book is to be used merely as a guide, not as a Scripture, every page and line of which is to be accepted as infallible.

Second, both the teacher and the student, especially the teacher, should be familiar with the most important sources of American history and with the best secondary authorities on the period under discussion. It will be our aim as we go along to indicate from month to month what are generally considered as the best books in each period.

Periods of American History.

With these few generalizations in mind, we may now approach the particular subject of this article. The early history of North America divides itself into three more or less well-defined epochs. First, there is the period of discovery, exploration, and settlement extending over the two centuries from the time of Columbus to the end of the seventeenth century. Second, there is the century from 1664 to 1763 during which the various nations which had planted colonies in North America were struggling for dominion and supremacy on the continent. Third, there is the period of twenty years during which the English colonies were moving steadily, step by step, toward their complete independence.

Needless to say, none of these epochs is clear and distinct. Discovery, exploration, and settlement go on far into the eighteenth century, even into the nineteenth; colonial wars have their roots in national differences which have their beginnings in Europe and America long before the year 1700; and the causes for the American Revolution must be sought in colonial institutions which were in process of development from the day that the first Englishman landed on the continent. Nevertheless, for purposes of class room discussion, the teacher may safely insist upon this threefold division of colonial history.

The European Background.

In the study of the first epoch, certain subdivisions again become clear. First, it is necessary, if the student is to understand the meaning of early American history, that he be made to comprehend the conditions in Europe which led the Spaniard, the Frenchman and the Englishman forth on their voyages of discovery and colonization. Far too many teachers neglect almost entirely what Cheyney calls “The European Background of American History.”

Every one who has studied the history of the first voyage of Columbus knows that this voyage was but the culmination of more than four centuries of European commercial history. Ever since the time of the crusades, and even before, there had gone on in Europe an extensive trade in Asiatic wares; spices and gums, drugs, medicaments and perfumes, diamonds, pearls, rubies and ivories, silk, cotton and woolen fabrics had been imported in ever-increasing quantities by the Italian towns and distributed through them from Seville to Novgorod. Then in the fifteenth century came a time when the eastern trade routes were closed by the conquering Turks and the nations of Western Europe were forced in consequence to seek these luxuries by new and unaccustomed routes. The discovery of America was not an accident, nor was Columbus the only hero of his age—this the student should be made thoroughly to comprehend.

Second, a slight knowledge of the aborigines must be insisted upon. Here, however, the teacher will need to exercise care and judgment lest he waste time on unessential details.

Third in order comes the geography of the new continent. The study of the physiography of the North American continent, if properly handled, will prove to the students a fascinating, an almost inexhaustible subject. If properly led, boys and girls will study their maps with even greater interest than they do their text-books. One lesson at least the teacher should devote to the shore line, the water courses, the gaps and mountain passes, the portages and the wood roads, else the story of the exploration of the continent must ever remain to the students a blind story of purposeless wanderings in a trackless wilderness. (See Farrand “Basis of American History,” Chaps. I to IV.)

When the student has grasped these fundamentals it will be time, and then only, to begin to thread with him the labyrinth of voyages and explorations which mark the first century of American history. Here the teacher will need to exercise great ingenuity and considerable caution. Rather a few facts well co-ordinated, than a multitude of details without any unifying principle is the one infallible rule. The Norsemen, for instance, one is tempted to say, may with profit be entirely neglected. “Nothing is clearer,” say Fiske (“Discovery of America,” I, pp. 235-254), “from a survey of the whole subject, than that these pre-Columbus voyages were quite barren of results of historic importance.... [That they constituted] in any legitimate sense of the phrase, a discovery of America is simply absurd.” Columbus, De Soto, Cortez, Coronado are really the only Spaniards whose names the student need remember. Equally, the voyages of Verrazano, Ribault, Cartier, Champlain, La Salle, Marquette and Joliet tell the whole tale of French activities over a hundred and fifty years.

Throughout this period, the teacher should keep these guiding posts constantly before the eyes of his students: First, that the Spaniards, when once they realized that they had discovered a new continent and had not reached the longed for shores of Cathay, were lured farther and farther into the heart of the continent in search of gold; second, that, owing to the direction of their approach, they occupied the southern and southwestern part of the continent only; third, that their forward movement ended in the end of the sixteenth century because of (a) their loss of naval supremacy (the Armada), (b) their narrow internal national policy (the expulsion of the Moriscos and the Inquisition), (c) their struggle to subdue the revolted Netherlands.

French Explorations.

Of the French, it should be noted: First, that they approached the continent from the north, entering it through the Gulf of St. Lawrence; second, that they rapidly turned their entire attention to the search for furs and to the conversion of the heathen Indian, “the quaint alliance of missionary and merchant, the black-robed Jesuit and the dealer in peltries,” as Fiske calls it (“Discovery,” II, p. 529); third, that the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes led them farther and farther into the continent, and consequently that the French settlements lacked the unity and compactness which is characteristic of the later English settlements with which they were soon to come into hostile contact.

Finally, of the history of this period of Spanish and French settlements, it may be said that it is better to follow the history of both nations down to the end of the seventeenth century before entering upon the English and Dutch settlements.

English and Dutch Settlements.

In studying the history of the English and Dutch settlements the way will again be a way through a trackless wilderness unless the teacher is bold enough to make a judicious selection among the many details which must appear in every text-book, neglecting all the others and insisting that his students obtain a clear comprehension of the two or three leading motives which are ever present in the colonizing efforts of both these nations. First, the student should be compelled to grasp clearly the significance of the trading and colonizing companies which were formed in such profusion in both England and Holland in the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century. Cheyney (“European Background,” pp. 137-139), mentions seventy of them. If teacher and student will follow carefully the activities of these companies in America they will find a key to the history of the founding of most of the Atlantic coast colonies.

Second, before attempting to follow the history of the English colonies in America, the history of the Protestant revolution in Europe must be reviewed and the attitude of James I toward all dissenters, Protestant and Catholic alike, must be made clear.

These two finger posts, the trading companies and the religious agitation in England will serve to guide many a student who might otherwise lose his way. To attempt at this time to introduce into the history of the colonies anything about the boundary disputes, the attempts at colonial union, the growth of colonial institutions or even the economic conditions which surrounded the life of the colonists is, it seems to us, a mistake.

Literature of the Period.

A word or two in closing about the literature of this period. Of sources, here, as throughout American history, there are four collections which are extremely valuable for use in the secondary schools: (a) Hart’s American History Told by Contemporaries, (b) Macdonald’s Documents of American History, (c) The American History Leaflets, (d) The Old South Leaflets.

Of the works of secondary authorities, those especially fitted for use in secondary schools are (a) Thwaites, “Colonies,” (b) Fisher’s “Colonial Era,” (c) Fiske’s “Discovery of America” and his other works on the settlement and history of the Atlantic coast colonies, (d) Parkman’s “Pioneers of France in America” and his other works on the explorations of the French, (e) the earlier volumes of Harper’s “The American Nation,” and (f) the earlier chapters of Doyle’s and Lodge’s histories of the English colonies in America.