Political history in the United States covers the

historiography Historiography is the study of the methods used by historians in developing history as an academic discipline. By extension, the term ":wikt:historiography, historiography" is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiog ...

or the methods used by political historians, political scientists, and other scholars in analyzing the history of politics in the United States.

Traditional political history

Around 1880-1920 wide-ranging non-academic historians such as

George Bancroft George Bancroft (October 3, 1800 – January 17, 1891) was an American historian, statesman and Democratic Party (United States), Democratic politician who was prominent in promoting secondary education both in his home state of Massachusetts ...

and James Ford Rhodes focused on durable institutions, especially the presidency, Congress, and the two main political parties. Traditional political history focused on major leaders and long played a dominant role beyond academic historians in the United States. The popularity of these writers was due to their literary style, storytelling abilities, and their willingness to draw lessons from history for the reader. They examined constitutions, platforms, rhetoric, and legislation to determine what was good or bad for the country. They excelled at biography and revealed the strengths, passions, and fatal flaws of historical figures. Modern scholarship is hesitant to make judgments about what "should" have been done at critical moments, and those who do base their judgments on the values of historical actors rather than specific actions. Starting with Edward Channing at Harvard in the early 20th century, the new university departments of history adopted much of the old style. What was new was a demand for finished PhD dissertations, a deemphasis on drama and color, and an insistence on using primary sources, as tracked through footnotes. The academics wrote for each other, with tenure as a reward, not for sales to a popular audience. These studies of U.S. political history accounted for about 25% of all the scholarly books and articles written by American historians before 1950, and about 33% into the 1960s, followed by books and articles on diplomacy.

Biographies

Political biographers tended to be more inclined towards moralizing judgments compared to other political historians. However, before the mid-1920s, scholarly biography was not a widely popular genre in the United States. It wasn't until Allen Johnson, Dumas Malone, and the editorial board of the

Dictionary of American Biography The ''Dictionary of American Biography'' (DAB) was a multi-volume dictionary published in New York City by Charles Scribner's Sons under the auspices of the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). History The dictionary was first propo ...

enlisted hundreds of academic historians to write brief articles on notable figures that scholarly biography gained momentum. Allan Nevins, a prominent contributor to the Dictionary, wrote prize-winning full-length biographies and also initiated a successful series of political biographies in the 1930s. The title of Nevins' most outstanding work, ''Grover Cleveland: a Study in Courage,'' epitomized the moralizing tendency of the genre, while arguing that heroes had to be understood in their deeper historical context. By the late 1940s numerous accomplished scholars had launched multi-volume biographies of significant political figures, intending to illustrate how men maintained a balance between power and responsibility, rather than describing the moral essence of politics.
* Tenured academic authors of two or more biographies of political leaders:

Stephen E. Ambrose Stephen Edward Ambrose (January 10, 1936 – October 13, 2002) was an American historian, academic, and author, most noted for his books on World War II and his biographies of U.S. presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. He was a lon ...

Carl L. Becker Carl Lotus Becker (September 7, 1873 – April 10, 1945) was an American historian who studied the American Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment in America and Europe. Life He was born in Waterloo, Iowa. He enrolled at the University of Wisco ...

, H. W. Brands, Alan Brinkley,

James MacGregor Burns James MacGregor Burns (August 3, 1918 – July 15, 2014) was an American historian and political scientist, presidential biographer, and authority on leadership studies. He was the Woodrow Wilson Professor of Government Emeritus at Williams Co ...

, John M. Cooper, Robert Dallek, David Herbert Donald, Frank Freidel,

Lewis L. Gould Lewis Ludlow Gould (born September 21, 1939) is an American historian and author. He is Eugene C. Barker Centennial Professor Emeritus in American History at the University of Texas at Austin. He is a specialist on 20th century American political h ...

, Fred Greenstein,

Richard Hofstadter Richard Hofstadter (August 6, 1916October 24, 1970) was an American historian and public intellectual of the mid-20th century. Hofstadter was the DeWitt Clinton Professor of American History at Columbia University. Rejecting his earlier historic ...

, Arthur S. Link, Allan Nevins, Vernon Louis Parrington, Robert V. Remini,

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Arthur Meier Schlesinger Jr. ( ; born Arthur Bancroft Schlesinger; October 15, 1917 – February 28, 2007) was an American historian, social critic, and public intellectual. The son of the influential historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. and a ...

, Jean Edward Smith, Sean Wilentz, and Ronald C. White. * Independent scholars with two or more biographies of political leaders: Charles A. Beard,

Albert J. Beveridge Albert Jeremiah Beveridge (October 6, 1862 – April 27, 1927) was an American historian and United States Senator from Indiana. He was an intellectual leader of the Progressive Era and a biographer of Chief Justice John Marshall and President Ab ...

, Irving Brant,

Robert Caro Robert Allan Caro (born October 30, 1935) is an American journalist and author known for his biographies of United States political figures Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson. After working for many years as a reporter, Caro wrote '' The Power Bro ...

Ron Chernow Ronald Chernow (; born March 3, 1949) is an American writer, journalist, and biographer. He has written bestselling historical non-fiction biographies. Chernow won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize, 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Biography and the 2011 American ...

, Claude Fuess,

Doris Kearns Goodwin Doris Helen Kearns Goodwin (born January 4, 1943) is an American biographer, historian, former sports journalism, sports journalist, and political commentator. She has written biographies of numerous U.S. presidents. Goodwin's book ''No Ordinary ...

, Burton J. Hendrick, Marquis James, Margaret Leech,

David McCullough David Gaub McCullough (; July 7, 1933 – August 7, 2022) was an American popular historian. He was a two-time winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. In 2006, he was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United S ...

, Jon Meacham, Edmund Morris, and Henry F. Pringle. Political scientists have very largely avoided biography. However in their studies of leadership, especially presidents and prime ministers, they have given some attention to the careers and political skills of leaders.

Charles Beard's economic interpretation

By the 1950s, Beard's economic interpretation of history had fallen out of favor; only a few prominent historians held to his view of

class conflict In political science, the term class conflict, class struggle, or class war refers to the economic antagonism and political tension that exist among social classes because of clashing interests, competition for limited resources, and inequali ...

as a primary driver in American history, such as Howard K. Beale and C. Vann Woodward. Still, as a leader of the " progressive historians", or " progressive historiography", Beard introduced themes of economic self-interest and class conflict regarding the adoption of the

Constitution A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organization or other type of entity, and commonly determines how that entity is to be governed. When these pri ...

His study of the financial interests of the drafters of the

United States Constitution The Constitution of the United States is the Supremacy Clause, supreme law of the United States, United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, on March 4, 1789. Originally includi ...

('' An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution'') seemed radical in 1913 since he proposed that it was a product of economically-determinist landholding Founding Fathers. He saw ideology as a product of economic interests.

Beard's Constitution

The historian

's ''History of Political Parties in the Province of New York, 1760–1776'' (1909) formulated the progressive interpretation of the American Revolution. He said that there were two revolutions: one against Britain to obtain home rule and the other to determine who should rule at home. Beard argued in his works ''An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States'' (1913) and ''An Economic Interpretation of Jeffersonian Democracy'' (1915) that the Constitution was set up by rich bondholders against farmers and planters. According to Beard, the Constitution was designed to reverse the democratic tendencies unleashed by the Revolution among the common people, especially farmers and debtors. Beard's interpretation was challenged by historians who argued that economic interests were decisive but that Beard had misinterpreted the economic interests involved. Instead of two conflicting interests, critics identified dozens of different economic interests operating at cross purposes, which forced the delegates to bargain. By the 1950s, Beard's economic interpretation of history, which emphasized economic self-interest and especially class conflict as drivers of historical events, was rejected by the great majority of historians. By the 1980s it was replaced chiefly by the notion that a new idea

republicanism Republicanism is a political ideology that encompasses a range of ideas from civic virtue, political participation, harms of corruption, positives of mixed constitution, rule of law, and others. Historically, it emphasizes the idea of self ...

swept the colonies and caused the Patriots to reject rule by the British monarchy and aristocracy.

New political history

The arrival in the 1960s and 1970s of a new interest in

social history Social history, often called history from below, is a field of history that looks at the lived experience of the past. Historians who write social history are called social historians. Social history came to prominence in the 1960s, spreading f ...

led to the emergence of the "new political history" which saw young scholars put much more emphasis on the voters' behavior and motivation, rather than just the politicians. It relied heavily on quantitative methods to integrate social themes, especially regarding ethnicity and religion. The new social science approach was a harbinger of the fading away of interest in Great Men.

Decline in late 20th century

The eclipse of traditional political approaches during the 1970s was a major shock, though diplomatic history fell even further. It was upstaged by social history, with a race/class/gender model. The number of political articles submitted to the ''Journal of American History'' fell by half from 33% to 15%. Patterson argued that contemporary events, especially the Vietnam War and Watergate, alienated younger scholars away from the study of politicians and their deeds. Political history never disappeared, but it never recovered its dominance among scholars, despite its sustained high popularity among the reading public. Some political historians made fun of their own predicament, as when

William Leuchtenburg William Edward Leuchtenburg ( ; September 28, 1922 – January 28, 2025) was an American historian who was the William Rand Kenan Jr. Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a leading scholar of the life and ...

wrote, "the status of the political historians within the profession has sunk to somewhere between that of a faith healer and a chiropractor. Political historians were all right in a way, but you might not want to bring one home to meet the family." Others were more analytical, as when Hugh Davis Graham observed: :The ranks of traditional political historians are depleted, their assumptions and methods discredited, along with the Great White Man whose careers they chronicled.

Recent trends

According to Michael Kazin, in the 21st century scholars have moved away from solely studying the American side of US politics and instead have adopted a "transnational" perspective, challenging the idea that the US is disconnected from global political trends. Historians now apply a broader definition of politics, including popular ideology, social movements, war, education, crime, sexuality, and the reciprocal influence of mass culture. Scholars from other fields, such as political science and law, have also shown an increasing interest in American history, and books about past presidents and politics are popular.

Antipartisanship

According to historian Stuart M. Blumin Americans show a long history of antiparty sentiment from the Constitution's ratification to the 21st century. Initially, the

Founding Fathers The Founding Fathers of the United States, often simply referred to as the Founding Fathers or the Founders, were a group of late-18th-century American revolutionary leaders who united the Thirteen Colonies, oversaw the War of Independence ...

criticized the idea of organized competitive political parties. Such parties contradicted classical republican principles of virtuous leaders acting in the public interest rather than selfish gain. Nevertheless, parties emerged in the mid-1790s in the form of the

Federalist Party The Federalist Party was a conservativeMultiple sources: * * * * * * * * and nationalist American political party and the first political party in the United States. It dominated the national government under Alexander Hamilton from 17 ...

led by

Alexander Hamilton Alexander Hamilton (January 11, 1755 or 1757July 12, 1804) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the first U.S. secretary of the treasury from 1789 to 1795 dur ...

, versus the Republican Party led by Thomas Jefferson and

James Madison James Madison (June 28, 1836) was an American statesman, diplomat, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the fourth president of the United States from 1809 to 1817. Madison was popularly acclaimed as the ...

. Scholars call it the

First Party System The First Party System was the political party system in the United States between roughly 1792 and 1824. It featured two national parties competing for control of the presidency, Congress, and the states: the Federalist Party, created largel ...

. After 1800, the Federalist steadily weakened, especially in the west and South, while the Republicans, or Democratic - Republican Party- became increasingly dominant. By the 1830s and 1840s, the

Second Party System The Second Party System was the Political parties in the United States, political party system operating in the United States from about 1828 to early 1854, after the First Party System ended. The system was characterized by rapidly rising leve ...

became dominant, with the new Democratic Party showing a small advantage over the new Whig party. Anti party partisan sentiment was a strong factor among the Whigs, while the Democrats emphasized loyalty to the party standard and rewarded compliance. However, the growing emphasis on patronage eroded the republican character of each party, leading to political corruption which stimulated anti-party sentiments. In the 21st century conventional anti-party themes remain compelling in political discourse, with a growing trend towards independent voter registration and nonpartisanship.Stuart M. Blumin, "Antiparty sentiment" in Michael Kazin, ed. ''The Concise Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History'' (2011), pp 20–21.

Notes

External links

A New Nation Votes: American Elections Returns 1787–1825
{{Historiography Fields of history