Merrill Monroe Jensen (July 16, 1905 in Elk Horn, Iowa – January 30, 1980 in

Madison, Wisconsin Madison is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Wisconsin. It is the List of municipalities in Wisconsin by population, second-most populous city in the state, with a population of 269,840 at the 2020 Uni ...

) was an American

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human species; as well as the ...

, whose research and writing focused on the ratification 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 It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, on March 4, 1789.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 ...

. His historical interpretations are generally considered to be of the "Progressive School" of American history, the most famous exponent of which was Charles A. Beard. Jensen was a professor of history at the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW and informally U-Dub or U Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington, United States. Founded in 1861, the University of Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast of the Uni ...

(1935–1944), where he was editor of Pacific Northwest Quarterly, and the

University of Wisconsin–Madison The University of Wisconsin–Madison (University of Wisconsin, Wisconsin, UW, UW–Madison, or simply Madison) is a public land-grant research university in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. It was founded in 1848 when Wisconsin achieved st ...

(1944–1976).

Life

Born in Iowa, Jensen took a job as a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse in

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upon graduating from high school. In 1929 he earned a bachelor's degree at the

. He completed a Ph.D. at the

in 1934, under the guidance of William B. Hesseltine. Except for a short stint as a historian for the Army Air Corps in 1944, his career was spent at his undergraduate and graduate alma maters. He was appointed Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Professor of American History at

Oxford University The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the second-oldest continuously operating u ...

in 1949-1950. He and his wife Genevieve Margaret Privet had one daughter. He died in

, on January 30, 1980.

Views

Jensen viewed the American Revolution was "an internal revolution carried on by the masses of the people against the local aristocracy."allthingsliberty.com
/ref> His early scholarship challenged the "consensus" interpretation of the Constitutional ratification process, arguing that the

Articles of Confederation The Articles of Confederation, officially the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, was an agreement and early body of law in the Thirteen Colonies, which served as the nation's first Constitution, frame of government during the Ameri ...

were a better expression of genuine democratic values than was the Constitution. The replacement of the Articles with the Constitution, Jensen argued, created a system of government that minimized the influence of radical democracy rooted in local politics. From his reading of the documentary evidence, Jensen identified deep ideological conflicts among Americans at the time of the ratification. His later scholarship focused heavily on primary documents, and he edited a number of substantial document collections, including ''The Documentary History of the First Federal Elections, 1788-1790'' (launched in 1976 and completed in 1989 by his students Robert A. Becker and Gordon denBoer) and
The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights
'' (launched in 1976 and as of 5 June 2018 filling 29 of a projected 31 volumes).

Books authored

*''The Articles of Confederation: An Interpretation of the Social-Constitutional History of the American Revolution, 1774-1781'' (University of Wisconsin Press, 1940

*''The New Nation: A History of the United States during the Confederation, 1781-1789'' (1950
read online
*''The Founding of a Nation: A History of the American Revolution, 1763-1776'' (Oxford University Press, 1968

*''The American Revolution within America'' (New York University Press, 1974

Works edited

*''Regionalism in America'' (1951) *''

English Historical Documents '' English Historical Documents'' (''EHD'') is a series of publications of source material on English history by the academic publisher Eyre and Spottiswoode, now part of Oxford University Press. Some later volumes were published by Routledge. The ...

, Volume IX, American Colonial Documents to 1776'' (1955) *''The Making of the American Constitution'' (1964) *''Tracts of the American Revolution, 1763-1776'' (1967
read online
*''The Documentary History of the First Federal Elections, Volume I, 1788-1790'' (1976), edited with Robert A. Becker

*
The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution
Vols. I-III:'', edited with John P. Kaminski and Gaspare J. Saladino.

References

External links