From Bradford to Mather: the Puritan mission in history -- The Enlightenment: Hutchinson and the Tory emphasis -- Jared Sparks and the dominance of the Federalist-Whig historians -- Richard Hildreth, utilitarian philosopher -- George Bancroft and German idealism -- Francis Parkman and the pageant of the wilderness -- From Fiske to Gipson: the rise of colonial institutional history -- John Bach McMaster and the rise of social history -- Henry Adams and the dream of a science of history -- Turner and the moving frontier -- Von Holst to Dunning: abolitionists and revisionists (1880-1910) -- Ulrich B. Phillips and the image of the Old South -- Charles A. Beard and the economic interpretation of history -- Parrington and the rise of intellectual history -- Allan Nevins and recent historiography
Notes
A survey of American historiography with an eye toward illustrating how various historians' viewpoints toward national crisis were influenced by their particular social conditioning