Public Opinion and the Teaching of History

Part II — The Activities of Propagandist Agencies

Chapter VI Attempts to Control Textbooks

The public school deals with that period of life in which strong impressions find easy lodgment in the child’s memory. Altruism, glorification of national achievements, hero worship, and other emotions are excited by contacts with teachers and books. It is the age in which the child’s ideals can be fired by the sayings of famous men and in which the story of valorous deeds stirs a responsive enthusiasm. Indeed, it is a common belief that the influences of these early associations and impressions persist far into maturity, for “as the twig is bent, so the tree is inclined.” With a keen appreciation of the possibilities of this plastic period of child life, authors of textbooks in history and the other social studies, obedient to the spirit of their times, have exalted and condemned as the prevailing temper has dictated.

History for the sake of propaganda is not a unique possession of any one country. It has been employed in the name of “patriotism” by many nations. Livy extolled Rome, Green exalted England, Bancroft eulogized the exploits of the founders of America, and Treitschke and Nietzsche pictured the glories of an imperialist régime in Germany. As a result, there has developed an overweening pride in national and racial attributes and achievements. From such a source has sprung much of the hereditary enmity between France and Germany. Indeed, it has been said that an analogous situation exists in the United States, and a well-known writer recently declared that, through the study of American history, “Americans are taught to hate Britishers,... and not only descendants of the men who made the Revolution, but every newly arrived immigrant child imbibes the hatred of Great Britain of today from the patriotic ceremonies of the public schools.”411

Propagandist history, however, is not merely an instrument of the ultra-nationalist. By the pacifist it may be employed to depict with a vivid gruesomeness the horrors of war; by it the militarist may demonstrate the advantages of preparedness; the racially conscious may narrate, in their history, achievements of their heroes to the exclusion or derogation of those of other groups; the religious enthusiasts may commend the contributions of their sect to the neglect of others; and economic and social organizations may seek to serve their particular purposes. Demands for revised history textbooks, such as emanated during the World War, to teach the point of view then current, are but a recent instance of a practice as old as the teaching of history.

History Textbooks in the South

In the United States, as well as elsewhere, propagandist influences have played their part in shaping the content of history textbooks. The South, in particular, has shown such tendencies, attempting in the ante-bellum days to propagate a history favorable to the slave-holding interests, and since that time endeavoring to justify the past in the eyes of posterity. The desire to depict events from a sectional point of view was especially apparent in the decade preceding the Civil War when a concerted effort to prescribe the content of history textbooks expressed itself in frequent agitations against the use of Northern textbooks. By the Southerner was raised the same query which has been raised in our own time—whether the author of a textbook has a right “to step aside from his proper course to drag in his own private views on vexed questions of national import” about which a writer should “maintain an impartial stand.”412 Such criticisms were directed against Northern textbook writers; for Southerners were agreed that an author would not be guilty of a heinous offense if he should “step aside... to drag in” views favorable to the institution of slavery. Indeed, a sectional presentation of history was deemed a necessity; and a movement for “home education” to combat the teachings of the “abolitionist North” attained considerable vigor in the ’fifties. To the Southerner, “home education” meant Southern trained teachers and textbooks filled with the convictions of the slave-holding South. Through such agencies it was hoped to expel from their midst “the wandering incendiary Yankee school-master” with “his incendiary school books”413 parading under “the black piratical ensign of abolitionism.”414

Even prior to the ’fifties, the South had realized the value of a propagandist literature, for Duff Green, a relative of John C. Calhoun, had secured a charter from South Carolina for a Southern Literary Company for the purpose of publishing school books adapted to his section.415 Green’s efforts must have proved unsuccessful, for it was followed by much newspaper discussion of the situation, which gained in asperity as the South became more belligerent in the assertion of her rights.

Writing in De Bow’s Review of 1855, one alarmist declared: “Our text-books are abolition works. They are so to the extent of their capacity, and though the poison of anti-slavery dogmas has not found its way into arithmetic and mixed mathematics, yet we should not be surprised to find that some work is now in progress in which the young learner will find his sums stated in abolition phrases, and perhaps be required to tell how many more sinners might have gone to Heaven if Abraham, the ’father of the faithful and the friend of God’ had not been a slave holder and a dealer in human chattels;... and so long as we use such work as Wayland’s Moral Science and the abolition geographies, readers and histories, overrunning as they do, with all sorts of slanders, caricatures and blood-thirsty sentiments... [they will] array our children by false ideas, against the established ordinances of God,....”416

Another writer could not condone the indifference of his section to the existence of such conditions. “When the public mind of our section was divided as to the justice and propriety of this institution [slavery]...,” he remarked, “it was not then to be wondered at that we should remain indifferent to the views presented to our youth on the subject, and that we should carelessly allow them to peruse, even in their tender years, works in which slavery was denounced as an unmitigated evil, and the universal race of Ham’s descendants were blazoned forth as a set of dusky angels and martyrs. Such a course may have been defensible at that period, but tell me, what show of propriety is there in its continuance at the present day? We have become awake to the rightfulness and justice of our stand; we have come to know that we are more sinned against than sinning; and we have witnessed the complete failure of many quixotic attempts to transform negroes into prosperous and thriving freemen. Why then should we wish that the rising generation, who are to frame and control public opinion, after we have passed from being, should be on this question of vital importance taught doctrines which are in direct conflict with what we now believe?”417

Because “southern life, habits, thoughts, and aims” were “so essentially different from those of the North,” another protagonist of “home education” maintained that a different character of books and training was required to “bring up the boy to manhood with his faculties fully developed.”418 Nor could this “true man” be developed if he must sit “at the feet of some abolition Gamaliel of the North,” but he must have “books and teachers of history from the South who should point out the destiny of the South.”419

As a result of the agitation of the press, the commercial conventions, which met during the years from 1853 to 1860, committed themselves with one accord, to the Southern educational program. The Memphis Convention of 1853 demanded the employment of native teachers, the encouragement of a home press, and the publication of books adapted to the educational wants and the social conditions of the section.420 The following year, the Charleston Convention passed a resolution which urged the production of textbooks by Southern men “with express reference to the proper education of the Southern youth.”421 The resolution declared that “this Convention earnestly recommends all parents and guardians within these states, to consider well, that to neglect the claims of their own seminaries and colleges, and patronize and enrich those of remote states, is fraught with peril to our sacred interests, perpetuating our dependence on those who do not understand and cannot appreciate our necessities and responsibilities; and at the same time fixing a lasting reproach upon our institutions, teachers and people.”422

In 1856, the Savannah Convention issued to “The People of the Slaveholding States” an address advocating joint action on the part of the Southern legislatures. “It will be well, at least, to look to our school books,” they declared. “Can the making of these be entrusted exclusively to those, who by instilling an occasional heresy, dangerous to our repose, imagine that they serve at the same time God and Mammon—their consciences and their pocket? The State Legislatures at the South alone are competent to heal this mischief. Property will submit to any amount of taxation for such a purpose. A system can and ought to be matured at the South by which the most ample encouragement shall be given to its educational system and its press. Withdraw at once the contributions which are returned too often to us now in contumely and insult.”423

At the same convention the committee upon the subject of “Text Books for Southern Schools and Colleges” reported that “the books rapidly coming into use in our schools and colleges at the South are not only polluted with opinions adverse to our institutions, and hostile to our constitutional views, but are inferior in every respect, as books of instruction to those which might be produced amongst ourselves, or procured from Europe....”424 The Committee proposed that the convention take the matter “under their auspices and select or prepare such a series of books, in every department of study, from the earliest primer to the highest grade of literature and science, as shall seem to them best qualified to elevate and purify the education of the South.”425 The Committee further recommended that “when this series of books shall have been prepared, the Legislatures of the Southern States be requested to adopt them as text-books.”426

The committees appointed at the Southern conventions evidently failed to obtain results, for De Bow’s Review of 1858 querulously remarked that the committees seemed to have dropped into repose after their appointments.427 Newspaper agitation, however, continued without abatement, The Constitutionalist suggesting, in 1858, that Georgia by law should compel her schools to use Georgia school books in which information was given regarding the early history of the state, and which contained “eloquent and patriotic emanations from the gifted pens” of some of their “ablest writers.”428

History textbooks held a conspicuous place in most of the discussions. Peter Parley’s History, extensively used at this time, came in for much adverse criticism because, in the opinion of the Southerner, it “insulted” and “misrepresented” the institutions of the South.429 “If it is important for us to have a home literature of our own in the lighter departments of reading and knowledge,” one critic remarked, “how much more vitally essential it is to our best interests that the books from which our children imbibe their earliest lessons in history and political economy should be written by those who are able to expound and vindicate, instead of misrepresenting and defaming the institutions under which they are to live and be educated.”430

Further criticism of the same textbook is found in an article on “Wants of the South” in De Bow’s Review for 1860. “Our schools have long been groaning under the burden of questionable orthodoxy, and in some instances decided hostility to the institutions which her public instructors, of all others, may reasonably be expected to advocate and defend,” said one writer. “... no teacher or pupil who has used Peter Parley’s Histories, or any of the popular ‘Readers’ and ‘Orators’ from which juvenile disciples of Demosthenes have learned to spout so glibly eloquent invectives against slavery, the slave trade, will fail to recognize the long-deplored existence of this deadly evil.”431

Other books of an historical nature, which were especially obnoxious to the South, were Gilbert’s Atlas and Appleton’s Complete Guide of the World, which contained “hidden lessons of the most fiendish and murderous character that enraged fanaticism could conceive or indite.”432 “This book and many other northern school books scattered over the country come within range of the Statutes of this State [Louisiana], which provide for the imprisonment for life or the infliction of a penalty of death upon any person who shall publish or distribute such works...,” declared one writer.433

Whelpley’s Compend of History was also considered heretical in nature because of its discussion of slavery, which inculcated “improper precepts in the minds of our children.”434 The writer in his diatribe against this book quoted the following passage from Whelpley to prove his point: “But for what purpose was he [the slave] brought from his country? Why was he forced from the scenes of his youth, and the cool retreats of his native mountains? Was it, that he might witness the saving knowledge of the gospel?... No. He was deprived of his freedom, the dearest pledge of his existence. His mind was not cultivated and improved by science!... He is detested for his complexion, and ranked among the brutes for his stupidity. His laborious exertions are extorted from him to enrich his purchasers, and his scanty allowance is furnished, only that he may endure his sufferings for their aggrandizement.”435

The discussion of slavery in the Northern textbooks was not the only cause for irritation. Equally distasteful to the Southerner were the invidious comparisons made between North and South.436 The histories produced by the North, one writer pointed out, “are filled with praise and glorification of the New England and Northern states generally, as a set of incorruptible patriots, irreproachable moralists, and most exemplary models for future imitation, and their descendants are depicted as fully equalling the standard set for them by their distinguished ancestors, of unexceptionable demeanor. On the other hand, the individuals who organized society in the Southern States are pictured as a race of immoral reprobates, who have handed down all of their vices and evil habits to their descendants of this day. While the institution of slavery and its introduction into our country are made the occasion of much violent invective, there is but a slight effort at rebuke, and a large amount of apology is offered, for the amusements of burning witches, hanging Quakers, and banishing Baptists, formerly so very popular in New England. While we, who now support and defend the institution of slavery, are either denounced or pitied, the residents of the Northern States, who have always been the chief prosecutors of the slave trade are allowed to pass uncensured. Such is the state of the histories.”437

To Willson’s Historical Series objection was raised because “the author has elected to make himself sectional and therefore must expect sectional support.” “Why say of the odious Hartford Convention,” a critic remarked, “‘Its proceedings were not as objectionable as many anticipated,’ or why use comparisons between the different sections as invidious, and as we believe and know, as false as these: ‘In Virginia and the southern colonies, where the inhabitants guided in the selection of their dwelling places chiefly by consideration of agricultural conveniences, dispersed themselves over the face of the country, often at considerable distances from each other, schools and churches were necessarily rare, and social intercourse but little known. The evils of the state of society thus produced still exist to a considerable extent in the southern portions of the Union. The colonization of New England was more favorable to the improvement of human character and morals.’” Further cause for complaint lay in the following passage: “Of the state of manners and morals in Maryland, Virginia and the southern colonies generally, we cannot give so gratifying an account. While the upper classes of inhabitants among the southern people were distinguished for a luxurious and expensive hospitality, they were too generally addicted to the vices of card playing, gambling and intemperance, while hunting and cock-fighting were favorite amusements of persons of all ranks.... It cannot be denied, however, that New England colonial history furnishes, on the whole, the most agreeable reminiscences, as well as the most abundant materials for the historian.”438

So common was a biased presentation of controversial questions in the books of the time that William Howard Russell, The [London] Times correspondent during the Civil War, declared that he was unable to obtain “a single solid, substantial work” on the controversy between the North and the South, for there was not one published which was “worth a cent.”439

Little response to the exponents of “home education” seems to have been made at this time by the state legislatures, although, in 1859, the Louisiana legislature adopted a resolution endorsing the movement “to encourage the production of and introduction into the schools of Louisiana of a series of school books written by citizens of the State, published in the South, not contaminated by the fanaticism of Northern authors.”440 Other Southern states since the Civil War have prescribed the type of histories to be used in their schools, but they have had for their chief intent a “proper presentation of the War of the States.”

Since the Civil War the most active exponents of a pro-Southern history have been Southern veterans’ associations and kindred groups. Especially vigilant have been the United Confederate Veterans who, since 1892, with few exceptions have announced in annual convention their advocacy of “a true and reliable history.” In 1892, the first historical committee, composed of “comrades skilled and experienced in such matters,” was appointed to “select proper and truthful histories of the United States to recommend for use in the public and private schools of the South.”441 No meeting of the Veterans was held in 1893, but the following year the Historical Committee offered an extensive and elaborate report.442 This report suggested the establishment of a chair of American history in Southern universities with time for research; that the Association recommend to the legislatures of Southern states that provision be made in the public school course for the teaching of history of the native state for one year, and for the establishment and support of a chair of American history in the state university or some suitable state institution, and that the preparation of school histories of the state be encouraged; that all private schools and academies teach the history of the state one year and devote the same amount of time to United States history; and that state legislatures be memorialized in order to gain their coöperation in securing “a different presentation of the narrative of facts for the truth of history of our common country.”443

The Committee, besides their recommendations, classified school histories in three groups. In the first class were those issued in the first ten or fifteen years following the close of the War, “dictated by prejudice and prompted by the evil passion that time had not then softened.” Secondly came those Northern histories apparently fair, either through a revision of an earlier edition or emasculation, in an “effort to curry favor with the text-book patrons of both sections”; also those histories with separate editions for North and South, as well as those “written and published at the North in which an honest effort is made to do justice to the South” but which failed to emphasize the distinctive features of the South or to emphasize the place of the South in the history of the Union. The third group contained a list of text-books acceptable to the Veterans, including Hansell’s Histories by H. E. Chambers of Louisiana, History of the American People by J. H. Shinn of Arkansas, History of the United States by Alexander Stephens of Georgia, History of the United States by George F. Holmes of Virginia, History of the United States by Blackburn and McDonald of Maryland, Grammar School History by L. A. Field of Georgia, and History of the United States by J. T. Terry of Georgia.

The report of the Committee of 1894 was accepted unanimously and the resolution, passed to continue the committee, urged that it “do everything in its power to encourage the preparation of suitable school histories and especially to encourage their publication by the building up of Southern publishing houses....”444

The Reports of 1895 and of 1896 manifested the same spirit and offered substantially the same recommendations as those made by the Committee of 1894. Both desired a “vindication for the Southern people and a refutation of the slanders, the misrepresentations and the imputations” which they had “so long and patiently borne.”445 The Report of 1895 pointed out that “while the South has always been prominent in making history, she has left the writing of history to New England historians” whose chief defect was “lack of catholic sympathy for all sections of the country.”446 The importance of the work of the Historical Committee was recognized in 1895 by increasing its membership from seven to fifteen to include a representative from each Southern state.447

By 1897 the agitation for sectional histories had become so stormy that the Nashville reunion took under advisement a suggestion of the Grand Army of the Republic of Wisconsin, which proposed the appointment of a “commission of distinguished educators from the ranks of the contending armies” who should write a history of the period 1861 to 1865 which should be satisfactory to both sections.448 The Historical Committee of the Confederate Veterans, however, deemed it inadvisable to undertake such a project, believing that a history textbook could not be written as well by a commission as by one person. However, the Committee pointed out that “the destiny of the South is now inseparably bound up with that of this great republic and that it is to the interest of the whole nation and its citizens everywhere that coming generations of Southern men should give to the Union the same love and devotion which their fathers gave to the United States and then to the ill-starred Confederacy;....”449 And, although they realized that “no sectional history is wanted in the schools of this country,” yet the Southern people desired in their histories “to retain from the wreck in which their constitutional views, their domestic institutions, the mass of their property, and the lives of their best and bravest were lost, the knowledge that their conduct was honorable throughout, and that their submission at last... in no way blackened their motives or established the wrong of the cause for which they fought.”450

Among the points at issue in the adoption of Northern textbooks was the use of certain opprobrious terms. At the Atlanta reunion in 1898, a resolution was adopted which gave voice to such objections. It requested the substitution of the term “the civil war between the States” for “the war of the Rebellion,” because such an expression reflected “on the patriotism of the Southern people and the cause for which they so heroically fought....”451 The Historical Committee at the same time indicated their aversion to other “offensive epithets” in Northern histories, such as “rebels” and “arch-traitors.”452 They recommended, among other things, that “Boards of Education and all others having charge of the selection of histories, geographies, speeches, readers, etc., be careful to exclude works that show the partisan, sectional and unpatriotic spirit.”453

Yet the need of a “broad American patriotism” was recognized by the United Confederate Veterans regardless of their attacks on Northern produced histories. Such an attitude manifested itself in the committee report of the reunion of 1898 which quoted with favorable comment an extract from an address of Commander John W. Frazier of the Fred Taylor Post, G. A. R., of Philadelphia. The Confederate Veterans especially approved the spirit of Mr. Frazier when he declared: “We must under the blending influence exerted by the new order of things, undo that which sectional feelings led both North and South to do in regard to the publication of public school histories—certain to create and foster lasting and bitter prejudices—and use our influence in behalf of a public school history of the late war and the causes leading to it, that will be used in common in all the public schools of the country,....”454

The suggestion of Mr. Frazier reflected the welding influence of the Spanish-American War upon all factions in America. In 1899, the Historical Committee of the Confederate Veterans announced that its duty was “little more than to keep watch upon the histories of the day” for “the prospect for fairness and candor in historical writing” seemed “much improved since the Spanish War,” because “a new perspective,” had been afforded the historian.455 Yet the same report evidenced a watchfulness on the part of the Southerner to prevent the use of books which “either pervert or fail to do justice to the history of the people of this section.”456 The reunion further endorsed the recommendation of the Historical Committee for the appointment in each state of a sub-committee of three to examine “every history taught in the schools of the state with especial reference to ascertaining whether said books contain incorrect or inaccurate statements or make important omissions of facts, or inculcate narrow or partisan sentiments.”457 In the event that any defects were found in any of the histories used in the schools, the Committee suggested that each sub-committee should “enter into friendly correspondence with the authors and publishers of such books, with a view to correcting such errors, or supplying such omissions.” In addition, it became the duty of each sub-committee “annually, one month before each reunion to make a report” to the Historical Committee, showing what histories of the state and of the United States were used in the schools of the state; and further “to make such suggestions with regard to school histories and with regard to the teaching of history” as might seem appropriate.458

The reports of the next few years show a slackening vigilance on the part of the historical committees. At each meeting of the Veterans a report and suggestions as to the improvement of historical instruction in the South were offered, but much of the recriminatory tone of the reports of the ’nineties had disappeared. In 1900, the Committee recommended again that the term “the war between the states” be substituted for other terms, and that money be appropriated in order that the Historical Committee could carry on their campaign, through the press and public meetings, for the use of histories doing “full justice” both to the South and the North.459 The Reunion of 1902 sanctioned the suggestion of the Historical Committee dealing with the preparation of a source book portraying the “character, the ideals and the leadership of the South,” and called favorable attention to Thomas Dixon’s novel The Leopard’s Spots.460

The historical reports presented to the reunions held in 1908, 1909 and 1910 still discussed the need for “true history” although commending the fairness of most historians. Yet the Committee hesitated to relax its watchfulness because “the history of the Confederate period as it is told in many books that may be used in our schools,... demands and deserves undiminished vigilance.”461

The Report of 1910 expressed, however, a sanguine satisfaction in the condition resulting from the agitation about history textbooks. “We do not fear the bookmaker now,” the Veterans declared. “Southern schools and Southern teachers have prepared books which Southern children may read without insult or traduction of their fathers. Printing presses all over the Southland—and all over the Northland—are sending forth by thousands ones which tell the true character of the heroic struggle. The influence and wealth of the South forbid longer the perversion of truth and the falsification of history.”462

In the reports of the historical committees two history textbooks received specific criticism for their treatment of Southern institutions and life. In 1903, attention was called to a paragraph in The Young People’s Story of the Great Republic by Ella Hines Stratton, in which “a most false and misleading account” was given of the capture of Fort Pillow by General N. B. Forrest.463 The Report of 1911 devoted considerable space to an attack on Elson’s History of the United States. “One of the most extraordinary happenings in regard to the history of the South occurred in Virginia in the last few weeks,” chronicled the Report. “Elson’s History of the United States had been selected as a textbook by Roanoke College. Miss Sarah Moffett, one of the students of the college, refused to attend the history class or use this history where it referred to the South and its people. For this she suffered reprimand.”464 The Southern Cross Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy thereupon undertook an investigation and issued a circular which was “widely distributed.”465 The circular was addressed: “To the Daughters of the Confederacy, the Camps of the Confederate Veterans, the Sons of Veterans, and to all Who are Loyal to the Southland, and Love Her Traditions and Desire a truthful History of Her Social and Political Life.”466

The charges brought against Mr. Elson rested upon “the partisan spirit that prompted the writer to slander a people who had reached the pinnacle of high ideals, refinement and culture, and to which it has never been the fortune of many to attain.”467 To the Southerner was especially abhorrent the portrayal of slave life in the South in which it was said: “‘Often the attractive slave woman was a prostitute to her master,’” “‘an evil’” that “‘was widespread at the South.’”468 Further objections arose to the statement: “‘A sister of President Madison declared that though the Southern ladies were complimented with the name of wife they were only the mistresses of Seraglios’”; and that “‘a leading Southern lady declared to Harriet Martineau that the wife of many a planter was but the chief slave of his harem.’”469 Mr. Elson was also regarded as misrepresenting the cause of the Civil War, which he attributed “to slavery and slavery alone” and not to state rights, which he declared “in the abstract had nothing to do with bringing on the war.”470

In response to the circular of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the Veterans adopted a resolution indicating that it could not be “too earnestly pressed upon the attention of those in charge of our educational institutions the supreme importance of excluding from our schools and colleges all histories that do not in their reports of the great struggle for constitutional liberty... fairly and impartially represent the facts.” The Reunion further resolved that there be used “only such histories as will recognize the justice of that cause [of 1861-1865] in support of which so many of our brave comrades shed their blood and gave their lives.”471

In 1912 the agitation regarding history textbooks had lost much of its bitterness and the line of cleavage between the Northerner’s history and that of the Southerner seemed less apparent. Under the fusing influence of the World War, the Confederate Veterans held their reunion in 1917 in the city of Washington where Confederate and Union flags waved together.472 But the spirit of sectional interest had too long enslaved them and, in 1921, the Reunion favorably adopted a report of the Rutherford Committee. Chief among the achievements for a “true history” which the Committee were able to report was the adoption of satisfactory histories in the states of Mississippi and Texas. The Committee predicted similar action in North Carolina where there were “true histories by Southern authors and published by a home house,” thereby eliminating any necessity for even considering “any Yankee books.”473

A revival of propaganda for sectional histories since 1921 is due in some degree to the appearance of two pamphlets which set forth the need of a distinct type of history for the South: The Truth of the War Conspiracy of 1861, by H. W. Johnstone, and Truths of History, by Mildred Lewis Rutherford, state historian for the United Daughters of the Confederacy. These pamphlets received the unanimous endorsement of the United Confederate Veterans at their meeting in Richmond, Virginia, June, 1922, in a resolution recommending their use in the public schools.474 Among other things, these writings purported to establish the fact that Lincoln began the Civil War. The committee report declared: “This [The Truth of the War Conspiracy of 1861] presents the official evidence gathered principally from the United States Government archives, which proves the Confederate War was deliberately and personally conceived and its inauguration made by Abraham Lincoln, and that he was personally responsible for forcing the war upon the South.”475

The endorsement of this ultra-Southern viewpoint caused a storm of protest, particularly in the North. Under the caption “The Confederate Veterans’ New Glands,” the Chicago Daily Tribune observed: “We are moved to wonder, ‘What is history?’ The Standard Dictionary defines it as ‘a systematic record of past events.’ No better definition in six words occurs to us. But more or less recent events in world politics, coupled with the current action of the Confederate Veterans, indicates [sic] that that definition is in error. History is becoming, if it has not already reached that stage, a medium of propaganda. That became evident in the world war, when European histories were combed for evidence of the innate barbarity of the German people. It was more evident in the efforts to arouse the American people to the point of intervention and actual warfare to free Ireland. It is now emphasized through the efforts of the Confederate Veterans to impose upon the children of the south their own interpretation of the Civil War, regardless of accuracy or the effect upon the nation. The Veterans are attempting to pass on their old hates and rancors to their descendants. They have not yet surrendered to Grant. They are a trifle feeble, to be sure, but apparently becoming less so. They are busily engaged in swapping their old glands for new.”476

The New York Times expressed equally strong disapproval of an effort to revive the bitterness of the past and attempt “a revocation of beatification or canonization” of Lincoln.477

No less resentful at the attempted disparagement of Lincoln’s services were the officers of the Grand Army of the Republic, who assailed Miss Rutherford’s statement that Lincoln began the war as a “lie.”478 Mrs. John A. Logan, representing the Dames of the Loyal Legion, also offered objections to such “a perversion of facts,” and declared that all patriotic societies would be urged to seek the suppression of any such histories.479

Protests against this revival of sectional animosity were not localized in the North. The Macon [Georgia] Telegraph suggested to Miss Rutherford that she would find better employment were she to bring to public view the virtues, the generosities and heroisms which were in the Old South and should be carried over in the New South. The Telegraph also believed that it would prove fruitful of good were she to dwell on the cordial tributes paid by the North to Lee as a man and as a general; and as for Lincoln, with much less research than she used in unearthing dubious evidences of his antagonism to the Southerners, she could find almost innumerable and indubitable proofs of his good-will. The Telegraph concluded that “the whole nation looks upon its Lincolns and its Lees as Americans, and humanity looks upon them as its own.”480

Beside the allegation that Lincoln began the Civil War, Miss Rutherford, following the impulse given her by the Johnstone pamphlet, Truths of the War Conspiracy of 1861,481 offered quotations to show that Lincoln was not a fit example for children, nor was he given his rightful place in history. Such quotations as the following are indicative of the character of her remarks: “People found in Lincoln before his death nothing remarkably good or great, but on the contrary, found in him the reverse of goodness or greatness. Lincoln as one of Fame’s immortals does not appear in the Lincoln of 1861 (Schouler’s History of the United States, Vol. VI, p. 21).”482 “Lincoln signed the liquor revenue bill and turned the saloon loose on the country, thus undoing the previous temperance work of the churches.”483 “Mr. Lincoln went to church, but he went to mock and came away to mimic.”484 “The people all drank, and Abe was for doing what the people did, right or wrong.”485 Miss Rutherford also presented evidence designed to prove that Lincoln was a tricky politician,486 and that the Emancipation Proclamation was unconstitutional.487

In contrast with these characterizations of Lincoln are the “spotless integrity, controlling conscience” and “sincere religious convictions” ascribed to Davis. Even a Northern historian, Ridpath, according to Miss Rutherford, testified that Davis had bitterness toward no man.488

Eighty-one per cent of the schools and colleges in the South, according to Miss Rutherford, were using, in 1921, “text-books untrue to the South,” and “seventeen per cent” were “using histories omitting most important facts concerning the South.”489 As written, the histories “magnify and exalt the New England colonies and the Mayflower crew, with bare mention of the Jamestown Colony, thirteen years older, and the crews of the Susan Constant, the Discovery, and the Goodspeed.”490 Other objectionable features in most school histories were the “extended account” generally given to the “religious faith and practice” of New England with no mention of Sir Thomas Dale’s Code in the Jamestown Colony, “which enforced daily attendance upon Divine worship, penalty for absence, penalty for blasphemy, penalty for speaking evil of the Church, and refusing to answer the Catechism, and for neglecting work.”491

Other Southerners than Miss Rutherford have criticized the customary presentation of history. “We owe it to our dead, to our living, and to our children, to preserve the truth and repel the falsehoods, so that we may secure just judgment from the only tribunal before which we may appear and be fully and fairly heard, and that tribunal is the bar of history,” asserted Benjamin H. Hill.492 Likewise Thomas Nelson Page declared: “In a few years there will be no South to demand a history if we have history as it is now written. How do we stand today in the eyes of the world? We are esteemed ‘ignorant, illiterate, cruel, semi-barbarous, a race sunken in brutality and vice, a race of slave drivers who disrupted the Union in order to perpetuate human slavery and who as a people have contributed nothing to the advancement of mankind.’”493

Among the textbooks designated by Miss Rutherford for special criticism were Davidson’s History of the United States, Montgomery’s Beginner’s American History, and Muzzey’s An American History.494 Davidson was criticized because he asserted that “the Jamestown colonists were vicious idlers and jail birds picked up on the streets of London,” and because of the statement that “side by side the two civilizations had grown up in America—the one dedicated to progress and kept up with the spirit of the age—the other a landed aristocracy with slavery as the chief excuse for its existence.”495

Condemnation was meted out to Muzzey’s textbook because it was alleged that he said, “The cause for which the Confederate soldiers fought was an unworthy cause and should have been defeated,” and because “it is impossible for the student of history today to feel otherwise than that the cause for which the South fought was unworthy.”496 Montgomery was placed in the objectionable group because he described the settlers of Georgia as “filthy, ragged, dirty prisoners taken from the ‘Debtor’s Prison’ by Oglethorpe.”497

On the other hand, R. G. Horton’s A Youth’s History of the Civil War presents a point of view acceptable to Miss Rutherford, for it declares that “the withdrawal of the Southern States from the Union was in no sense a declaration of war upon the Federal government but the Federal government declared war on them, as history will show.”498

Doubtless the most prejudiced discussion of mooted questions since the Civil War appears in the textbooks produced before the opening of the twentieth century. This period, in general, characterized by a spirit of intense local patriotism, reflected itself clearly in the history textbooks. During this period were published such Southern textbooks as Venable, A School History of the United States, Lee, New School History of the United States, Chambers, A School History of the United States, and Taylor, Model School History.

Susan Pendleton Lee’s New School History of the United States can be quoted as typical. “The Constitution of the United States recognized slavery.... The opinion that it was a moral wrong did not prevail before the days of Garrison and his followers who pronounced it to be the sum of all ‘iniquity.’... The outcry against slavery had made the Southern people study the subject, and they had reached the conclusion that the evils connected with it were less than those of any other system of labor. Hundreds of thousands of African savages had been Christianized under its influence. The kindest relations existed between the slaves and their owners.... The bondage in which the negroes were held was not thought a wrong to them, because they were better off than any other menial class in the world.”499 The same author justified the Ku Klux Klan because “no high spirited, courageous people could patiently submit to such a government.” “As open resistance was impossible,” she declares, “they, too, had recourse to secret organizations. They were at first local, and were intended for self-protection against the barn burnings and worse outrages committed by misguided negroes.”500

As a result of this desire to present the history of their section in terms of their own convictions, the Southerners have always agitated for textbooks different from those used in Northern schools. Northern textbook companies whose enterprise was much condemned during the ante-bellum period have capitalized this sectional preference and produced for Southern consumption, among others, Evans’ The Essential Facts of American History, Chambers’ A School History of the United States, and Stephenson’s An American History.501 On the other hand, for the North, the same book companies have published textbooks satisfactory to that section. Today, in substantially all of the states which formed the Confederacy, specific textbooks in American history are prescribed, a practice not so universal in the North, where local adoption is sometimes found.502 An analysis of these Southern textbooks, however, discloses a very temperate presentation of controversial questions. Upon the points of contention between the North and the South, there is a natural bias in favor of the South, a tendency to attempt justification and exoneration. Evans, in The Essential Facts of American History, for example, in discussing “reasons for secession,” lays greater stress than the textbooks of the North on the right of secession, a “right which had been asserted by other than the Southern States.”503 Stephenson, in An American History, dubs John Brown as “that terrible John Brown,”504 and characterizes the carpet-bag governments as insolent, dishonest and violent.505 The terms “rebellion” and “civil war” are employed by Northern, not Southern, histories, the “war of the states” and the “war of secession” being used in the South.

Attempts of the Grand Army of the Republic to Control History Textbooks

Six years before the Confederate Veterans in reunion accepted the report of their first historical committee regarding the “false” histories used in Southern schools, the Grand Army of the Republic learned through a similar channel that the history textbooks of the North “signally” failed “to comprehend the causes that resulted in the war of the rebellion.”506 Much cause for complaint arose from the fact that textbooks were “compiled for a national system of education, South as well as North,”—a condition held sadly unacceptable, it would seem, by the patriotic organizations of this period.507

In the Report of 1888, the G. A. R. undertook to point out statements in textbooks used in the South which appealed to them as indicative of “a thoroughly studied, rank, partisan system of sectional education.”508 As a case in point Davidson’s School History of South Carolina, “published at Columbia, South Carolina, by one W. J. Duffie, copyrighted in 1869,” was examined. This history, so the Report declared, in Chapter 195 ascribed “the cause of secession, which was the cause of the war,” to the fact that “Congress kept passing laws which it had no right to pass according to the Constitution.”509 Further, in speaking of the withdrawal of South Carolina from the Union the author asserted that “she had a right to do this; that is, if the States rights party of the South was correct in its doctrine.”510

The Report condemned another history textbook, written by Blackburn and McDonald, because of the following passage: “The second year of the war now commenced; it found each section preparing with terrible earnestness for the conflict. The South was straining every nerve to resist the Northern multitudes;... To fill her armies the North had a better and more successful mode, she offered immense bounties and high pay. Induced by these, thousands of European mercenaries enlisted. The South had nothing but her gallant children to put in the field and thus she was condemned to stake her most precious jewels against the trash of Europe.”511

Other grounds for criticism were found in Alexander Stephens’ common school history which was guilty of an effort “to indoctrinate the youth” of the South with the “monstrous heresy” of state rights and secession.512

“These Southern histories do not fail to make known their side of this question. They are full of it,” concluded the Committee. “What we deem treason is there made respectable. While our histories on the same subject are comparatively silent, indeed are so lamentably deficient upon this question that it were far better to discard all history of our country during the epoch of 1860-5 than to admit them to our schools as now compiled. It is indeed time to cease toying with treason for policy, and to cease illustrating rebels as heroes, as in the case of some of our school histories.”513

The Report of 1888 inaugurated a practice extending over a period of more than twenty years. The Report of 1892 laid its emphasis upon the fact that the textbooks in history “slandered the North and the cause of the Union,... depreciated the value of our troops, and represented that the South was in the right, and that the army which saved the Union was a wicked aggressor....”514

In 1895 the Encampment, meeting at Louisville, had its attention called by the Department of Indiana to the character of history textbooks used in Northern schools. In that state alarm had been excited by Montgomery’s Leading Facts of American History, “the authorized history” for the public schools of the state. Under the auspices of the local G. A. R. an investigation of this book had been conducted. As a result, seven charges were presented against it, the indictment stating that Ellis’ Eclectic Primary History and Barnes’ History were believed to be “equally objectionable.”515

The objections of the Indiana G. A. R. received the endorsement of the national encampment, and Montgomery’s history was found guilty on the following counts: first, it contained “no suggestion or intimation that the men who fought for the preservation of the Union were right”; second, there was “a general unfairness of treatment of the people of the North, of the officers and soldiers of the Union armies and the battles fought by them”; third, it was “calculated to give the student false impressions as to the relative courage, heroism and achievements of the contending armies, and of the endurance, devotion and sacrifices of the people of the two sections of the country engaged in the conflict”; fourth, “the accounts of the victories of the Confederates” were “exaggerated, while those of the Union armies” were “dwarfed and made insignificant by comparison”; in the fifth place, “all statements of a commendatory and eulogistic character” were “reserved for the Confederates, while nothing of like character” was said “in favor of the Union soldiers or people”; sixth, that it was “unpatriotic and partisan in statement, tone and sentiment”; and seventh, that it was “unreliable in its statement of facts.”516

Among objectionable history textbooks “written by Southern authors, for the avowed purpose of giving a history of the War of the Rebellion from a Southern standpoint,” was that of “Reverend Dr. D. W. Jones, published in 1896.”517 This book was taken “as a fair sample of its class” by the Committee on School Histories reporting in 1897. The Veterans rested their case upon such a statement as: “The seceding states not only had a perfect right to withdraw from the Union but they had amply sufficient cause for doing so.”518

In the “careful examination” to which the school histories of the North were subjected by the Committee of 1897 no book was found which deserved “unqualified endorsement.”519 This was due to the “one vital defect” common to all the histories—that all of them treated the War “as a contest between the sections of the country... and not as a war waged by the Government for the suppression of rebellion against National authority and meant to destroy National existence.”520 Indeed, the Committee had reached their conclusions regarding the “histories in general use in all sections” after “two days of examination.”521 During this time they had found in “many of these works extravagant expressions as ‘this crushing defeat’” in speaking of the Northern army, and such a statement as “‘the Confederates could not be conquered until they were destroyed,’”—all equally obnoxious and uncomplimentary to the North.522 Such a condition, the Committee felt, arose from “a commercial spirit” which “largely controls and inspires these publications.”523

In view of the situation as it then existed, the Committee asked that the “Encampment record a solemn and emphatic protest against the further use of any history of the Civil War in the public schools of this country which does not teach that this war was a war waged by the National Government for the suppression of rebellion and the preservation of National existence; that there was a right side and a wrong side,... that in the decision of this question the victors were right and the vanquished wrong.”524 They further recommended that the agitation for “improved text-books” be continued, that a permanent committee on the teaching of patriotism in the schools be appointed, and that the Grand Army of the Republic and its allied organizations “give direct and persistent attention to the removal and exclusion of improper histories... in use.”525

The results of the agitation for “unbiased” histories which the Confederate Veterans felt had been achieved by 1896 in the South, the G. A. R. through their activities failed to accomplish in the North before 1898. However, at that time they felt “justified to report substantial improvement in the tone and sentiment” of textbooks, particularly in “the more recent publications.”526 Yet they urged “a continuance of effort... to place before the children of the Republic truthful and patriotic histories” of the Civil War, and registered a “solemn and emphatic protest” against the proposal that the struggle of 1861 to 1865 be called “the Civil War between the States.”527

The following year the Committee report rang with a spirit of optimism because of the changed character of history writing and instruction brought about by “our organization.” As proof for their gratification they pointed out that “in one of the leading works in use more than fifty substantial changes of the text have been made in that portion presenting the history of the rebellion.”528 Yet regret was expressed that no history known to them made “it clear in statement that the war for the preservation of the Union was prosecuted on the one side by the National Government and on the other by those in armed rebellion against its authority.”529 To insure continued vigilance the Encampment approved the appointment of an “aide” to each department to keep in touch with the school histories in his state, and to “confer with school authorities and endeavor through them to secure the best obtainable school histories in the schools and the exclusion of such as are unfit.”530

The satisfaction expressed by the Committee of 1900 was reiterated at the encampment the following year. But the Committee were robbed of much of their gratification when they considered the “avowedly sectional standpoint” of histories in the South, where it was still taught that the Confederate States were “a lawful government.”531

The agitation to investigate history textbooks lost much of its vigor and aggressive anxiety with the opening of the twentieth century. In 1904 the chairman of the school history committee suggested “in view of the utter want of interest exhibited throughout the whole country in regard to this matter” that the committee “be abolished.”532 Warren Lee Goss, national patriotic instructor, reporting at the forty-first encampment in 1907 declared it his belief that the G. A. R. were “not called upon to interfere in any way with the regular instruction in the schools in United States history, but rather to supplement that instruction by special observances.”533 Two years later the portion of the report on patriotic instruction devoted to “histories” merely listed the textbooks most commonly used,534 and in 1910 a similar report eulogized “the loyalty and patriotism of the majority [of those living] who wore the gray.”535 This sympathetic and tolerant attitude seems to have remained unchallenged in the successive encampments of the G. A. R., and unlike the Confederate Veterans of the last few reunions, the Grand Army of the Republic have not sought to rekindle old animosities.

Textbooks for Roman Catholics

As early as 1834 the Roman Catholics of New York urged upon the schools textbooks which would show agreement with their point of view. In 1828 the Public School Society, an organization designed to educate poor children not provided for by any religious society, was allowed to levy a local tax for its support. To this the Roman Catholics raised objections, since they were permitted to dictate neither the kind of instruction offered nor the textbooks adopted. Among the points in controversy was the request of the Catholic clergy that no book should be used but such as had been submitted to the Bishop and declared “free from sectarian principles or calumnies against his religion.”536 In those books where objectionable statements were found, it was suggested “that such passages be expunged or left out in binding.”537 The censorship requested was not granted, and in 1840 the agitation regarding textbooks was renewed. Again it was charged that some books contained passages not merely displeasing to the Roman Catholics, but hostile to their faith; whereas others indulged in statements which were both “defamatory” and “false.”

The trustees of the Public School Society, avowedly anxious to dissipate these objections, took measures to secure information from various sources, including both laymen and clergy, with the hope that a removal of the complaint might be effected. They adopted a resolution declaring that they would submit for examination, to the Reverend Felix Varela, some textbooks used in Public School Number 5. As further proof of their desire for harmony, the trustees appointed a committee of five to see whether the books in the schools or libraries contained passages derogatory to the Roman Catholics.538 Following their action Reverend Mr. Varela pointed out certain objectionable features in some of the textbooks. In one geography he discovered a passage in which the Catholic clergy were characterized as having great influence but being opposed to the diffusion of knowledge. He also disapproved of the description of Italy in which were statements which would “tend to diminish the consideration that a Catholic child has for the Catholic Church.”539 In another textbook, the discussion of the character of Luther proved objectionable, for, although it might please the Protestants, he felt that there was implied an attack on the Catholic Church.

On July 9, 1840, John Power, vice-general of the diocese of New York, wrote a letter to the editor of Freeman’s Journal, in which he voiced his disapproval of the textbooks employed to instruct children. Odium, he felt, was attached to the Catholic clergy because they were represented as keeping the people in ignorance to promote their own interests, and libraries contained books with “most malevolent and foul attacks on their religion... no doubt with the very laudable purpose of teaching them [Catholic children] to abhor and despise that monster called popery.”540

With failure attending their efforts at censorship, the Roman Catholics resorted to an address to their “fellow citizens of the city and state of New York” in which they appealed for a redress of their grievances. “We are Americans and American citizens. If some of us are foreigners,” they declared, “it is only by the accident of birth,.... But our children, for whose rights as well as our own we contend in this matter, are Americans by nativity.”541 Repeating the assertions of the priests, the address remonstrated against the false “historical statements respecting the men and things of past times, calculated to fill the minds of our children with errors of fact and at the same time to excite in them prejudice against the religion of their parents and guardians.”542

In answer to the exceptions raised by the Catholics, the trustees of the Public School Society expressed doubt as to the wisdom of expurgation, for they believed “nothing of a mere negative character” would be acceptable. “The books selected for the children,” they stated, “have, from the first, been those used and most highly esteemed as school-books. The passages objected to, or nearly all of them, are historical, and relate to what is generally called the Reformation. The writers were Protestants, and took a view of the men and incidents of that excited and eventful period directly opposed to those entertained by the members of the Roman Catholic Church. These portions, must, of course, be offensive to Catholics, and they furnish just cause for complaint.... The objectionable passages are not numerous, but the books are not to be found without them.... The difficulty of procuring books entirely exempt from objection cannot perhaps be more forcibly illustrated than by the fact that one work containing passages as liable to objection as almost any other, is now used as a class-book even in the Catholic schools. It is the intention of the trustees, nevertheless, to prosecute the work of expurgation until every just cause of complaint is removed.”543

As a result of the agitation, revised and expurgated books appeared; in some instances the objectionable passages were stamped out with ink from a wooden block or the leaves pasted together or removed. In some cases the books under criticism were prohibited in the libraries and the schools. Yet this failed to satisfy the Roman Catholics. When the expurgated editions were worn out, they were replaced by new books without changes, and gradually this discussion over textbooks subsided.

During the ’eighties it again became a matter of speculation with the Roman Catholics whether they should be taxed to support schools from which their children got “no benefit,” or, if attending, suffered “positive injury and injustice.”544 They were indeed skeptical as to the merits of a non-sectarian education which they held “professedly non-Christian,”—a system that occupied itself “as little with the mission, history, and teachings of the divine Founder of Christianity” as it did “with the life and doctrines of Confucius or Buddha.”545

A storm center of the agitation was Boston, where the Catholics formed a considerable number of the population. Here a denunciation of public school instruction included both teachers and textbooks, resulting in the removal of Swinton’s History and the dismissal of a teacher (a Mr. Travis) for “erroneous and misleading” statements about the granting of indulgences.

“It is very hard,” declared one writer on the controversy, “that a young man who teaches only what he has been taught himself, only what thousands of young men and women have been taught and are teaching, should be singled out and set aside for penalty while others go scot free.... While the Roman Catholics were weak they could not help themselves, and we went on saying what we pleased. Now they are numerous enough in some places to hold the balance of power, and they hold it with a mighty grasp....”546

In an effort to prevent the exclusion of the textbook from the schools, the Protestants advanced various arguments: that it had been in use ten years without protest, that “the outcry” was not “honest,” and that the agitation was “simply the opening wedge for riving our school system and dividing the public school money between Catholics and Protestants.”547

Other histories than Swinton’s were in like manner placed by the Catholics in the objectionable list. It was alleged that Prescott’s works “swarm[ed] with Puritan prejudice against all things Catholic” and that Macaulay’s History of England emphasized the worst traits of Catholic personages and gave little credit to the Jesuits.548 So far as Macaulay was concerned, one Catholic objected to sending his children to school to study history from a book acknowledged by the Protestants to be “a gloriously Protestant book,” by which his children would be “gloriously indoctrinated into Protestantism and a hatred of their parents’ religion.”549

As a means of settling the controversy it was suggested that all history or the parts relating to the Protestant and Catholic churches be omitted from the curriculum. This could be done, one writer maintained, “without missing anything of value to our common school system or to our other cherished institutions.” Moreover, it was also held that there were “plenty of undisputed topics” to be studied in the schools which were looked upon with “entire unanimity” by “all creeds,” such as two and two make four. For “nothing should ever be taught in schools supported by common funds except that which is accepted by the common faith.”550

With the great expansion of the Catholic Church in the United States since the Civil War and the growth of parochial schools in all parts of the country, the particular needs of the Catholics have been met by the enterprise of publishers in supplying special textbooks for their use.551 As a result today there are found in parochial schools such social study textbooks as McCarthy’s History of the United States, O’Hara’s A History of the United States, A History of the United States for Catholic Schools by the Franciscan Sisters of the Perpetual Adoration of St. Rose Convent, La Crosse, Wisconsin, Lawler’s Essentials of American History, Betten’s The Ancient World, Betten and Kaufman’s The Modern World, and Burke’s Political Economy.552

The desire to present events in American history in such a way as to show the importance of the Catholic Church has led to the preparation of textbooks like McCarthy’s History of the United States. In this book it has been “made clear that Catholics discovered, and in a large way, explored these continents, that Catholics transferred civilization hither, that they opened to the commerce of Europe the trade of the Pacific, and that they undertook the conversion of multitudes of dusky natives, of whom few had risen to the upper stages of barbarism.”553 Although the “war for independence” was begun largely by Protestants, the author avers the help of Catholic nations like France and Spain gave “undoubted assistance to the New Republic.” Norse settlement and discovery are treated extensively, and Columbus’ missionary spirit receives considerable attention. Catholic notables like Governor Dongan, the Calverts, Captain John Barry, and Thomas Macdonough are given more space than ordinarily allotted in school histories. “The winning of the West, in which Catholics acted an important part,” the war on the sea in which are enumerated “the exploits of the O’Briens of Machias, Maine,” “the beginnings of the Catholic Church in America” and “Washington’s patriotic letter to his Catholic countrymen” are other unique features.554

Similar in point of view is the textbook written by the Franciscan Sisters of the Perpetual Adoration. Its contents, announces the Foreword, are not immured within the bounds of “the usually taught historical facts,” but include “the too often forgotten efforts of the Church in American History.” Not only is the story of “the venturesome explorer, the intrepid colonizer, the hardy pioneer, the noble warrior, the eloquent statesman” narrated, but there is also depicted “the quiet heroism of the loyal sons and daughters of the Catholic Church.” “Our country is justly proud of the liberty she offers to all her children,” affirm the authors, “but these children are many in faith, and diversified in race peculiarities. Common interests may seem to unite them from time to time, but there can be no true, permanent union except where the spirit and the faith are dominating forces. But where is such a bond of unity except in the Catholic Church? Mother Church folds her arms about all her children and questions not their color or their race.”555

To the teachers, the authors offer certain aids and directions. The importance of a “proper setting of United States history with a knowledge of the threefold chronological divisions of world history” and an insight into the “difference between Sacred history and Profane, or Secular history” are indicated. In the period of colonization, teachers are urged to make clear, among other things, “how the Catholic Church, like the mustard seed of the Gospel, has flourished and grown, as it were, into a mighty tree.” The Sisters urge, also, a thorough delineation of the growth of the educational system of the United States including an understanding of “how our cherished parochial schools grew from humble beginnings into the splendid system which now labors so zealously for the spiritual and intellectual welfare of our country.”556

The Betten-Kaufman histories, The Ancient World and The Modern World, are typical of Roman Catholic textbooks in the field of European history. Based upon West’s Ancient World and his Modern World, the authors have introduced changes desirable for the purpose of “promoting the great cause of Catholic education.”557 The chief departure from the traditional European history textbook used in the public schools is in the discussion of Luther and the Reformation. Although Tetzel’s use of the theory of indulgences is criticized in the Betten and Kaufman textbook as “ill advised,”558 Luther’s theories regarding the remission of sins are characterized as “monstrous.”559 The Church as an agency for good and for promoting the civilization of the world is given significant attention; the “Catholic view” of social evils is set forth in opposition to other theories, and a discussion of “harmonious coöperation” between church and state is intended to disclose the influence of the Church in the solution of the world’s evils.560

In an allied field Father Burke has written his Political Economy designed for use in Catholic Colleges, High Schools, and Academies. Here political economy is discussed not only from the standpoint of “the merely concrete, material things that enter into the science, but also with reference to the personalities of the members of society whose activity is exercised on these concrete, material things.”561

Father Burke’s book is divided into twenty-three chapters with titles common to the usual economics textbook. Its unique feature lies in the treatment of various economic theories from the point of view of the “Catholic School.” The doctrine of Malthus is rejected for moral and economic reasons, which take their course in “human injustice and selfishness in the spirit of greed that closes the hearts of men to the dictates of charity and fairness,” and which lead to “improper methods of the distribution of wealth.”562 The author expresses a belief in the inequality of man, through which comes inequality of distribution. Such a hardship is due, in no small degree, Father Burke declares, to the “fallen state” of man. Because of the sin of his first parents he is “subject to death, to sufferings, to misery, and to labor.” This can be proved, it is averred, by the Book of Revelation. “Hence,” asserts Father Burke, “evils may exist in this world, injustice and oppression may go on, and the equilibration of things may never take place here; the wicked may prosper and the honest and just may be oppressed, and no adequate remedy may appear; yet the moment of compensation, of perfect justice, will come, if not in this life, then in the life of eternity.”563

Such a presentation of economic theories has been acclaimed highly satisfactory in Catholic reviews, for, “since ethics as a science directing human actions according to right reason embraces of necessity all of man’s activities, it follows that political economy is rightly subject to the laws of ethics.”564 “This clear understanding of the state of the question... enables us at once to detect the errors and dangers of many of the high sounding economic theories which occupy so much space in the literature of the day,” declares one reviewer.565 Another reviewer in Extension believes that an accurate knowledge of economic principles is impossible “from an examination of the text-books used in some of the secular colleges and universities” in which not only are “some of the so-called principles false, but the resultant deductions, where they are not entirely fallacious, are frequently misleading.”566 The Pilot offers its endorsement of the textbook because “in these days of industrial and economic unrest, when so much that is false and misleading is written on political and social problems, a book on political economy for Catholic schools is most welcome. Catholic philosophy sets forth sound and unimpeachable principles bearing upon the rights of the individual and of the family, and upon the powers and functions of ‘the State.’”567

The purpose of these books is to place emphasis upon Catholic contributions and the power of the Church. As indicated in a textbook written in the later nineteenth century, whose content is much the same as the more recent Catholic textbooks, it is “the manifest duty of those who are entrusted with the education of our children to see that in learning the history of the country they do not lose sight of the rise, progress, and social influences of the Church in the United States....568 And finally, as religion is always the sweetest inspiration and support of patriotism, the breaking down of religious beliefs in various modern nations, and notably in our own, is accompanied by a loss of patriotism.... Reverence for authority is lost, and society, in order to protect itself, is driven to appeal to force. Nothing can avert the danger but the influence of a great moral power endorsed with all the attributes which create respect and encourage obedience. The Catholic Church is this power....”569

In turn, these textbooks have been criticised because of the amount of space given to the Catholic Church in comparison with that allotted other churches. One critic has asserted that the history by the Franciscan Sisters does not mention a single Protestant body after the period of the Revolution, and that “one ignorant of the true situation and reading this particular history would imagine that the United States was a Catholic nation.”570 Further criticism has arisen because, in the critic’s mind, facts of history are mixed with “acts of Catholic piety.” As proof of this objection is cited an excerpt from a Catholic textbook in which is given a description of the death of Pizarro: “Just before he died he called upon his Redeemer and tracing with his bloody finger a cross upon the floor, he kissed the sacred symbol and expired.”571

Further evidence of this is seen by the same writer in the statement that “as the missionaries made their way westward, the worship of St. Mary marked their path till the great Mississippi, the River of the Immaculate Conception, bore them [down] toward those Spanish realms where every officer swore to defend the Immaculate Conception.”572 To this objector of a separate history for Catholic schools, “it is the very evident purpose of these texts... to propagate Catholic ideas and not to give a true picture of the development of America.”573

Textbooks in Civics, Economics and Sociology

Criticism of public school textbooks and teaching is not confined solely to the subject of history but includes in its ever-widening circle books in the allied fields of civics, economics and sociology. Especially is this true of those in government or civics. Since the close of the World War a movement for the teaching of the Constitution has closely paralleled that for the study of American history. Organizations and individuals with the avowed purpose of inculcating patriotism have urged that more attention than formerly be given the study of the machinery of government. To this end influence has been exerted for the passage of laws requiring the subject of civics in the schools, and many books on the Constitution have appeared to meet an increased demand.

Among the organizations which have sponsored the movement for instruction in the Constitution have been the American Bar Association, the National Security League, The Constitution Anniversary Association, and the Better America Federation. Organizations such as the Sentinels of the Republic are engaged in a similar program in adult education.

In 1922 in pursuance of a resolution adopted by the executive committee at Tampa, Florida, the American Bar Association appointed a Committee on American Citizenship “to devise ways for promoting the study of and devotion to American institutions and ideals.” This resolution was interpreted as laying upon the Committee “the duty to prepare a program under which the lawyers of the United States, coöperating with every patriotic society and organization, and with every true American man and woman, shall be urged to join in an earnest effort to stem the tide of radical, and often treasonable, attacks upon our Constitution, our laws, our courts, our law-making bodies, our executives and our flag, to arouse to action our dormant citizenship, to abolish ignorance, and crush falsehood, and to bring truth into the hearts of our citizenship.”574

The Committee recommended the appointment of a standing committee on American Citizenship, the appointment of local committees “to see that the Constitution of the United States is taught in every school... to report to the bureau the courses in each state, the textbooks used, and the qualifications of teachers for teaching American citizenship.” In addition it was suggested that the coöperation of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws be enlisted “in an effort to have enacted in each state suitable laws making a course each year in the study of and devotion to American institutions and ideals part of the curriculum in all schools and colleges sustained or in any manner supported by public funds.”575

The Reports of 1923 and 1924 again envisaged “the need of activity” because of “the socialistic doctrines... taught in many of our schools and colleges,” and pointed out that efforts of the Bar toward laws requiring the teaching of the Constitution had received encouragement from legislators and the public in general.576 In 1923, according to the Report of that year, twenty-four states had definite laws, in five states laws had been introduced and in nineteen states there was no such statute. The principal difficulty which the Committee had encountered in having such a law passed had arisen out of “the conservatism of school authorities,” who appeared “fearful that the mere requirement” would “not necessarily be the best means of promoting the teaching of the Constitution,” and who were “slow to change from long established methods that had been used in connection with the school curriculum.”

In their advocacy for a wider-spread knowledge of the Constitution the American Bar Association received the coöperation of other organizations interested in the same work, such as the American Legion, patriotic societies, women’s organizations, the Masonic Service Association, the Knights of Columbus, Chambers of Commerce, the Rotary, Lions, and Kiwanis. Yet they felt that “the most powerful influence” that they could evoke “undoubtedly would be the association of teachers,” for they wished “to reach the mind of the child while it is still plastic.” They affirmed as their “ultimate aim” that “no child should leave even the common schools without an elementary knowledge and appreciation of our Constitution and what it means to every individual.”577

By 1924, the Committee reported the existence of a law requiring the teaching of the Constitution in thirty-one states, and in other commonwealths regulations of the state department of education effecting the same purpose.578 One of the aspects of the situation which appeared to the Committee as more important even than properly qualified teachers was “the proper attitude toward our government and the spirit in which the teaching is performed”—a teaching which should be grounded “on bed-rock Americanism” and “imbued with a desire to communicate such spirit to their pupils.”579 Indeed, it was held that “the schools of America should no more consider graduating a student who lacks faith in our government than a school of theology should graduate a minister who lacks faith in God.”580

According to the Report the educational activities of the Committee were many, “even going so far as to suggest to the ministers appropriate texts for Thanksgiving Day which should call attention to the blessing of our form of government.”581 Members of the Bar had written special articles for several periodicals on good citizenship as well as furnishing cartoons for the press of the country. The Committee had aided in the display and sale of books on the Constitution, they had sponsored “a nation-wide celebration of Constitution week,” they had appeared as speakers on community programs and otherwise had helped in the celebration of national holidays. In addition they had prepared a “citizenship creed.” This creed stressed the obligations of citizenship and a faith in the American government, “the best government that has ever been created—the freest and most just for all the people.” To uphold and defend the government was at all times a duty of the citizen. “Just as the ‘Minute Man of the Revolution’ was ready upon a moment’s notice to defend his rights against foreign usurpation” so it was the citizen’s duty “as a patriotic American to be a ‘Minute Man of the Constitution’ ready at all times to defend the long-established and cherished institutions of our government against attack, either from within or with out,” and to do his “part in preserving the blessings of liberty” for which his “Revolutionary forefathers fought and died.”582

The National Security League is likewise engaged in the movement for teaching the Constitution in the schools. Through the Committee on Constitution Instruction and its Civic Department, the League has campaigned “for over three years” to have passed a bill requiring definite courses in the Constitution in all public schools.583 According to literature circulated by the League, the Committee was rewarded by the passage of such a requirement in thirty-six states, in most cases the legislatures taking over verbatim the bill drafted by them.584

To the League’s program opposition to a mandatory legislative control of education occasionally arose from educational authorities in states where the bill had been introduced. But the chairman of the Committee was “glad to say that state legislators generally, representatives of the public will, have not agreed with these gentlemen and their arguments, and have looked upon a knowledge of the Constitution as an essential in citizen making.”585

In addition to legislation which requires the study of the Constitution, thirty-three states by May, 1925, made mandatory a teacher’s examination on the Constitution.586 So far-reaching were the results of their activities, that the League’s Committee on Constitutional Instruction estimated that 200,500 teachers were required to teach the Constitution of the United States to a total of over 4,000,000 school children.587

To find suitable textbooks became a problem, for the Committee held that “while there are many books which satisfactorily explain the Constitution to advanced students and adults, there is practically nothing which suitably transmits the basic principles of our government to the minds of children.” For this “short stories” on the Constitution were necessary in order that facts concerning the history of the document would be “readily understood by the average child,” because when “eloquently taught and interpreted in story form by a teacher who knows it and reverences its provisions, it will rouse any class to enthusiasm.”588

Besides the “nation-wide popularization of the Constitution” through the distribution of almost a million copies of a “Catechism of the Constitution,” the National Security League endeavors to assist teachers in passing their examinations for licenses by publishing a Course on the Constitution for Normal Schools.589 Its literature on the Constitution has been sent by request to 2038 teachers, to whom was also made available Dr. Jean Broadhurst’s book, Verse for Patriots to Encourage Good Citizenship, “of special value in teaching English literature and patriotism” and for holiday program materials.590 In the campaign for education, Beck’s The Constitution of the United States: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow was also sent “to the governors of all the States where the bill requiring the compulsory teaching of the Constitution has become a law,... with the advice that the book is available for all teachers and instructors in their states upon application.”591 A teachers’ manual “which is attracting wide attention under the title ‘Our Constitution in My Town and My Life’ which contains 115 questions and answers on the Constitution for classroom use” has been written by Miss Etta V. Leighton, Civic Secretary.592

As an “evidence of the value” and of the influence of the Security League’s educational program, the “Report” for November 15, 1925, recounted “that the Professor of Political Science in a large western university will use our suggestions in revising her text book on the State and National Constitution.”593

The Constitution Anniversary Association, incorporated March, 1923, is another organization engaged in promoting a study of the Constitution in order to familiarize to a greater degree the people of this generation with “those historic days incident to the writing of the Constitution,” that they may “recognize their value” and understand “the danger of our drifting during recent years away from representative government toward direct action; from individual property rights to socialism; from individual responsibility for individual conduct toward class consciousness, class agitation and class legislation,....” A purpose of the Association is “to arouse interest in the men who wrote the Constitution... to make clear that they were governmentally-minded as Edison and Marconi are electrically-minded; as Emerson and Socrates were philosophically-minded; as Shakespeare and Longfellow were literary-minded; as Mozart and Mendelssohn were musically-minded; and that in the light of all that history and experience could teach, they were making a contribution as important to the science of government as was [sic] the ten digits to the science of mathematics, the scale to music, or the alphabet to language.”594 A further aim of the organization is “to urge upon educational institutions that in the teaching of History, Civics and Political Science the Constitution be given the place of prominence and importance which it deserves.”595 The observance of Constitution Week, as the name of the Association attests, is of primary interest to the organization.

Harry F. Atwood, author of Back to the Republic, Safeguarding American Ideals and Keep God in American History, directs the activities of the Constitution Anniversary Association. Since 1918 Mr. Atwood “has spoken in all parts of the country to various types of audiences on the Constitution.”596 While addressing a Los Angeles gathering under the auspices of the Better America Federation in May, 1922, Mr. Atwood sowed the seed for the National Oratorical Contest on the Constitution. It was at this meeting that Mr. Harry Chandler, of the Los Angeles Times, conceived the idea “of developing interest in the Constitution” by conducting such a contest in the schools of the state. As a result, “the school year of 1922-23 witnessed the preparation of over 8000 orations,” and “the final contest was held in Los Angeles where prizes aggregating $5000 were awarded.”597 This led to similar contests in other states, supported by “the American Bar Association, the Constitution Anniversary Association and other patriotic organizations.”598 The contest became nation-wide, the final meeting being held at Washington. In the second contest (1924-1925) over 18,000 schools entered; the awards amounted to $45,600, and 1,500,000 high school students competed. Twenty-eight daily newspapers across the continent conducted this contest.599

Mr. Atwood carries his advocacy of a knowledge of the Constitution and of representative government to the people not only through his addresses delivered throughout the country but also by means of his writings. It is his belief that “we have drifted from the republic toward democracy; from statesmanship to demagogism” in “an age of retrogressive tendencies.”600 He holds that a republic provides the “golden mean” of government, autocracy and democracy offering “undesirable extremes.” To make clear his meaning parallels are drawn between “the realm of nature and of human activity” and the realm of government, attributing to each “two extremes and the golden mean.” For instance, he believes that “what thirst is to the individual, autocracy is to government; what drunkenness is to the individual, democracy is to government; what temperance is to the individual, the republic is to government.”601

According to Mr. Atwood “the most defective portion of our thinking and teaching in the schools is that phase of education which pertains to civics, economics and history.”602 So far as textbooks are concerned, Mr. Atwood was convinced that “there are comparatively few who will contend that there has ever been written a good history of the United States of America.” The same statement holds true for textbooks in civil government, for none makes clear “to the average student the form of government that was established here under the Constitution.”603 Mr. Atwood was concerned still more with the fact that so few students had read the Constitution,—students who had received from twelve to sixteen years’ education at the expense of the state. “So long as the expense of the public schools and State universities is paid by the government,” Mr. Atwood declared, “one object at least should be to turn out well informed and patriotic citizens, and the best possible way to do that is to give them an understanding of the meaning of the Constitution and a high regard for its wise provisions.” Mr. Atwood is, moreover, sympathetic with those who maintain that “teachers in the public schools should be impressed with the fact that their salaries are paid at public expense.”604

The sentiment of the Better America Federation of California regarding the study of the Constitution in the schools is not unlike that of the Constitution Anniversary Association. Mr. Woodworth Clum in “America is Calling,” a pamphlet to the students in high schools and colleges, sets forth the tenets of his organization, in his declaration that he would like to see “every school and college student in America not only learn the Preamble to the Constitution so that they could repeat it verbatim at any time or any place, but... also have them know its meaning so well that when they repeat it they would recall the entire philosophy of the American government.”605 Much apprehension was felt by the Better America Federation because of “groups of free thinkers or radicals” agitating for some other form of government under which there would be “no profits... in business.”606

In accord with an interest in education evident in its earliest meetings, the American Federation of Labor has carried on investigations as to the character of teaching and the content of textbooks in the social studies. In 1903, the Executive Council was directed “to secure the introduction of textbooks that will be more in accord with modern thought upon social and political economy, books that will teach the dignity of manual labor, give due importance to the service that the laborer renders to society, and that will not teach the harmful doctrine that the wage-workers should be content with their lot, because of the opportunity that may be afforded a few of their number rising out of their class, instead of teaching that the wage earners should base their hopes upon the elevation of the conditions of the working people.”607

In 1919, the Executive Council was instructed “to appoint a committee to investigate the matter of selecting, or of preparing and publishing textbooks appropriate for classes of workers,” because the convention found “one of the chief difficulties in securing appropriate classes for the workers is the dearth of unbiased and suitable textbooks.”608

The committee thus appointed reported in 1920 an insufficient and inaccurate teaching of industrial growth and of the trade union movement. The responsibility for this condition was assessed upon the economists of the past “whose teachings still largely dominate in the educational institutions of our time,”—teachings “which have failed to stand the test of experience and of unbiased investigation.” Ideas held faulty were thought, furthermore, to be in no small measure the outgrowth of ideas gained from books failing to “state accurately and interpret correctly economic laws and their application to our modern industrial society.”609 The Committee therefore recommended the preparation of a textbook by a competent trade unionist under the direction of the executive officers of the American Federation of Labor with a special committee for this purpose, and “the teaching of unemasculated industrial history embracing an accurate account of the organization of the workers and of the results thereof, the teaching of principles underlying industrial activities and relations, and a summary of legislation, state and federal, affecting industry.”610

The attention of the convention was focussed in its educational program the following year upon a proposed investigation of textbooks in civics, economics and history. The committee to whom this task was delegated reported in 1922. Their report, published in 1923, pointed out the importance of “instruction in social and economic studies,” because such studies are “vitally concerned with wide-spread understanding of our social and economic institutions and forces.”611 Yet the American Federation of Labor expressly denied a desire to have their point of view “stressed to the exclusion of all others.” They wanted merely “an emphasis commensurate with its significance.” Nor did they wish “public education to be influenced by partisan bodies of any kind.” For they esteemed “the persons most competent to judge in detail what should be taught and how it should be taught... those who are themselves engaged in the educational profession.”612

Inasmuch as “there are no more important determining factors than the economic fabric to which the majority of citizens contribute the larger share of their creative energy” the Federation considered essential a knowledge of the trade-union movement and “of all other social problems having to do with the welfare of the working people.”613 The information held important for the worker they felt should be taught in the junior as well as in the senior high school, in order to reach those students who leave school early.614

In the consideration of the textbooks most commonly used in the public schools, the Federation’s committee held it “obvious that old-fashioned didactic methods of teaching are not suitable to the new treatment,” that “subjects should be presented not in the form of finished judgments and dogmatic rules... but rather as observations of the world about us, concerning which the pupil must to a great extent exercise his own judgments;” and that “in the case of highly controversial subjects, important dissenting views should be fairly and adequately presented.”615 Although special pleaders for some change in common educational practice, they asserted that “the labor movement, unlike selfish interests, does not and cannot depend for public favor upon narrow propaganda; what it wants and needs is the light of day and freedom of opinion. The more people know, and the more they think, the better in the long run for working men and women, and for all our citizenship.”

As a consequence of their premises, the Committee applied to the textbooks considered the following tests: “In the first place, is the book of old, narrow type, or of the newer and broader type? In the second place, is its general method that which inculcates certain fixed principles which may have been acceptable some time in the past, or, on the other hand, that which portrays society as a group of growing and changing institutions? In the third place, does it include adequate information about important subjects, particularly subjects of concern to the wage-earning population, such as trade-unionism, collective bargaining, standards of living, hours of work, safety and sanitation, housing, unemployment, civil liberty, and the judicial power? And in its treatment of these subjects, does it fairly present labor’s point of view as well as that of others?”616

The application of these tests to one hundred twenty-three textbooks—forty-seven histories, forty-seven civics, twenty-five economics, and four sociologies, revealed that fifty-five per cent were of “the newer type dealing with the broader aspects of government, and the social and industrial life of the people rather than with forms of organization, military events and abstract themes.” Sixty per cent were found to be “dynamic rather than static in their method of treatment” in that they recognized “to a greater or less degree the power for growth in our institutions.”

On the other hand, the Committee decided that “a majority of texts fell short of the standards in one or more important respects,”617 although, on the whole, “the newer type of text” attempted “to give the labor movement in the problem of industry adequate and just consideration.”618 Failure to do so the Committee attributed either “to ignorance of the author or to a hesitancy to deal with this difficult subject, rather than to a deliberate attempt to keep the facts of industry out of the schools.” The survey found “no evidence that text books are being used for propaganda purposes.”619

The Public Service Institute through its chairman also has urged a more extensive study of “labor civics,” and commended the New York course in civics for older grammar grade children and first year high school pupils.620

Still others have become censors of the character of social study instruction in the public schools. Books treating the modern problems of race, labor and capital, immigration, private property, and topics of like nature have been examined with a critical eye. The portrayal of facts relating to races and nationalities in the United States has proved a fruitful source of attack. Authors have been asked to omit or make colorless references to controversial topics in the preparation or the revision of textbooks which would discuss, for example, the Chinese and Japanese in America, the Italians and the Jews. In one city the negroes protested the use of a textbook because of a statement to the effect that the Southern white man tried to keep the negro from voting, the protest carrying enough weight to cause a special edition of the book to be printed for use in that city.

Its presentation of the subject of private property was the source of an attack upon Berry and Howe’s Actual Democracy, “an elementary discussion” of present-day problems in America. Exception was taken to children being taught that “private property is one of the fundamental institutions of American democracy... an unmistakable index of social progress... [which] cannot be destroyed without destroying also the ideals of liberty and democracy in which Americans believe.”621

Its method of discussing trade-unionism622 and immigration likewise met disfavor. In the case of the latter subject, the critics were disturbed because, among other things, the authors concluded “that the immigration situation has rendered necessary a profound change in the very structure of our government. [For] in order to control the turbulent non-American elements, we have been compelled to modify many of our earlier democratic ideals and to adopt centralization of authority, which is far different in spirit from American traditions... [and] that [due to immigration] American democracy is facing a life and death struggle with Marxian socialism.”623

In treating freedom of speech the author of the secondary school textbook is to no less degree upon slippery ground, for here again critics have acclaimed partisanship and bias evident in discussions. On this charge A. T. Southworth has been adjudged guilty in his The Common Sense of the Constitution of the United States in that he says, “This amendment [the first amendment] also guarantees the right of free speech. There can, of course, be no such thing as absolute free speech. The only persons who say exactly what they think every minute of the day are babies and fools.... There is reason in all things, and on general principles a person may say in this country anything he pleases, provided what he says is not libelous or slanderous, or contrary to the public morals; and provided that he does not advocate the overthrow of the government by force. In this country where we have a government, not of men but of laws, it is not reasonable that anyone should preach the overthrow of the government by force. If B says, ‘Murder A, throw him out of office, and let me rule,’ then it is perfectly logical for C to advocate the murder of B after B has set himself up as a ruler. This is anarchy.”624

The allegation that textbook-making has been directed by “Big Business” has also been made. As a case in point, Hughes’s Text-Book in Citizenship has been cited as one which carries many illustrations printed “by courtesy” of such corporations as the Carnegie Steel Company, the International Harvester Company and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.625 “And,” according to the critic, “it is not pictures of blast furnaces with sweating men... but pictures of Americanization schools... factory gardens... model factory buildings... and a group of twenty-four elderly men, who having labored for thirty-five years each in the employ of the Carnegie Steel Company are posed at the annual picnic given to the employees as a reward for services rendered.”626 A section in the same textbook, “Employers of the Right Sort,” in which is discussed profit sharing by the employees of the United States Steel Company, also met with disapproval. Equally disliked was Mr. Hughes’s discussion of the I. W. W. because he said: “It is hard to see how a right-thinking American can possibly indulge in such performances or hold such theories. A decent man finds it difficult to sympathize with even oppressed people who use any such means to have their grievances corrected.”627 The textbook was further adjudged biased in its discussion of Lenin and Trotsky as “two able and unscrupulous leaders” and of the anarchists whom “no civilized people can tolerate.”628 On the other hand, the same author’s book Economic Civics was attacked by a member of the American Car Company of Berwick, Pennsylvania, on the ground of being “Bolshevistic.”

Other books have incurred the disapproval of business interests. American Economic Life by Henry Reed Burch has been charged with being “unfair” in its treatment of monopolies for saying: “Trolley lines, subways and ’bus companies often possess great monopoly power. For example, in a city of one million and a half the competitive cost of transportation perhaps does not exceed three or four cents a passenger, yet the actual price paid by the passenger is usually from five to eight cents. This difference between the price paid and the competitive price represents the extent of the monopoly power.”629

Many business organizations have interested themselves in a program for education not only among their own employees but among the people in general. Pamphlets and other published materials have in this way been distributed to set forth the point of view held desirable. Such a motive doubtless led to a survey of books dealing with the subject of banking in 1919 by the American Bankers Association. The examination of the books induced the Association through their Public Education Commission to publish and distribute a series of talks to be given in the schools, since the books examined were, on the whole, found to be “prepared from the standpoint of bankers, and not the standpoint of the mass of students who attend high school.”630 The talks were designed to be delivered by bankers to pupils in the eighth grade, the senior year of the high school, and to civic, business and fraternal organizations in order to acquaint people more thoroughly with methods of banking.631

During the World War the preparation of a series of lessons entitled Lessons in Community and National Life under the auspices of the Bureau of Education and the Food Administration provoked adverse criticism from the National Industrial Conference Board. In the lessons topics pertinent to a study of community civics were treated, and included discussions on international trade relations, manufacturing methods, labor organizations and similar subjects. To these, exception was taken, and it was asserted that “opinions on controversial subjects are frequently introduced into the Lessons by suggestion rather than by direct statement, and through the whole fabric is woven a thread of propaganda in favor of the eight-hour day, old age pensions, social insurance, trade-unionism, the minimum wage and similar issues.”632 A “partisan” attitude was said to be expressed in such a statement as: “We are told that in the United States somebody is injured while at work every fifteen seconds, and somebody is killed every fifteen minutes. We cannot wonder at this when we realize how many dangers there are in modern industry.”633 According to The [New York] World, Magnus N. Alexander, managing director of the National Industrial Conference Board, alarmed a convention of the National Boot and Shoe Manufacturers’ Association when he told them that these lessons were spreading “insidious, unwarranted propaganda, particularly injurious for reading by youth in the plastic age when youth is inclined to take for granted and as proved all that is said through the medium of the books in his classroom.”634

These criticisms caused editorial comment in different periodicals throughout the country. The Capital Daily Press of Bismarck, North Dakota, declaring that “for generations the reactionaries have maintained their grip on the control of our educational institutions, and from the kindergarten to college the ’plastic minds of our youth’ have been sedulously taught the superior sacredness of private property and the supremacy of dollar rights over human rights. This is one thing which has made political and industrial progress so slow.”635

To the editor of The School Review the whole discussion furnished “a legitimate opportunity to call attention to the fact that the schools have been very deficient in times past in their treatment of social problems.” He felt that the time had come “when there ought to be a very clear and explicit assertion on the part of educational people that they will not be dominated by such criticism as here presented,” for he believed “the schools of a democracy have a right to discuss democratic and popular matters.”636

Chapter VII — The Attack on History Textbooks Since 1917

Since the World War, an ardent patriotism has swept the country, resulting in a widespread investigation of the teaching and writing of history. Sponsored by various groups, the movement has gained considerable momentum, until history teaching and history textbooks are in danger of being an expression of certain religious, racial or other partisan opinions. These groups hold, in common, that American histories, as now written, neglect heroic characters in American history, especially in the Revolutionary War, and that they are distorted by a pro-British bias. Propaganda, indeed, makes strange bed-fellows. In this new praetorian guard of the temple of American patriotism are found the Hearst newspapers, an element of the Knights of Columbus and of the Irish-Americans, the German-Americans, and finally patriotic societies of this country.

The charge of “Anglicization,” usually enlivened by mysterious references to “British gold,” arises in part from the new trend of American historical scholarship in the last twenty-five years. Historians employing scientific methods have done much to revise the traditional ideas concerning our relations with Great Britain. Important contributions of this character have been made, for instance, by such historians as George Louis Beer, Charles M. Andrews, Herbert L. Osgood, Sydney George Fisher, and Claude H. Van Tyne.

These investigations were going forward at the same time that conscious efforts were being made by the publicists of the two countries to reveal to the two English-speaking peoples their common ties and responsibilities in the world today. Many books were printed and organizations formed to promote Anglo-American concord; among the latter, such bodies as the Sulgrave Institute, the Anglo-American League and the English-Speaking Union.

To suspicious onlookers the work of the historians in their cloisters took on the appearance of deliberate propaganda favorable to Great Britain—a suspicion, it need hardly be said, entirely unwarranted. It needed only an appeal such as that of Herbert Adams Gibbons that we solidify an amicable relationship with Great Britain through our common language, common ideals and common interests, to confirm the credulous in their suspicions.637 Furthermore, suggestions from men like Albert Bushnell Hart that our history text-books be rewritten to encourage better international relations seemed to afford additional proof that pro-British agencies were in control of history textbooks.638 The writings of special pleaders like Owen Wister strengthened this impression.639 Indeed, Charles Edward Russell has gone so far as to declare that definitely planned attempts to rewrite American history textbooks, for the purpose of encouraging better Anglo-American relations, were launched as early as 1896, and have been carefully carried on since then.640

On the other hand, the proponents of revision, conscious of an “agitation for the reintroduction of parochial patriotism into the schools and colleges,” have entered a plea for “the truth” in school histories and for the writing and teaching of history by scholars unaffected by the demands of “politicians.”641 To them, the true fount of patriotism does not arise from textbooks of history which are “nationalistic rather than impartial.”642 They would seek, rather, to depict events not as “partisans” but in a “scientific spirit, with the desire to understand rather than to justify.”643

Attacks on History Textbooks by the Hearst Newspapers and Charles Grant Miller

In 1921 the Hearst newspapers began the publication of a series of articles designed to arouse “patriotic American parents” to a realization that “the school histories now being taught to their children have been revised and in some instances wholly rewritten in a new and propitiatory spirit toward England.”644 Since that time these articles have appeared at irregular intervals from the pen of Charles Grant Miller. There has been yeast in his statements, and to them may be attributed the origin of much of the criticism directed against history textbooks by individuals and organized groups. With titles set up in large black-faced type these articles captured the eye of those who, consciously or unconsciously, were giving heed to the feverish propaganda which has flourished since the World War. In his articles, Mr. Miller proceeded from the discussion of “United States History Revised in School Books, Belittles Revolution and Thanks England for Bestowing Liberty on America” to a treatment of “Propaganda seeks to Distort American History, British Workers are Being Backed by a Heavily Financed Machine....”645

Chief among the historians whom Mr. Miller would characterize as “Anglicized” are found Albert Bushnell Hart, John P. O’Hara, Everett Barnes, A. C. McLaughlin, C. H. Van Tyne, William B. Guitteau, and Willis Mason West. Charges of “Anglicization” have been brought also against C. H. Ward for his edition of Burke’s Speech on Conciliation with America and upon Helen Nicolay for her Book of American Wars. The pro-British point of view which Mr. Miller found expressed has been brought about by “intrigue and treason” and the American school histories which portray it “must be cast out if America is to remain America.”646

Substantially all of the criticisms of history textbooks in which Mr. Miller has indulged have related to statements regarding the Revolutionary War. He found it especially objectionable when a history like John P. O’Hara’s gives “the impression” that “the American Revolution originated not in the colonies themselves, but among the devoted friends of liberty in England,” and when “more quotation is given from Pitt than from Patrick Henry.”647 A “wholesome desire for increased friendship and coöperation between the United States and Great Britain,” declared Mr. Miller, “creates no justification for the policy of propitiation of England through defamation of America, which offers as sacrifice upon the altar of international comity immortelles snatched from the monuments of our nation’s heroic founders.... In our own heroes and history our nation has been exceptionally blessed. They have proved unfailing sources of pride and inspiration that have prompted us as a people to stanch character, high endeavor, noble achievements and unparalleled progress.”648

The second article in the Chicago Herald and Examiner lay bare the alleged defects in Barnes’ textbook, where the author plays “the part of a flunky apologist to England for the independence established by our fathers,” and in which he “burlesques its world affecting results.”649 Barnes, furthermore, Mr. Miller pointed out, ignores such patriots as “Nathan Hale, whose only regret on the British scaffold was that he had but one life to give to his country,... Ethan Allen, Mad Anthony Wayne and the battle of Stony Point,” while, on the other hand, “there is a full page of praise for the traitor Benedict Arnold whom ‘Congress had treated unfairly.’”650 In addition to other faults, Mr. Miller cited the statements that “the first signer of the Declaration of Independence was a smuggler,” “that the Continental Congress ‘was a scene of petty bickerings and schemings’ among ‘selfish, unworthy, short-sighted, narrow-minded, office-seeking and office-trading plotters,’ that ‘half the colonists were loyal to England’; that the rest were united in resistance only ‘because they dared not be otherwise,’ and that if in England the wise course had only prevailed against the ‘foolish’ King, ‘this great country would probably now have been a great branch of the British empire.’”651

Barnes was also condemned because he calls the War of 1812 “a mistake,” the burning of Washington “an act of reprisal” for the burning of buildings in Canada, and Jackson’s victory at New Orleans “a wasted battle; a needless victory.”652 How different to Mr. Miller was “this new Barnes” from the Barnes’ Brief History of the United States which spoke “always from the American viewpoint, with American interests and sympathies at heart!”653

The next authors to arouse his ire were McLaughlin and Van Tyne, who with other historians were “reshaping” American history “to serve international interests under whose hypnotism of propaganda American public opinion has been goose-stepping for five years in the direction of a return to English subjection.”654 Charged with omitting Hale, Decatur, Faneuil Hall, the Green Mountain Boys, Betsy Ross and the flag, the quartering of troops and “the British attempts to bribe,” they were declared guilty also of “strictly minimizing the patriot valor at Lexington, Bunker Hill and New Orleans.” Such omission in the school histories Mr. Miller compared with “an ancient custom to remove the viscera and brain before embalming a body.” Indeed, Mr. Miller found it extremely objectionable that the “leading founders of our liberties are characterized by McLaughlin and Van Tyne as follows: ‘It is hard to realize how ignorant and superstitious were most of the colonists of America’—p. 134; ‘Patrick Henry, a gay, unprosperous and hitherto unknown country lawyer’—p. 141; ‘Smuggling was so common that even a leading Boston merchant was known as ’the Prince of Smugglers’’—p. 140;... and ‘Adams and Hancock stole away across the fields’—p. 153.”655

Besides these grievances the Hearst papers objected to the omission of “such famous slogans as ‘We have met the enemy and they are ours’ and ‘Don’t give up the ship’”; and McLaughlin and Van Tyne “go further [even] than their fellows and seek to destroy these inspiring slogans by disputing their authenticity.”656

This attack on the McLaughlin and Van Tyne textbook provoked a protest from C. H. Ward, whose edition of Burke’s Speech on Conciliation with America the Hearst papers also had criticized. “Mr. Miller,” declared Ward, “skillfully quotes with a sneer from the McLaughlin and Van Tyne book” (regarding Patrick Henry). “Yet this book,” he asserted, “does in fact give more than usual prominence and praise to Patrick Henry: ‘Who declared with marvelous eloquence’ (p. 141); ‘With burning words he denounced the tyranny’ (p. 142); ‘Patrick Henry again electrified the Virginia leaders by his daring prophecy’ (p. 150); ‘Securing a commission and money from the Governor of Virginia, Patrick Henry’ (p. 182).” Notwithstanding this treatment of Henry, Mr. Ward averred that “Mr. Miller so quotes as to imply that the authors have slandered Henry; but the two adjectives ’gay and unknown’ are the only two words that convey aught but praise.”657 Further, Mr. Ward showed that, in the account of Lexington, the statement that “Adams and Hancock stole away” is taken out of its context. Ward, likewise, found that Miller has “misrepresented” Hart’s history, for he was unable to discover some of the statements attributed to that author.658

On November 20, 1921, the Chicago Herald and Examiner devoted an article to an attack not only upon Barnes, Hart, McLaughlin and Van Tyne, but also upon William B. Guitteau, who, too, had fallen victim to “the snobbish spirit of apology and subserviency to England.”659 This attitude, according to Mr. Miller, “the publishers, Silver, Burdett and Company, boldly proclaim in their advertisements” in saying: “This book has been written in the light of recent events in which a new atmosphere has been created for the study of our national life.... The revolutionary war and subsequent Anglo-American difficulties hitherto distorted in our school books through an unthinking adherence to traditional prejudice, have been restated by Dr. Guitteau in their true light.”660

One of the objectionable points urged against Guitteau and other historians was the ignoring of Irish patriots. In large, bold-faced type Mr. Miller called attention to “the elimination of German and Irish assistance to the colonists in the Revolution, as well as the Dutch of New York and Pennsylvania, the French of Carolina and the Swedes of New Jersey and Delaware, while the help given by France is minimized and charged to selfish, scheming motives.”661 In his earlier editions, declared Mr. Miller, Professor Hart had the “frankness to say ‘Germans, Irish, Scotch-Irish, French, Dutch, Negroes and Englishmen stood side by side in the ranks,’” but in the revised edition of 1920 “he has magically transformed so eminent a hero as Baron De Kalb from a German to a Frenchman.”662

“Home grown motives might be imagined for carrying back a century and a half the cancellation of friendly relations with the Germans,” was Mr. Miller’s observation, “but whence comes the motive for a sudden change in attitude toward Irish heroes of the Revolution?” Such a situation revealed to Miller a significant animus, for certainly “it is not our own country that has had the trouble with the Irish.” To him it was conceivable that hidden forces were actuating the “recent revisions,” for “by the early historians” the high regard in which George Washington held Irishmen was “glowingly recognized.”663

The publication of this “series of articles written for the Hearst newspapers by Charles Grant Miller... aroused a wave of indignation all over the country,” according to the Chicago Herald and Examiner for May 14, 1922. As a result, “patriotic societies have taken up the battle and various organizations have started movements to stop such perversion of American traditions.” As an example of one who was aroused to the situation described in the articles, the Herald and Examiner published a letter from Senator William E. Borah, “who raises a clarion voice against the insidious effort to falsify the glorious story of the American fight for independence and to cheat the youth of this day of the heroic inspiration and sturdy manhood of the days of the Revolution.”664

Although Senator Borah did not desire “to have our histories do any injustice to Great Britain,” yet he did not want “facts concealed nor events ignored in order to satisfy those who now seem to regret that their ancestors ever came to this country.”665 He presumed that the next step would be “an expurgated edition” of the Declaration of Independence, which would be read “with appropriate apology” on the Fourth of July “should that continue to be observed.” All of this led him to remark that in “due time some sycophantic intellectual interloper will feel constrained to urge that we withhold from our young men and women the unjust attack so long made upon the American-English gentleman known as Benedict Arnold.”666

Under the caption “Let United States History Teach Patriotism,” Wallace McCamant, one-time president of the Sons of the American Revolution, announced his approval of the stand taken by Charles Grant Miller. “What think you of a school history,” queried Judge McCamant, “which begins the story of the American Revolution with this sentence? ‘There is little use trying to learn whose fault it was that the war began, for, as we have seen, such a long train of events led to disagreement between England and America, that we should have to go back and back in the very founding of the colonies. As in most quarrels, the blame is laid by each party on the other.’”667 When an author, in discussing taxation without representation declares that “there was here an honest difference of opinion,” it was evident to Judge McCamant that he “has certainly not been called of God to write American history.”668

To those “who say that history should not stress war,” Judge McCamant admitted that “there are important chapters in our peace history which should be adequately covered,” but he suggested that there is “nothing else” which “will grip the imagination of the young like the story of the soldier or the sailor who fights and dies that his country may be free.”669 The inculcation of patriotism, which is the chief value in the teaching of American history in Mr. McCamant’s mind, can best be attained in setting forth “sacrifices in winning freedom.”670

The next angle from which Mr. Miller criticized American school histories is in “the magical transformation of King George III from a born Briton into a German.”671 Such, he asserted appears in the 1916-17 edition of the school history by Hart, a plain evidence of “the forces of British propaganda” which “were increasing their influences to quicken an American hatred of Germany and to hurry us into war and into permanent alliance....”672 To prove his contention regarding the nationality of King George III, he quoted the “English historical authority, Macaulay,” thus: “‘The young King was a born Englishman. All his tastes and habits, good and bad were English.’”673

As a result of the “many forces actively at work” Mr. Miller observed that the “Anglicized revisionists, like ten automatons worked by one will, begin to teach American school children: ‘that the American revolution was made in Germany;...’ that ‘the American revolution was a contest between German tyranny and English freedom, although neither party in the struggle knew that this was the issue’;....”674 On the other hand, Mr. Miller found in John Bach McMaster’s history “an excellent summary” where “the venomous quality of English comments upon America is vividly described.”675

Another victim of “Anglicization” Mr. Miller held to be Matthew Page Andrews, “director of the English-Speaking Union and Anglicized author of three American school histories” whose source of information was Greg’s History of the United States, published in London in 1887.676 It was the belief of Mr. Miller that it was Greg’s History from which Mr. Andrews adduced the conclusion that “Lincoln was controlled by fanatics and through perfidy and broken pledges forced our Civil War.”677 In his discussion of Greg’s book, Mr. Miller failed to mention Greg’s characterization of Townshend’s work. In this latter case it would seem that Greg ought to have met with approval, for he described Townshend’s part in the Revolution as “folly,” as well as saying that Townshend “pledged himself to a series of petty customs imposts.”678 Furthermore, he mentions Ethan Allen, Stark, Wayne, St. Clair, Putnam, Sumter and Marion, and in that regard should prove acceptable to those desiring the inclusion of heroic characters in textbooks.679

On October 15, 1922, the Chicago Herald and Examiner sought to expose the agencies which ranged “all the way from the cultivation of ‘more friendly relations’ to the fulfillment of the Carnegie prophecy of the Reunited States, the British-American Union and the Cecil Rhodes Design,”680 and which were responsible for textbook revision. Besides the “elaborate and well-oiled British propaganda machine established by Sir Gilbert Parker and the late Lord Northcliffe,” Mr. Miller had discovered “at least a full half dozen of strong propaganda organizations” all of whose methods were “sinister and to the one end.” Among these were the “Sons of St. George, an old organization of British-born residents of this country” who, “within the last few years,” had “emerged from obscurity through a hard drive for increased membership and vigorous assertion of British spirit,” and who had offered “the only open opposition which the Sons of the Revolution in California have encountered in their winning fight against Anglicized school histories....” In the California case, the opposition was directed by “the American-born wife of a son of St. George and from a daughter of the American Revolution who is a member of the English-Speaking Union,” which exemplified “the favorite policy of all of these British propaganda organizations” in which they “push their American-born women to the front to do their open fighting.”681

The English-Speaking Union is another of the organizations of which Mr. Miller spoke. Its magazine, The Landmark, has “bitterly attacked as ‘demagogic’ and ’narrow-minded’ the movement to restore true American history to our public schools”;—and “it arranges for the granting of degrees by English universities to American collegiates who teach to our youth the imperialistic interests of Great Britain.”682

The third agency for Anglicization, according to Mr. Miller, is the Sulgrave Institute “founded upon the idea that George Washington has loomed too large throughout the world ever to be belittled, and so must be claimed as an Englishman, who established in this western world English freedom.” A like fate Mr. Miller prophesied for Lincoln “for whom there is now being provided an English lineage and an English ancestral home, as a shrine where expatriate Americans may bend the sycophantic knee in foolish worship of supposed English influences that are said to have freed our slaves and saved our Union.”683

Other forces of like design Mr. Miller found in the “Cecil Rhodes Scholarship, the Cecil Rhodes Secret Society and the Rhodes Scholarship Alumni Association of America,” all influences for Rhodes’ dream—“the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire.”684 Of like character are “the multiform Carnegie institutions, supported by the $200,000,000 fund of the Carnegie Corporation, and designed to influence and direct the spirit and methods of the scholastic, public school and library forces of the country,” as well as the religious through the “Church Peace Union.”685 The World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches and The American Association for International Coöperation are among the various influences named by Mr. Miller, which seek to “Briticize” America.

One of the chief endeavors of “all of the propaganda organizations,” according to Mr. Miller, is the substitution of the observance of Magna Charta Day, June 15, for that of July the fourth. Such an effort led him to conclude that “the international mind is a British mind throughout. While insidiously seeking to denationalize America, it is insistently striving to strengthen the nationalism of Great Britain.”686 Mr. Miller held as chiefly responsible for “this de-Americanizing ‘dope’” Nicholas Murray Butler and “more than a score of college presidents and professors, other educators and preachers, who readily are traced into other British propaganda organizations and are officially identified with various British secret services in this country”; who through a system of pensions are “securely subsidized into keen sympathy with the Carnegie design of ‘the Reunited States—the British-American Union.’”687

The inclusion in American history textbooks of statements designed to show that American constitutional practices had their source in English institutions caused Mr. Miller to criticize not only Barnes, O’Hara, McLaughlin and Van Tyne, against whom he had other grievances, but also David Saville Muzzey and Willis Mason West. “Such is not American history,” he declared, “it is British propaganda,” for even an Englishman, Gladstone, has said, “The American Constitution is the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.”688 “Such disparagement in revised school history is not mere unintentional error,” asserted Mr. Miller. “..., these and other gross alterations recently made in ten of our school histories, are a direct result of definite design and organized propaganda” conducted by “propaganda associations pussyfooting among us... to deaden our respect for our own birthright, inoculate us with contempt for our free institutions and fit us for coercion of re-colonization.”689

On November 4, 1923, however, the New York American carried a retraction of an attack on West’s History of the American People which “was printed in such a way as to lead readers to believe... that the statements [objected to by the Hearst papers]... were made without qualification.” The American apologized for “inadvertently” publishing part of a discussion in such a way as to distort “the meaning of both paragraphs when read together.”690

As a result of the agitation of the Hearst newspapers the “treason texts” were being revised, according to the Chicago Herald and Examiner of April 20, 1924. Among the authors attempting to “re-Americanize” their histories were David S. Muzzey, who already had made “three mincing revisions,” Andrew C. McLaughlin and C. H. Van Tyne who have “at last submitted to the irresistible force of nation-wide protest against treason texts and have strikingly reversed their views....”691

However, Mr. Miller has not confined his activities solely to the publication of articles in the Hearst newspapers, but has resorted to other means for preaching his gospel. Through the agency of an organization called the Patriot League for the Preservation of American History he has endeavored to carry on his war against the “British propagandists” and “to purge the public schools of the Anglicized school histories and establish in their stead textbooks that teach the true American annals and inculcate the true American spirit.”692 The slogan for the Patriot League is taken from Washington’s Farewell Address: “Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence, I conjure you to believe me, fellow citizens, the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake; since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government.”693 Charges against “ten” Anglicized school histories reincarnating “the spirit of Benedict Arnold” have been made by the Patriot League in a pamphlet entitled “Treason to American Tradition.” These charges have been indorsed and the accused books condemned, in formal resolutions unanimously adopted in their national conventions by the American Legion, the Descendants of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, the Grand Army of the Republic, the Knights of Columbus, the Sons of the American Revolution, and the United Spanish War Veterans.694 The proscribed list includes books under the authorship of Matthew Page Andrews, Albert Bushnell Hart, John P. O’Hara, C. R. Ward, David Saville Muzzey, Willis Mason West, William B. Guitteau, A. C. McLaughlin and C. H. Van Tyne, Everett Barnes, and Edwin Greenlaw. The Patriot League concludes that “the heroic history of a nation is the drum and fife music to which it marches,” and that “it makes a mighty difference whether America continues to quickstep to ‘Yankee Doodle’ or takes to marking time to ‘God Save the King.’”695

In commenting upon Mr. Miller’s pamphlet The New York Times declared: “Mr. Miller attempts in this pamphlet, through the quotation of isolated sentences and passages, to prove that the authors whom he criticized have no reverence for the Revolutionary leaders, preach the doctrine that the colonists had no grievance against England, suppress all the thrilling stories of valorous achievement on which our youth used to be nourished, and make no use of authorities other than British in commenting on the Revolution.

“What Mr. Miller does prove by all his toil is quite different, namely, the undenied fact that our recent textbooks dealing with the early days of the Republic have been compiled by men whose purpose, so far as they had a purpose in addition to that of supplying accurate information, has been to promote friendship between Great Britain and the United States rather than to perpetuate their ancient animosities. That is a crime in Mr. Miller’s eyes, for he holds and avows the strange belief that school histories should be different for the children of different countries....

“To argue with an upholder of that grotesque theory would be worse than waste of time. Fortunately, Mr. Miller is alone in holding it, except, perhaps, for the company of those whose hatred of England is so fierce that for them any stone is good enough to throw at her....”696

Agitation by Catholics and Irish

A desire to combat the tendency of recent textbooks to depict our relations with England from a viewpoint not violently anti-British has led an element of the Knights of Columbus to join in the movement for expurgating textbooks. Their chief cause for complaint lies in the narration of events of the American Revolution, the War of 1812, and in England’s attitude toward the Federal Government during the Civil War. Joseph T. Griffin, in a pamphlet, American History Must It Be Rewritten to Preserve Our Foreign Friendships? regretfully remarks that with the present-day presentation of the Revolutionary War in our histories, “it will soon require more courage for Americans to believe the Declaration of Independence than it did for Jefferson to write it.”697 Such a condition has arisen, according to Mr. Griffin because of the fear of exciting antagonism toward Great Britain, whereas “the only consideration which should guide the American writer of a history text-book is whether the material he is to present... is true as to facts, ennobling as to sentiment, and stimulating to the morale of the nation; and that while we are eager to preserve friendly relationships with other nations, we are not willing to forego one iota of our national glory or consign to oblivion any part of our historical traditions.”698

The charge that a definite campaign of British propaganda had been carefully inaugurated, Edward F. McSweeney, one-time head of the Knights of Columbus Historical Commission, set forth in a pamphlet entitled America First.699 “According to our modern Tories in their propaganda Campaign,” declared Mr. McSweeney, “Washington and his colleagues were wrong, and only the leaders of an ignorant, criminal, and cruel mob. American independence was only a sudden thought, and not the result of long growth and development.”

In proof of the conspiracy charge the author showed by actual figures the increase in the area of the English dominions during the past three hundred years. This expansion he ascribed to the wrecking “of every nation that aspired to be her competitor for any considerable share of the world’s commerce or for equality of political power among the States of the world”; for by “intrigue, propaganda and alliance” Great Britain has “destroyed the commercial power of Spain, Holland, Denmark, France, and as a result of the great world-war, of Russia, Austria-Hungary and Germany.” Today, Mr. McSweeney pointed out, there remain only two nations “which are real competitors of England—Japan and the United States,” the former annexed by secret treaties and alliances, the latter, in reality, being the sole competitor.700

It was Mr. McSweeney’s belief that the first effort of the pro-British propagandists “to undermine the foundations of our national life” was “by tampering with the children in the public schools”; a movement which had “made substantial progress,” for “the history of the Revolution has been re-written to make it appear that the objections to a connection with England, so important a hundred years ago, have been to a large extent set aside, and that the time may come when through some application of the Federal principle... [the English-speaking people] may come together into a vaster United States, the pathways to whose scattered parts shall be the SUBJECTED seas.”701

This movement, he held, had been aided by some of the great publishing houses of the United States, citing the words of George Haven Putnam, “the head of one of the largest publishing houses in the country,” in a Fourth of July speech made in London: “The feelings and prejudices of Americans concerning their trans-Atlantic kinfolk were shaped for my generation as for the boys of every generation that had grown up since 1775 on textbooks and histories that presented unhistorical, partisan and often distorted views of the history of the first English colonies, of the events of the Revolution, of the issue that brought about the war of 1812-15, and the grievances of 1861-65.... Textbooks are now being prepared which will present a juster historical account of events of 1775-83, 1812-15, and 1861-65.... It is in order now to admit that the loyalists had a fair cause to defend, and it was not to be wondered at that many men of the more conservative way of thinking should have convinced themselves that the cause of good government for the colonies would be better served by maintaining the royal authority and by improving the royal methods, than by breaking away into the all-dubious possibilities of independence.”702

Some of the British proselytism, Mr. McSweeney attributed to a propagandist campaign inaugurated by Lord Northcliffe, who left “one hundred and fifty million dollars” and “ten thousand agents” in this country.703 “Local societies should be formed in every center to foster British-American good-will, in close coöperation with an administrative committee,” Lord Northcliffe is alleged to have said. “Important articles should be broken up into mouthfuls for popular consumption, and booklets, cards, pamphlets, etc., distributed through organized channels to the public. Advertising space should be taken in the press, on the hoardings, and in the street cars for steadily presenting terse, easily read and remembered mind-compelling phrases and easily grasped cartoons that the public may subconsciously absorb the fundamentals of a complete mutual understanding.” According to Mr. McSweeney, the influence of this campaign is already evident in textbooks for primary grades “in which more than ninety per cent of the pupils are children of foreign born parents, or are themselves foreign born.”704 Authors of such textbooks, writers like Owen Wister, Ex-President Taft, George Haven Putnam, Professor William L. Cheney, Albert Shaw, President Judson of the University of Chicago, Admiral Sims, and others are arraigned by McSweeney and charged with un-Americanism.705 The condemnation of Wister is based, in part, on his statement that our school histories have been responsible for keeping George III’s memory green, but that “A movement to correct the school books has been started and will go on.”706

Of all the propagandist arguments set forth by England “the most dangerous and un-American” in the opinion of the writer is that about “Anglo-Saxon civilization.” “By dint of iteration and reiteration,” declared Mr. McSweeney, “this uncontradicted falsehood has actually brought about in the United States the subconscious acceptance of a misleading idea, which during the last fifty years has grown, until it is commonly used, yet nobody even knows what it means.... The Anglo-Saxon tradition is a pure myth. To verify it is like looking at midnight in a dark cellar for a black cat that isn’t there.” Nor did he believe “the Anglo-Saxon impulse... in the least responsible for the progress of the United States. It had nothing to do with the Spanish in Florida; the Huguenots in Virginia; the Swedes in Delaware and New Jersey; the Dutch in New York and Pennsylvania, and the Celts in Maryland and Pennsylvania.”707

Furthermore, this antagonist of Great Britain sought to controvert some of the statements which would show that American institutions sprang largely from England. He contended that never was there “a greater falsehood” than the claim that the English were the founders of the New England town meeting, for it arose from the Teutonic “folk mote”; that it was unquestionably true that there is in the United States scarcely a political or legal institution of English origin; that the doctrine of the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal” was of Roman not English law; that the United States could not get religious liberty from England, “because religious liberty did not exist there”; that popular education, freedom of the press, the secret ballot, the vast machinery of public charitable, reformatory and poor administration were derived from other than English sources.708 With such an exposition, Mr. McSweeney arrived at the conclusion that the part of “our legal system which is consistent with natural justice comes from Rome; the incongruous, absurd and unjust features” from England.709

The place of the Irish race in the making of America, Michael J. O’Brien, chief historiographer for the American Irish Historical Society, sought to establish in A Hidden Phase of American History. It proposes to set forth “Ireland’s Part in America’s Struggle for Liberty” and to lay bare “the heart of the Irish race in Ireland during the War of Independence as beating in sympathy with the revolted colonies in America,” to narrate the story of Irish contributions to the Revolutionary army, and to establish a place of preëminence for the Irish in the building of the Republic.710 It runs, in its twenty-four chapters, the gamut of the history of most of the colonies, depicting the part played by the Irish. It is offered as an antidote to Bancroft, Henry Cabot Lodge, and other American historians, and concludes its narrative with a chapter on “America’s Debt to Ireland” in which is set forth the plea for American aid for Ireland in her struggle for independence.711

Of this book the Irish World speaks with enthusiasm: “The most repulsive snake in popular opinion is the cobra, famous in stories of East Indian life.... Yet a little animal of the ferret type can kill him in a brief fight,... a frail but daring creature known as the mongoose.... In the historical order we have the cobra, the repulsive serpent who makes history a fountain of lies, whose fangs poison the human race for centuries, whose history of the so-called Reformation is the cobra of the past four centuries. The Anglo-Saxon history of this continent is a cobra of the same species. It has poisoned the life of the American people.... All the Anglo-Saxon writers from Bancroft on, suppressed, ridiculed where they could not suppress, mutilated where they could neither suppress nor ridicule, everything Irish in American history. The Universities of Harvard, Yale and Columbia have been conspicuous in spreading the poison, for that matter in cultivating and intensifying its virulence, as their historians are the best illustrations of the cobra’s viciousness and malignity. The Catholic faith at this moment cannot get a hearing from them.... It is pleasant to announce that the mongoose has arrived and is already at work. His name is Michael J. O’Brien... [who] has brought out a book... called ‘A Hidden Phase of American History.’” His first battle is with George Bancroft, “looked upon as our great historian, our most dignified, honest and truthful writer.... Saturated with the poison of the cobra George Bancroft could no more see and tell the truth about the Catholics and the Irish than Sir Edward Carson or Tom Watson,” but O’Brien “will kill the Anglo-Saxon cobra in this country. He is more important than twenty cathedrals and one million orators. He should be provided with a pension of one hundred dollars a week and let loose upon the libraries and records of the Anglo-Saxon....”712

During 1921 and 1922 the Knights of Columbus, acting through an Historical Commission, promoted a movement for original studies in American history by offering prizes for original research. The purpose of the society was “to encourage investigation into the origins and achievements and the problems of the United States, to interpret and perpetuate the American impulse, the impulse of the patriots who founded and who through their successors, have preserved the Republic; to promote American solidarity; and to exalt the American ideal.”713 The session of the Supreme Assembly which launched this project was held May 28, 1921, at Chicago. According to John H. Reddin, Supreme Master, it was their “aim to enlist a commission of leading historians of diverse racial extraction and religious denominations” to prepare twenty-four pamphlets “covering critical periods in the nation’s history; the matter to be written direct from original sources,” and the pamphlets to be distributed “in millions of copies to schools and colleges, legislators and newspapers throughout the country.”714

The Thirty-Ninth International Convention of the Knights of Columbus, with twenty thousand delegates in attendance, met at San Francisco on August first. Among the activities which were endorsed was the movement for a “propaganda proof” history at the cost of one million dollars,715 by which, if necessity demanded, every town in the country could be flooded with pamphlets telling “the true tale of America’s great origin and America’s greatness” and “stripped of all manner of European or Asiatic coloring.”716

Shortly following this announcement of the plan of the Knights of Columbus, Edward F. McSweeney, Chairman of the Historical Commission, issued the following statement: “The Knights of Columbus history movement aims at only one thing—the preservation of truth in the writing of American history. Many of the textbooks used in our schools are utterly unreliable on important phases of the nation’s story and totally disregard many cardinal events and personages. The Knights of Columbus oppose the cause of no other nation, they are simply aligning the 800,000 members of the order in the production and distribution of a straight-forward story, free from propaganda of any kind as to the origin and development of this country.”

“An attempt is even now being made,” continues the statement, “and Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University, announced his advocacy of it recently in London, to promote the celebration of the signing of the Magna Charta in English-speaking countries. The anniversary of the Magna Charta coming late in June, and being the object of the celebration as the basis of liberty, which it is not, would necessarily eclipse our own Independence Day, which, I believe, is the ultimate object of the movement.... The Knights of Columbus believe that the Declaration of Independence is an infinitely more important and conclusive document than the Magna Charta.” Under the compulsion of this belief they registered their opposition to “this and other forms of un-American propaganda.”717

In December the movement for “Americanized” histories was furthered at a meeting held at Washington, D. C., and the announcement was again made that the Knights of Columbus would offer $7500 in prizes for monographs in American history, the first prize to be $3000.718

According to Columbia, the organ of the Knights of Columbus, their history program was attacked with “virulence” by “certain organizations, dedicated to creating better Anglo-American relations.” Thus, from the Loyal Coalition of Boston emanated the following protest: “The obvious intention of a certain group, with the approval of the French ambassador, to rewrite the history of the United States, is an issue of the hour. Our whole educational system is seriously menaced because of the influence of certain instructors who react to aliens of hyphenated influence.”719 The British-American Association also showed their opposition by offering “a prize to be known as the John Adams Gold Medal for the essay best setting forth the most instances of the friendship of Great Britain toward America from 1600 to 1920.” This hostility was clearly evident to the Knights in the statement of the organization: “To offset the work of the Fourth Degree Knights of Columbus Historical Commission, whose Chairman, Edward F. McSweeney, has declared that the English people, so far as they had any voice, were substantially unanimous in their attitude, opposing the aspirations of the Colonists for freedom and backed up by the King and Parliament in continuing the fight for Colonial Liberty.”720

Yet not all Catholics gave unqualified endorsement to the Commission’s activities. January 1, 1924, Mr. McSweeney’s chairmanship ceased. In commenting upon the changed personnel of the Commission, The Fortnightly Review, a Roman Catholic periodical, expressed the hope that reorganization would “result in a more economical programme and one that will really advance the cause of history.”721

“The organization of this Commission in the first place was a most extraordinary procedure,” stated the Review. “A man whose work and training had never been in the field of history, was chosen before the members of the Commission were selected, and was given a salary that amounted to more than twice the pay of a full professor of history in our larger universities!722 When the personnel of the Commission was announced, it was found to contain the name of but one professional historian....723 Unfortunately, the early statements appearing under the imprint of the Commission, some utterances of the Chairman, and some articles published in Columbia, were not calculated to remove the existing impression that the Commission had no constructive programme,... and that the Chairman at least was willing to follow ’the historical expert’ of the Hearst syndicate in the unjust, unfair, unmerited, and uncalled for attack on certain history textbooks.”724

In the course of setting forth their arguments the pro-Irish criticized certain textbooks in common use in the public schools. Albert Bushnell Hart’s School History of the United States was attacked because it “attempts to show that the American Revolution was not justified” by the following statements: “They [the colonists] were as well off as any other people in the world. They were not desperately oppressed,”725 and “they enjoyed more freedom and self-government than the people in England.”726 And again, “Thousands of good people sincerely loved Great Britain and were loyal to King George. The loyalists were harshly put down.”727 Hart, moreover, includes statements whose effect may be “unquestionably bad” upon “the impressionable minds of the young,” according to one critic.728

It was also held that the “National spirit” of the pupils will suffer inevitably from such expressions of a “propaganda of palliation” as appear in McLaughlin’s History of the American Nation. “And all this means that while we speak, we shall probably always speak, of the struggle between England and America, the war that ensued had many of the features and many of the deplorable effects of a civil war.” Besides, an attempt to abase the motives of the Revolutionary patriots was plainly evident to objectors in the assertion that “Trivial offenses on the part of governments cannot justify revolution. Only oppression and serious danger can justify war. It cannot be said that the Colonies had actually suffered much. It might be even seen that the mother country was not at all tyrannical in taxing the Colonies to pay for defending them, and beyond question George III and his pliant ministers had no interest in treating the Colonies with cruelty.”729

Everett Barnes, too, was found culpable in assuming an “apologetic attitude” toward the Revolution in his statement: “The disputes that brought about the War were not between the Colonists and all the English at home. They were rather between the Tories and the Whigs on both sides of the sea, neighbor against neighbor. Had the great Whig party in England been in power with Edmund Burke as its leader, it would have checked the King in his foolish course.... Had there been no war, this great country would probably now be a great branch of the British Empire.”730 Another occasion for grievance was discovered in teaching that the War of 1812 was “a mistake,” and “a case in which righteous anger overcame judgment,” when, in reality, “the events which preceded the declaration of war were infinitely more humiliating to the young nation than those which caused us to enter the World War.”731

When “Faneuil Hall, the cradle of liberty,” Nathan Hale, the Swedes of New Jersey and Delaware, the Dutch of New York, the Germans of Pennsylvania, the French of South Carolina, the Irish both North and South are not mentioned as a part of the Revolution or are practically ignored in the struggle for American independence, the would-be revisionists feel there is just cause for remonstrance.732 Therefore, the Irish “solemnly protest” at “the diluted historical fluid served by Barnes, Van Tyne, McLaughlin, Hart, and others,”733 for “Americans are not yet ready to accept a King.”734

GERMAN-AMERICAN AGITATION

Of similar purport has been the movement to disparage “denatured” histories instituted by the Steuben Society, the successor of the German-American Alliance. This organization has taken its name from “the man that forged the tool which overthrew British tyranny.” Its avowed purpose is to battle against “the sinister efforts that threaten to pervert historical truth and independence of thought in this fair country of ours.”735 The membership is composed of men and women of the German race who are citizens of the United States, excluding those who were “shifters and trimmers during the War,” and “who are known to possess no race pride.”736 The chief medium for the dissemination of information is the S. S. Bulletin. An article appearing in the issue of February 15, 1922, set forth the attitude of the Steubenites toward history textbooks, and acknowledged the indebtedness of the Society to the Hearst newspapers for exposing “the conspiracy secretly to alter United States school histories, so as to promote a British-American union.”737 In commenting upon the charge that school histories were being edited by British propagandists, the Bulletin pointed out that “the public school is the fountain head of future citizenship. History teaching is the chief source of patriotic spirit and purpose.... A nation’s history is to its own people an essential force for national pride, morale and solidarity.”738

Much of the irritation of the Germans toward “de-Americanized” histories arose from the same source from which sprang the dissatisfaction of the Knights of Columbus. Their chief causes for complaint lay in the “defamation” of the nation’s “heroic characters,” the “misrepresentation” of “the just causes of the American Revolution” and of “the basic principles of the Republic,” besides “innumerable inspiring episodes in our history [being] belittled or entirely omitted” because of “the professed interest of Anglo-American amity.”739

“Every true American,” asserted the Steubenites, “naturally resents and resists the teachings in these books to our children that ‘the President of the Continental Congress and first signer of the Declaration of Independence was a smuggler, with no other mention of Hancock from cover to cover,’ that Jefferson was ‘deserving of a halter,’ and that Hamilton declared that ‘the people are a great beast.’”740 And although “nine revisionists give nine different sets of causes for the American Revolution,” which are mutually contradictory and contrary to the causes stated in the Declaration of Independence, yet the Declaration continues to be “immortal” and “gives the lie to all these anglicized revisions.”741

In addition to the “emasculation” of many intrinsically essential historical “truths,” the pro-German controversialists found cause for complaint in “the attempt to envelop the America of today in the myth of Anglo-Saxon origin and kinship.” Such a procedure “wrongs the colonial Germans and Dutch of Pennsylvania and New York, the Swedes of New Jersey and Maryland, the French Huguenots of Carolina, the Irish of all the colonies, [and] the Jews from every clime.”742

A confession of kinship of interest with the Knights of Columbus movement is freely made in the acceptance of quotations demonstrating the “baleful propaganda.”743 The German-Americans are one with the Irish-Americans in their feeling of humiliation at the thought of having “the history of our national life for one hundred and forty-four years declared a forgery,” and in seeing “it rewritten at the dictation of the champions of a foreign power who repudiates the stand of their forefathers.”744

It is precisely such a sentiment that influenced the American Turner-Bund, formerly the American Gymnastic Union and made up of Germans, at their annual convention in June, 1923, to endorse the movement of the Sons of the American Revolution,—a movement inaugurated “to revise history textbooks,... with a view to eliminating or correcting alleged distortion of facts.”745 The resolution of the Turner-Bund alleged that “many textbooks now in use contain distinctly pro-French and pro-British statements, neglecting throughout American history the work of the German people in its development.”746 The resolution further carried the indictment of a school history which states that “Alsace-Lorraine was stolen in 1871 from France by Germany,” whereas, it was asserted, “France stole it from Germany two hundred years before.”747

Besides the effort of the German-Americans “to put a stop to the prevailing tendency to misuse our public schools for undermining American sentiment in favor of British colonialism,” the Steuben Society avowed as one of its purposes the desire to “foster in American children of German blood a proper pride of ancestry as a necessary basis of true American patriotism.”748 Such is the intent of Frederick Franklin Schrader in his book “1683-1920.” His purpose is made clear by the following statement found in the preface:

“A blanket indictment has been found against a whole race. That race comprises upward of 25 per cent of the American people and has been a stalwart factor in American life since the middle of the seventeenth century. This indictment has been founded upon tainted evidence. As is shown in the following pages, a widespread propaganda has been, and is still, at work to sow the seeds of discord and sedition in order to reconcile us to a pre-Revolutionary political condition. This propaganda has invaded our public schools, and cannot be more effectively combatted than by education.” The assertion that a charge of “German propaganda has no terrors for the author,” is also included in the preface, for “statements of fact may be controverted; they cannot be disproved by an Espionage Act, however repugnant their telling may sound to the stagnant brains of those who have been uninterruptedly happy because they were spared the laborious process of thinking for themselves throughout the war, or that no inconsiderable host which derives pleasure and profit from keeping alive the hope of one day seeing their country reincorporated with ’the mother country’—the mother country of 30 per cent of the American people. It is to arouse the patriotic consciousness of a part of the remaining 70 per cent that this compilation of political and historical data has been undertaken.”749

To insure this “proper pride of ancestry” it is the opinion of the author that there should be given greater publicity to German contributions in the making of the United States. Among these contributions, the Germans would have it a matter of more general knowledge that the first iron works in this country were established by a German (Thomas Reuter in 1716); that the first American-printed Bible was printed by a German (Christopher Sauer in 1743); that the first paper to print the Declaration of Independence in America was the Pennsylvania Staatsboten of July 5, 1776; that it was the Germans who first called Washington “the father of his country”; that General Herkimer of Oriskany was of German extraction; that Steuben formulated the principles and regulations that governed the American army when it was created; that Germans have contributed valuable inventions; that Lincoln was of German descent; that Molly Pitcher was a German; and that of the ideals of liberty and of education the Germans were conspicuous creators.750

Nor would the Germans have the Americans forget such incidents as the saving by Germans of American refugees from a “bloodthirsty mob of Mexicans at the Southern Hotel, Tampico, Mexico,” through their aid in 1914,751 the help of Germans in holding Fort McHenry in the War of 1812,752 and that “the German element furnished nearly 200,000 men, natives of Germany” for the Northern army in the Civil War.753

The Censorship of Patriotic Groups, Fraternal Organizations and Others

Other agencies than the Hearst newspapers and those groups united by religious and racial bonds have interested themselves in attacking the histories used in the public schools. Most active among these censors are various patriotic organizations and individuals, notably newspaper editors. Through such forces many investigations of textbooks have been undertaken, resulting, at times, in the exclusion of the books under criticism from the public schools.

During the World War, European history textbooks bore the brunt of attack. Discussions tending to bestow praise upon the Central Powers, or in any way to disparage the institutions or prowess of the Allies, were deemed disloyal to the cause in which the United States was engaged. Not only were history textbooks condemned but also textbooks in foreign language, particularly in German. The same spirit showed itself in many avenues through which public opinion could be affected. Thus a federal judge enjoined the production of “The Spirit of ’76,” a film depicting the Wyoming Massacre and Paul Revere’s ride, because it tended “to make us a little bit slack in our loyalty to Great Britain in this great emergency.”754

To those who feared a diluted Americanism, it seemed quite apparent that sinister forces were abroad, and in the attacks made upon authors of history textbooks, it was frequently charged that the preparation of school histories was in the hands of German paid agents. Indeed, the activities of pro-German forces to control the content of history textbooks, it was alleged, had been operating for some time, and since 1915 had been directed by Dr. Dernburg, under whom definitely made plans had been perfected.755 This conclusion was reached by the skeptical when to one of his agents was attributed this statement: “The Americans do not love the British, and they are inclined to like the Germans. By controlling the preparation of school histories, we can begin to make Americans from the time they are children see the German point of view.”756

Among the organizations which feared the inculcation of disloyalty through a study of history as commonly written was the Fathers of Soldiers and Sailors League. It was through their influence that the James Harvey Robinson histories were excluded from the schools of Des Moines, Iowa, because of the statement regarding Germany contained in these books.757 Among the objections raised against Robinson’s Medieval and Modern Times were the characterization of the German government, the failure to fix the responsibility upon Germany for bringing about the World War, and the discussion of the violation of “all laws of humanity as well as of international law” by Germany. In addition to criticisms directed against the 1916 edition of this book, the Des Moines objectors felt that there was a pro-German bias evident in the 1918 Supplement in such a statement as the following: “So while Germany was able, as we shall see, to conquer important portions of Central Europe as the war proceeded, she lost all her colonies. The question whether she is to have them back or not will be one of the great problems to adjust at the end of the war.”758

The same organization identified itself with a movement in California to investigate the content of history textbooks. In July, 1918, the State Board of Education directed that all textbooks in American and European history appearing upon the official list of high school textbooks be submitted to a committee of expert historians for review, to determine whether such textbooks were objectionable on the ground of being pro-German or containing matter which might be offensive to the American allies in the World War. On September 18, the committee reported, and the following books were stricken from the official list: Botsford, A Brief History of the World, Myers, Mediaeval and Modern History, and Myers, General History. Robinson’s Medieval and Modern Times, edition of 1916, was also eliminated from the official list, but the edition with the supplement of 1918 was substituted upon condition that the publishers make certain changes in the revised edition. Robinson and Beard, Outlines of European History, Part II, was banned until a specified revision should take place. Of the books examined, the committee found no important objections to Andrews, Short History of England, Ashley, Early European Civilization, Cheyney, Short History of England, Harding, New Mediaeval and Modern History (edition of 1918), Robinson and Breasted, Outlines of European History, Part I, Webster, Early European History, and West, Modern World. The committee rendered decisions against the Myers histories because they represented a viewpoint opposed to that of the time. Botsford’s textbook was found objectionable because it was “favorable to the acts of Germany and critical to an unjust degree of the acts of the... allied nations,” and because it presented the causes of the American Revolution in a “bald form.”759

Other places, actuated by similar sentiments, interested themselves in the character of history instruction. Seattle, Washington, became the center of a controversy between the school superintendent and the teachers on the one hand, and two of the school directors on the other, regarding Robinson and Beard’s Outlines of European History.760 As a result of the discussion, the book was thrown out of the Seattle schools until the expurgation and revision should occur.761

In Montana, the State Council of Defense ordered the withdrawal of West’s Ancient World from circulation in all public and school libraries, because they objected, among other things, to an introductory statement that “the settlement of the Teutonic tribes was not merely the introduction of a new set of ideas and institutions... it was also the introduction of fresh blood and youthful minds—the muscle and brain which in the future were to do the larger share of the world’s work.”762

Due to the same point of view and under the same compulsion, the Commissioner of Education of Rhode Island in 1918 undertook an investigation of the textbooks in use in that state, and found objectionable “various text-books designed for sixth grade history according to the report of the committee of eight.” In a large number of books [were found]... “various references to the Germans which, in the light of recent developments, are to be regarded as incorrect or exaggerated statements....” And it was considered “objectionable to place before the children of America statements which are, or which will appear to them to be, laudatory of the people with whom we are at war or adversely critical of our own people.”763 The use of histories considered “offensive” was also discontinued in the states of Arizona, Iowa, Ohio, and Oklahoma, either through the action of the office of the state superintendent or some other official.764 Doubtless in other states the action of local boards brought about the same result.

New textbooks, syllabi and other teaching aids appeared. Superintendent William L. Ettinger of the New York City schools, for example, in 1918 issued a syllabus on the War designed to aid teachers in “imparting a correct intellectual understanding of the causes, events and issues of the war,” as well as to help them in inspiring “the pupils with a love for the ideals and an appreciation of the sacrifices of our country.” For, he held that “the American Army of the future, both men and women, are in our schools today.” Dr. Ettinger’s letter to the Principals of High Schools declared that “History should be taught so that a deep emotional appeal” should be made in all topics; that “a lasting effect” could “be produced on the ideals, purposes and emotions of the child only by arousing deep feeling in connection with the presentation of the subject matter.” In the event of adding new material as the War progressed, it was required that “all such material... be approved by the Principal of the School before... used in the classroom.”765

As in all books which were meeting the popular demand of the time, the Syllabus made Germany “the only country in the world that was prepared and anxious for war” because of her autocratic government, the character of the Kaiser, militarism and navalism, Germany’s desire for world domination, and the insidious inculcation of loyalty in the German people through the Prussian system of education.

The insistence of the American people that histories in the schools should not be in any degree “laudatory” of the enemy peoples nor “unfavorable” to our allies in arms led to the revision of many textbooks after April, 1917. Since 1923 these revisions, in turn, have been criticized in the light of recently published documents relating to the origin of the War. Although the question of war guilt is still held by many historians as debatable, it is pointed out in The Freeman for June, 1923, that probably “children have already been indoctrinated with a theory that leaves no excuse for uncertainty, no opening for new evidence and no stimulus to free thought.”766

With this condition in mind, critics have assembled their arguments against certain textbooks in European history found in the public schools. Because it made Germany primarily responsible for the World War objection was raised to The Story of Human Progress by Willis Mason West, an author but a short time before criticized for pro-Germanism.767 Roscoe Lewis Ashley is challenged for saying in his Modern European Civilization that “Germany wanted war and determined to rule or ruin... and a war which in the true sense had been made ‘in Germany’ was a reality”; while Webster, in his Modern European History, is criticized for the statement that “There is no longer any need to fix the responsibility for the World War. That the German government planned it and precipitated it has been made evident by the avowal of the Germans themselves.”768

The interpretation placed upon the causes leading to the War by Charles Downer Hazen in his Modern Europe has likewise been condemned. For Hazen “summarizes the case as follows: ‘The world was stunned by the criminal levity with which Austria-Hungary and Germany had created this hideous situation. The sinister and brutal challenge was, however, accepted immediately and with iron resolution by those who had done their utmost during those twelve days to avert the catastrophe.’”769 A criticism by Professor Harry E. Barnes directed for the same reason at the textbooks of this author provoked a spirited exchange of opinion in the spring of 1924. Professor Hazen upheld his interpretation as to Germany’s guilt, while Professor Barnes asserted that such a point of view was untenable in the light of official documents made known since the War.770

Other writers of European histories used in the schools have not escaped. According to The Freeman, Robinson and Beard, in their History of Europe Our Own Times, seem to have been “more or less taken” with the plan of leaving the “readers to draw their own conclusions” in their chapter on the origin of the War. Disapproval arose out of the statement that “the assertions of the German leaders that England desired war and was responsible for it are, of course, as the rest of the world knows, wholly without foundation in fact,” and because of the quotation from Prince Lichnowsky indicting Germany.771

On the other hand, Modern History, by Hayes and Moon, is given a clean bill of health because of its treatment of this controversial subject. The critic, however, pointed out, in fairness to the other writers criticized, that “in the interval that has elapsed since the appearance of the other texts..., certain new items of evidence had been brought forward and the general war-fever had abated somewhat. The authors of the new book therefore enjoyed certain special advantages, which help, no doubt, to explain the novel tone....”772

Not only has the treatment of the origin of the War been a source of criticism but also the divergent points of view regarding German atrocities, reparations and the Treaty of Versailles. On these points Professor Donald Taft in his study “Historical Textbooks and International Differences” has declared that American pupils are taught from two kinds of textbooks, one group being “bitterly anti-German” and the other attempting a fairness of judgment. Of this he cites Guitteau’s Our United States and Long’s America as examples.773 Much the same point of view is held by Isabel Kendig-Gill in a pamphlet “War and Peace in United States History Text-Books,” in which, in addition, she declares that “nowhere is there any fundamental analysis either of the political and economic situation out of which the war grew or of its spiritual and moral costs to the world.”774

Following the close of the World War, the place of prominence held by the histories of Europe in the critic’s eye was eclipsed by American histories. A desire to depict events favorable to the Allies was superseded by the apprehension that such a narrative would prove the undoing of American patriotism. This apprehension was mingled in the minds of many with the fear that the solid pillars of society were being threatened with radicalism and socialism. In this spirit, for example, attacks on history textbooks were inaugurated by the editor of The Daily Courier of Ottumwa, Iowa. On March 2, 1919, under the caption, “Get a New History,” appeared an editorial attacking Muzzey’s An American History because of its “socialistic trend” and its treatment of the period since the Civil War.775 Two years later, due to the energy of the editor of the Ottumwa Daily Courier, Governor Nate Kendall of Iowa was asked by the joint committee on Americanism of various patriotic and civic organizations to appoint a commission “to investigate anti-American and radical teaching in state owned institutions and the public schools.” The action of the committee was prompted by the information “that there were good reasons to believe that some of the textbooks on American History used in our schools were wanting in national and patriotic spirit and sentiment; that they failed to instil devotion to American ideals, and pass[ed] over lightly events in American history which should... stimulate pride of country, patriotism and devotion to our institutions.”776 No action was taken by the Governor.

One of the most active organizations in the present-day movement to remodel the content of history textbooks has been the Sons of the American Revolution. In 1917 at the instigation of the Executive Committee of the National Society an examination of Muzzey’s An American History was undertaken by Judge Wallace McCamant, later president-general of this organization. His verdict was unfavorable; and as a result the book was excluded from the public schools of Portland, Oregon, and Evanston, Illinois. Although a revised edition later appeared, this critic still believed Muzzey a “political partisan” and his history unsuitable for use in the public schools.777 One of the most “grievous faults” which Muzzey committed, in the opinion of Judge McCamant, was in his discussion of the American Revolution, wherein he spoke “contemptuously of Hancock, Warren, Otis and the Adamses” in calling them “patriots” with quotation marks attached to the word.778 He was held equally culpable because the Revolutionary dispute is said to have involved “a debatable question,” a statement, which, in the critic’s mind, should disqualify him from writing a school history.779 Yet a reading of the statement in its context conveys a different meaning from that suggested by Judge McCamant, for Muzzey declares: “Until the Declaration was published the Tories and Loyalists, of whom there were tens of thousands in the American colonies, were champions of one side of a debatable question, namely, whether the abuses of the King’s ministers justified resistance; but after the Declaration loyalty to the King of Great Britain became treason to their country.” The reviewer found other grievous faults in that “the author contemptuously refers to the speeches and papers of Henry and the Adamses as ‘their rhetorical warnings’ against being ‘reduced to slavery’”; that only one sentence is devoted to Bunker Hill; that there is “no mention of the death of Joseph Warren”; that there is “no reference to the gallantry with which the Americans defended the rail fence and the redoubt”; and only a brief mention of Lexington and Ticonderoga. “Aside from four sentences,” only “seven pages” are devoted “to the Revolutionary War,” when the “students in our public schools should be taught that our free institutions were won by heroism and sacrifice.”780 Other omissions of “essential” facts were the failure to describe the work of Marion, Sumter, Pickens and Williams; no mention being made of Gansevoort, Anthony Wayne or Stony Point, Light Horse Harry Lee or Paulus Hook, Bennington or John Stark.

Carrying the criticisms further, it was alleged that this history contains inaccuracies and unfair statements; that it is full of partisanship of a political character; that it gives a biased treatment of controversial subjects; and is pro-British.781 It was the belief of the reviewer, moreover, that controversial subjects like the tariff have no place in a high school textbook, for “whatever the views of a citizen may be on this subject he should be permitted to send his children to school without having them taught that his own views on this question are unsound.” Characterization of Mr. Wilson’s policies, “particularly as set forth in his ‘New Freedom’ as an economic Declaration of Independence,” also struck a discordant note. Class distinctions are also made conspicuous, the reviewer declared, as in such a statement as “Federalism, which stood in John Adams’ phrase, for government by ‘the rich, the well-born and the able’”; and in “The failure of the South to get rid of slavery in the early decades of the nineteenth century must be set down to the domination of a class of rich, aristocratic planters.”782

During the year 1923 the activities of the Sons of the American Revolution became diversified to the extent that their report on Patriotic Education dealt with several American histories. This report was actuated by the interest that had been shown in the “National Congress” meeting at Springfield in May, 1922, when that body expressed a deep interest in “the subject of American history textbooks” and resolved that the Committee on Patriotic Education “take needful measures to eliminate from our schools” all objectionable textbooks.783

In their review of American histories, the Committee found “a great deal of inaccuracy and considerable propaganda bearing on political questions which still divide the people.”784 They held as “fundamental defects and those which are most clearly subject to criticism at the hands of a patriotic society... inadequate and unsympathetic treatment of the American Revolution and a treatment of events in our recent history in such a manner as to inculcate loyalty to class rather than to country.”785 The Committee, furthermore, emphasized the importance of a study of an untainted American history, one teaching “a veneration of the great men of our past” as “the best antidote for radical and disintegrating propaganda.” They maintained that “the chief purpose to be subserved in teaching American history is the inculcation of patriotism.”786 To devote only ten pages out of five hundred to a discussion of the Revolutionary War laid the author open to criticism by patriotic groups; and such inadequate treatment could not be excused on the ground that the book was written for advanced students who have gathered the necessary details in the elementary grades. The works of Fiske, Schouler, Trevelyan, and Lodge, although written for adults, discussed these details, which, in itself, was proof of their value to the Committee who were considering textbooks.

In the examination of history textbooks the Committee found “the McLaughlin and Van Tyne, O’Hara, Everett Barnes, Hart, James and Sanford, Muzzey and West histories objectionable in the treatment of the American Revolution.”787 The Muzzey, West and Burnham histories were described also as “open to criticism on the ground of class hatred.” Because the objections to Muzzey’s and West’s books were based on more than one ground for complaint, separate criticisms were published by the Committee, which were “widely circulated.”788

On the other hand, endorsement was accorded to Gordy’s textbook and the Thwaites and Kendall history for grammar school use. For the high school the Committee recommended the amended edition of Guitteau’s book and the Halleck history.789

As a result of their agitation, according to the Report, the Everett Barnes history had been amended and the author had removed from it the aspersions on John Hancock. The Committee wished to distinguish sharply, however, between this Barnes and “the old Barnes history which has always been sound in its Americanism.”790 They desired also to recommend “without qualification” the history of Dr. Edward Channing, who at their request had signified his willingness to make suggested changes in his textbook. With evident approval they quoted the following statement from William J. Long, “author of the latest history published by Ginn and Company” in which he said: “What I missed in our histories, especially those of recent date, was the spirit of devotion without which the mere facts of history have little interest or consequence to my boy and your boy.”791

The efforts of the national group received the active support of many local units. Under the direction of “Compatriot S. T. Cameron of the District of Columbia Society” the Piney Branch Citizens’ Association of Washington, D. C., opened fire on Muzzey’s An American History for the reasons frequently assigned, and circulated, according to Judge McCamant, “a scholarly brief” that proved this textbook “hopelessly unfit for school use.”792

Among the standards which the Piney Branch Citizens’ Association set up for a textbook in American history were: that it should assume “an unquestioning attitude toward the sincerity, the aims or the purpose of the founders of this Republic or of those who have guided its destinies; that it should contain no material that tends to arouse political, racial, or religious controversy or hatred”; that it should “emphasize the principles and motives that were of the greatest influence in the formation and development” of the government; that “it must incite in the pupil ideals of patriotic and civic duty,” as well as cultivating “an appreciation of the hardships endured and the sacrifices made in establishing and defending American ideals.”793

No success attending their efforts to eliminate this textbook from the acceptable list in the Washington schools, the Piney Branch Association continued their attack. On April 25, 1923, a public hearing was given Professor Muzzey and his critics, at which “more than one hundred persons, including school officials, teachers, civic leaders and interested students... listened attentively to the arguments pro and con which continued for nearly four hours.”794 In defending himself, Professor Muzzey declared that Mr. Cameron had “garbled the facts and twisted phrases in a way” that was “absolutely unfair”; that he had taken “certain words and sentences and read them without the complete section,” which, in many cases, put “an entirely different aspect upon them.”795 With Mr. Cameron, in criticizing adversely this American history, was Charles Edward Russell of the “Patriot League for the Preservation of American History.” He regarded the book as “‘a grave public menace,’” and declared that “the school children in the heart of China” were being taught “a more accurate account of the American revolution than those in the Washington schools.”796

On the other hand, unqualified endorsement was given the textbook by Superintendent of Schools Frank W. Ballou. George J. Jones, head of the history department of the Washington high schools, emphasized “the destructive nature” of the attack and “pointed out that all of the teachers of American history in the local high schools vouch[ed] for its patriotism....”797 In support of Mr. Jones were Dr. George M. Churchill and Elmer L. Kayser, professors of American history at George Washington University, Dr. Charles E. Hill, professor of political science at the same university, Dr. Leo F. Stock, professor of history at the Catholic University, and Rear Admiral George W. Baird, former president of the Board of Education.798

In commenting upon this and other attacks directed against this textbook, Carson C. Hathaway in The Dearborn Independent for October 23, 1923, declared: “To Muzzey, history is a review of what happened and an important analysis of why it happened. To those who desire to be thrilled by the familiar stories of our national heroes, the text may not be satisfying. But perhaps there is enough thrill in even an unbiased treatment of American history to satisfy any thoughtful and patriotic American.”799

In November, 1922, the Kentucky branch of the Sons of the American Revolution addressed a communication to nine educational institutions requesting the exclusion of Muzzey’s An American History from the lists of approved textbooks, because of its “flippant, inaccurate and unsympathetic” content-matter.800 Failure to inculcate “reverence for our Revolutionary fathers and their ideals” besides its “callous indifference” in the treatment of battles and heroes appeared to the Kentucky Sons characteristic of this book.

As a comment on their action, the Louisville Times editorially remarked:

“If the Sons of the American Revolution in Kentucky have discovered a public school text-book of history that is unfair to the national record that book is lonesome. The Times is not familiar with the work of Professor Muzzey of New York, which the society at its meeting last night denounced as ‘unpatriotic, unfair, inaccurate, partisan, closely bordering on the socialistic and lacking in Americanism.’ But for many years in the public schools of the United States courses have been full of text-books on history which committed most of these crimes in reverse order, by misstating all facts relating to the foreign controversies of the United States and the wars fought by this nation.

“The Muzzey book may be all that is charged against it. If so, it is remarkable that it was adopted in the Kentucky schools after considerable investigation; that it was not complained of during the inquiry into history text-books in New York; that the University of Kentucky recommended it....

“But unless the book is unfair and inaccurate it should be defended against attack. The valor of ignorance is asserting itself in all quarters of America. Calmly content for several generations to study histories that were grossly unfair to every other nation in the world, some portion of the American public have lately gotten into the book-censoring business....

“... The ancestors of the gentlemen who sat last night resented nothing more than censorship of all kinds. They wanted to settle for themselves what they should read, eat, drink, wear and do. The era of Jefferson and Franklin and Samuel Adams was not the era of excision and paternalism.”801

The Courier-Journal also, in an editorial on “Writing History,” stressed the new values which have developed in the scientific presentation of history, causing “a fresh and clarified perspective.” To the Courier-Journal Muzzey’s textbook represented “the newer tendencies in historical writing,” and aimed wisely “to give the emphasis to those factors in our national development, which appeal to us as the most vital from the standpoint of today.” The editorial commended it for omission of facts which could easily be found elsewhere, and because of its non-sectionalism.802

Action similar to that taken by the Kentucky chapter occurred in California, where not only the Sons of the American Revolution but the Sons of the Revolution instituted a search for “anti-American” histories. Here the latter organization, under the leadership of Frank H. Pettingell, in an effort to gain converts to their point of view, distributed to all school districts Charles Grant Miller’s pamphlet Treason to American Tradition.803 By the former organization two detailed reports regarding Muzzey’s An American History were issued, the one expressing the opinion of a majority of a committee to investigate this book, and the other setting forth the views of a dissenting member.

The majority report revealed no criticisms which had not been presented in the National Report.804 On the other hand, the minority statement included four points: first, that “fairness requires that if we are to pass upon the histories used in the schools, there should be an examination of those in general use, not merely one; second, if there is to be a critical examination of histories in use in the schools of this country, it should be by a committee composed of members sufficiently acquainted with the writing and teaching of history, that their report may be comprehensive and scientific, as well as patriotic; third, the majority report fails to consider thoroughly the purpose for which this history was written; and fourth, the history should be judged by its whole tone and spirit and purpose, and not by words and sentences isolated from their context.”805

In analyzing the textbook and comparing statements with those cited in the majority report as reprehensible, the minority report accepted the principle adopted by some textbook writers, namely, that biographical history should be left to the elementary grades and the study of institutional development to the secondary school.

As a result of this agitation, the Commissioner of Secondary Schools of California appointed a committee to investigate history textbooks. They reported that none of the books examined were found tainted by disloyal or unpatriotic sentiments, and that the attacks against history textbooks were due to a “revival of pro-German sentiment,” to “an ineradicable Irish anti-British sentiment,” to a “journalistic opposition to Great Britain,” and “to an element of political reaction against the domestic legislation of recent years.”806

In Ohio, also, the Sons of the American Revolution at their state convention in Cleveland in May, 1923, condemned Muzzey’s An American History and adopted a resolution that no textbook should be used in the schools “which belittles the founders of our government or minimizes their achievements.”807

During Education Week in 1922, the Idaho Society Sons of the American Revolution, under the leadership of Captain A. H. Conner, started an agitation against the History of the American People by Willis Mason West, resulting in the exclusion of this book from the Boise schools. Criticized in much the same manner as Muzzey’s An American History, this textbook was held unfit to “be found in a single school in the United States of America.”808 To Captain Conner, the treatment of historical incidents, not only in the Revolutionary period and in the War of 1812, but in the Civil War and recent period, deserved severe condemnation.

Objection was raised to the treatment accorded battles in the American Revolution and in the War of 1812, as well as that of controversial questions which have “no place in a history.”809 From the latter, Captain Conner adduced that “the author of this book is quite evidently a free trader.” The discussion of the labor question, socialism, the direct primary, the initiative, the referendum, the League of Nations and other “controversial subjects,” such as were found in this book “are out of place in a school history.” Furthermore, it was charged that the book “excuses the South for its disgraceful treatment of Union soldiers in military prisons, (p. 566), states that Robert E. Lee ranks among the noblest figures in American history and practically accuses Grant of being in collusion with the ‘Whiskey Ring.’”810

Captain Conner’s criticism of West’s discussion of the Civil War period gained ready converts to his point of view, and the Phil Sheridan Post Number 4 of the Grand Army of the Republic issued a denunciation of the textbook as “worse than a travesty on justice, and a slam in the face of true Americans.”811

These and other efforts of the Sons of the American Revolution to censor history textbooks have resulted in their elimination from many lists of approved textbooks. According to F. W. Millspaugh, vice-president of the Tennessee chapter, “efforts to have certain books withdrawn from public schools in Tennessee and Alabama have been unvaryingly successful.”812 Muzzey’s history, according to Judge Wallace McCamant, was excluded from the schools of Adrian, Michigan, Murfreesboro and Nashville, Tennessee, Florence, Alabama, and a number of schools in Kentucky, and “all of the objectionable histories... from the schools of Indiana on a hearing before the textbook commission and as a result of the attack made upon them by the Sons of the American Revolution.”813 According to Captain Conner, “Muzzey’s history has been taken out of the schools of Burley, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho Falls, Nampa and Pocatello, and West’s history has been taken out of Boise as a result of the activities of the National Society acting through the Idaho Society.”814

Although many places have barred the books under suspicion, success has not everywhere attended the efforts of the Sons of the American Revolution. This is accounted for by Judge Wallace McCamant because of “the attempt made by the educators responsible for its [a book’s] presence to defend their action,” and because “the publishers of these objectionable books are strongly entrenched in educational circles....”815

But others than “the educators” and “the publishers” have opposed the efforts of the Sons of the American Revolution in their attempts at textbook censorship. “Individual members” of the organization “in Rhode Island, New Jersey, the District of Columbia, Ohio, South Dakota and California have taken issue publicly with the work of... the [national] Committee.”816 For example, the historian of the Passaic Valley (New Jersey) chapter, in reviewing Muzzey’s textbook, asserted that “the whole trend of the book is to tell the logical course of events, and to explain the causes of events,” and that there was “no ground” for Judge McCamant’s observation that “the author has ‘no abiding conviction in American fundamentals; no enthusiastic veneration for the great men who founded the Republic.’”817

Other dissenters from Judge McCamant’s opinion were in general agreement with this statement, another member of the Sons of the American Revolution suggesting that “one must surmise that Judge McCamant came to the book determined to be displeased.”818

A mutuality of interest with the Sons of the American Revolution in censoring school histories is seen in the action of the Sons of the Revolution at St. Louis in December, 1922. Aroused by an address of Roy F. Britton, president of the local chapter, a resolution to investigate history text-books used in the St. Louis schools was unanimously adopted. In Major Britton’s report to the local chapter he expressed disapproval of Muzzey’s An American History and Hart’s School History of the United States, books which he himself had examined, as well as condemning Ward’s edition of Burke’s Speech on Conciliation with America and Guitteau’s Our United States, which he had not examined. The last two books used in the St. Louis schools were also classed with the “de-Americanized” histories because “several men of prominence, apparently speaking with authority, as well as certain patriotic societies and newspapers have denounced” them.819 McLaughlin and Van Tyne’s A History of the United States for Schools and West’s History of the American People were cited likewise as examples of the “revisionists’ methods” according to men like Charles Grant Miller and Charles Edward Russell.820 Major Britton’s efforts received the approval of some of the newspapers of St. Louis for the “real service” he had rendered,821 one editorial remarking that school histories should set forth that the American Revolution was “a tremendous exhibit of resolution and courage to set at naught the most powerful military and naval country of the time.”822

Other patriotic organizations have likewise attested their interest in the status of present-day history instruction. The Descendants of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, on July 4, 1922, at their national convention, asserted an aversion to public school histories which would “misinterpret the men and measures, manners and methods and the great events of the Revolution and the subsequent periods leading up to the Constitution of 1787.”823 The Veterans of Foreign Wars in National Encampment on August 24, 1922, “indignantly” protested against the alleged un-American histories, and commended Charles Grant Miller for his “patriotic service” in exposing and checking “a sinister attempt to degrade our country’s history.”824

Similar action was taken by the New York State Department, Grand Army of the Republic, in 1923, in demanding the presentation of “true American history,”825 and by the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution in 1923.826 The United Spanish War Veterans in annual convention deplored the “British propaganda” found in a school history,827 and the Veterans of the Seventy-Eighth Division of the American Legion at Atlantic City, in September, 1923, passed resolutions for the suppression and removal from the schools of all unpatriotic textbooks and “particularly history books.”828

These criticisms upon history textbooks impelled the American Legion to undertake, in 1922, the writing of an American history. This project received the endorsement of more than fifty national patriotic societies, but the preparation of the textbook was first entrusted to Charles F. Horne, professor of English in the College of the City of New York and editorial director of the American Legion. According to Mr. Horne, the Legion had as a purpose “an absolutely honest history... in no sense boastful or extravagant.”829 In the statement of their principles, the Legion expressed a desire that their history “speak the truth, so that no child learns afterwards to distrust it. But in telling the truth it must be careful to tell the truth optimistically. It will mention the blunders of the past so that the child learns to be careful; but it must dwell on failure only for its value as a moral lesson, must speak chiefly of success....”830

The Legion, among other things, likewise set up as a principle for their textbook the inspiration of patriotism. Upon “every page a vivid love of America” must be preached. It was their conviction that such a book should “encourage patriotism, strengthen character, stimulate thought and impress the worth of Truth.”831

In 1925, The Story of Our American People expressed in a tangible form the aims of the Legion. Two volumes offer solace to those whose sensibilities have been wounded by the treatment accorded events in the American histories most commonly used in the public schools. For the pupil is taught that “this is the land of hope,” a land that “even strangers love,”—looked upon by “the poor folk and oppressed of other lands... as a kind of paradise,... where work brings its best reward, the one region where Peace seems assured, the land of Opportunity...” to which even “the leaders of other countries” turn “as a land of Power, able to help them in their political troubles, yet not grasping at their rights.”832

To the pupil is revealed “a Divine Purpose” controlling the history of America for, although “perhaps the oldest continent in the world,” America lay “unused” until the time when “civilization should prove worthy of it.” It was “by natural processes” that “the world of Europe was sifted and sorted that there might be planted here some of its richest seed,” a people who might well be “called a ‘chosen race’ of Europeans.” Among this number were some “made desperate by Europe’s dreary lack of opportunity”; sometimes there were “folk convicted as criminals, but laws have not always judged men as God judges them, and the governments of those days were apt to be harsh and narrow.”833

Many of the points “omitted” from other school histories are found here. Not a few of our heroic characters such as Betsy Ross, Nathan Hale, Molly Pitcher, “Mad Anthony” Wayne, John Paul Jones, and Haym Salomon are given recognition. Nor are there missing such slogans as “Don’t give up the ship.”834

The pupil is led through “the Second War for Independence, a story of outworn patience and of mistakes which ended in unexpected fortune;” through the war with Spain, “a people’s war”; and finally through the World War, in which we were “no feeble foe to match even the terrible German colossus.”835

In a letter to The New York Times Professor Claude H. Van Tyne, under the caption “A Questionable History,” declares the title of this history to be “so bombastic that it might as well be ‘The Marvelous Story of Us.’” He points out that the pamphlet which accompanies the book lists not only the organizations which are said to have gone over the material and to have given it their approval, but also schoolmen and historians “of wide repute.” “I will not say as to the schoolmen,” said Professor Van Tyne, “but as to historians I have looked over the entire list which is given and I find not one historian of repute in it.... There is also added an imposing array of senators... some chairmen of great national political parties, who, of course, endorse the scheme out of pure policy.... That which was a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand when Charles Grant Miller began his infamous attack upon the histories written by men who really knew the facts has become a menacing storm, threatening truth wherever it is found.”836

According to Frank C. Cross, National Director of the Americanism Commission in 1925, the American Legion believed that “much of the agitation and complaint regarding school textbooks in history has apparently come from prejudiced sources—from men and institutions that are themselves propagandists....” The Legion, furthermore, he declared, do not believe that the authors who have been generally attacked are “unpatriotic or that their books are written as the result of organized propaganda.” Yet they felt that some of the authors had “laid themselves open to just criticism because they have sometimes made statements from the point of view of a critic or investigator rather than from that of a teacher,” that “some of these authors are at fault in placing before immature pupils the blunders, foibles and frailties of prominent heroes and patriots of our Nation.” The Legion also took exception to the introduction of “matters of controversial nature without giving adequate space... for presentations of the essential facts on both sides.”837

Through the activities of such patriotic groups have arisen agitations similar to that in Dubuque, Iowa, where the local post of the Veterans of Foreign Wars sponsored a history textbook attack.838 Under the direction of a committee composed of a representative of the Ladies’ Grand Army of the Republic, the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Spanish-American War Veterans, the Parent-Teacher Association, and the Superintendent of Schools, McLaughlin and Van Tyne’s A History of the United States for Schools was cast out of the public schools.

Still others than the patriotic societies of the United States have censored the content of history textbooks. Among these are the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, who have advocated the inclusion in all school histories of some account of the place and achievement of the negro in this country’s development.839 The Ethical Society of Davenport, Iowa, would seek a substitute for West’s History of the American People because it does not depict sufficiently the contributions of countries like Germany to the United States.840

The New Jersey State Council of the Junior Order of United American Mechanics, “representing 80,000 members in its 1922 Convention” endorsed the work of the Patriot League for the Preservation of American History and demanded an “unimpaired” American history.841

Similar action was taken by the Knights of Pythias in their Grand Lodge meeting in Trenton, New Jersey, in September, 1923, in unanimously accepting a report on history textbooks used in the New Jersey schools and adopting a resolution condemning “A School History of the United States by Albert Bushnell Hart; A History of the United States (1919) by John F. O’Hara; Burke’s Speech on Conciliation with America (1919) by C. H. Ward; An American History Revised (1920) by D. S. Muzzey; Builders of Democracy by Edwin Greenlaw; Our United States (1919) by William Backus Guitteau; McLaughlin and Van Tyne’s History of the United States for Schools, revised 1919; History of the American People (1918) by Willis Mason West; Short American History by Grades and later condensed into one volume and American History for Grammar Grades (1920) by Everett Barnes.”

They further pledged their “unflagging support to the Patriot League for the preservation of American History in its plans to drive from our schools all treason texts that have a tendency to deprive the generations yet to come of the sacred heritages that were won by the unmatchable sacrifices of our forefathers.” The Committee recommended also a campaign of publicity against the condemned histories and the appointment of committees in each “subordinate Lodge” through whom these books were to be “thrown out and their use prohibited.”842

In March, 1923, The New Age called the attention of Masons to the criticisms raised by patriotic organizations and by Charles Grant Miller against American histories. Since most of the “distinguished patriots,” who were either omitted from the textbooks or who were slightly mentioned “with some slurring or critical allusion,” were “Masons,” The New Age urged parents to look into the kind of histories their children were using.843

In 1924 “forty-three” patriotic and fraternal organizations of New Jersey united in endorsing the Williams school history bill, designed to legalize the censorship of histories in that state. These included the American Legion, the Descendants of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, the Sons of the American Revolution, the Steuben Society of America, the Grand Army of the Republic, the United Spanish War Veterans, the Knights of Columbus, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Junior Order United American Mechanics, the Knights of Pythias, and the Patriotic Order Sons of America.844 An exhaustive discussion of the text books commonly attacked was issued by the New Jersey Unit of the Patriot League in February, 1924. According to this pamphlet the Guitteau, the Muzzey, the Barnes, the McLaughlin and Van Tyne histories had been revised to meet the objections raised against them, but not to the entire satisfaction of their critics.845

Set off against the advocates of a highly nationalized history are those interested in promoting the spirit of internationalism. With this desire Robert Andrews Milliken suggested the re-writing of history through the Committee of the League of Nations on Intellectual Coöperation. The work as projected purported not to be an attempt to reform each nation’s textbooks but to present an impartial world history, neither neglecting nor overestimating the achievements of distinct national groups.846 The same sentiment is responsible for the advocacy of an abolition of partisan textbooks tending to foster bitterness and hostility among nations, which was sanctioned in June, 1923, by the Federation of the League of Nations Society.847

Investigations by Municipal and School Authorities

The endeavors of those who have constituted themselves textbook censors have borne fruit in many towns and cities of the United States. They are the source of the well-known New York City investigation of history textbooks. In October, 1920, Superintendent William L. Ettinger appointed Associate Superintendent Edgar D. Shimer and a committee to investigate attacks made on histories used in the public schools. In November, 1921, the Committee presented a unanimous report on the fundamental principles that should govern the preparation of textbooks on history for the city schools. During November and December, 1921, and into January, 1922, the Committee held open session weekly to listen to charges against histories, at which L. R. MacEagain of the Irish Patriotic League, Charles Grant Miller, Patrick J. Lang, Mrs. E. J. Cramer of the Daughters of the American Revolution, Mrs. M. R. Jacobs, Abraham Wakeman,848 and Edward F. McSweeney of the Knights of Columbus appeared.849

On May 12, 1922, the comprehensive report of the Committee was adopted by the Board of Education. This document is concerned chiefly with three matters: the establishment of a set of fundamental principles and reasonable standards for the writing of school histories, a detailed consideration of the charges made against textbooks, and certain conclusions reached as a result of the inquiry.

In the formulation of the “General Principles” by which a history textbook should be written, the Committee was doubtless guided by a letter of October 28, 1920, from Superintendent Ettinger, in which he suggested that “a distinction should be drawn between the obligation to cleave closely to the line of historical truth, such as is incumbent upon the historian writing for adult readers and the discretion properly conceded to an author of school texts who writes for immature minds incapable of and disinclined to make fine distinctions but instinctively inclined to worship at the shrine of all that is loyal, heroic, and self-sacrificing.” Mr. Ettinger believed it unwise to present to children facts concerning the infirmities of men who had been inspirational forces in national life. He objected, furthermore, to forces which tended to destroy a reverence for the institutional life of the country.850

In setting forth the “General Principles” for guidance in writing history textbooks, the Committee denied to the author “absolute freedom in the selection or in the interpretation of historical material” because “predetermined aims and standards predetermine selection and interpretation.” Furthermore, the Committee felt there should not be included in a textbook statements of a derogatory character concerning American heroes. Material which would tend to “arouse political, racial, or religious controversy, misunderstanding, or hatred” they also wished excluded.851

In the investigation, examination was made of many of the best known textbooks in American history and government including those by Barnes, Guitteau, Hart, Magruder, McLaughlin and Van Tyne, Morris and West. In all of these books the Committee found statements which were objectionable to them, their chief disapproval arising from the discussions of our relationship with England, especially in the American Revolution and in the War of 1812; the incorporation of controversial topics in the textbook; the failure to inculcate patriotism; the emasculation of accounts of wars for the purpose of encouraging peace; and derogatory statements concerning our national heroes.

In speaking of the American Revolution, the Report declared: “Throughout... there should be but one aim: to impress upon the pupils the sublime spectacle of thirteen weak colonies spread along fifteen hundred miles of sea coast, poorly equipped and poorly disciplined, giving battle to the strongest military and naval power in the world. In addition the Colonists were surrounded by hostile Indians and in their midst was a large body of Tories working at times openly, at times secretly, but, at all times against them.... The pupil must be taught that if liberty is to continue ’to dwell in our midst’ he must be prepared, should occasion arise, to make similar sacrifices.”852 Authors of textbooks, the Report indicated, should “refrain from such characterizations as ‘War Hawks’ or from cynical, sarcastic or sneering remarks concerning the prosecution of the war.” It was also felt that such a statement as Barnes made—“The war was a mistake. It was a case in which anger overcame judgment”—would be the generator of an unfortunate attitude in the pupils.853 Nor should writers indulge in controversial discussions because “The public schools are maintained by the public funds. The taxpayers are of various creeds and political beliefs” and it is necessary to respect their feelings.854

Criticism was directed toward several textbooks because they failed “to inculcate patriotism by bringing to the attention of the pupils the best in the lives, words and deeds of our patriots.” According to the Committee too much attention was given “to the utterance and achievements of the heroes of other countries.” To those who would offer disagreement to such a statement because it meant a “narrow-visioned patriotism” tending to accentuate racial consciousness, they offered the suggestion that “in the elementary grades, our primary concern is to acquaint the pupils with the deeds and words of our own heroes, and the traditions of our own land.”855 Even though derogatory statements regarding our national heroes might be statements of fact, they asserted that “truth is no defense to the charge of impropriety,” for it “is a solemn and sacred obligation” to preserve “unsullied the name and fame of those who have battled that we might enjoy the blessings of liberty.”856

The conclusion of the Committee included, besides the criticism indicated in the discussion of the Report given above, the statement that no evidence of intentional disloyalty had been found on the part of the authors of the textbooks although their attitude toward the founders of the Republic in some cases was “entirely reprehensible.” Nor was there evidence to support the charge that the textbooks had been written as “a result of unwholesome propaganda” although some of the writers frankly stated that they believed “there ought to be more friendly relations between Great Britain and the United States, and that they had written their histories from that standpoint.”857

Another investigation of the history textbooks used in the New York City schools was projected in December, 1921, under the auspices of the Hylan city administration. On December sixth, Mayor John F. Hylan instructed David Hirshfield, Commissioner of Accounts, to make “a thorough investigation... with regard to the new history readers and text-books alleged to contain anti-American propaganda, which have been introduced into the schools of this city.”858 To the Mayor it was a matter of considerable concern that the school children of that city should be “inoculated with the poisonous virus of foreign propaganda which seeks to belittle American patriots.”859

The inquiry was begun December tenth, at which time J. J. Shields, an insurance agent, and Charles Grant Miller were consulted by Mr. Hirshfield.860 According to The New York Times, Mr. Hirshfield did not wish to employ experts in his investigation, preferring men of “sound judgment” who were “open to conviction.”861

In the course of the examination of the books under criticism, Mr. Hirshfield held “five public hearings during the period from February 3 to April 18, 1922, to which all those interested were invited.”862 Among those who spoke were Alvin E. Owsley, National Commander of the American Legion, who raised objections to history teaching in which “children do not understand the facts” of American history; Joseph T. Griffin;863 Colonel H. B. Fairfax, representing the Veterans of Foreign Wars, who was surprised at the intimation in school textbooks that Paul Revere’s ride was a myth; Julius Hyman, who felt that Jewish heroes like Haym Salomon and Aser Levi should be given a place in histories;864 and William Pickens, a negro, who wished history textbooks to record the fact that the first man killed in the Boston riot was Christmas Adams [Crispus Attucks] a negro, that 5,000 negroes fought in Washington’s army, 250,000 in the Civil War and 400,000 in the World War.865

On the other hand, Mr. Francis M. Kinnicut of the English-Speaking World and Mr. Telfair Minton of the Loyal Coalition spoke in defense of the histories under attack.866 According to Mr. Hirshfield, “representatives of the text book publishers” were also present but “none spoke” in defense of their books.867

In his investigation, Mr. Hirshfield examined Muzzey’s An American History, West’s History of the American People, Hart’s School History of the United States, McLaughlin and Van Tyne’s A History of the United States for Schools, Guitteau’s Our United States, Barnes’ Short American History by Grades, and Barnes’ American History for Grammar Grades.868 All of the books were found guilty of “promoting more friendly relations and mutual understanding with Great Britain” to the extent that the “school children are now being taught not the consecrated maxim, ‘Taxation without representation is tyranny,’ but, quite to the contrary, that ‘in England’s taxation of the colonies there was no injustice or oppression,’ and that the real reason independence was sought, was because after England had at great cost crushed out autocracy in the Western Hemisphere, the colonists no longer needed the protection of the mother country, and were unwilling to pay their fair share of the costs incurred.”869

Mr. Hirshfield’s appraisal is not unlike that of all other critics who allege that pro-British agencies are in control of the writing of American history. “A determined purpose to disregard the Declaration of Independence, breed disrespect for the Constitution of the United States and American institutions and belittle the great men and women responsible for the establishing of the United States of America” is seen in the writings of many educators who are charged with a willingness “to be subsidized into sympathy with the Carnegie design of ‘the reunited states, the British-American Union.’”870

In addition to the grievances urged against the historians in their treatment of Anglo-American relations, Mr. Hirshfield objected to the characterization accorded such “great leaders” as Jackson, Monroe and Clay by McLaughlin and Van Tyne, who with “other history revisionists show a peculiar fondness for this unfair method of estimating the characters of American leaders.”871 Among other criticisms directed against Muzzey’s history was that of inaccuracy,872 and West’s textbook was condemned because it was written by an “outright propagandist endeavoring zealously to promote the British design of an Anglo-American union.”873

In the discussion allotted by the Report to Guitteau’s Our United States and the Barnes histories, Mr. Hirshfield pointed out changes made by these authors in revisions which have appeared since these books were first criticized. These changes led Mr. Hirshfield to remark that “the promptness with which ‘modern historical scholarship’ may shift itself to any attitude required is truly amazing.”874 Mr. Barnes, especially, he charged with “mobility” of judgment, but declared that Barnes “is only a Brooklyn school principal and is not considered in scholastic circles of colleges and historical associations, like some of the other complained-of historians, who have been seduced into a sycophantic acceptance of English authority on all things American.”875

The statements in the Hirshfield Report regarding school histories bear a striking similarity to those of Charles Grant Miller. Indeed, with but insignificant exceptions the Hirshfield attacks on McLaughlin and Van Tyne’s A History of the United States for Schools, Guitteau’s Our United States, Barnes’ Short American History by Grades and his American History for Grammar Grades are couched in the same language as that employed by Charles Grant Miller in his articles in the Hearst newspapers. Furthermore, the section of the Report devoted to “British Propaganda Agencies are Active in America” is substantially a verbatim re-publication of an article which appeared October 15, 1922, in the Chicago Herald and Examiner.876 A comparison of the statements under the name of David Hirshfield and those under that of Charles Grant Miller tends to verify a statement in the New York Tribune which ascribes the authorship of the Hirshfield Report to Charles Grant Miller.877 Indeed, the Tribune in a series of articles beginning November 5, 1923, discussed in detail the Hirshfield Report and asserted that it is “a substitute paper for a document turned in by a reputable scholar and expert who had been expressly commissioned at considerable expense to the city to make a thorough survey of the books in question.”878 According to the Tribune, “coincident with holding some public hearings” the Commissioner of Accounts “employed Joseph Devlin, a recognized lecturer and writer on historical and educational subjects, to examine the complained-of histories.”879 Mr. Devlin, “a staunch supporter of Tammany” and of Mayor Hylan, is said to have included in his report on history textbooks an exoneration of the “Briticized” historians, characterizing them as one hundred per cent American whose loyalty to the United States could not be questioned.880 Although better compilations of American history could be imagined by Mr. Devlin, he asserted that the historians were not guilty of the charges made,—charges designed “to help keep bigotry, dissension and distrust between this country and England.”881

Besides the books which the Hirshfield Report condemned as lacking in Americanism, Mr. Devlin examined A History of the United States by John P. O’Hara, A History of the United States of America by Charles Morris, American Government by Frank A. Magruder, Builders of Democracy by Edwin Greenlaw, History of the United States by Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard, and The Making of Our Country by Smith Burnham.882 The Magruder and Greenlaw textbooks, Mr. Devlin pointed out, were not histories, and the only cause for complaint which he could find against the latter was the inclusion of “Hymn of Love for England.” The former was described as a “plain work on civics and government, not dealing with history at all and free from one-sided opinion.” Regarding the Morris and Burnham histories, Mr. Devlin found no objection. The authors of the Beard textbook, however, he felt should be asked to “cut out all apologies for the conduct of England,” and the O’Hara volume, although “very well compiled,” was open to charges of bias and a pro-Catholic viewpoint.883

Of those histories which the Hirshfield Report had condemned, Mr. Devlin found only one which justified the charge of a pro-British point of view. This textbook—The History of the American People by Willis Mason West—had been banned from the New York City schools. The McLaughlin and Van Tyne history, the Devlin Report declared, should be revised in such a way that it would arouse more “pride in American breasts for the part the forefathers of our country played in freeing it from England,” but it was not found culpable in many of the respects commonly alleged.

The employment of Mr. Devlin for the purpose of investigating history textbooks was denied by Mr. Hirshfield. The only connection which Mr. Devlin had with the history inquiry, according to Mr. Hirshfield, was to “list all the textbooks, particularly as to authorship and the number of textbooks by different authors used in the same grade of work.” Later when “Mr. Devlin took it upon himself to write a history report and had the audacity to submit same to me, I dismissed him at once,” declared the Commissioner of Accounts.884

In refutation of Mr. Hirshfield’s denial regarding his part in the history inquiry, Mr. Devlin asserted that he began his investigation of history textbooks on December 21, 1921, as “an expert” through the direction of Mr. James McGinley, Hirshfield’s “chief of staff,” and continued the work for seven months when “the investigation was brought to a close” due to lack of funds.885 “Nearly a year after these opinions had been submitted by Mr. Devlin and shelved,” stated the Tribune, “the Hirshfield-Miller version appeared....”886

The Devlin Report “being the opposite of what his employers wanted,” remarked The New York Times, “... the job was turned over to one Charles Grant Miller, who joyously and promptly turned out, and in, a report of just the right—meaning the desired—kind, and that is the one, says the Tribune, which Mr. Hirshfield signed and published, greatly horrifying a part of the metropolitan population and as much amusing the rest of it.”887

The Hirshfield Report stimulated much discussion throughout the country. In New York, Superintendent of Schools William L. Ettinger declared “that the very idea of the Commissioner of Accounts investigating such a subject as the teaching of history in the public schools was highly amusing,” and that the Report was “belated and unnecessary inasmuch as the school authorities had already condemned seven of the eight histories condemned by Hirshfield.”888

The press in all sections of the United States devoted their columns to the Report and to the teaching and writing of history. The Atlanta Journal, under the caption of “Politician vs. Historian,” remarked that “Mr. Hirshfield’s views... are of no consequence. But the general reaction to his ganderish expression of them is highly interesting and altogether wholesome.” The New York World, according to the Journal, suggested that “‘the standing of the historians whom he attacks is better than his own’; while the Buffalo News comments: ‘Instead of leaving history to educators who are reputed to know something about it, the politicians are arrogating to themselves the right to determine what texts shall, and what texts shall not, be used.’”889

“The New England view is well reflected by the Hartford Times,” declared The Journal, in saying that “‘if we are teaching history and not mythology we want our children to acquire a critical capacity which shall enable them to appraise the world they live in by an intelligent application of the knowledge of the past... if a child has been trained to believe that between the years 1776 and 1885 all Americans were supermen, the appearance of a Hirshfield must come with something of a shock.’”890 Similar sentiment was expressed by the Baltimore Sun which asserted that Mr. Hirshfield’s “jazzy little turn on the public stage would hardly deserve notice at all if it were not for the lamentable tendency of a few excitable citizens whom it represents.”891

To the [Fort Wayne, Indiana] News Sentinel “there is something in that name Hirshfield that sounds significant,”892 and to the Milwaukee Journal “the very intemperance” of Mr. Hirshfield’s charges suggested that he was “not without his own prejudices.”893 The Dubuque Telegraph-Herald ascribed Mr. Hirshfield’s fears to “an over-stimulated imagination” or to “the close connection of his chief, Mr. Hylan, with William Randolph Hearst,” who “is doing his best to stir up ill-feeling between the United States and Great Britain.”894

The reaction of historians was reflected by James Truslow Adams in his article “History and the Lower Criticism” in The Atlantic Monthly for September, 1923, in which he described the advance made in historical scholarship during the generation before the War. “Since then, however,” he declared, “the forces of reaction and obscurantism seem to have been let loose and to have gathered fresh strength.... Partly because it [history] uses the language of the common man, the common man constitutes himself a judge of its truth, and we have the spectacle of a municipal commissioner of accounts attacking the validity of the scholar’s work while a town chamber of commerce defends it.”

“What then of the future?” queried Mr. Adams. “Is the writing of popular history to be an effort to discover and to disseminate among the people the true story of mankind in the past, or is it to be written as an ethical or political tract, to further the passionate conflicts of the present?” The desire of the historian to portray the truth and to be just in his estimates, is to Mr. Adams a surety that “the patriot need fear no danger to the ideals and inspiration to be derived from an ever more painstaking scrutiny of the history of the colonies and of the nation. The historian who most loves truth is most likely to love his country.”895

Other cities have passed through experiences similar to that of New York, but less publicity has attended the investigations. On October 23, 1922, the City Council of Boston “unanimously passed an order requesting the School Committee to give a hearing for the consideration of certain objections made to the use in the public schools... of ‘School History of the United States,’ revised 1920, by Albert Bushnell Hart; Burke’s ‘Speech on Conciliation,’ edited by C. H. Ward 1919, and ‘American History,’ by D. S. Muzzey.”896

In compliance with this request the School Committee “personally examined the books under discussion with considerable care....” They also had prepared “a careful and dispassionate review under the direction of all of the Board of Superintendents of all or substantially all of the criticisms made against these books and brought to their attention, and a refutation of these criticisms which, in the opinion of the Committee, justice to the authors demands.”897

Although the Committee were not “in entire sympathy and agreement with all the statements which the books contain,” nor in complete accord regarding the emphasis placed upon “certain events in our national history,” yet they felt that “such differences” were not “sufficient to warrant the condemnation of the books nor the impeachment of the sincerity and good faith of the authors.”898

A “hearing” regarding the textbooks under examination was arranged for and held by the School Committee and the City Council on November 15, the latter being represented by one member. “In the course of the hearing,” stated the Report, “irrelevant and extraneous matters were brought to the attention of the School Committee to which it listened with scant patience.” What the School Committee regarded as “unwarranted and ill-founded attacks were made upon the authors of these books,” whereas to the Committee “the real and only question at issue” was whether their [Muzzey’s and Hart’s] histories contain material to which reasonable and proper objection may be made.899 In the opinion of the Committee “no historian had ever succeeded in writing a book which met satisfactorily every point of view, nor does any history place an equal amount of emphasis upon all the topics which it discusses.” Besides, “it is clearly impossible that one brief volume should give adequate treatment to all the steps incident to the origin and growth of a great nation.”900

The Committee also deplored “the course pursued by the critics of these books in tearing from their context detached sentences and omitting explanations and summaries which are essential to a grasp of the authors’ real meaning.” Such a procedure, they believed, would permit a critic to find an “opportunity for criticism of any book that ever has been written on the subject of history, and indeed on many other subjects as well.”901

After having given “due consideration to the matter,” the School Committee therefore were of the opinion “that the criticisms against these two books” did not justify “their exclusion from the Authorized List.”902 A dissenting opinion, however, was issued, which, “while in agreement” with the Report, nevertheless set forth the view that the Board of Superintendents should ask for certain changes in the books when they were revised.903

In the comprehensive reviews of Hart’s School History of the United States and Muzzey’s An American History, the Committee pointed out that the chief sources of the criticisms were taken from “Mr. Charles Grant Miller,—Treason to American Tradition; Mr. Wallace McCamant,—Review of Muzzey’s American History; Mr. James A. Watson,—Speech before the Boston City Council and interview reported in the Boston Globe of October 24, 1922,... and from the ‘Report on History Text Books used in public schools of the City of New York, 1922.’”

In examining each statement which had been quoted to prove that these textbooks were Anglicized editions, the Committee showed that the “apologetic attitude toward England” charged by the critics could not be so considered when quotations were taken in their entirety.

In concluding their reviews, the Committee declared, “Both writers have shown a striking sense of proportion, great skill in focusing attention upon what is vital, and commendable courage in calling attention to weaknesses and mistakes in our history, some of which still need to be corrected. The few defects of these books are insignificant as compared with their many excellencies. Both books mark an advance in the writing of history texts for school use. Both are worthy contributions to the study and teaching of American history. Neither of them should be excluded from our schools.”904

Because of alleged un-Americanism West’s History of the American People was banned from the approved lists of text books in Alta, Iowa, and Jackson, Minnesota.905 The McLaughlin and Van Tyne history received like treatment in Battle Creek, Michigan.906 From the San José (California) Carnegie Library Hart’s Formation of the Union, his National Ideals Historically Traced, and Van Tyne’s American Revolution were removed by orders of the library board, who declared them “un-American and unfit for reading, particularly by school children.”907 The Study of the Nations by Harriet Tuell was prohibited in the schools of Somerville, Massachusetts, because of alleged pro-British leanings. The attacks against this book culminated in a bill in the Massachusetts Senate, in 1921, forbidding its use in any school of the commonwealth, but the bill died in committee.

Public Opinion Regarding the Censorship of History Textbooks

These endeavors to censor history textbooks have occasioned much discussion by the press, by educators and others. To The New York Times “however commendable these efforts to find and set forth the historical truth may be, and however honorable and sincere the motive, it must be admitted by all that this is not the way to ‘rewrite history.’”908

To the [New York] Evening Globe “the controversy over school histories is largely between defenders of doctrine and defenders of free inquiry, between those who do not believe that children can be trusted with the truth and those who believe that they can. Most of the modern histories have been written by scholars inspired by the scientific spirit and, therefore, no more tender with myths about history than a modern bacteriologist with myths about disease.... A true American history need not rob us of the story of Paul Revere or the reverence for George Washington, but it will teach that personal anecdotes are not the life of a nation, that great men as well as mean men flourish in every generation....”909

The reaction of teachers engaged in the public schools is much the same as that of the press. The continued agitation regarding histories carried on in Washington, D. C., led the High School Teachers’ Association to adopt the following resolutions:

“It is resolved that the questioning of the Americanism of teachers of history in American schools is resented, that the teachers themselves should be the judges of the content of the courses, and that the object of teaching history is to give the truthful picture of the past, with due regard to the age of the pupil for whom the work is intended, and therefore the truth should not be distorted for any purpose whatever; both sides of a controversial question should be presented from an academic point of view so that the students of history shall be trained in habits of open-minded tolerance.”910

Further evidence of a rebellion against the censorship attempted over history textbooks was manifested at the annual meeting of the Association of History Teachers of the Middle States and Maryland in May, 1923, when a series of resolutions was unanimously adopted “deploring an agitation based on either ignorance or malice, or which has for its object the promotion of animosities between classes of nations;...”911 In October, 1923, the Washington State Teachers’ Association resolved:

“1. That decisions regarding textbooks should be made by those scientifically trained; 2. That teachers who show a lack of judgment in the interpretation of texts, or whose loyalty is questioned, should be disciplined, or dismissed by their own school board. There should be no blanket charge against the whole corps. 3. That no unbiased committee of examiners has, on investigation, substantiated the attacks made on History teaching in American schools. 4. That examination will show that the groups making these attacks have no understanding of the distinction between grade and high school history, no conception of the methods of teaching, nor of the necessary content of an American history. 5. That a cursory examination of the attacks appearing in newspapers and originating with organizations prove much of their charge is based on half quotations and a wrenching of sentences from their context. These display an entire lack of the American quality of fair play.”912

The objection of historical scholars toward present-day censorship of history textbooks voiced itself at a meeting of the American Historical Association in December, 1923, when the following resolutions were adopted:

“Whereas, there has been in progress for several years an agitation conducted by certain newspapers, patriotic societies, fraternal orders, and others, against a number of school text-books in history and in favor of official censorship, and

“Whereas, this propaganda has met with sufficient success to bring about not only acute controversy in many cities but the passage of censorship laws in several states, therefore

“Be it resolved by the American Historical Association, upon the recommendation of its Committee on History Teaching in the Schools and of its Executive Council, that genuine and intelligent patriotism, no less than the requirement of honesty and sound scholarship, demand that text-book writers and teachers should strive to present a truthful picture of past and present, with due regard to the different purposes and possibilities of elementary, secondary and advanced instruction;—that criticism of history text-books should therefore be based not upon grounds of patriotism but only upon grounds of faithfulness to fact as determined by specialists or tested by consideration of the evidence;—that the cultivation in pupils of a scientific temper in history and the related social sciences, of a spirit of inquiry and a willingness to face unpleasant facts, are far more important objectives than the teaching of special interpretations of particular events;—and that attempts, however well meant, to foster national arrogance and boastfulness and indiscriminate worship of national ‘heroes’ can only tend to promote a harmful pseudo-patriotism; and

“Be it further resolved, that in the opinion of this Association the clearly implied charges that many of our leading scholars are engaged in treasonable propaganda and that tens of thousands of American school teachers and officials are so stupid or disloyal as to place treasonable text-books in the hands of children is inherently and obviously absurd;—and

“Be it further resolved, that the successful continuance of such an agitation must inevitably bring about a ruinous deterioration both of text-books and of teaching, since self-respecting scholars and teachers will not stoop to the methods advocated.”913

The sentiment of other educators is much the same as that of writers of history and the history teacher. Professor William C. Bagley has declared that “an official public or governmental censorship over history text-books would be a calamity of the first magnitude.”914 To Dean Percy R. Boynton “the hue and cry about American histories for schools is a piece of post-war hysteria.”915 In general, the attitude of educators can be summarized in the words of Dr. Payson Smith of Massachusetts: “The public school does not owe to business interests or to special interests or to labor interests of any kind that there shall be constructed in the minds of the young people attitudes and opinions designed to be definitely and specifically helpful to those interests.... It is not a legitimate part of the public school program to deal in any phase of propaganda. Let the doors of the school-house once be opened to the appeals of those who want... any subject taught from the special viewpoint of a group of people and they must remain open until the schools will be so crowded with the teachings of the propagandists that there will be no time or opportunity left for doing the work which is the primary responsibility of the schools.”916

Footnotes

411 Stephens, H. Morse, “Nationality and History,” The American Historical Review, Vol. XXI (January, 1916), pp. 225-237.

412 “Our School Books,” De Bow’s Review, Vol. XXVIII (1860), p. 435 et seq.

413 Ibid., p. 439.

414 Ibid., p. 437.

415 The United States Telegraph, October 5, 1836, in which appeared Duff Green’s prospectus for the American Literary Company, which was to have a capital of $500,000 to print the Telegraph, manufacture paper, publish books, prepare a new series of elementary school textbooks, elevate the general standing of literature, and “render the South independent of Northern fanatics.”

416 De Bow’s Review, Vol. XVIII (1855), pp. 660-661.

417 De Bow’s Review, Vol. XXVIII (1860), p. 435 et seq.

418 “Southern School Books,” De Bow’s Review, Vol. XIII (1852), pp. 258-266.

419 Ibid., p. 265.

420 Ibid., Vol. XV (1853), p. 268.

421 Ibid., Vol. XVII (1854), p. 508.

422 Ibid.

423 Ibid., Vol. XXI (1856), p. 553.

424 Ibid., Vol. XXII (1857), p. 104. Committee was composed of J. D. S. De Bow, of Louisiana; H. Gourdin, of South Carolina; and D. McRae, of North Carolina.

425 Ibid.

426 Ibid.

427 Ibid., Vol. XXV (1856), p. 117. Article on “Southern School Books.”

428 Ibid., p. 597.

429 Peter Parley was the pen-name of S. G. Goodrich.

430 “Education at the South,” by “A South Carolinian,” ibid., Vol. XXI (1856), pp. 651-652. Peter Parley’s (Goodrich’s) Pictorial History of the United States was also criticized. Ibid., p. 657.

431 Ibid., Vol. XXIX (1860), p. 219.

432 Ibid., Vol. XVIII (1855), p. 661.

433 Ibid., p. 663.

434 Ibid., Vol. XXI (1856), p. 653.

435 Ibid., p. 653. The italics are supplied by the transcriber.

436 Ibid., Vol. XXII (1857), P. 557. Criticism of Willson’s Outlines of History and his American History.

437 Ibid., Vol. XXVIII (1860), p. 438. “Our School Books.”

438 Ibid., Vol. XXII (1857), p. 557. Again in an article on “Southern School Books,” Vol. XXV (1858), p. 117. Geographies and readers received similar criticism, because they, too, contained “invidious” comparisons or sought to “inculcate improper precepts” in the minds of the children on the subject of slavery. In 1868 Willson’s Intermediate Readers were condemned because the fourth of the series declared: “The Great Rebellion was a war set on foot for the purpose of destroying the government of the United States.”

439 Russell, William Howard, My Diary North and South (Boston, 1863), p. 25. “Mr. Appleton sells no less than one million and a half of Webster’s spelling-books a year; his tables are covered with a flood of pamphlets, some for, others against coercion; some for, others opposed to slavery,—but when I asked for a single solid, substantial work on the present difficulty, I was told there was not one published worth a cent.”

440 Acts of Louisiana, 1859, No. 244, p. 190.

441 Minutes of the Third Annual Meeting and Reunion of the Confederate Veterans... 1892, pp. 98-99.

442 Minutes of the Fourth Annual Meeting and Reunion of the United Confederate Veterans... 1894, pp. 3-12.

443 Ibid.

444 Ibid. The meeting of the Veterans was at Birmingham, Alabama.

445 Minutes of the Fifth Annual Meeting and Reunion of the Confederate Veterans... 1895, p. 13.

446 Ibid., p. 15. The Committee of 1895 added to the list of acceptable textbooks drawn up in 1894 the History of the United States by Susan P. Lee.

447 In the meeting held in 1896 the following histories received endorsement: School History of the United States, by J. William Jones, D. D. of Virginia, Brief History of the United States, by Susan Pendleton Lee of Virginia, Our Country, A History of the States, by Oscar H. Cooper and others of Texas. Minutes... of the United Confederate Veterans,... 1896, pp. 28-50.

448 Minutes... of the United Confederate Veterans... 1897, p. 49. See also Journal... of the Grand Army of the Republic... 1897, p. 233. The activities of the G. A. R. are discussed later.

449 Minutes... of the United Confederate Veterans..., op. cit., p. 46.

450 Ibid.

451 Minutes... of the United Confederate Veterans... 1898, p. 87.

452 Ibid., pp. 44-52.

453 Ibid.

454 Ibid.

455 Minutes... of the Confederate Veterans... 1898, pp. 144-154.

456 Ibid., p. 147.

457 Ibid., p. 152.

458 Ibid.

459 Minutes... of the Confederate Veterans... 1900, pp. 78, 80.

460 Minutes... of the Confederate Veterans... 1902, pp. 54-59. The Report of 1901 pointed out that “one of the most favorable omens of our times is the catholicity with which thoughtful men, both North and South, now speak and write of the issues of the war between the States.” Minutes... of the Confederate Veterans... 1901, p. 61. A similar sentiment was expressed at the Reunion of 1904. Minutes... of the Confederate Veterans... 1904, pp. 32-33.

461 Minutes... of the Confederate Veterans... 1909, pp. 30-38.

462 Minutes... of the Confederate Veterans... 1910, p. 101.

463 Minutes... of the Confederate Veterans... 1903, p. 164. The Southerners felt that Northern histories failed to recognize any successes of the Confederate forces. The objectionable points in Stratton’s book were found on pages 257-258, according to the Minutes.

464 Minutes... of the Confederate Veterans... 1911, p. 11.

465 Ibid.

466 Ibid. This appeared in large black-faced type in the Report.

467 Ibid., p. 12.

468 Ibid., p. 13.

469 Ibid.

470 Ibid.

471 Ibid.

472 Reunion of the United Confederate Veterans Proceedings of the Twenty-Seventh Annual Reunion.

473 Minutes... United Confederate Veterans, 1921, p. 11. Report of the Rutherford Committee, October 24, 1921, C. Irvine Walker, general chairman.

474 The New York Times, June 21, 1922. Miss Rutherford’s ideas had been endorsed by the United Confederate Veterans in Atlanta, October 7-11, 1919. See A Measuring Rod for Text-Books prepared by Miss Rutherford (Athens, Georgia). This pamphlet sought to establish some of the facts later brought out in Truths of History.

475 Ibid.

476 Chicago Daily Tribune, June 23, 1922, editorial.

477 The New York Times, June 23, 1922, editorial. The Times felt that “quite the gravest of Miss Rutherford’s charges against Lincoln,... is that he wanted a civil war and forced the South to begin one that inevitably would end in her defeat and ruin.” Objection was also raised to Miss Rutherford’s charge that Lincoln’s Gettysburg address was worthless. Rutherford, Mildred, Truths of History (Athens, Georgia, 1921).

478 The New York Times, June 28, 1922.

479 Ibid., June 24, 1922.

480 Ibid., November 4, 1922.

481 Written in 1917 and sent to Miss Rutherford who added to the contents and produced her Truths of History.

482 Rutherford, op. cit.

483 Ibid., p. 64. Miss Rutherford gave no source for this quotation.

484 Ibid., p. 70. Miss Rutherford ascribed this quotation to Lamon’s Life of Lincoln.

485 Ibid., from Lamon’s Life of Lincoln.

486 Ibid., pp. 77-78. Quoted from Charles Francis Adams, Lamon’s Recollections of Lincoln, Mr. Everett, and Mr. Seward.

487 Ibid., p. 71.

488 Ibid., p. 57.

489 Ibid., p. 1.

490 Ibid., p. 11.

491 Ibid.

492 Ibid.

493 Ibid., p. v.

494 Davidson, William M., History of the United States (Chicago, 1903); Montgomery, David, The Beginner’s American History (Boston, 1899, 1920); Muzzey, D. S., An American History (Boston, 1920).

495 Rutherford, op. cit., p. 104.

496 Ibid., p. 110. This quotation from Muzzey’s is incorrect in Truths of History. Muzzey, eulogizing the Southern women, adds this statement: “It is impossible for the student of history today to feel otherwise than that the victory of the South in 1861-1865 would have been a calamity for every section of our country. But the indomitable valor and utter self-sacrifice with which the South defended her cause both at home and in the field must always arouse our admiration.” Muzzey, An American History, pp. 372-373.

497 Rutherford, op. cit., p. 104. In her chapter entitled “Reconstruction was not just to the South. This injustice made the Ku Klux Klan a necessity,” Miss Rutherford, pursuing a policy peculiarly inharmonious for a writer of Truths of History, allowed herself again to become negligent as to the accuracy of her quotations. Citing Muzzey as one authority for the title of her chapter, she ascribed the following statement to him: “The rules of these negro governments of 1868 was an indescribable orgy of extravagance, fraud and disgusting incompetence—a travesty on government. Unprincipled politicians dominated the States’ government and plunged the States further and further into debt by voting themselves enormous salaries, and reaping in many ways hundreds of thousands of dollars in graft. In South Carolina $200,000 were spent in furnishing the State Capitol with costly plate glass mirrors, lounges, armchairs, a free bar and other luxurious appointments for the use of the negro and scalawag legislators. It took the South nine years to get rid of these governments.” In reading Muzzey’s book, the reader cannot but wonder at the reason for the inaccuracy of the quotation, for precisely the same end would have been accomplished had Miss Rutherford quoted verbatim: “The Reconstruction governments of the South were sorry affairs. For the exhausted states, already amply ’punished’ by the desolation of war, the rule of the negro and his unscrupulous carpetbagger patron was an indescribable orgy of extravagance, fraud, and disgusting incompetence,—a travesty on government. Instead of seeking to build up the shattered resources of the South by economy and industry, the new legislators plunged the states further and further into debt by voting themselves enormous salaries and by spending lavish sums of money on railroads, canals, and public buildings and works, for which they reaped hundreds of thousands of dollars in graft.” In a footnote Muzzey adds the following from which Miss Rutherford has culled the idea for part of her quotation: “The economic evils and social humiliation brought on the South by the Reconstruction governments are almost beyond description. South Carolina, for example, had a legislature in which 98 of the 155 members were negroes...; in one year $200,000 was spent in furnishing the state capitol with costly plate-glass mirrors, lounges, desks, armchairs, and other luxurious appointments, including a free bar for the use of the negro and scalawag legislators. It took the Southern states from two to nine years to get rid of these governments.” See Rutherford, op. cit., p. 87; Muzzey, op. cit., pp. 387-388.

498 Horton, Rushmore G., A Youth’s History of the Great Civil War in the United States from 1861-1865 (New York, 1866).

499 Lee, New School History of the United States, p. 261.

500 Ibid., p. 357.

501 Evans, Lawton B., The Essential Facts of American History (Benjamin H. Sanborn and Company, 1920); Evans is from Augusta, Georgia. Thompson, Waddy, History of the People of the United States (D. C. Heath and Co., 1919); Chambers, Henry Edward, A School History of the United States (American Book Co., 1895); Stephenson, Nathaniel Wright, An American History (Ginn and Co., 1913, 1921); Estill, Harry F., The Beginner’s History of Our Country (Southern Publishing Co., Dallas, Texas, 1919).

502 Alabama, James and Sanford’s American History; Arkansas, Evans’ The Essential Facts of American History; Florida, Stephenson’s An American History; Georgia, Evans’ First Lessons in American History and Evans’ Essential Facts of Lessons in American History; Louisiana, Estill’s Beginner’s History of Our Country, Evans’ Essential Facts of American History and Stephenson’s An American History; Mississippi, Estill’s Beginner’s History of Our Country and Mace-Petrie’s History of the People of the United States; Texas, Cousin and Hill’s American History; Virginia, Andrew’s United States History. These data were secured from a questionnaire. North Carolina reported state adopted textbooks but did not name them; South Carolina failed to report.

503 Evans, The Essential Facts of American History, p. 364.

504 Stephenson, An American History, p. 399.

505 Ibid., p. 486. However cf. Muzzey, op. cit., p. 387 et seq.; Guitteau, William S., Our United States (Boston, 1919), p. 47 et seq.; West, Willis M., American History and Government (Boston, 1913), p. 627.

506 Journal of the Twenty-Second Annual... Encampment Grand Army of the Republic, 1888, pp. 210-217. The U. C. V. Committee first reported in 1894, no reunion being held in 1893.

507 Journal... op. cit., p. 210.

508 Ibid.

509 Ibid.

510 Ibid.

511 Ibid., pp. 212-213. Criticism of a history “By J. S. Blackburn, Principal of the Potomac Academy, Alexandria, Virginia, and W. N. McDonald, A. M., Principal of the Male High School, Louisville, Kentucky, Twelfth Edition Revised.”

512 Ibid.

513 Ibid., p. 215.

514 Journal of the Twenty-Sixth National Encampment Grand Army of the Republic... 1892, p. 207.

515 Journal of the Twenty-Ninth National Encampment Grand Army of the Republic,... 1895, p. 230.

516 Ibid., p. 331. Montgomery’s books were disapproved by the South. Cf. page 159.

517 Journal of the Thirty-First National Encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic... 1897, p. 233. This book was endorsed by the Confederate Veterans in 1896, but the author’s name is given as J. W. Jones. Minutes... of the Reunion of Confederate Veterans... 1898, p. 31.

518 Journal, op. cit.

519 Ibid., p. 234.

520 Ibid.

521 Ibid.

522 Ibid. The books in which the quotations appeared were not named.

523 Ibid.

524 Ibid.

525 Ibid., p. 238.

526 Journal of the Thirty-Second National Encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic... 1898, p. 192.

527 Ibid., p. 194.

528 Journal of the Thirty-Third National Encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic... 1899, pp. 244-246. The textbook was not named.

529 Ibid.

530 Ibid.

531 Journal of the Thirty-Fourth National Encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic... 1900, p. 145.

532 Journal of the Thirty-Eighth National Encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic... 1904, pp. 244-246.

533 Journal of the Forty-First National Encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic... 1907, p. 173.

534 Journal of the Forty-Third National Encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic... 1909, p. 164. The list included McLaughlin’s History of the American Nation, Montgomery’s Leading Facts of American History, Mace’s School History of the United States, McMaster’s History of the United States, Gordy’s History of the United States, Eggleston’s “History,” Johnson’s “History,” Barnes’ “History,” Fiske’s “History,” Scudder’s “History,” Anderson’s “History,” and in the South “Waddy Thompson’s United States History, revised and improved by the late General John B. Gordon.”

535 Journal of the Forty-Fourth National Encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic... 1910, p. 219. The Phil Sheridan Post No. 4, G. A. R., joined with the Sons of the American Revolution in 1922 in an effort to eliminate West’s History of the American People from the acceptable textbooks of the Boise, Idaho, schools. In addition to criticisms regarding West’s discussion of the American Revolution and the War of 1812, the Veterans objected to the treatment of the Civil War period. See p. 265 and the Idaho Statesman, December 9, 1922.

536 The controversy related to Public School Number 5. The Public School Society was organized in 1805 and gradually extended its activities until 1853, when it gave its buildings and property to the City Board of Education. See Bourne, William Oland, History of the Public School Society of the City of New York (New York, 1870), p. 324 et seq.

537 Ibid., p. 324. No action was taken at that time, but a Roman Catholic teacher was employed for Public School Number 5.

538 Ibid., p. 325.

539 Ibid., p. 328.

540 Ibid.

541 Ibid., p. 331.

542 Ibid.

543 Ibid., p. 342.

544 Deshon, George, “A Novel Defence of the Public School,” The Catholic World, Vol. L (February, 1890), pp. 677-687.

545 Ibid.

546 Hamilton, Gail, “Catholicism and Public Schools,” North American Review, Vol. CXLVII (1888), pp. 572-580.

547 Ibid.

548 “The Anti-Catholic Spirit of Certain Writers,” The Catholic World, Vol. XXXVI (February, 1883), pp. 658-667.

549 Deshon, loc. cit.

550 Hamilton, loc. cit.

551 In 1815 there were “about 70,000 Catholics to be found in the United States,.... In 1918,... its Catholic population had increased to 17,416,303,....” McCarthy, Charles H., The History of the United States for Catholic Schools (New York, 1919), p. 421.

552 McCarthy, Charles H., The History of the United States for Catholic Schools (American Book Co., 1919); O’Hara, John P., A History of the United States (The Macmillan Company, 1919); A History of the United States for Catholic Schools prepared and arranged by the Franciscan Sisters of the Perpetual Adoration (Scott, Foresman and Company, 1914); Lawler, Thomas B., Essentials of American History (Ginn and Company, 1918); Betten, Francis S., The Ancient World (Allyn and Bacon, 1916); Betten, Francis S., and Kaufman, Alfred, The Modern World (Allyn and Bacon, 1919); Burke, E. J., Political Economy, designed for use in Catholic Colleges, High Schools and Academies (American Book Company, 1913).

553 McCarthy, op. cit., preface, p. iii. Professor McCarthy is Knights of Columbus Professor of American History at the Catholic University of America.

554 Ibid., preface, p. iv.

555 The Franciscan Sisters of the Perpetual Adoration, A History of the United States for Catholic Schools (Chicago, 1914), pp. 3-4.

556 Ibid., pp. 5-6.

557 Betten, The Ancient World, preface.

558 “This much maligned priest [John Tetzel], personally of blameless character, undoubtedly went too far in his endeavors to procure financial success. He insisted indeed on the necessity of contrition and confession for all those who wished to obtain the remission of temporal punishment for themselves; but his teaching concerning the indulgence for the dead was not free from serious errors. To secure this benefit for a soul which has, of course, departed this life in the state of grace, nothing, according to him, is required but the alms. This doctrine, though at his time actually taught by some irresponsible preachers, has never been supported by ecclesiastical authority. Tetzel’s own brethren in religion openly reproached him for his ill-advised tactics, which soon became the talk of the whole country.” Betten and Kaufman, The Modern World, p. 376.

559 “At least he [Martin Luther] imagined that he had made the discovery that the doctrine of the Church concerning the remission of sins was altogether wrong. He thereby implied that Christ, contrary to His solemn promise, had allowed the Church to fall into a most disastrous error. The new system, which gradually developed in Luther’s mind, confused the nature of sin with concupiscence, which is a consequence of original sin, and while it makes man inclined to sin is no sin in itself. By the sin of Adam, he thought human nature was corrupted beyond recovery; man’s acts can only be bad; but Jesus Christ covers the soul with His infinite merits, which, as it were, conceal all trespasses from the eye of the just God; if sinful man expresses his firm ‘belief’ in this merciful dispensation, God will not punish him, though the sin is not taken away, but merely covered; the sinner therefore remains a sinner;.... It is evident that such a justification is no justification at all, and it will always remain a riddle how Luther could maintain that he had found such a monstrous doctrine in the Bible.” Ibid., pp. 377-378.

560 “The causes of the social evils are not only economic, but moral and religious as well. It is true that present economic conditions are far from satisfactory. Though production, on account of the introduction of machinery, has increased enormously, wages have not kept pace with that increase.... But the moral and religious causes are not to be overlooked. The breaking loose from practical Christianity, so characteristic of the last two centuries, has developed an intense selfishness, a struggle for wealth in which each one seeks his own material advantage at the expense of his neighbor.... What, then, are the remedies proposed by Catholics? Certainly not the adoption of Socialist views.... The Socialists deliberately ignore, yea exclude, religion from coöperation in the solution of the great social problem. They forget that man’s happiness here below is not his ultimate end, that the Creator did not want equal wealth and equal material advantages for all.... The state having at heart the temporal welfare of its citizens, should by wise legislation protect the workers, their health, and morals, and that of their family. But the change of hearts which is so necessary for the cure of modern evils is the principal task of religion. Hence the Church should be free to carry out her mission.” Ibid., pp. 630-641.

561 Burke, E. J., Political Economy designed for use in Catholic Colleges, High Schools, and Academies (New York, 1913), p. 1. According to Bullock’s Elements of Economics, one textbook used in the public schools, “Economics is the science which deals with the efforts of mankind to secure the material commodities and personal services which are needed to support life and to make a civilized existence possible.” Bullock, Charles J., Elements of Economics (Boston, 1913), p. 4.

562 Burke, op. cit., p. 57.

563 Burke, op. cit., p. 386. Although “followers of the Catholic School do not deny that much of the evil existing in society is due to defective methods of distribution, they suggest no such drastic action as the Socialists.... They appeal to the influence of the Church’s teaching and the power of Christian doctrine to bring about a spirit of charity and justice in the mutual dealings of capitalists and labor.” Ibid., p. 392.

564 Advertising pamphlet entitled “The Hospitality given Father Burke’s Political Economy.”

565 Ibid., p. 6.

566 Ibid.

567 Ibid., p. 4.

568 Hassard, John R. G., A History of the United States of America (New York, 1878), p. vi.

569 Ibid.
The National Lutheran Council had, in 1923, a committee on history textbooks, whose purpose was to make known any “flagrant or actual misrepresentations” of their church in history textbooks used in the United States. Letter from Lauritz Larsen, President of the National Lutheran Council to the author under date of January 13, 1923. No report of the committee was given. The writer of the letter also stated that there had been no “organized effort to suggest the content of history textbooks in the public schools, not even as this might pertain to the teaching of the history of the Reformation in the public schools.”
According to Werner, Brigham Young “insisted that the school-books should be published in Utah, and written there if possible, rather than imported at unnecessary expense from the East. The teachers, too, he wrote should be Latter-day Saints, so that the children might learn only what they ought to know.” Werner, M. R., Brigham Young (New York, 1925), p. 451.

570 Sweet, W. W., “Religion in Our School Histories,” The Christian Century, Vol. XLI (November 20, 1924), pp. 1502-1504.

571 The textbook is not named in the article.

572 The title of this book is not given in the article but such a statement appears in A History of the United States by the Franciscan Sisters of the Perpetual Adoration, p. 68.

573 Ibid.

574 Report of the American Bar Association, Vol. XLVII (1922), pp. 416-423.

575 Ibid.

576 Report of the American Bar Association, Vol. XLVIII (1923), pp. 442-451. The committee was composed of R. E. L. Saner, chairman, Walter George Smith, Andrew A. Brice, Wallace McCamant, John Ford O’Brien.

577 Report of the American Bar Association, Vol. XLIX (1924), pp. 255-269.

578 Ibid. Chapter IV discusses laws since 1917.

579 Ibid.

580 Ibid. The Reports of 1923 and 1924 are similar.

581 Ibid., pp. 262-263.

582 Ibid., p. 271. The entire creed appears in the Appendix.

583 Printed statement from the National Security League, 25 West 43d Street, New York.

584 For the statement of the American Bar Association as to their activities see page 187.

585 Ibid.

586 The National Security League, “Report to Members for the Month Ending May 15, 1925.”

587 Printed statement quoted previously.

588 Ibid.

589 The National Security League, “Report to Members for the Month Ending May 15, 1925.”

590 Ibid., October 15, 1925.

591 Ibid., May 15, 1925.

592 Printed statement quoted previously.

593 The National Security League, “Report to Members for the Month Ending November 15, 1925.”

594 Constitution Anniversary Association, “A Statement of the Expanding Activities.”

595 Ibid.

596 Ibid.

597 Constitution Anniversary Association, “Bulletin Number 10.”

598 Ibid.

599 Constitution Anniversary Association, “Bulletin Number 9.” The first prize in the Second Annual Contest was $2000, and was awarded to Robert Sessions of Birmingham, Alabama, a boy of fifteen years. See Constitution Anniversary Association, “Bulletin Number 10.”

600 Atwood, Harry F., Back to the Republic, the Golden Mean: the Standard Form of Government (Chicago, 1918), p. 20. The italics are in the original.

601 Ibid., pp. 36-40. Mr. Atwood draws ten parallels to autocracy, democracy and the republic from religion, domestic life, food, drink, music, thought, sleep, light, moisture, and the number of wheels most serviceable on vehicles.

602 Atwood, Harry F., Safeguarding American Ideals (Chicago, 1921), p. 34.

603 Ibid., pp. 29-32.

604 Ibid.

605 Clum, Woodworth, “America is Calling,” The Better America Federation of California, Los Angeles.

606 Ibid.

607 “Education for All,” Official Record of the American Federation of Labor in the Struggle to Bring Knowledge to the Masses (American Federation of Labor, Washington, 1922), p. 4.

608 Ibid.

609 Ibid.

610 Ibid., p. 5.

611 Report of the Proceedings of the Convention of the American Federation of Labor at Cincinnati, June, 1922. Eighth Day Proceedings. Report of the American Federation of Labor, Committee on Education on Social Studies in the Public Schools, “Labor and Education” (The American Federation of Labor, Washington, 1923), pp. 1-13.

612 Ibid., pp. 3-4, 7. The New York Times, August 25, 1921.

613 Report of the American Federation of Labor, op. cit., pp. 3-4, 9.

614 Ibid., p. 21.

615 Ibid., p. 23.

616 Ibid.

617 Ibid.

618 Report of Proceedings, Eighth Day (1922), p. 356.

619 Ibid. According to the Committee the “modern textbooks in most frequent use are: civics, Ashley’s The New Civics, Beard’s American Citizenship, Dunn’s The Community and the Citizen, Forman’s The American Democracy, Hill’s Community Life and Civic Problems, Hughes’ Community Civics, Magruder’s American Government in 1921, and Reed’s Forms and Functions of American Government; in economics, Burch’s American Economic Life, Burch and Patterson’s American Social Problems, Hughes’ Economic Civics, Laing’s An Introduction to Economics, Marshall and Lyon’s Our Economic Organization, and Thompson’s Elementary Economics; in sociology, Burch and Patterson’s American Social Problems, Ellwood’s Sociology and Modern Problems [sic], Towne’s Social Problems, and Tuft’s The Real Business of Living; in history, Ashley’s American History, Beard and Bagley’s A First Book in American History, Beard’s History of the United States, Bourne and Benton’s History of the United States, Cousins and Hills’ [sic] American History, Evans’ The Essential Facts of American History, Forman’s A History of the United States for Schools, and Advanced American History, James and Sanford’s American History, Mace’s School History of the United States, Muzzey’s American History, Thompson’s History of the United States, Political, Industrial and Social, and West’s History of the American People. “Labor and Education,” p. 28.

620 The New York Times, September 3, 1923.

621 Herskovitz, Melville J., and Willey, Malcolm M., “What Your Child Learns,” The Nation, Vol. CXIX (September 17, 1924), pp. 282-284. The book referred to is Berry, Margaret K., and Howe, Samuel B., Actual Democracy (New York, 1923). The quotation is found on page 63.

622 In the discussion of trade-unionism objection was raised to the classification of unions as “business unionism—which is trade conscious but not class conscious,... the friendly or uplift union which may be either trade or class conscious, and is conservative,... ‘predatory unionism’... secret, either radical or conservative, class or trade conscious, and has two wings; ‘hold-up unionism,’ the corrupt type recently exposed in our great cities, and ‘guerrilla unionism’ which never combines with employers, but engages in a secret and violent warfare with capital... a fourth and more objectionable type of unionism... calls itself ‘revolutionary unionism.’ It may be either socialistic as was the Western Federation of Miners, or anarchistic like the Industrial Workers of the World....” Berry and Howe, op. cit., pp. 73-74.

623 The Nation, loc. cit. The quotation which was objectionable to the writers of the article was found on pages 167-169 of the textbook.

624 The Nation, loc. cit. See Southworth, A. T., The Common Sense of the Constitution of the United States (Boston, 1924), pp. 91-92.

625 The Nation, loc. cit. Hughes, R. O., Text-Book in Citizenship (Boston, 1923).

626 The Nation, loc. cit.

627 The Nation, loc. cit. Hughes, op. cit., pp. 510-511.

628 The Nation, loc. cit. Hughes, op. cit., pp. 510-511.

629 Letter under date of December 7, 1925, from the editor of “Service Talks,” published by the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company. Burch, Henry Reed, American Economic Life (New York, 1921), p. 330.

630 American Bankers Association, “Books devoted wholly or in part to the subject of Banking.” The books mentioned were not all social study books, arithmetic and bookkeeping textbooks being included.

631 “Talks on Banking and Elementary Economics,” prepared by the Public Education Commission, American Bankers Association, New York.

632 Educational News and Editorial Comment, “Social Studies in Public Schools,” The School Review, Vol. XXVII (1919), pp. 205-212. National Industrial Conference Board, A Case of Federal Propaganda in Our Public Schools, pp. 4, 11. The lessons were prepared under the direction of Charles H. Judd, Director of the School of Education of the University of Chicago, and Leon C. Marshall, Dean of the School of Commerce and Administration in the same university.

633 The National Industrial Conference Board in connection with this remarked: “Such a statement indicates a studied effort to present to the immature mind an exceedingly distorted picture of factory life. It suggests an almost constant maiming and mangling of industrial workers, whereas, as a matter of fact, most industrial accidents are of a minor character such as slight cuts, scratches and slivers. Take, however, at its face value the statement that somebody is killed every fifteen minutes while at work. On the basis of a 54-hour work-week, approximately the average in this country, this means a total of 11,250 deaths in industry per year... the scholar should also be given an idea of the millions of workers to whom this total of deaths is related. He should in fairness also have pointed out to him the hazards of non-industrial pursuits which cause annually more fatal accidents than occur in industry.” The National Industrial Conference Board, op. cit., p. 11.

634 The School Review, loc. cit.

635 Quoted in The School Review, loc. cit.

636 The School Review, loc. cit. Instances of criticism of textbooks might be multiplied. Authors have met objections to their works because there were no “Republican illustrations in the book,” because of quotations from Münsterberg and other Germans, and because of the discussion devoted to prohibition. In this last case a member of the Board of Education of Chicago is reported to have criticised the use of an arithmetic as looking like “a bartender’s friend” in that it was full of problems of “how much did this wine merchant order his sherry or how many barrels of whiskey could the man purchase for such an amount.” Iowa City [Iowa] Press-Citizen, November 13, 1924.

637 In an article, “The Anger of the Anglophiles,” Edward F. McSweeney of the Knights of Columbus Historical Commission discussed the “Anglo-Saxon myth.” In his discussion he ascribes to Gibbons the point of view that an “over emphasis upon Anglo-Saxonism is positively harmful to Anglo-Saxon solidarity, that it is a stimulus to the enemies among Americans of friendship with Great Britain,” [and] “that the idea that a better understanding with Great Britain can be effected by rewriting our history textbooks be abandoned.” Gibbons, however, points out means of bringing about “the better understanding” by “creating an irresistible public opinion.” Columbia, April, 1922, p. 10.

638 Hart, Albert Bushnell, School Books and International Prejudices (International Conciliation Bulletin, January, 1911, No. 32). Professor Hart points out that a more favorable attitude toward Great Britain developed in the United States about the time of the Spanish-American War, and urges that the American Revolution be taught American and British youth as “a deep and broad Anglo-Saxon movement in which both sides had some rights and both had some wrong.”

639 A study of the presentation of the American Revolution in history textbooks was made by Charles Altschul in 1917. See Altschul, Charles, The American Revolution in Our School Text-Books (New York, 1917). Also see Wister, Owen, A Straight Deal or the Ancient Grudge (New York, 1920).

640 Russell, Charles Edward, “Behind the Propaganda Scenes,” Columbia, September, 1922, p. 5 et seq. Mr. Russell declares that the undertaking was financed by Andrew Carnegie.

641 William Allen Neilson, president of Smith College, in an address before the English-Speaking Union, May 16, 1920. The Christian Science Monitor, May 17, 1920; also Bulletin No. 7, June, 1923, of the English-Speaking Union (345 Madison Avenue, New York). Agencies for Anglo-American friendship assert they have made no attempts to combat present-day efforts of anti-English groups. (Letters to the author under date of June 26, 1923, from the Secretary of the Sulgrave Institution, and under date of July 6, 1923, from the Secretary of the English-Speaking Union.)

642 Eagleton, Clyde, “The Attitude of Our Textbooks Toward England,” Educational Review, Vol. LVI (December, 1918), pp. 424-429.

643 Schuyler, Robert Livingston, “History and Public Opinion,” Educational Review, Vol. LV (March, 1918), pp. 181-190.

644 Chicago Herald and Examiner, July 3, 1921.

645 In Chicago Herald and Examiner, July 3, 1921, and October 15, 1922. The latter was not the last article written, however.

646 Ibid., January 14, 1923.

647 Ibid., July 3, 1921. In O’Hara’s History of the United States, thirteen lines are given to Patrick Henry’s opposition to the Stamp Act, over four of which are devoted to the words by Henry: “‘Tarquin and Caesar each had his Brutus; Charles I his Cromwell; and George III—(here cries of “Treason! Treason!” from the Speaker and others were heard)—may profit by their example. If this be treason make the most of it.’” pp. 124-125. On the other hand, six lines are allotted to a discussion of Pitt’s reaction toward the repeal of the Stamp Act, and approximately three lines to direct quotation from him. (“When the question of repeal came up in the House of Commons, Pitt ‘rejoiced that America had resisted.’ He was glad that Americans were not ‘so dead to all the feelings of liberty as voluntarily to submit to be slaves.’”) p. 126. (O’Hara, John P., History of the United States, New York, 1919). There has been only one edition of this history textbook.

648 Ibid.

649 Ibid., July 17, 1921.

650 Ibid.

651 Ibid.

652 Ibid.

653 Ibid.

654 Ibid., July 24, 1921. The article is entitled “Declaration of Independence is Censored: England’s Guilt for Revolution Disputed in New United States Histories.”

655 Ibid. This characterization of the colonials as “ignorant and superstitious” is in a chapter devoted to “Life in the Colonies” in which are discussed, among other things, “Colonial Ignorance and Superstition” and “The Salem Witchcraft.” In the paragraph on “Colonial Ignorance and Superstition,” the following sentence is indicative of the trend: “Hornets were thought to come from the decaying bodies of horses, and honey bees from cattle.” The quotation regarding Henry is as follows: “... Patrick Henry, a gay, unprosperous, and hitherto unknown country lawyer, who made his reputation by declaring with marvelous eloquence that there was a limit to the legal control which the King might exert over Colonial law-making,” page 141. McLaughlin, Andrew C., and Van Tyne, Claude Halstead, A History of the United States for Schools (New York, 1911).

656 Ibid. In the 1911 edition of McLaughlin and Van Tyne’s textbook, “We have met the enemy and they are ours” appears on page 247. The quotation “Don’t give up the ship” is on page 248, but a footnote suggests that Lawrence’s real words seem to have been, “Fight the ship until she is sunk,” while those usually given are the words of the boy who took the message on deck.

657 The New York Times, September 28, 1921.

658 Ibid.

659 Chicago Herald and Examiner, November 20, 1921.

660 Ibid.

661 Ibid.

662 Ibid. Mr. Miller quotes thus: “France shut her eyes when some gallant French officers, especially Marquis De Lafayette and Baron De Kalb, went to America as volunteers, p. 136.” In Professor Hart’s book the quotation is as follows: “Agents were sent to Paris to ask help; the French secretly gave them military supplies and money and shut their eyes when some gallant young French officers, especially Marquis de Lafayette and De Kalb, went to America as volunteers.” (Hart, Albert Bushnell, School History of the United States, New York, 1920, p. 136.)

663 Ibid.

664 Chicago Herald and Examiner, May 14, 1922. Letter from William E. Borah to P. B. Arnell, Manager Oregon Teacher’s Monthly, Salem, Oregon.

665 Ibid.

666 Ibid.

667 Chicago Herald and Examiner, May 21, 1922.

668 Ibid.

669 Ibid.

670 Ibid.

671 Ibid., September 10, 1922.

672 Ibid.

673 Ibid.

674 Ibid.

675 Ibid.

676 Ibid.

677 Ibid.

678 Greg, Percy, History of the United States from the Foundation of Virginia to the Reconstruction of the Union. 2 v. (London, 1887), Vol. I, p. 134.

679 Ibid., pp. 165, 168.

680 Chicago Herald and Examiner, October 15, 1922.

681 Ibid. According to a pamphlet of the English-Speaking Union “it is an organization based on individual membership, and is non-political and non-sectarian. It aims at no alliance, and is not connected with governments. It takes for granted that the growth of friendship between English-speaking peoples in no way implies or produces unfriendly relations between English-speaking peoples and those of other lands and tongues.”

682 Ibid.

683 Ibid.

684 Ibid.

685 Ibid.

686 Ibid.

687 Chicago Herald and Examiner, January 14, 1923. This article names others than educators as open to the charges of “Anglicization.” Among these are Rev. Dr. James E. Barton, George E. Roberts, a Magna Charta Day Committeeman, vice-president and publicity manager of the National City Bank, New York and “propaganda expert of the International Banking Corporation,” who, with “Henry S. Pritchett, president of the Carnegie Foundation, conducts a correspondence school in ‘Economics for Business Executives,’ another spacious channel for special privilege.”

688 Ibid. Edwin Greenlaw’s book, Problems of Democracy, was condemned also by Mr. Miller. It is not a history textbook, however.

689 Ibid.

690 The New York American, November 4, 1923. The article for which apology was offered appeared in the issue of April 1, 1923, under the caption of “U. S. Histories made up of British Slanders.” The article criticized certain characterizations of heroic characters in American history as: “Englishmen of that day believed sincerely that the Revolution was the work of a group of ‘soreheads.’ George Washington, as a youth, had been refused a coveted commission in the British Army. Sam Adams’ father had been ruined by the wise British veto of a Massachusetts ‘Land Bank.’ The older Otis had failed to secure an appointment on the Massachusetts bench. Alexander Hamilton was a penniless and briefless law student with no chance for special advancement unless by fishing in troubled water.” The statement of the American follows in part: “The fact is, that the paragraph referred to immediately preceded the following qualifying paragraph: ‘All this of course as an explanation of the part played by Washington, Adams, Otis and Hamilton, was as absurd as was the view of many Americans that high-minded men like Chief Justice Oliver and Governor Hutchinson of Massachusetts were loyalists simply to cling to office and salary. But had the British charge been true, what greater condemnation could be devised for the old colonial system than that under it George Washington could not get a petty lieutenant’s appointment and that a genius like Hamilton had practically no chance for advancement unless taken up by some great gentlemen.’” West, Willis Mason, History of the American People (Boston, 1918).

691 Chicago Herald and Examiner, April 20, 1924. According to Mr. Miller the McLaughlin and Van Tyne textbook, among other “corrections” made, included in the latest edition “Nathan Hale, who had been omitted entirely... as one who ‘risked all for his country’s cause.’” These authors also have, according to Mr. Miller, “improved the picture of Patrick Henry” by describing him thus: “A hitherto unknown country lawyer, but a sincere lover of liberty.” “Such corrections and many others in this one book and all the innumerable corrections that have been made in five other texts can have but one significance,” concluded Mr. Miller. “The Anglicized authors have come to realize that the American people will not tolerate Anglicized histories in our public schools.”

692 Bulletin of the Patriot League (Charles Grant Miller, Organizing Director, Rosebank, New York City, 1922).

693 Ibid.

694 Ibid.

695 Miller, Charles Grant, Treason to American Tradition (New York), p. 6. The books by Ward and Greenlaw are literature textbooks. West’s History of the American People was attacked on much the same basis as other histories in the Chicago Herald and Examiner, March 5, 1922.

696 The New York Times, November 26, 1921. Editorial “Appealing Now to Teachers.” The editorial first discussed the mailing of the pamphlet to many teachers in New York’s public schools.

697 Griffin, Joseph T., American History Must It Be Rewritten to Preserve Our Foreign Friendships? (Knights of Columbus Historical Commission, Boston, 1922), p. 4.

698 Ibid., p. 3.

699 McSweeney, Edward F., America First (Boston, Mass.).

700 Ibid., p. 4-5.

701 Ibid., p. 5. He cites Hosmer, Samuel Adams, p. 263.

702 Ibid., pp. 5-6.

703 Ibid., p. 5.

704 Ibid., pp. 6-7.

705 These men, with the exception possibly of one, have written no history textbooks although they may have written books and articles for the general reader favorable to an Anglo-American understanding.

706 Ibid., p. 9. Quoted from The [London] Times, July 4, 1919. Many of the “reformed” school-books, according to Mr. McSweeney, attempt to picture George III as a German monarch, and “consequently the fight of the colonials was against Germany,” thereby leaving an erroneous impression. Ibid., p. 10.

707 Ibid., pp. 11-12.

708 Ibid., p. 12.

709 Ibid., pp. 12-13.

710 O’Brien, Michael J., A Hidden Phase of American History. Published by Dodd, Mead and Company, 1919.

711 O’Brien, op. cit. The chapters are entitled: Attitude of the People of Ireland toward the American Colonists, Benjamin Franklin’s Visits to Ireland, Irish Sympathy for the Revolting Colonies, Efforts to Conciliate the Irish Catholics, History by Suppression, Ireland’s Share in America’s Fight for Freedom, False Statements Refuted, Irish Names in American Muster-Rolls, The Friendly Sons of Saint Patrick, “The Line of Ireland,” More History by Suppression, Marion, Lacey, and McClure, Irishmen Flock to the Standard of Washington, Irish Immigration Prior to the Revolution, Vast Irish Immigrations to Pennsylvania, The “Scotch-Irish” Myth, Early Irish Settlements in New York, The “Irish Donation,” Early Irish Settlers in Virginia, More Light on the “Scotch-Irish” Myth, Early Irish Settlers in the Carolinas, Pre-Revolutionary Irish in Georgia, The First Census of the United States, America’s Debt to Ireland. The obscurity which envelops the Irish in American history, Mr. O’Brien believes, is because of the “premeditated suppression of facts” due to the influence of the “Anglo-Saxon cult.” Ibid., pp. 241-242.

712 McClure, S. S., “Some Delusions about Ireland,” McClure’s Magazine, Vol. LII (June, 1922), pp. 93-103. Quoted from the Irish World, August 23, 1919.

713 Reddin, John H., “The American History Contest,” Columbia, September, 1921, p. 12.

714 The New York Times, May 29, 1921.

715 The New York Times, August 1, 1921.

716 Ibid., August 4, 1921. Remarks of Supreme Master John H. Reddin, of Denver. According to Charles Grant Miller, the Knights of Columbus took the matter up after “my first series of exposures of Anglicized alteration” proposing “to produce a new school history.” Opposition led them “to withdraw from this project,” but to issue “historical brochures to the general public.” Letter, under date of November 23, 1922, from C. G. Miller to the author.

717 The New York Times, September 8, 1921. According to the Times other members of the Commission besides McSweeney, who were present at the meeting, were Rear Admiral William Benson, Maurice Francis Egan, Professor George Derry of Union College, and Professor Charles H. McCarthy of the Catholic University of America. All signed the statement, the Times reported. A trustworthy Catholic authority informed the author that Henry Jones Ford of Princeton and Hannis Taylor, former minister to Spain, were on the Commission. At Taylor’s death Dr. Dunne succeeded. Egan early resigned, it is said, due to his fear of anti-British tendencies.

718 Chicago Herald and Examiner, January 1, 1922. The amount of the first prize was $2500, according to an announcement in Columbia, September, 1921, p. 12. This prize was awarded to Samuel F. Bemis, a Protestant, of Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington. According to The Fortnightly Review this work was not inspired by the Commission, for “it was practically completed when the prize was announced and would have been published this year anyhow.” The Review also states that it was “the only scientific study submitted.” The Fortnightly Review, Vol. XXX (November 1, 1923), p. 422.

719 McSweeney, Edward F., “The Anger of the Anglophiles,” Columbia, April 1, 1922, p. 10.

720 Ibid.

721 “The K. of C. Historical Commission,” The Fortnightly Review, Vol. XXX (December 1, 1923), pp. 457-458. The Commission is reported to have spent between $80,000 and $90,000.

722 According to a reputable Catholic authority, Mr. McSweeney’s salary was $12,000 and expenses.

723 The Fortnightly Review, loc. cit. The writer of the article was of the opinion that “with Catholic laymen filling chairs of history and political science at Harvard, Columbia, Bryn Mawr, the Catholic University, and elsewhere, and with other Catholics engaged in library and archival work of importance, it is small wonder that the Commission, containing the name of but one engaged in the profession of history, failed to win the confidence of those interested in history.”

724 Ibid.

725 Hart, Albert Bushnell, op. cit., p. 120.

726 Ibid., p. 126.

727 Ibid., p. 145. These attacks are found in Griffin, op. cit.

728 Griffin, op. cit., p. 5. “Others were drawn into the army by money, bounties and promise of land.” Hart, op. cit., p. 134. Mr. Griffin asks: “Is this building up or breaking down the morale of a nation? The consideration of such statements may be a painless intellectual question for the adult—but to the impressionable minds of the young the effect is unquestionably bad.”

729 Ibid., p. 6. Quotation from McLaughlin, Andrew C., History of the American Nation (New York, 1919), p. 152. McLaughlin goes on to say that the “Revolution was justifiable because the colonists stood for certain fundamental principles that were woven into the very fabric of their lives.”

730 Ibid., p. 7. Barnes, Everett, American History for Grammar Grades (New York, 1920).

731 Griffin, op. cit., p. 9.

732 Ibid., p. 11.

733 Ibid., p. 8. Objections were lodged against John P. O’Hara’s history although he is a Catholic. In The Fortnightly Review, April 15, 1924, Mr. O’Hara protests against the criticisms directed against him: “As long as the criticisms were confined to the Hearst press and similar secular mediums of publicity I was able to follow the discussion without being greatly disturbed; but when with the blessing of the K. of C. Historical Commission the Hearst ‘authority’ was allowed a page in Columbia, the official K. C. organ, on which to spread his charge that I, among others, was a Benedict Arnold who had sold his country for British gold, and when, in addition, his stuff was widely reprinted in the Catholic press, a different situation was created.... I received letters from various persons complaining... that a man of my name should have fallen a victim to British agencies of corruption. One such letter put me in distinguished company in this fashion:
“‘Judas, 30 pieces of silver;
Benedict Arnold, 10,000 pounds and a coronet:
O’Hara???’”

The Fortnightly Review, Vol. XXXI (April 15, 1924), pp. 156-157.

734 The Gaelic American, March 11, 1922, p. 6. “McSweeney on the Schools.” The pamphlet by Mr. Griffin, from which the author has quoted, was published by the Hudson County Federation of the Holy Name Society (1922) “as a guide to Red-Blooded Americans with the moral fibre strong enough to believe and insist that American History, crimsoned with the blood of our martyrs, shall be maintained in its entirety and shall be elaborated upon by those authors alone, who, as Americans, still believe In the Magnificent Structure Which the Forefathers of this Republic Have Reared and Which Must Endure.”

735 Jaegers, Albert, A Brief Sketch of the Life and Character of Baron von Steuben (Steuben Society Publication, Jacob Leisler Unit), p. 5.
In the hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee to repeal the charter of the German-American Alliance in 1918, it was revealed that this organization had endeavored to control history textbooks. In conjunction with the Ancient Order of Hibernians in America in 1907, the Alliance had resolved “to recommend a systematic investigation of the share all races have had in the development of our country, in war and in peace, from the earliest days, as the basis for the founding and continuance of an unbiased American history.” In the testimony it was declared that it was their purpose “to give credit where credit is due” because “in all of our current school histories, and most others,... the Anglo-Saxon has been glorified and exalted to the exclusion of those others who did so much for this country, like the Irish and the Germans and the other countries.” “Hearings before the Subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate,” 65th Congress, 2d Session, Senate Report 3529, p. 645 et seq. At the same time Professor Samuel B. Harding testified that in 1915 objection was raised to a chapter on the World War which he had written for a high school textbook and that his publishers (the American Book Company) had been warned that such would be “considered obnoxious,” and that “the organization no doubt would feel itself obliged to actively oppose the use of such a book in any school anywhere in any state.” Ibid., pp. 619-620.

736 S. S. Bulletin, Vol. I, No. 13 (February 1, 1922), p. 1.

737 Ibid., No. 14 (February 15, 1922).

738 Ibid.

739 Ibid.

740 Ibid.

741 Ibid.

742 Ibid.

743 Schrader, Frederick Franklin, “1683-1920” (New York, 1920), pp. 22-25. There are the same quotations from George Haven Putnam, Owen Wister, and Lord Northcliffe as found in the Knights of Columbus pamphlets. See page 227.

744 Ibid., p. 25.

745 The St. Louis Star, June 27, 1923. The resolution was adopted June 26. It is stated that three hundred delegates were present at the convention.

746 Ibid.

747 Ibid.

748 S. S. Bulletin, loc. cit.

749 Schrader, op. cit., pp. 9-10. The place of the German element in American history had been treated by Faust ten years prior to Schrader’s book. Faust, Albert B., The German Element in the United States with especial reference to its political, social and educational influence (Boston, 1909).

750 Schrader, op. cit. Ridder, Victor, The Germans in America (New York, 1922), and Jaegers, op. cit.

751 Schrader, op. cit., p. 19.

752 Ibid., p. 10.

753 Ridder, op. cit., p. 14.
In 1917, an investigation of the most commonly used textbooks in history was made by Timothy T. Lew to determine the treatment given Chinese-American relations. Mr. Lew’s conclusion was that the attitude of Americans toward the Chinese was likely to be one of indifference or prejudice because of the lack of attention given in textbooks, or because many events which would show cordial relations had been overlooked. Lew, Timothy T., “China in American School Text-Books,” Spl. Suppl. to The Chinese Social and Political Science Review, Vol. VI-VII (July, 1923).

754 Chafee, Zechariah, “Freedom of Speech,” The New Republic, Vol. XVII (November 16, 1918), p. 67. Also Espionage Act Cases with Certain Others on Related Points, compiled and edited by Walter Nelles (New York, 1918), pp. 33-35. The case is listed as The United States vs Motion Picture Film “The Spirit of ’76.” Southern District of California, Southern Division, November 30, 1917, under Judge Bledsoe.

755 Harré, T. Everett, “Shadow Huns and Others,” The National Civic Federation Review, Vol. IV (February 15, 1919), pp. 12-16.

756 Ibid.

757 Report of the Committee from the Fathers of Soldiers’ League to the Board of Education, Des Moines, Iowa, 1918. (In manuscript.)

758 Quoted from Robinson, James Harvey, Medieval and Modern Times (New York, 1918). The committee who investigated the textbook hazarded this remark upon the excerpt quoted: “It would seem to your committee that the historian has another guess coming, and that Germany is not liable to get her colonies back or any indemnities.” Report, loc. cit.

759 California State Board of Education, Special Bulletin No. 4. Series of 1918. The committee included E. D. Adams, Arley B. Show, W. A. Morris, E. I. McCormac, W. J. Cooper.

760 The Seattle Star, September 30, 1918, Editorial.

761 Harré, loc. cit.

762 Bulletin of the Montana State Council of Defense, April 22, 1918. West, Ancient World (Boston, 1913), p. 570.

763 Forty-Ninth Annual Report of the State Board of Education... of Rhode Island, January, 1919, pp. 77, 81. The history textbooks were not named.

764 Information gained through a questionnaire sent to the superintendent of public instruction in each state. All states but South Carolina replied.

765 A Syllabus of the World War for Use in the High Schools of The City of New York adopted by the Board of Superintendents (Department of Education of the City of New York, 1918), p. 5.

766 “Accepted Fable,” The Freeman, Vol. VII (June 27, 1923), pp. 366-367.

767 See page 248. Professor West is author of Modern Progress (Boston, 1920) but not of The Story of Human Progress. The quotation was not verified.

768 “War in the Textbooks,” The Nation, Vol. CXIX (Sept. 17, 1924), p. 277.

769 Ibid. See Hazen, Charles Downer, Modern Europe (New York, 1920), p. 690.

770 Barnes, Harry Elmer, “Seven Books of History against the Germans,” The New Republic, Vol. XXXVIII (March 19, 1924), part II, pp. 10-15. Also see Professor Hazen’s letter in The New Republic, Vol. XXXVIII (May 7, 1924), pp. 284-285. On the question of the origin of the War a series of articles by Professor Barnes appeared in The Christian Century for October, November, December, 1925. See also Barnes, Harry Elmer, in Current History, Vol. XXII (May, 1924), on the origin of the War; also Fay, Sidney B., “New Light on the Origins of the World War,” The American Historical Review, Vol. XXVI (October, 1920), pp. 37-53; Fay, Sidney Bradshaw, “The Black Hand Plot that led to the World War,” Current History, Vol. XXIII (November, 1925), pp. 196-207.

771 The Nation, loc. cit. Robinson, James Harvey, and Beard, Charles A., History of Europe Our Own Times (Boston, 1921), pp. 543-544.

772 The Nation, loc. cit. See Hayes, Carlton J. H., and Moon, Thomas Parker, Modern History (New York, 1923).

773 Taft, Donald R., “Historical Textbooks and International Differences” (Chicago, 1925). Guitteau, William Backus, Our United States (New York, 1923). Long, William J., America (Boston, 1923).

774 Kendig-Gill, Isabel, “War and Peace in United States History Text-Books,” National Council for Prevention of War, Washington, p. 10. The author quotes passages to prove her contention from Mace’s Beginner’s History, Muzzey’s An American History, and Guitteau’s Our United States. Also “Drugging the Young Idea,” The Freeman, Vol. VII (August 22, 1923), pp. 556-557.

775 The [Ottumwa, Iowa] Daily Courier, March 2, 1919, “With the persistency of a fanatic and the illogical deduction of a demagogue, Professor Muzzey makes the tariff and the trusts the principal defendants in the case which he brings against the United States of America.... His book is a clearly conceived and a closely written argument for socialism treating the various steps in the country’s history from the standpoint of the socialist instead of the unbiased historian....” As a result of this opposition, Muzzey’s textbook was excluded from the Ottumwa schools. For the same reason the use of this history was discontinued in Leonia, New Jersey.

776 Iowa Legionnaire, April 15, 1921.

777 A pamphlet entitled Muzzey’s School History written by Wallace McCamant, Chairman of the Committee on Patriotic Education of the National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, July 27, 1922. See also Official Bulletin of the National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, Vol. XVII (October, 1922), Washington, D. C.

778 Ibid., p. 1. An examination of the textbook reveals the distasteful quotation marks in the following passage: “Letters, pamphlets, petitions, came in an uninterrupted stream from the Massachusetts ‘patriots,’ Hancock, Warren, Otis, and the Adamses.”

779 Pamphlet, op. cit., p. 2. See Muzzey, op. cit., p. 115.

780 Pamphlet, op. cit.

781 Ibid., pp. 5-16.

782 Ibid., p. 13.

783 Pamphlet entitled “The Sons of the American Revolution and the Histories in Use in Our Schools,” p. 8.

784 Ibid., p. 1. Also “Report of Committee on Patriotic Education” published separately and obtained from Judge Wallace McCamant, Portland, Oregon.

785 Ibid.

786 Ibid., pp. 2-3.

787 Ibid., p. 3.

788 Ibid.

789 Ibid., p. 6. Guitteau’s Our United States and Halleck’s History of Our Country are designed primarily for the junior high school, and not for the senior high school.

790 Ibid., p. 5. Cf. statement of Charles Grant Miller, page 211.

791 Pamphlet, “The Sons of the American Revolution and the Histories in Use in Our Schools,” p. 7. At their meeting at Swampscott, Massachusetts, in May, 1925, Judge McCamant again called the attention of the Sons of the American Revolution to the textbook situation, and urged them to use pressure to have the right kind of textbooks in the schools of their states. Boston Herald, May 19, 1925.

792 Ibid., p. 3.

793 District of Columbia Board of Education Piney Branch Citizens’ Association against Muzzey’s School History (Washington, D. C., April 25, 1923), p. 2. [Washington, D. C.] Sunday Star, June 4, 1922. Muzzey’s defense is criticized by the chairman of the Piney Branch Historical Committee in an issue of the Star, June 18, 1922.

794 The [Washington, D. C.] Star, April 26, 1923.

795 Ibid.

796 Ibid. The activities of the Patriot League for the Preservation of American History are treated in the section devoted to Charles Grant Miller and the Hearst newspapers.

797 Ibid.

798 Ibid.

799 Hathaway, Carson C., “Is Muzzey’s American History Revolutionary?” The Dearborn Independent, October 20, 1923, p. 2.

800 Louisville Times, November 9, 1922. Institutions to which the request was sent were the high schools of Owensboro, Ashland, Dayton, Maysville, Louisville, Collegiate School, Bowling Green, Kentucky State University, Hamilton College, Lexington, and Berea College, Berea.

801 Ibid.

802 Louisville Courier-Journal, November 12, 1922.

803 This is the statement of Charles Grant Miller in the Chicago Herald and Examiner, March 5, 1922.

804 The report is signed “September 8, 1922.” The investigating committee were George Clark Sargent, E. L. Magee, E. J. Mott, W. P. Humphreys and Donozel Stoney. The adoption of the report “engendered a heated discussion” according to the San Francisco Chronicle of November 24, 1922.

805 “Minority Report upon Muzzey’s History of the United States to the Board of Managers of the California Society of the Sons of the American Revolution.” (In manuscript.)

806 Report of the Committee of Five on American History Text-Books now in Use in California High Schools (Sacramento, 1922). (In manuscript.) The committee appointed in April, 1922, reported in June. It was made up of E. D. Adams (chairman), Professor of American History, Stanford University; E. I. McCormac, Professor of American History, University of California; J. A. Nowell, Head of the History Department, Fresno Teachers’ College; W. W. Mather, Head of the History Department, Ontario; A. H. Abbott, Professor of History, College of the Pacific, San José. They examined many of the commonly used American history textbooks.

807 The Cleveland Plain Dealer, May 2, 1923.

808 Pamphlet “Should the ‘History of the American People’ by Willis Mason West be used as a School Text Book?” p. 4. (Obtained by the author from A. H. Conner, Attorney-General of Idaho.) This attack of West’s textbook was first published in the Idaho Statesman.

809 Ibid., pp. 3-4.

810 Ibid.

811 Idaho Statesman, December 9, 1922.

812 Letter under date of July 20, 1923, to the author. However, textbooks in Tennessee are selected by a board appointed by the governor.

813 Letter under date of August 20, 1923, from Judge Wallace McCamant. A letter under date of July 11, 1923, from H. C. Weber, Superintendent of Schools at Nashville, Tennessee, stated that he was not informed regarding the results of a complaint against a textbook used in the Nashville schools which had been presented to the legislature. In Nashville, Tennessee, the High School used James and Sanford’s American History for the past two years according to a statement from the Superintendent of Schools. In Adrian, Michigan, West’s History of the American People was the textbook according to a “Directory of Adrian Public Schools, 1923-1924.” W. F. Weisand, Superintendent of Schools of Nampa, Idaho, informed the author in a letter of November 19, 1923, that for the years 1923 and 1924, Beard and Bagley, History of the American People and Beard, History of the United States were used. Muzzey’s history was still in use in November, 1923, according to the superintendents of schools at Burley, Idaho, and in Idaho Falls, Idaho. This information was obtained in personal letters from the Superintendent of Schools. It does not agree with Captain Conner’s statement.

814 Letter under date of September 8, 1923, from A. H. Conner.

815 Letter under date of August 20, 1923, from Judge Wallace McCamant.

816 Report of Committee on Patriotic Education (S. A. R.), op. cit., p. 7.

817 Report of the Historian of Passaic Valley Chapter, S. A. R., on Muzzey’s American History, December 15, 1922. (In manuscript.) Schuyler M. Cady historian. The report was approved by the chapter, February 12, 1923.

818 Official Bulletin of the National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, December, 1922.

819 Report of Roy F. Britton to St. Louis Society of Sons of Revolution on American History Text-Books Used in St. Louis Schools, December 16, 1922. (In manuscript.) Major Britton quoted from Charles Edward Russell’s article “Behind the Propaganda Scenes” which appeared in Columbia, September, 1922.

820 Ibid.

821 St. Louis Times, December 18, 1922.

822 St. Louis Daily Globe Democrat, December 18, 1922.

823 Quoted in a pamphlet of The Patriot League for the Preservation of American History.

824 Hirshfield, David, Report on Investigation of Pro-British History Text-Books in Use in the Public Schools of the City of New York (N. P.), p. 71.

825 Ibid., p. 72.

826 Ibid.

827 The New York Times, September 15, 1921. The “school history” is not named.

828 Ibid., October 1, 1923. The unity of opinion of various patriotic organizations was discussed in the New York American, November 4, 1923.

829 Statement obtained from Charles F. Horne, New York City, December, 1923. See Appendix for complete statement of principles.

830 Ibid.

831 Ibid.

832 Horne, Charles F., The Story of Our American People (2 v., New York, 1925), p. 1. The work is not issued for general publication as yet, according to a foreword.

833 Ibid., Chapter I. In connection with this last statement the text-book adds that “some of the convicts sent here were indeed evil-minded rascals; but many were men we would have applauded for their so-called crimes.” Ibid., p. 10. Illustrations of a “Divine Purpose” in American events are found elsewhere, for example Burgoyne’s surrender, 1777, “brought to our people a sense of awe, of direct aid from Heaven.” (Vol. I, p. 377.) See also Vol. I, p. 439.

834 Ibid., pp. 365, 371, 390, 394, 396, 404, Vol. II, p. 94.

835 Ibid., Vol. II, pp. 80-118; 348-358; 415-444.

836 The New York Times, July 24, 1925. Professor Van Tyne also said: “I have noticed many manifest errors and dubious statements as I ran hastily over the part devoted to the American Revolution, but the main trouble is in its organization, and its sense of proportion.... One virtue it has which I had not expected. It is not bitterly anti-British.”

837 Personal correspondence, December, 1925, with Frank C. Cross, National Director of the Americanism Commission, American Legion. Mr. Cross gave this information because of an inquiry as to the extent and manner in which the Legion had become interested in the teaching of American history and the Constitution. See Appendix.

838 The Des Moines Register, February 27, 1923.

839 The Christian Science Monitor, August 31, 1923.

840 Communication of the Ethical Society to the School Board, Davenport, Iowa, May 24, 1923. (In manuscript.) The communication refers to Charles Grant Miller’s pamphlet Treason to American Tradition for details.

841 Hirshfield, Report, p. 74.

842 Report of Special Committee on School Histories and Text Books Adopted by Grand Lodge Knights of Pythias September 20, 1923. It was also recommended that a copy be sent to the State Board of Education and that the Supreme Representatives be instructed to present the matter before the Supreme Lodge.

843 “Concerning School Histories,” The New Age, March, 1923, pp. 156-157.

844 This bill is discussed on page 104.

845 “Patriotic Organizations Appeal for School History Bill,” The New Jersey Unit, The Patriot League (Newark, New Jersey, February 22, 1924), p. 12. This pamphlet sets forth the criticisms commonly raised against the histories.

846 The Des Moines Register, April 24, 1923.

847 The Christian Science Monitor, June 27, 1923.

848 The New York Times, December 3, 1921. Charles Grant Miller at this time is reported by the Times to have said that Hart’s history contained nothing objectionable to Americans, but that the preface was bad.

849 Ibid., December 10, 1921. In this section not all the places in which history investigations have been carried on have been mentioned. Only typical and outstanding cases are given. See pages 253, 259, 265, 273.

850 Report on History Text-Books used in the Public Schools of the City of New York, p. 6. An abbreviated form of this report was published in The Historical Outlook, Vol. XIII (October, 1922), pp. 250-255.

851 Report, op. cit., p. 14. The “General Principles” are set forth in more detail in the Appendix of this study.

852 Ibid., p. 20.

853 Ibid., p. 25.

854 Ibid., p. 25.

855 Ibid., p. 26.

856 Ibid., p. 23.

857 Ibid., p. 170. Willis Mason West is mentioned. Ibid., p. 160.

858 The New York Times, December 7, 1921. Hirshfield, op. cit., p. 7.

859 Ibid., p. 8.

860 The New York Times, December 11, 1921.

861 Ibid., December 8, 1921. Mr. Hirshfield is alleged to have said that the investigation had been planned for several months but had been “postponed to forestall the cry that it was to get Irish votes.” Ibid.

862 Hirshfield, op. cit.

863 Joseph T. Griffin, the author of American History Must It be Rewritten to Preserve Our Foreign Friendships? Cited in the discussion of the Knights of Columbus movement.

864 Haym Salomon, mentioned in the diary of Robert Morris as “my little Jew friend on Front Street,” is credited with lending $400,000 to the colonists, becoming bankrupt. Aser Levi, a Dutch Jew, was not permitted by Peter Stuyvesant to serve in the militia, but by an appeal to Holland finally, was able to do so. The New York Times, February 4, 1922.

865 Ibid.; also The Standard Union [Brooklyn, New York], February 3, 1922. The negro killed in the Boston riot was Crispus Attucks. Among others who appeared at the hearings were Charles Grant Miller, Charles Edward Russell, Warren B. Fisher of the United American War Veterans, Thomas P. Tuite of the Vanderbilt Post G. A. R. and of the Star Spangled Banner Association, Judge Wallace McCamant, Mrs. Marie J. Stuart of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and Major David Banks of the Military Order of Foreign Wars.

866 Hirshfield, op. cit., p. 9.

867 Ibid., p. 10.

868 Ward’s edition of Burke’s Speech on Conciliation with America was also examined. The latest editions of the textbooks were reviewed.

869 Ibid.

870 Ibid., p. 67. Mr. Hirshfield charged certain financial leaders of the country like George E. Roberts and Frank A. Vanderlip with abetting movements for Anglo-American concord. The National Security League in its program for “‘the special training of school teachers to interpret the United States Constitution in the public schools’” and to “secure legislation in the various states which will make this teaching compulsory throughout the country” was described as another agency under pro-British influence.

871 Hirshfield, op. cit., pp. 38-40.

872 Ibid., pp. 18-19.

873 Ibid., p. 20.

874 Ibid., p. 44. Guitteau’s history was criticized for his discussion of the League of Nations in addition to other points objectionable to Mr. Hirshfield. It was held that such discussions are inappropriate, inasmuch as it is still an “unsettled political question” which will be “an issue in some form or other in the coming presidential campaign.” Ibid., p. 47.

875 Ibid., pp. 57-58.

876 This is entitled “Propaganda seeks to Distort American History. British Workers are Being Backed by a Heavily Financed Machine. Purpose of the Changes in Textbooks Range All the Way from Cultivation of ‘More Friendly Relations’ to the Fulfillment of the Carnegie Prophecy of the Reunited States, the British-American Union and the Cecil Rhodes Design.” The articles in the Chicago Herald and Examiner in which the McLaughlin and Van Tyne history was criticized appeared July 24, 1921, and January 14, 1923. The Hirshfield report adopts the same phraseology. Guitteau’s textbook was attacked in an article of November 20, 1921, and the Barnes histories in an article of July 17, 1921.

877 New York Tribune, November 5, 1923. The Tribune published this statement from Miller: “The printed Hirshfield report is substantially as I wrote it except for illiteracies and pictures.” The Tribune asserted that it had possession of fac-similes of special pay roll vouchers signed “David Hirshfield, Commissioner of Accounts” for Charles Grant Miller and Joseph Devlin, for expert work.

878 Ibid.

879 Ibid.

880 Ibid., November 6, 1923.

881 Ibid.

882 Ibid., November 11, 1923. The O’Hara history was criticized in an article by Charles Grant Miller in the Chicago Herald and Examiner, July 3, 1921. See page 210.

883 Ibid. These histories, according to the Tribune, were not on the authorized list for use in the New York City schools.

884 Ibid., November 5, 1923.

885 Ibid., November 23, 1923.

886 Ibid., November 5, 1923. Devlin was paid $2000 for his work, and Miller received $562.50 for his work from February to May, 1923, as a “special expert in history text-book investigation,” according to the Tribune.

887 The New York Times, November 6, 1923.

888 Ibid., June 5, 1923. An American History by David S. Muzzey was the eighth history in the Hirshfield list. At the time of the investigation under the auspices of the schools there had been no complaint against this book according to Superintendent Ettinger.

889 The Atlanta Journal, June 27, 1923.

890 Ibid.

891 Ibid. The Baltimore Sun is also quoted by The Atlanta Journal.

892 The News Sentinel, June 6, 1923. Editorial.

893 The Milwaukee Journal, June 9, 1923. Editorial.

894 Dubuque Telegraph-Herald, June 14, 1923.

895 Adams, James Truslow, “History and the Lower Criticism,” The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. CXXXII (September, 1923), pp. 308-317.

896 City of Boston, Proceedings of School Committee, December 18, 1922, p. 180.

897 Ibid.

898 Ibid.

899 Ibid.

900 Ibid.

901 Ibid.

902 Ibid., p. 181. Signed by David D. Scannell and Frances G. Curtis.

903 Ibid. Signed by Richard J. Lane.

904 Ibid., p. 191. The Report is given in part in the Appendix.

905 Letter from S. G. Reinertson, Superintendent of Schools, Jackson, Minnesota, and formerly Superintendent at Alta, Iowa, under date of March 25, 1923.

906 Chicago Herald and Examiner, March 5, 1922.

907 The New York Times, May 1, 1923. Also The Survey, Vol. L (April 15, 1923), p. 68.

908 The New York Times, September 12, 1921.

909 The [New York] Evening Globe, February 22, 1922.

910 The Dearborn Independent, October 20, 1923.

911 Adopted May 5, 1923. Columbia University, New York.

912 Adopted October 25, 1925.

913 The American Historical Review, Vol. XXIX (April, 1924), p. 428.

914 Giddings, Franklin, “Are we getting better text-books?” The Independent, Vol. I (June 3, 1922), pp. 5-9.

915 Ibid. The following comment on the attitude of historians and educators toward the censorship of histories appeared in the New York American, November 4, 1923: “It has been insolently asserted by speakers for foreign propaganda agencies and by some college professors and school men that the interpretation of American patriotism should be left to ‘higher historical scholarship’ and that ’ignorant’ and narrowly nationalistic American patriotic organizations should keep their hands off. We contend, on the contrary, that we who have followed the flag for American ideals know what these ideals are; we cherish them for what they are and will maintain them in our schools as zealously as we have maintained them in battle-line.”

916 Dr. Payson Smith in an address on “Schools should be Uninfluenced,” The Christian Science Monitor, November 2, 1921.
Doubtless it is pertinent to call attention to the work of peace organizations in the analyses of history textbooks by which it has been shown that heroes and achievements of war have received much more space than heroes and achievements of peace. See War and Peace in United States History Text-Books by the National Council for Prevention of War, Washington, D. C., and An Analysis of the Emphasis upon War in Our Elementary School Histories, by the Association for Peace Education, Chicago.