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To say that the Dunning School approved the policy of Lincoln seems problematic, in that it basically accepts the Dunning School's view of what Lincoln's policy would have been. To say that they approved of the policy of Johnson is also, I believe, problematic - my understanding was that the traditional Dunning School saw Johnson as flawed, and blamed him, in part, for the failure of presidential reconstruction. Here's what Foner says in the preface to his Reconstruction:
Foner goes on to say that later biographers of Johnson in the Dunning School (Robert Winston, George Milton, Howard Beale) rehabilitated him, but it seems problematic to say that the Dunning School, as such, particularly approved of Johnson. john k 16:43, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
As I have mentioned elsewhere, historians have not completely demolished all of the framework bequeathed to them by Dunning and his students. In fact, a careful perusal of the endnotes of works by Michael Les Benedict, Michael Perman, and William Gilette all reveal the ways in which scholars continue to debate issues first articulated in Dunning's Essays on the Civil War and Reconstruction and Reconstruction.-Sean -- 20:29, 4 April 2007 128.143.167.233
The following appears in the article on Reconstruction and in this article, yet provides no citation. It is removed from this article, pending provision of citation.
Skywriter 05:28, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
"Princeton University historian James M. McPherson wrote that the accepted "facts" at the start of the 20th century "supported the prevalent belief in the mental inferiority of black people" and this "conservative interpretation dominated Civil War historiography for many years." This claim has no logical place in this article and will be removed within 24 hours if it is not tied into Dunning school explicitlyDie4Dixie 04:47, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
"...who opposed allowing black people to vote or bear arms..." this has no bearing on the school and its placement gives it undue weight. I remove it now. Before reverting, please discuss here. Die4Dixie 04:50, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
The criticism section needs some paring down . It is longer than the description of the School of thought. If we can't do without all the criticism, I suggest that we create two articles.One just about the Dunning School, and another entitled "Criticism of Dunning School".Die4Dixie 21:17, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
The direct quote at end is not what the source says. The juxtaposition of this quote with the proceeding part of the paragraph deliberately gives the impression that the sweeping generalization was the first part. The cunning change of "this" for "his" in the direct quote furthers compounds the problem. I am removing this whole paragraph, so that someone can try again. Whoever is editing this article needs to hold himself to accepted conventions of honesty and the use of quotes. I will assume good faith and that the editor doesn't know how to quote properly, rather than is deliberately dishonest. I can only think of a couple of academic disciplines that this type of shoddy work would be tolerated;however, I would not accept it from a tenth grader in a general diploma track, and I won't accept it in an article to which I contribute.Die4Dixie 21:52, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
"In the 1940s a different approach was pioneered by Howard K. Beale. Beale's approach combined "racial egalitarianism and an insistence on the centrality of class". He claimed that even some of the more progressive southern historians maintained ther[sic] belief "that their race must bar Negroes from social and economic equality." Among those Beale indicated were making positive contributions were "southern liberals" like C. Vann Woodward and Francis Simkins. [1]"
This has nothing to do with The Dunning School. Perhaps it might fit in some category like " History of Historical Schools of Thought". This is really getting tiresome. I see that I am going to have to go through someones edit history and check up on a lot of editing. This editing is freshman at best, and has no place logically in this article. Die4Dixie 22:03, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
"Dunning believed that allowing blacks to vote and hold office had been "a serious error". [2] ". Current not listed anywhere. Page 213 of what? Due to all the other problems this shoddy article has had , it is MHO that radical use of the editing scalpel is needed. After the earlier quote problem, I'll not leave this to chanceDie4Dixie 01:03, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
I don't think, Claude Bowers should be listed as a "Representative Dunning School scholar". First he was not a scholar at all, second he was not a disciple of Dunning at Columbia like all the other listed scholars (except Coulter) and third and most important while he was sharing some (most) thesis of Dunning and his associates, there were also some differences, e.g. the completely different evaluation of Andrew Johnson, who was highly praised by Bowers and highly discredited by Dunning and even more by Fleming for his stubornness. Fleming wrote: „Johnson was ill-educated, narrow, and vindicative and was positive that those who did not agree with him were dishonest.“ (p. 71, Sequel to Appomattox) Bowers on the contrary portrayed Johnson as a "Honest, [...] tender, able, forceful [...]" Gentlemen (p. 43-44, Tragic Era)
It would be more correct to list Bowers "Tragic Era" as a best-selling book, which helped to present some of the general themes and thesis of the Dunning School to the public. Flohru -- 09:31, 15 April 2008 User:Flohru
Stampp was not as kind to the previous generation of reconstruction historians as the previous wording seemed to suggest. I read his book a while ago, and it's an indictment of the whole school. To characterize it as "they got a lot of things right", but "they didn't tell the whole story" is completely dishonest. Stampp was writing to say that they got everything wrong, although he was following DuBois. Likebox ( talk) 01:52, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
(deindent) I am not an expert in anything, and I don't claim that I have any special knowledge. My sole qualification is that I read Stampp's book. It was really good, and I don't think this article is doing it justice. When he was writing, it was appropriate to call him a revisionist, but you can't call him a revisionist today, his view is the commonly accepted one. Likebox ( talk) 21:38, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
Also, I'm not sure its appropriate to say that Stampp led the revision movement, because DuBois was saying much the same thing many decades earlier, and I think DuBois was echoing the general sentiment in the black community. I remember a quote somewhere, perhaps in the introduction to Stampp's book, where an elderly black man who remembered the era was complaining about the then current historical record in much the same terms. Likebox ( talk) 21:50, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
The Novick material has been restored. It provides both criticism and an explanation for the views held by the Dunning School. Tom (North Shoreman) ( talk) 20:24, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
Historian Peter Novick noted that two forces, the need to reconcile the North and the South after the Civil War and the increase in racism as Social Darwinism appeared to back the concept with science, contributed to a “racist historiographical consensus” around the turn of the century on the “criminal outrages” of Reconstruction. [3] Novick provided examples of the style of the Dunning School approach when he wrote:
James Ford Rhodes, citing [Louis] Agassiz, said that “what the whole country has only learned through years of costly and bitter experience was known to this leader of scientific thought before we ventured on the policy of trying to make negroes [sic] intelligent by legislative acts.” John W. Burgess wrote that “a black skin means membership in a race of men which has never of itself succeeded in subjecting passion to reason.” For William A. Dunning, blacks “had no pride of race and no aspiration or ideals save to be like whites.” Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer quoted approvingly the southern observation that Yankees didn’t understand the subject because they “had never seen a nigger except Fred Douglass.” Blacks were “as credulous as children, which in intellect they in many ways resembled.” [4]
References
The terminlogy of revisionists is still the dominant term used. recent examples available online include http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=300901196284168 and http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/37.2/br_10.html. I have yet to see where an actual historian of reconstruction refers to themselves as a neoabolitionist -- Foner and Stampp certainly have not used this term which often has a negative connotation. Tom (North Shoreman) ( talk) 11:31, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
Not sure why "1950s" was changed to "1930s". As far as the textbooks used in southern states are concerned, such views sometimes persisted significantly beyond the 1950s... AnonMoos ( talk) 20:10, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: Not done (page mover closure) DrStrauss talk 09:25, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
Dunning School →
Dunning school – The
Google Ngram shows lower case as dominant form for term and to comply with
WP:NCCAPS.
Mitchumch (
talk)
04:12, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on Dunning School. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
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is any mention how lack of cooperation and lynchings affected government, Juror1 ( talk) 21:17, 14 October 2017 (UTC)
As it stands, the Wiki page for the Dunning School of American Historiography is comprised almost entirely of criticism. Editors over time have not contained quotes from critics of the school (such as Eric Foner) to the appropriate criticism section. Because of this, there are contained in the article almost no objective or pro-Dunningite sources, leaving us with an incredibly biased article.
I intend to move all the criticism of the Dunning School into the "Criticism" section (where it belongs), and to add direct quotations from the authors working within the School to provide their view on their mission and the mission and approach of the School writ large. I have tried to retain all of the substance of the critical lines, simply moving them into a more appropriate section. St.Sidonius ( talk) 19:45, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
To say that the Dunning School approved the policy of Lincoln seems problematic, in that it basically accepts the Dunning School's view of what Lincoln's policy would have been. To say that they approved of the policy of Johnson is also, I believe, problematic - my understanding was that the traditional Dunning School saw Johnson as flawed, and blamed him, in part, for the failure of presidential reconstruction. Here's what Foner says in the preface to his Reconstruction:
Foner goes on to say that later biographers of Johnson in the Dunning School (Robert Winston, George Milton, Howard Beale) rehabilitated him, but it seems problematic to say that the Dunning School, as such, particularly approved of Johnson. john k 16:43, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
As I have mentioned elsewhere, historians have not completely demolished all of the framework bequeathed to them by Dunning and his students. In fact, a careful perusal of the endnotes of works by Michael Les Benedict, Michael Perman, and William Gilette all reveal the ways in which scholars continue to debate issues first articulated in Dunning's Essays on the Civil War and Reconstruction and Reconstruction.-Sean -- 20:29, 4 April 2007 128.143.167.233
The following appears in the article on Reconstruction and in this article, yet provides no citation. It is removed from this article, pending provision of citation.
Skywriter 05:28, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
"Princeton University historian James M. McPherson wrote that the accepted "facts" at the start of the 20th century "supported the prevalent belief in the mental inferiority of black people" and this "conservative interpretation dominated Civil War historiography for many years." This claim has no logical place in this article and will be removed within 24 hours if it is not tied into Dunning school explicitlyDie4Dixie 04:47, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
"...who opposed allowing black people to vote or bear arms..." this has no bearing on the school and its placement gives it undue weight. I remove it now. Before reverting, please discuss here. Die4Dixie 04:50, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
The criticism section needs some paring down . It is longer than the description of the School of thought. If we can't do without all the criticism, I suggest that we create two articles.One just about the Dunning School, and another entitled "Criticism of Dunning School".Die4Dixie 21:17, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
The direct quote at end is not what the source says. The juxtaposition of this quote with the proceeding part of the paragraph deliberately gives the impression that the sweeping generalization was the first part. The cunning change of "this" for "his" in the direct quote furthers compounds the problem. I am removing this whole paragraph, so that someone can try again. Whoever is editing this article needs to hold himself to accepted conventions of honesty and the use of quotes. I will assume good faith and that the editor doesn't know how to quote properly, rather than is deliberately dishonest. I can only think of a couple of academic disciplines that this type of shoddy work would be tolerated;however, I would not accept it from a tenth grader in a general diploma track, and I won't accept it in an article to which I contribute.Die4Dixie 21:52, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
"In the 1940s a different approach was pioneered by Howard K. Beale. Beale's approach combined "racial egalitarianism and an insistence on the centrality of class". He claimed that even some of the more progressive southern historians maintained ther[sic] belief "that their race must bar Negroes from social and economic equality." Among those Beale indicated were making positive contributions were "southern liberals" like C. Vann Woodward and Francis Simkins. [1]"
This has nothing to do with The Dunning School. Perhaps it might fit in some category like " History of Historical Schools of Thought". This is really getting tiresome. I see that I am going to have to go through someones edit history and check up on a lot of editing. This editing is freshman at best, and has no place logically in this article. Die4Dixie 22:03, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
"Dunning believed that allowing blacks to vote and hold office had been "a serious error". [2] ". Current not listed anywhere. Page 213 of what? Due to all the other problems this shoddy article has had , it is MHO that radical use of the editing scalpel is needed. After the earlier quote problem, I'll not leave this to chanceDie4Dixie 01:03, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
I don't think, Claude Bowers should be listed as a "Representative Dunning School scholar". First he was not a scholar at all, second he was not a disciple of Dunning at Columbia like all the other listed scholars (except Coulter) and third and most important while he was sharing some (most) thesis of Dunning and his associates, there were also some differences, e.g. the completely different evaluation of Andrew Johnson, who was highly praised by Bowers and highly discredited by Dunning and even more by Fleming for his stubornness. Fleming wrote: „Johnson was ill-educated, narrow, and vindicative and was positive that those who did not agree with him were dishonest.“ (p. 71, Sequel to Appomattox) Bowers on the contrary portrayed Johnson as a "Honest, [...] tender, able, forceful [...]" Gentlemen (p. 43-44, Tragic Era)
It would be more correct to list Bowers "Tragic Era" as a best-selling book, which helped to present some of the general themes and thesis of the Dunning School to the public. Flohru -- 09:31, 15 April 2008 User:Flohru
Stampp was not as kind to the previous generation of reconstruction historians as the previous wording seemed to suggest. I read his book a while ago, and it's an indictment of the whole school. To characterize it as "they got a lot of things right", but "they didn't tell the whole story" is completely dishonest. Stampp was writing to say that they got everything wrong, although he was following DuBois. Likebox ( talk) 01:52, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
(deindent) I am not an expert in anything, and I don't claim that I have any special knowledge. My sole qualification is that I read Stampp's book. It was really good, and I don't think this article is doing it justice. When he was writing, it was appropriate to call him a revisionist, but you can't call him a revisionist today, his view is the commonly accepted one. Likebox ( talk) 21:38, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
Also, I'm not sure its appropriate to say that Stampp led the revision movement, because DuBois was saying much the same thing many decades earlier, and I think DuBois was echoing the general sentiment in the black community. I remember a quote somewhere, perhaps in the introduction to Stampp's book, where an elderly black man who remembered the era was complaining about the then current historical record in much the same terms. Likebox ( talk) 21:50, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
The Novick material has been restored. It provides both criticism and an explanation for the views held by the Dunning School. Tom (North Shoreman) ( talk) 20:24, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
Historian Peter Novick noted that two forces, the need to reconcile the North and the South after the Civil War and the increase in racism as Social Darwinism appeared to back the concept with science, contributed to a “racist historiographical consensus” around the turn of the century on the “criminal outrages” of Reconstruction. [3] Novick provided examples of the style of the Dunning School approach when he wrote:
James Ford Rhodes, citing [Louis] Agassiz, said that “what the whole country has only learned through years of costly and bitter experience was known to this leader of scientific thought before we ventured on the policy of trying to make negroes [sic] intelligent by legislative acts.” John W. Burgess wrote that “a black skin means membership in a race of men which has never of itself succeeded in subjecting passion to reason.” For William A. Dunning, blacks “had no pride of race and no aspiration or ideals save to be like whites.” Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer quoted approvingly the southern observation that Yankees didn’t understand the subject because they “had never seen a nigger except Fred Douglass.” Blacks were “as credulous as children, which in intellect they in many ways resembled.” [4]
References
The terminlogy of revisionists is still the dominant term used. recent examples available online include http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=300901196284168 and http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/37.2/br_10.html. I have yet to see where an actual historian of reconstruction refers to themselves as a neoabolitionist -- Foner and Stampp certainly have not used this term which often has a negative connotation. Tom (North Shoreman) ( talk) 11:31, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
Not sure why "1950s" was changed to "1930s". As far as the textbooks used in southern states are concerned, such views sometimes persisted significantly beyond the 1950s... AnonMoos ( talk) 20:10, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: Not done (page mover closure) DrStrauss talk 09:25, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
Dunning School →
Dunning school – The
Google Ngram shows lower case as dominant form for term and to comply with
WP:NCCAPS.
Mitchumch (
talk)
04:12, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on Dunning School. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
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source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 21:56, 14 September 2017 (UTC)
is any mention how lack of cooperation and lynchings affected government, Juror1 ( talk) 21:17, 14 October 2017 (UTC)
As it stands, the Wiki page for the Dunning School of American Historiography is comprised almost entirely of criticism. Editors over time have not contained quotes from critics of the school (such as Eric Foner) to the appropriate criticism section. Because of this, there are contained in the article almost no objective or pro-Dunningite sources, leaving us with an incredibly biased article.
I intend to move all the criticism of the Dunning School into the "Criticism" section (where it belongs), and to add direct quotations from the authors working within the School to provide their view on their mission and the mission and approach of the School writ large. I have tried to retain all of the substance of the critical lines, simply moving them into a more appropriate section. St.Sidonius ( talk) 19:45, 26 July 2023 (UTC)