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James Ford Rhodes And the Negro A STUDY IN THE PROBLEM OF OBJECTIVITY |
by ROBERT CRUDEN The continuing debate among historians as to the scientific nature of their discipline involves, as a basic element, the problem of objectivity. Is it possible for history to be objective in the sense that the physical and biologi- cal sciences are objective: namely, that its findings "do not depend in any important sense on the personal idiosyncrasies or private feelings of those who reach them, but are marked by a process in which complete abstraction is made from these"?1 If so, by what standards may we determine its objectivity? The purpose of this article is to examine some of the factors involved in these questions as they emerge from a study of the work of one of America's most noted historians, James Ford Rhodes. To pinpoint the issue, discussion is limited to that aspect of Rhodes's writings in which the problems are most clearly delineated: namely, Rhodes's treatment of the role of the Negro in the period of which he wrote, 1850 to 1877. Rhodes, it may be recalled, was the prosperous Cleveland businessman (one of his partners was his brother-in-law, Mark Hanna) who, in middle NOTES ARE ON PAGES 198-199 |
130 OHIO HISTORY
age, turned to the writing of history
with such success that his interpretations
of the Civil War and Reconstruction
strongly influenced American thought
in the generation prior to World War I.
Even today, two of the most eminent
of American historians, Samuel Eliot
Morison and Henry Steele Commager,
believe that his seven-volume History
of the United States from the Com-
promise of 1850 to the Final Restoration
of Home Rule at the South in
18772 "is still the best detailed history of that
period although shot full of
holes by the research of the last fifty
years." They commend his treatment
of Reconstruction as "notably
impartial."3
That phrase admirably sums up Rhodes's
own appraisal of his work.
Although he thought of himself as a
literary rather than scientific historian,
he insisted that in writing his History
he sought "to get rid so far as possible
of all preconceived notions and
theories," for, as he said,
such is the constitution of the human
mind, or at any rate my own, that as I
went through the mass of my material I
would have seized upon all the facts
that made for my theory and marshalled
them in its support while those that
told against it I would have
unconsciously and undoubtedly quite honestly
neglected.4
He was persuaded that in dealing with
the Negro, he was, as he put it, "an
earnest seeker after truth, . . . trying
to hold a judicial balance and to tell
the story without fear, favor or
prejudice."5
In this belief Rhodes was confirmed by
the almost unanimous verdict of
his contemporaries, both lay and
scholarly. When Albert Shaw, editor of
the Review of Reviews, praised
Rhodes's work as "like finality itself" he
summarized similar comments by such
diverse figures as Theodore Roose-
velt, Gamaliel Bradford, and Justice
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and by
such disparate publications as The
World's Work and the International
Socialist Review.6 Woodrow Wilson's judgment that Rhodes's History was
"perhaps the finest piece of
historical writing yet done by an American,"
represented, in extreme degree, the
conclusions of other historians, including
Albert Bushnell Hart, Edward Channing,
William E. Dodd, and Frederic
L. Paxson.7 The awesome
confidence of the American public in Rhodes's
fairness, objectivity, and integrity is
demonstrated with almost embarrassing
frankness in a letter to Rhodes from
John T. Morse, Jr., the editor of the
American Statesmen series:
You are absolutely the most fair-minded
man who ever dealt with matters of
controversy. . . . Of course you manage
to infuse a certain kindliness and
gentle mercy into your justice, as we
are told that God does--(though I would
rather trust you than him).8
JAMES FORD RHODES AND THE NEGRO 131
Much the same opinion of Rhodes's work
was entertained by such distin-
guished English historians as Samuel R.
Gardiner, W. E. H. Lecky, and
Charles Harding Firth.9
Yet Rhodes it was who set it down as
"scientific truth" that Negroes
constituted "one of the most
inferior races of mankind."10 Capable of only
limited mental development, they early
in life turned aside from intellectual
to sensual pursuits; incapable of love
or affection, they showed that a lack
of chastity was "a natural
inclination of the African race."11 Much of the
horror of slavery was mitigated by the
fact that the griefs of the Negro were
transient.12 As to
public morality, wherever the Negro had been given
political freedom he had shown himself
"greedy for office and emolument,"
while demonstrating both indifference to
movements for political reform
and incapacity for matters of
government.13 The history of the race indicated
that it had contributed little to human
progress.14
It followed, then, that Reconstruction
was not only a failure but also "an
attack upon civilization," for it
was essentially an effort to impose upon a
highly developed Anglo-Saxon culture the
rule of this "ignorant mass of
an alien race," a rule made all the
worse because it embraced also "knavish
white natives and the vulturous
adventurers who flocked from the North."15
As Rhodes saw it, "Intelligence and
property stood bound and helpless
under negro-carpet-bag rule" while Negro
legislators and their depraved
white allies wrote a "sickening
tale of extravagance, waste, corruption and
fraud."16 Despite the
frequently devious and violent means used by the
enemies of the Reconstruction
governments, the eventual overthrow of such
governments was a development at which
"all lovers of good government
must rejoice."17 This
interpretation became almost standard among his-
torians, and, as has been noted, even in
our own day some historians find it
"notably impartial."
Use of the racial formula led Rhodes to
quite different conclusions about
Anglo-Saxons. American greatness, he
wrote, was due basically to the
energetic and independent character of
the people, deriving from their
Protestant Anglo-Saxon forbears.18 During
the Civil War, northern Demo-
crats showed the Anglo-Saxon sense of
political responsibility; the Union
troops at Gettysburg displayed
Anglo-Saxon zeal in defense of the home-
land.19 The Anglo-Saxon
spirit of resistance to oppression helped explain
why the Confederacy fought so
courageously,20 Anglo-Saxon respect for
law, on the other hand, was symbolized
in the career of Abraham Lincoln.21
Lincoln's plan for reconstruction
displayed Anglo-Saxon practicality, while
that of Senator Sumner "smacked of
the logic of the French."22 As for
132 OHIO HISTORY
southern Anglo-Saxons, Rhodes fully
endorsed the description of them by
Senator George F. Hoar of Massachusetts:
They are a noble race. . . . Their love
of home; their chivalrous respect for
women; their courage; their delicate
sense of honor; their constancy . . . are
things by which the people of the more
mercurial North may take a lesson.
And there is another thing--covetousness,
corruption, the low temptation of
money has not yet found any place in our
Southern politics.23
So much for the racial content of
Rhodes's History. Let us briefly
examine Rhodes's use of sources.
First, he relied almost entirely on
white sources for his treatment of the
role of the Negro: white scientists,
white magazines (particularly The
Nation), and white newspapers. To be sure, the Negro press of
the day was
not the extensive enterprise that it is
today, but there were some Negro
newspapers available for the period, and
certainly after 1870 there was a
steady growth in the number of such
newspapers.24 Rhodes showed no
familiarity with them at all. Likewise,
he paid no attention to the proceed-
ings of the various public bodies of the
Reconstruction governments, pre-
ferring to rely on second-hand accounts
by unsympathetic white observers.25
When Negro sources were called to his
attention, such as the works of
John R. Lynch and Kelly Miller, he
refused to read them on the grounds
that they were partisan and
controversial.26
Second, Rhodes chose to accept only
certain types of white testimony.
Thus in the conflict between the reports
of U. S. Grant and Carl Schurz on
conditions in the postwar South, he
believed Grant rather than Schurz
because the general "possessed one
of those minds which often attain to
correct judgments without knowing the
how and the why."27 Likewise, in
the conflict between the majority and
minority reports of the Ku Klux Klan
committee he chose to accept that of the
Democratic minority, for, as he
put it,
the minority report comes nearer to the
truth. At many points the Republican
document halts and boggles. . . .
Consciousness of a bad cause may be read
between the lines. . . . While the
Democrats attempt to prove too much, . . .
they are straightforward and aggressive
with the consciousness of a cause based
on the eternal principles of nature and
justice.28
Much of Rhodes's treatment of
Reconstruction in South Carolina was
based on The Prostrate State by
James S. Pike, although one might expect
an historian "trying to hold a
judicial balance" to exercise caution in
accepting uncritically the reports of a
newspaperman who believed that "a
JAMES FORD RHODES AND THE NEGRO 133
large majority of all the voting
citizens of the state are habitually guilty of
thieving and of concubinage."29
Also, had Rhodes been more careful, he
might have discovered that Pike, a year
before he set foot in South Carolina,
had written for the New York Tribune an
article which "made practically
every major point he made" in the
book, which, of course, purported to be
a first-hand eyewitness account.30 In
any case, Pike's testimony was flatly
contradicted by General Oliver O.
Howard, head of the freedmen's bureau
and a man with some experience in the
postwar South. Rhodes, however,
rejected Howard's testimony as
"another of these extraordinary apologies
for ignorance when covered by a black
skin."31 Perhaps the same reasoning
explains his passing over James G.
Blaine's tribute to the integrity of Negro
congressmen and senators, although
otherwise he drew heavily upon Blaine
for his discussion of postwar politics.32
These examples have been cited, not to
discredit Rhodes, but to point up
the problems raised in this article: How
could an historian who honestly
strove to tell the story without fear,
favor, or prejudice have fallen so far
short of what we conceive to be basic
standards of objectivity? And perhaps
even more important, how can one account
for the tribute paid to his work
by historical scholars on the grounds
that it was almost godlike in its
objectivity?
There are many explanations why Rhodes
fell short of his own ideal of
objectivity. He lacked professional
historical training, and indeed, appar-
ently believed that if a person
possessed such attributes as diligence, accur-
acy, love of truth, and impartiality,
training was not really necessary.33
It is not surprising, then, that he
showed only dim awareness of problems
of methodology and interpretation.
Also, and perhaps more important, Rhodes
did not possess a keen,
inquiring mind. Study of his work, as
well as the testimony of those who
knew him personally, shows that he
shrank from analysis of the personal
feelings and attitudes of people,
including his own.34 It is
hardly to be
wondered at, then, that he did not succeed
as well as he believed in divesting
himself of "preconceived notions
and theories," particularly since he did
not fully appreciate the various
influences which shaped his conscious
thought.
Paramount among these was his father,
Daniel P. Rhodes, who played a
decisive role in determining James's
upbringing, education, and choice of
business vocation.35 Daniel was a
militant Democrat in the Civil War period,
a political campaigner for Clement L.
Vallandigham, a man who objected
to Mark Hanna because, in his view,
young Hanna was "a damned screecher
134 OHIO HISTORY
for freedom."36 James said he drank
in his father's opinions "eagerly."37
In this context it is easy to understand
why young James, on a trip to the
South in 1872, had only to look at the
"faces and manners" of the Negroes
to understand why southern whites were
fearful of "robbery, killing, burn-
ing and rape."38
On a more conscious level, Rhodes, like
most middle-class Americans of
his day, was deeply influenced by
Herbert Spencer. He himself explained
that he was not "emancipated"
from Spencer until he was in his forties, but
Rhodes's emancipation was more fancied
than real.39 He accepted Spencer's
basic concepts of survival of the
fittest and of racial evolution which pro-
duced superior and inferior varieties of
the human race, and in his History
he frequently cited Spencer as an
authority.40
Of equal significance, perhaps, was the
influence of Edwin L. Godkin,
editor of The Nation, a journal
which Rhodes read religiously from youth
to old age.41 As Rhodes put
it, "his influence was abiding. . . . Godkin
preached to us every week a timely and
cogent sermon."42 For his treat-
ment of Reconstruction, Rhodes relied
heavily upon The Nation, which, he
said, provided "excellent
historical material."43 Godkin's attitudes may
be gathered from his reference to
leaders of Reconstruction governments as
"rogues" and "ignorant
thieves" and his endorsement of segregation in
schools, together with his
recommendation to Negroes that they earn the
respect of white men while reconciling
themselves to the fact that "most of
the work has to be done by the lower
class."44
Apart from such specific influences,
Rhodes's approach to matters of
race was deeply colored by the accepted
opinion of his own day, that period
which Rayford Logan has so aptly named
the nadir of the Negro in Ameri-
can life and thought. Rhodes matured in
a society the dominant cultural
theme of which he himself outlined:
"It was an age of science--the era of
Darwin and Spencer, of Huxley and
Tyndall. The influence of heredity and
the great fact of race was better
understood than ever before."45 Rhodes
was especially impressed by the arguments
of Louis Agassiz, who testified
that "from the very character of
the negro race" social equality with whites
was a "natural impossibility."
Historically, wrote Agassiz, the Negroes had
remained at a low sensual level; they
"groped in barbarism and never
originated a regular organization
among themselves."46 To this
Rhodes
added: "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 intelligent by legislative
acts."47
JAMES FORD RHODES AND THE NEGRO 135
Such attitudes explain in part Rhodes's
cavalier treatment of sources
favorable to the Negro; it must be added
that his treatment also sprang from
his conception of the historian as judge
rather than inquiring scholar.
In his opinion, the most important
quality of the historian was the judicial,
not the inquiring, mind.48 As
judge, the historian evaluated the evidence
placed before him--and in Rhodes's case
this was literally true, for much
of his research was done by others.49
Evidence which the judge deemed false
or prejudiced, he rejected; the honest
testimony of honest men, he accepted.
It did not occur to him that such
testimony, when rooted in preconceptions
as to race shared by the judge, might
also be false or prejudiced or only
partly true.
Further, the historian, as judge, was
not to go beyond the valid testimony
presented; he was under no obligation to
scour the most unlikely places for
data without considerations of race or
color. Since it was generally agreed
that the Negro was the most inferior of
human beings, responsive only to
sensual stimuli, why should his
testimony be admitted in a court governed
by the rules of reason? As to white
sources favorable to the Negro, it was
obvious to Rhodes that they were tainted
by either interest or emotion, and
were thus inadmissible. In short, just
as Rhodes believed that the antislavery
historian could best write objective
history of the Civil War,50 so he assumed
that the white historian with
Anglo-Saxon sympathies could best write
objective history of the Reconstruction
period.
Finally, it should be noted that Rhodes
believed that history had a
didactic purpose: quoting Tacitus, he
declared that purpose to be, "to let no
worthy action be uncommemorated, and to
hold out the reprobation of
posterity as a terror to evil words and
deeds."51 Within the framework of
American history, the purpose was to
inculcate patriotism and to encourage
the young to "follow in the path of
the distinguished."52 It is indicative of
the unreflective character of Rhodes's
mind that he saw no apparent contra-
diction between such attitudes and his
avowal that he tried to write history
without fear, favor, or prejudice.
So much for Rhodes himself. How are we
to explain his reputation
among historians for sound, critical
scholarship?
First, so far as scholars of his day
checked his sources they found them
generally to be accurately cited.
Indeed, this was a source of considerable
praise by scholarly reviewers.53
As to his use of purely white sources, and
then only white sources unsympathetic
with the Negro, Rhodes's judgments
seemed so consonant with obvious
"truths" in relation to race that the issue
of bias rarely arose. Belief in his
fairness was strengthened also by his
136 OHIO HISTORY
frequent avowal that there was room for
difference of opinion and by his
stated willingness to make corrections
of fact in future editions of his work.54
His failure to include Negro opinion
within this framework naturally elicited
little objection from a scholarly
community predominantly Anglo-Saxon in
origin and attitude which shared the
general belief in Negro inferiority.
Acceptance of Rhodes as a model of
objectivity rested also on the fact
that he and his public, lay and
scholarly, shared a set of assumptions about
race which they believed to be
scientific truths. Rhodes's effort to buttress
the accepted notion of Negro inferiority
with the weight of scientific opinion
seemed to prove once again his
conscientious effort to be fair and objective.
His exclusion of testimony favorable to
the Negro, whether from white or
Negro sources, seemed so much in the
nature of things as to pass almost
unnoticed. In this respect, Rhodes
differed little from other historians of
the early part of the twentieth century,
as may be seen from examination of
the works on Reconstruction which
appeared at that time.55
Finally, Rhodes, in his role of didactic
historian, handed down not only
historical but also moral judgments.
These judgments, stated explicitly
throughout the seven volumes which
appeared in that fateful period between
1892 and 1906, validated the traditional
middle-class virtues of hard work,
thrift, and sobriety; and the
traditional beliefs in "hard money," laissez
faire, and Anglo-Saxon supremacy.56
To a middle class shaken by the
panic of 1893 and its consequences, such
as the Pullman strike and the
Populist revolt, the intoning of the
ancient litanies in the calm, authoritative
accents of the historian brought comfort
and reassurance. To the reawakened
spirit of nationalism which marked the
sectional reconciliation of the 1890's,
Rhodes supplied reinterpretations of the
Civil War and Reconstruction which
brought a glow of satisfaction to
readers in both North and South. To the
confident, expansive America of the
early twentieth century, Rhodes carried
the message that the American people
were sound at the core, representing,
indeed, one of the foremost civilizing
influences of the period. Scholars as
well as laymen responded warmly to such
genial assurance. As John T.
Morse, Jr., put it: "Precisely such
a book had been keenly desired, but by
whom it should be written no one had
been able to suggest. Now this secret
was made known. . . . There was one
universal acclaim of praise."57
What does all this have to do with
discussion of the scientific nature of
history?
It has been shown that Rhodes strove to
write objectively and indeed quite
honestly believed that he had done so.
It has been noted that the scholarly
critics of his day shared the opinion
that he was a model of objectivity.
JAMES FORD RHODES AND THE NEGRO 137
It has also been indicated that from the
vantage point of our own day it
appears that Rhodes fell far short of
that ideal. This study of an individual
historian, therefore, suggests the
following conclusion:
That until we have devised some means
whereby the historian may isolate
his judgments as historian from the
influence of his own past and his own
cultural milieu; and, perhaps more
importantly, some means whereby the
community of historical scholars may
abstract its critical judgments from
the unexamined assumptions which it
makes about the nature of knowledge,
of man, and of society, it seems
premature to talk of history as a genuinely
scientific discipline. Until that happy
day, the historian will have to con-
tinue to beware of the lies of honest
men--including his own.
THE AUTHOR: Robert Cruden is an associ-
ate professor of history at
Baldwin-Wallace Col-
lege. He is the author of a recent life
of James
Ford Rhodes (reviewed in this issue).
His article
was first given as a paper at the annual
meet-
ing of the Ohio Academy of History in
1960.
|
James Ford Rhodes And the Negro A STUDY IN THE PROBLEM OF OBJECTIVITY |
by ROBERT CRUDEN The continuing debate among historians as to the scientific nature of their discipline involves, as a basic element, the problem of objectivity. Is it possible for history to be objective in the sense that the physical and biologi- cal sciences are objective: namely, that its findings "do not depend in any important sense on the personal idiosyncrasies or private feelings of those who reach them, but are marked by a process in which complete abstraction is made from these"?1 If so, by what standards may we determine its objectivity? The purpose of this article is to examine some of the factors involved in these questions as they emerge from a study of the work of one of America's most noted historians, James Ford Rhodes. To pinpoint the issue, discussion is limited to that aspect of Rhodes's writings in which the problems are most clearly delineated: namely, Rhodes's treatment of the role of the Negro in the period of which he wrote, 1850 to 1877. Rhodes, it may be recalled, was the prosperous Cleveland businessman (one of his partners was his brother-in-law, Mark Hanna) who, in middle NOTES ARE ON PAGES 198-199 |