Abstract
I hope the American Historical Review will thinkg [sic] it [volume VI] “just the thing”; But I am shivering in my shoes, for the Grand Army of the Republic and the Daughters of the Confederacy will join arms and march on Widener 417 and throw me out of the window. Never mind! Let them come! It has been great fun writing the book and I hope that at least one person will have some ideas as to the labor it has cost.1
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References
Edward Channing to J. Franklin Jameson, June 9, 1924, John Franklin Jameson Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.
Letter to the author from Edward C. Kirkland, July 18, 1966.
Edward Channing to A. Lawrence Lowell, January 7, 1922, A. Lawrence Lowell Papers, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Edward Channing to George P. Brett [President, Macmillan Company], July 9, 1922, Edward Channing File, Macmillan Authors Collection, New York Public Library.
Channing to Brett, November 6, 1922, Macmillan Collection.
Ibid., December 14, 1922.
Channing to Jameson, May 3, 1923, Jameson Collection.
Channing to Brett, September 26, 1923, Macmillan Collection.
Ibid., December 28, 1923, June 9 and December 29, 1924. Channing apparently maintained his habit of isolating himself all through this period. He must have been speaking of the meeting of the American Historical Association when he wrote to Jameson in June, 1924: “I rejoice to receive your annual letter and invitation and if I do not join the brethern at Branford, it is not because I do not love my brothers and wish to commune with them, it is because I am mortgaged to volume vi of a ‘History of the United States’.” (Channing to Jameson, June 9, 1924, Jameson Collection.)
Channing to Brett, March 4, 1925, Macmillan Collection.
Ibid., March 17, 1925.
John Channing Fuller, “Edward Channing: Essays on the Man, the Teacher, and the Writer” (Unpublished senior honors thesis, Williams College, 1943), p. 126; Interview with Paul H. Buck, June 9, 1967, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Edward Channing, A History of the United States. Volume VI: The War for Southern Independence (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1925), pp. 3–4.
Ibid., pp. 1–2.
Ibid., pp. 4–5.
Ibid., pp. 35–36.
Ibid., pp. 11–12.
Ibid., p. 15.
Ibid.
Ibid., pp. 23 and 16.
Ibid., pp. 19–20.
Channing to Jameson, June 1, 1816 [sic], Jameson Collection.
Ibid., p. 74.
Ibid., p. 77.
Ibid., pp. 84–85.
Ibid., pp. 101–102.
Ibid., p. 103.
Ibid., pp. 113–114.
Fuller, “Edward Channing,” p. 127.
History, VI, p. 119.
Ibid., pp. 124–125, 137 and 135.
Ibid., pp. 142–146.
Ibid., pp. 150–157.
Ibid., pp. 196 and 200.
Ibid., p. 221.
Ibid., p. 299.
Ibid., pp. 388, 309, 295 and 228. Channing found only one occasion to be critical of Lincoln, and he emphasized it so strongly that one gets the feeling he must have been trying to prove his objectivity. He labeled Lincoln’s support of re-colonization of the Negro in Africa “one of the most remarkable failures of Lincoln’s whole career.” (p. 525)
Ibid., pp. 229–230, 232 and 253. Speaking of the Southern radicals, Channing wrote: “They had brought about the existing crisis-at least so it would seem-to serve as a pretext for secession and, having succeeded in that, they were absolutely opposed to any sort of concession to the North. And they were absolutely right, if the Southern social system were to live, it must live under its own government. It was so out of tune with the opinion of mankind that it could not exist under the domination of any other rulers of the white race. It is extraordinary that any set of people should have likened themselves, as many typical Southerners did, to the lords and ladies, to the thanes and squires of the pages of Sir Walter Scott and not have realized that a mediaeval state of society could not exist in the modern world.” (p. 254)
Edward Channing, A History of the United States. Volume IV: Federalists and Republicans, 1789–1815 (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1917), pp. 154–155.
History, VI, pp. 268–270. “The motives and reasons that led the men and women of the South into secession are as inscrutable now as they were in i860 and in 1861,” wrote Channing. It was a rather strange remark for him to make, for he went ahead to delineate the reasons, concluding that “The great mass of the white inhabitants of the Cotton States sincerely believed that they were in danger of persecution and of disaster and that their ‘honor’ demanded independence.” (pp. 256, 264–265)
Ibid., p. 315. Louis Gottschalk emphasized the political more in his analysis of Channing’s interpretation. “Edward Channing conceived of the struggle as a phase of evolving nationalism,” wrote Gottschalk. “The growing nation’s aims were ambiguous: Which definition of aims should prevail, that of the North or that of the South? When the South concluded that its definition was doomed, it determined to follow the example of the colonies in 1776 and work out its own destiny. The Civil War to Channing was a War for Southern Independence, a war to ensure to the South freedom to organize a nation after its own design, free from the implications of Northern definition.” Louis Gottschalk, ed., Generalization in the Writing of History: A Report of the Committee on Historical Analysis of the Social Science Research Council (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), p. 136.
Howard K. Beale, “What Historians Have Said About the Causes of the Civil War,” Theory and Practice in Historical Study: A Report of the Committee on Historiography (New York: Social Science Research Council, 1946), p. 89
Gerald N. Grob and George Athan Billias, Interpretations of American History: Patterns and Perspectives. Volume I: To 1877 (New York: The Free Press, 1967), pp. 418–421.
History, VI, p. 277. Channing showed an even more sympathetic attitude toward Davis on pp. 624–626.
Ibid., p. 326. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson and J. E. B. Stuart were also praised by Channing, Stuart as “one of the outstanding military figures of the war” and Jackson as “one of the few military geniuses that the war produced” and the Confederacy’s “greatest soldier.” (pp. 480, 469, and 478)
Ibid., pp. 403–404. 481, 558–559 and 573
Ibid., p. 557. A more detailed evaluation of McClellan appeared on pp. 474–476.
Letter to the author from Herbert W. Hill. September 26, 1966.
History, VI, pp. 332–333.
Ibid., p. 341.
Ibid., pp. 374–379.
Ibid., pp. 435–436. Channing thought the blame for the controversial Andersonville “belonged on the utter breakdown of the Confederate administrative bureaus” rather than on any maliciousness on the part of Southerners, (p. 442)
Ibid., pp. 552, 562, 456, 575, 445 and 504.
Ibid., pp. 605–606.
Ibid., pp. 612–621.
Allan Nevins, The Gateway to History, New, revised edition (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, Incorporated, 1962), pp. 241–244. One reviewer, on the other hand, no less a historian than William E. Dodd, was completely satisfied with Channing’s interpretation, feeling that it was “surely going to be the final verdict on this part of the subject.”-New York Tribune, August 9, 1929.
Edward Channing to Charles Francis Adams, January 6, 1906, Adams Family Papers, Charles Francis Adams II File, Massachusetts Historical Society Library, Boston. Channing specifically minimized the role of the blockade in the History, VI, pp. 519–521.
Albert Bushnell Hart to Edward Channing, November 2, 1925, Albert Bushnell Hart Papers, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Channing to Hart, November 3, 1925, Ibid.
Ibid. The document is headed: “Queries on Channing’s History of the United States, Volume VI, Put by Albert Bushnell Hart, November 4, 1925.”
Hart to Channing, November 2, 1925, Ibid.
Fuller, “Edward Channing,” p. 126.
David Seville Muzzey, Political Science Quarterly, XL (December, 1925), p. 624.
Charles A. Beard, “History and an Antidote,” New Republic, XLIV (November 11, 1925), p. 311.
B. B. Kendrick, Historical Outlook, XVI (October, 1925), pp. 283–284; Channing to Brett, October 10, 1925, Macmillan Collection.
Interview with Hugh O. Davis, September 22, 1966, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Davis also recalled of his student association with Channing: “I believe that I was his last student. The only reason that he took me was that I was a southerner and distant kin of ‘Pres. Jeff,’ and he was a bit partial!”-Letter to the author, August 2, 1966.
Carl Russell Fish, “Edward Channing: America’s Historian,” Current History, XXXIII (March, 1931), p. 865.
William MacDonald, Nation, CXXI (September 23, 1925), pp. 334–335; Channing to Brett, September 28, 1925, Macmillan Collection.
Charles A. Beard, “History and an Antidote,” New Republic, XLIV (November 11, 1925), p. 311.
Ibid.
Dixon Ryan Fox, American Historical Review, XXXI (October, 1925), pp. 151–154. The other reviews of volume VI are: Booklist, XXII (December, 1925), p. 111; Independent, CXV (July 18, 1925), p. 79; Willis Fletcher Johnson, “Studies in History,” North American Review, CCXXII (September-October-November, 1925), pp. 177–187; C. M. Morrison, New York Evening Post Literary Review, September 5, 1925; Outlook, CXLI (December 23, 1925), Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer, “American Annals,” Saturday Review of Literature, II (August 22, 1925), p. 61. Oberholtzer, disciple as he was of McMaster, had to complain about Channing not using newspapers as sources.
Nevins, The Gateway to History, pp. 231 and 267.
Ibid., p. 232.
Samuel Eliot Morison, “Edward Channing: A Memoir,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, LXIV (October, 1930–June, 1932), p. 283. There is a copy of the letter from Frank D. Fackenthal, Secretary of Columbia University, to Channing, informing him of the Pulitzer Prize award, in the “Resignation” folder in the possession of Elizabeth Channing Fuller.
Channing to Brett, October 18, 1922, Macmillan Collection.
Ibid., November 6 and December 14, 1922.
Ibid., July 3, August 21, September 13, and October 29, 1925.
Ibid., December 8, 1925.
Ibid., March 19, 1926, August 3, 1927, Brett to Channing, August 4, 1927.
Channing to President and Fellows of Harvard College, January 21, 1929, Lowell Papers.
The telegram and letters are in the “Resignation” folder.
Morison, “Edward Channing,” p. 283. A brief article on the event appeared in the Boston Herald of March 12, 1929. (Clipping in “Resignation” folder.) The portrait now hangs in the Union Catalog room of Widener Library.
Interview with Robert H. Haynes, August 24, 1966, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Channing to Brett, May 13, June 25, and August 6, 1930, Macmillan Collection.
Edward Channing to Eva G. Moore, July 15 and September 9, 1930, Channing Correspondence, 1884–1930, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Morison, “Edward Channing,” p. 284.
Interviews with Elizabeth Channing Fuller, August 18 and 19, 1966, Chatham, Massachusetts.
Alice T. Channing (Mrs. Edward Channing) to Brett, March 12, 1931, Macmillan Collection.
Ibid.
Alice T. Channing to Lowell, March 11,1931, and Lowell to Alice T. Channing, March 12, 1931, Lowell Papers.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, In Retrospect: The History of a Historian (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, Incorporated, 1963), p. 86.
Interview with Samuel Eliot Morison, June 9, 1967, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Ibid. Channing’s grandson, John Channing Fuller, said the manuscript was destroyed by the family, apparently upon the recommendation of Lawrence Shaw Mayo, whom he described as “an intimate friend of Channing, and as closely associated with him as anyone.” (Fuller, “Edward Channing,” p. 130) The present author can understand the reluctance to publish the manuscript, but would strongly take issue with the widow Channing, Samuel Eliot Morison, or anyone else who would contend that it is “the only thing to do” to destroy any historical document which might possibly have any value. And certainly Channing’s comments on the 1865–1898 period would have been very interesting and valuable, incomplete and imperfect though they apparently were. It also seems inconceivable that any perceptive reader of such a manuscript would have decided on the basis thereof that Channing was a “second-rate historian.” Would he not instead have decided, as Morison and Schlesinger themselves did, that Channing’s abilities as a historian were declining with age? The destruction of the manuscript can only be lamented. Strangely inconsistent with Morison’s stand on the destruction of the Channing manuscript is his condemnation of the adopted twin sons of A. B. Hart for their failure to preserve intact his collection of materials. And they did not destroy, but simply dispersed, with profit as their motive.-Samuel Eliot Morison, “A Memoir and Estimate of Albert Bushnell Hart,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, LXXVII (January-December, 1965), pp. 50–51.
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© 1974 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Joyce, D.D. (1974). The War for Southern Independence, and the End of the Great Work. In: Edward Channing and the Great Work. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-2061-9_8
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