ir books during the Progressive era. John Fiske wrote a two-volume treatment of the American Revolution in 1891. To be sure, this was at the earliest stages of the Progressive movement in the United States, but it falls well within the boundaries. In that context, one can evaluate the contents of Fiske’s book, and in one other also: which occurred in various places in Turner’s writings. Fiske writes much in the second volume of his history of “drums and trumpets.” However, there are still inklings of his views as to the nature of the war. He writes, for example, of the “absurd talk of John Adams,” who proposed the annual election of general officers by Congress, and that “if some great men should be sent home as a result, [then the nation will not be ruined]” (Fiske, 31). Fiske sees this as a ludicrous notion to say the least, indicating his great-man orientation. (As an aside, Fiske writes of Benedict Arnold’s death-bed remorse at “ever having put on any other” uniform than that of the colonial forces, which story has found its way into American mythology.) In a sentence, Fiske writes of armies and leaders, of imperial nations and colonies, and of congresses and parliaments. He clearly does not write of rivers, mountains, and mass suffrage. Albert Bushnell Hart wrote his story of the Formation of the Union in 1894. The publisher, Longman’s, offered other works by professors of history, including one progressive professor who would someday become famous the world over: Woodrow Wilson. At the time, Fiske was an assistant professor of history at Harvard University. Hart asserted that the Constitution was more than a compact, the term he assigned to the Articles of Confederation. He defined a “compact” as little more than a treaty, calling it an agreement between states that lost its force when one of the parties ceased to observe it. Instead, Hart held tha...
