Great Moments In History

Going through my old books I came across Great Moments in History by Samuel Nisenson and Alfred Parker.  Published in 1932, Great Moments had been my mother's book (her maiden name is inscribed) and I remember reading, and loving, it as a child of 9 or 10.  It consists of 150 "Moments" described in one page, illustrated, and vividly written vignettes, beginning with The Exodus from Egypt (1285-1250 BC) and The First Olympic Games (776 BC) and concluding with Lindbergh's Transatlantic Flight (1927).  It is heavily weighted towards American history.

Samuel Nisenson wrote a series of similar books, primarily in the 1930s but continuing into the 1950s with titles like Minute Biographies, Minute Sketches of Great Composers, Great Moments in Catholic History, Great Moments in Baseball, History's 100 Greatest Events, and a 1934 biography of Franklin Roosevelt.

Written for general audiences and published by Grosset & Dunlap, one of the big publishing houses of the day, the books provide an insight into the America of that era.  I thought it would be interesting to see how and whether events related to race in America are portrayed almost a century ago.

One of the "Great Moments" is "The Introduction of Slavery in America: The Beginning of the Powerful Institution that was Nearly to Disrupt America" (August 1619), pictured below.  The narrative provides a pretty good summary of the origin and growth of slavery in the Western Hemisphere and concludes:

The spread of the institution of slavery had far-reaching and disastrous effects on the social history of the United States.  It created a sharp line of division between the northern manufacturers who did not need slaves and the southern planters who depended on them, a division that ultimately precipitated the American War Between the States in 1860.

Doesn't appear the authors had any doubts about the cause of the Civil War.

The next relevant Moment is in 1793, "The Invention of the Cotton Gin: The Remarkable Machine that Changed the History of America", pictured below.  We are given an account of the invention by Eli Whitney along with its impact on the economics of cotton.  This page concludes:

Between 1791 and 1801, the exports of cotton, now a cheap commodity, instead of a luxury, increased 100-fold, and slavery became an important industrial factor in the Southern states.  The South was soon a country of vast cotton plantations, while the slave system grew into a powerful institution that threatened to disrupt the Union and ultimately brought on the Civil War.

 The Capture of John Brown: The End of the Raid that Startled the Country! (Oct 18, 1859) is next up.

With the coming of the Civil War the next entry on the subject is"The Freeing of the Slaves: The Proclamation that made All Men Free and Equal in America!" (January 1, 1863), pictured below.

Unlike the prior entries, this narrative has serious flaws.  It states that Lincoln "freed all the slaves by his Emancipation Proclamation".  The effect of the Proclamation was much more limited, being restricted to slaves still held in areas controlled by the Confederacy on that date.  Non secessionist slave states, and slave holding areas already occupied by Union troop were not included.

The narrative concludes:

"Although the liberation of the Negroes at first threw the South into chaos, the gradual readjustment, after the war, placed the Negro on an equal footing with the White man and fulfilled the words of the Declaration of Independence that 'All Men are Created Equal'"

That is not what happened and, in the former slave states, the "readjustment" took the form of Jim Crow laws which began to be adopted in the final two decades of the 19th century.

The final Moment dealing with race in America is "The Reconstruction of the South" (1867-1876) and it goes badly awry.  We read of Northern "carpetbaggers", the Southern white "scalawags" who joined in their corrupt schemes, and government "completely into the hands of the Negroes".  It only ends when "the people finally rose and drove them out".  Once the states were readmitted "the Union was once more intact and a new industrial South replaced the broad plantation with its black slaves."

We find no mention of the Black Codes, instituted by southern states in 1865-66, or of the spree of violence by Whites against newly freed Blacks, actions which triggered the 1867 Reconstruction Act.

Great Moments in History was published in 1932 at the height of the influence of the Dunning School interpretation of the Civil War and Reconstruction.  William Dunning was a professor of history and political philosophy at Columbia University.  Extremely influential, Dunning taught and wrote that Reconstruction was a disaster, that freedmen were incapable of self-government, Blacks should not be allowed to vote or hold office, and segregation necessary; the military occupation of the South had been a mistake; and that the Reconstruction state governments had been corrupt and incompetent, a gross mischaracterization, particularly given the armed resistance they faced from recalcitrant Whites.  This caricature of reconstruction governments was prevalent for decades - I remember references to this in my middle school history book in the early 1960s, though by high school I think it was gone.

It is interesting that the greatest diversion between the text and the real history is in its most recent entry, illustrating the failure of post-Civil War America to find a way to assimilate Blacks at the same time it was successfully assimilating millions of immigrants.

This book was written during a period that some historians consider the nadir of the post-Civil War experience for Black Americans, the era between the World Wars (see Strange Fruit for more details), and it is a reflection of its times.