The Power Of Ideals In American History

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Excerpt from The Power of Ideals in American History The lectures hitherto given under the auspices of the Dodge Foundation for Citizenship have embodied the thought of distinguished men, famous in some field of public service, - in law, in state administration, or in church organization. These men, speaking from personal experience, have been able to present in didactic form, ethical standards of conduct. The teacher of American history will certainly affirm that he also has standards of conduct and he naturally turns to history itself, seeking in the experience of the past great principles of national progress. If it can be shown that the American people have been largely influenced in their development by moral principles, or by ideals, it is at least a safe presumption that ideals still animate this nation. I wish then to recall to your remembrance certain leading ideals, powerful in their influence upon our history, in the past one hundred years. Before undertaking this, however, permit me an explanation of the reason for my choice of subject. There is today a very decided tendency to seek purely material reasons for historical development, and especially so, apparently, in American history. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

From the Introduction. The lectures hitherto given under the auspices of the Dodge Foundation for Citizenship have embodied the thought of distinguished men, famous in some field of public service, -in law, in state administration, or in church organization. These men, speaking from personal experience, have been able to present in didactic form, ethical standards of conduct. The teacher of American history will certainly affirm that he also has standards of conduct and he naturally turns to history itself, seeking in the experience of the past great principles of national progress. If it can be shown that the American people have been largely influenced in their development by moral principles, or by ideals, it is at least a safe presumption that ideals still animate this nation. I wish then to recall to your remembrance certain leading ideals, powerful in their influence upon our history, in the past one hundred years. Before undertaking this, however, permit me an explanation of the reason for my choice of subject. There is today a very decided tendency to seek purely material reasons for historical development, and especially so, apparently, in American history. The causes of the American Revolution are asserted to have been almost wholly commercial, to the exclusion of those ideals of political and religious freedom which our forefathers loudly voiced, and which their descendants have accepted as a creed. Upon this period of our history I do not propose to touch, but it is interesting to observe that the modern interpretation differs little from the contemporary accusations of British writers, -as in the words of Thomas Moore, expressing contempt for sordid motives hidden under the guise of liberty. "Those vaunted demagogues, who nobly rose From England's debtors to be England's foes, Who could their monarch in their purse forget, And break allegiance, but to cancel debt."

Since the early twentieth century, historians have traditionally defined manifest destiny as the belief that the United States was destined to expand from coast to coast. This generation of historians has posed manifest destiny as a unifying ideology of the nineteenth century, one that was popular and pervasive and ultimately fulfilled in the late 1840s when the United States acquired the Pacific Coast. However, the story of manifest destiny was never quite that simple. In A Failed Vision of Empire Daniel J. Burge examines the belief in manifest destiny over the nineteenth century by analyzing contested moments in the continental expansion of the United States, arguing that the ideology was ultimately unsuccessful. By examining speeches, plays, letters, diaries, newspapers, and other sources, Burge reveals how Americans debated the wisdom of expansion, challenged expansionists, and disagreed over what the boundaries of the United States should look like. A Failed Vision of Empire is the first work to capture the messy, complicated, and yet far more compelling story of manifest destiny’s failure, debunking in the process one of the most pervasive myths of modern American history.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.