American historians of the early national period, argues Eileen
Ka-May Cheng, grappled with objectivity, professionalism, and other
"modern" issues to a greater degree than their successors in later
generations acknowledge. Her extensive readings of antebellum
historians show that by the 1820s, a small but influential group of
practitioners had begun to develop many of the doctrines and
concerns that undergird contemporary historical practice. "The
Plain and Noble Garb of Truth" challenges the entrenched notion
that America's first generations of historians were romantics or
propagandists for a struggling young nation.
Cheng engages with the works of well-known early national
historians like George Bancroft, William Prescott, and David
Ramsay; such lesser-known figures as Jared Sparks and Lorenzo
Sabine; and leading political and intellectual elites of the day,
including Francis Bowen and Charles Francis Adams. She shows that
their work, which focused on the American Revolution, was often
nuanced and surprisingly sympathetic in its treatment of American
Indians and loyalists. She also demonstrates how the rise of the
novel contributed to the emergence of history as an autonomous
discipline, arguing that paradoxically "early national historians
at once described truth in opposition to the novel and were
influenced by the novel in their understanding of truth."
Modern historians should recognize that the discipline of
history is itself a product of history, says Cheng. By taking
seriously a group of too-often-dismissed historians, she challenges
contemporary historians to examine some ahistorical aspects of the
way they understand their own discipline.
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