Much as I love an origins story rooted in the awesome power of the William & Mary Quarterly, this essay is problematic in at least 3 ways and in how it’s entered a broader conversation about how we do history. 1/ https://newrepublic.com/article/160995/consensus-approach-history

I’ll start with 3 things I appreciate about @WilliamHogeland’s piece. 1st, it invites us to consider how historical narratives are built and deployed—that’s important. 2nd, it gives us a close up look at a couple of examples. The close look is important, too. 2/

The whole point of historical scholarship is the relationship of the evidence offered in support of the argument. These close looks are meant to show us that if that relationship is baggy (a “feint” or “bluff” as he says of other scholars’ work) the argument won’t stand. 3/

And 3rd the piece asks us to consider what happens when arguments that won’t or shouldn’t stand instead dominate our understanding—occluding both scholarly and public understanding of the past. In this case, for a key and contentious era, the American national founding. 4/

While I appreciate the aims, the piece does a disservice to better understanding just how early America has been characterized--what Hogeland describes as “a framing of the national founding that…prevailed all my life, in elite policy circles, and with the American public.” 5/

That framing is “consensus history” abt “grand principles that the revolutionary generation agreed on.” Such consensus begins, he argues, w Edmund S. Morgan’s early work and stretches into the G. Wood / S. Wilentzian views on display in critiques of the #1619Project. 6/

The piece is centered on an analysis of Morgan’s scholarship on the Stamp Act crisis, beginning w his 1948 WMQ article. In the essay & the later book Hogeland shows Morgan’s evidence falling short. 7/

Hogeland asserts that Morgan makes an evidentiary feint by excluding a subtitle on a pamphlet –and by calling a petition a pamphlet. Here’s the version Morgan cites. I’m not an expert on the Stamp Act but let’s just say I’m not persuaded by Hogeland’s point. (See subthread)8/

But the larger issues for me aren’t about Hogeland’s argument’s about Morgan, but that his essay 1. misses just what the characterization of early America has been, 2. how it came to be, 3. what weakens its hold, and 4. why that matters. /9

So first. THE big consensus wasn’t about specific political principles (sure that might be one but it’s a more minor piece) but that elite colonial then national politics and politicians were of foundational, paramount historical importance to national history. /10

And crucially parallel to this, the foundational and paramount importance of European settlers and settlement./ 11

Second, Hogeland says museums etc echoed “consensus history” but historians like Morgan in 40s-50s were working fr decades/ centuries of historical practice/ representation inc the erasure of native people –literally from historical consciousness of places they still lived-- /12

And the denial of the massive population of enslaved people. TL/dr Colonial Williamsburg preceded consensus historians, in fact was created parallel w progressive historians who as Hogeland notes highlighted a much more fractious (still white) early history. /13

So let’s be clear about the larger echo chamber around the echo chamber that produced that “consensus.” Hogeland mistakes the elite worlds he references (“policy makers!”) for the whole. 14/

+ I know others have noted Morgan’s critical book, _American Slavery, American Freedom_ -- where Morgan points out the cleavage at the heart of the natl founding. /15

And third, what fatally weakened the historical scholarly consensus that Hogeland describes? Better historical evidence for a much more capacious field framing (bemoaned by G Wood among others) in part because a more diverse profession. /16

But what has weakened the public characterization of early America as Anglo, European, east coast? It just won’t hold up, basically. Scholars are doing public work / public history is more capacious. Plus communities knowing and demanding more/ better. /17

Last/ fourth what really troubles me about this piece is the conclusion that either historians like Morgan or journalists such as the #1619Project are so driven to a big national narrative/ story that that they will even falsify evidence (that’s what he says Morgan did). /18

A big interpretation requires so much smoothing and sanding that it borders on—or is—unethical. Even when Morgan was writing a journal article in the mid to late 40s he was so in the grip of this grand narrative that he sanded the corners on individual pieces of evidence. /19

Left out –the donut to this hole- is that generations of scholars and public audiences have been doing exactly the work of representing the incredible complexity and nuance and diversity of American history—including early America. //20