"In government as well as in trade a new era came to the colonies in 1763." -- Albert Bushnell Hart
Albert Bushnell Hart, Ph.D. (July 1, 1854–July 16, 1943), was an American historian, writer, and teacher. One of the first generation of professionally trained historians in the United States, a prolific author and editor of historical works, Albert Bushnell Hart became, as Samuel Eliot Morison described him, "The Grand Old Man" of American history, looking the part with his "patriarchal full beard and flowing moustaches."
"As often happens during a war, some parts of the country prospered, notwithstanding the constant loss.""Besides paid white laborers, there was everywhere a class of white servants bound without wages for a term of years, and a more miserable class of Negro slaves.""Each colony became accustomed to planting new settlements and to claiming new boundaries.""England and France were rivals, not only on the continent, but in the West Indies, in India, and in Europe.""Everywhere among the English-speaking race criminal justice was rude, and punishments were barbarous; but the tendency was to do away with special privileges and legal exemptions.""Few characters in history are indispensable.""From William of Orange to William Pitt the younger there was but one man without whom English history must have taken a different turn, and that was William Pitt the elder.""In 1763 the English were the most powerful nation in the world.""In any event, colonization and the grant of lands were provincial matters.""In appearance the labor system of all the colonies was the same.""In comparison with other men of their time, the Americans were distinguished by the possession of new political and social ideas, which were destined to be the foundation of the American commonwealth.""In each colony in 1750 were to be found two sets of governing organizations, - the local and the general.""In some of the middle colonies the towns and counties were both active and had a relation with each other which was the forerunner of the present system of local government in the Western States.""Many attempts had been made by colonial legislatures to cut off or to tax the importation of slaves.""More emphasis was thus thrown upon the local governments than in England.""On March 10, 1764, preliminary resolutions passed the House of Commons looking towards the Stamp Act.""One of the strongest and most persistent elements in national development has been that inheritance of political traditions and usages which the new settlers brought with them.""The colonies had little occasion to feel or to resent direct royal prerogative.""The growth of constitutional government, as we now understand it, was promoted by the establishment of two different sets of machinery for making laws and carrying on government.""The old charters of Massachusetts, Virginia, and the Carolinas had given title to strips of territory extending from the Atlantic westward to the Pacific.""The participation of the people in their own government was the more significant, because the colonies actually had what England only seemed to have, - three departments of government.""The residence of the Plymouth settlers in the Netherlands, and the later conquest of the Dutch colonies, had brought the Americans into contact with the singularly wise and free institutions of the Dutch.""The Stuart sovereigns of England steadily attempted to strengthen their power, and the resistance to that effort caused an immense growth of Parliamentary influence.""Washington's defeat in 1754 was followed by active military preparations on both sides."
Hart was born in Clarksville (now Clark), Mercer County, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Harvard University in 1880. He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and a classmate and friend of future U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt. He studied at Paris, Berlin and Freiburg, and received his doctorate from Freiburg in 1883. That same year joined the Harvard faculty, serving as instructor in history in 1883-1887, assistant professor in 1887-1897, becoming professor in 1897. He remained on the faculty for 43 years, retiring in 1926. In retirement he continued to write and edit from a room in Widener Library. He maintained a summer home in New Hampshire near Mount Monadnock.
Hart was an editor of the Harvard Graduates' Magazine from 1894 to 1902. He served as president of the American Historical Association in 1909 and of the American Political Science Association in 1912. In 1914, he was appointed exchange professor at the University of Berlin.
Hart authored Formation of the Union (1892), Salmon Portland Chase (1899), Essentials of American History (1905), Slavery and Abolition (1906), and many other books. He was editor of the "American Nation" series (28 volumes, 1903-1918) and other series on American history, of many source books and guides for the study of American history, and, with Andrew C. McLaughlin, of the Cyclopedia of American Government (3 volumes, 1914). He was an editor of the American Historical Review for fourteen years, and president of both the American Historical Association (AHA) and the American Political Science Association. Hart edited the American Year Book from 1911 to 1920 and from 1926 to 1932. He edited a five-volume history of Massachusetts in 1927-1930 and worked as the official historian of the George Washington bicentennial commission from 1926 to 1932.
In 1909, he played an important role in enabling his former student, W. E. B. Du Bois, to deliver his paper "Reconstruction and Its Benefits" to the AHA in New York. This essay was elaborated as the book Black Reconstruction in America in 1935 and proved to be a seminal work in moving historical discussion of the Reconstruction period away from the views of the Dunning School. He served as a trustee of Howard University. Though a believer in the racial inferiority of African Americans, he nevertheless opposed plans to deny black students places in the Freshman Halls at Harvard in the years following World War I.
A proponent of U.S. participation in World War I, he was accused of espionage in December 1918, but the charges were determined to be the work of German propagandists trying to undermine his pro-British stance.
A discussion arose in 1923 as to the "Americanism" of his history textbooks, The Epoch of American History and National Ideals of History Traced. An investigating committee suggested the removal of his School History of the United States from New York City schools. New International Encyclopedia
Hart's Efforts to Collect the Writings of Theodore Rooseveltmoreless
Hart was a devoted friend and follower of Theodore Roosevelt and was elected as a Roosevelt delegate to the Republican convention of 1912. He became an enthusiastic trustee and supporter of the Roosevelt Memorial Association, now called the Theodore Roosevelt Association and said that from the time of TR's death he had the idea to "present in alphabetical arrangement extracts sufficiently numerous and comprehensive to display all the phases of Roosevelt's activities and opinions as expressed by him." This work would eventually be called the Theodore Roosevelt Cyclopedia.
Professor Hart wrote Herman Hagedorn of the Association: "What we are after is the crisp, sharp, biting sparks that flew from the Roosevelt brain." Hart told the survivors of the Harvard Class of 1880 that editing the cyclopedia "will be a very interesting and agreeable service to the memory of our great classmate." From the beginning, however, the project was plagued with problems simply because Hart was very busy with many other commitments. Hart had to postpone the cyclopedia, and he asked the Association for research and clerical staff, but the Executive Committee of the Roosevelt Memorial Association delayed appropriations for the cyclopedia, because the expense was "so great," and it was not until May 1928 that a budget was approved for the cyclopedia, although the project had been publicly announced years before. Finally in 1931, Hart presented a rough draft of the cyclopedia to Hagedorn. But the book needed much more work and the elderly Hart "began to decline" and Hagedorn reported to the RMA Executive Committee that Hart could not finish the project "because of his advanced years."
It appeared in 1941 as The Theodore Roosevelt Cyclopedia edited by Albert Bushnell Hart and Herbert Ronald Ferleger.
