D2.His.7.9-12: How the Present Shapes Interpretations of the Past: Four Readings of the Constitution of 1787

Overview

Lesson Procedure

75-80 minutes of class time across 5 phases.

1. Warm-Up10 minutes
2. Direct Instruction20-25 minutes
3. Guided Practice15 minutes
4. Independent Practice20 minutes
5. Closure10 minutes

1. Warm-Up10 minutes

   Warm-Up Prompt

   "Imagine two histories of your town: one written in 1950 and one written this year. Name two things the newer one would probably include or stress that the older one might not. For each, say why: what changed between 1950 and today?"

   Collect answers in four rough groups on the board: things that happened since, changed ideas or values, new problems people care about and new records or tools. Tell students that these four groups are the lenses for today. Define an interpretation as an explanation of what happened in the past and why it mattered, and historiography as the study of how interpretations of the past have been written and have changed.

2. Direct Instruction20-25 minutes

   Part 1: Every interpretation has a present. The people who interpret the past (historians, teachers, museum writers, students) live in a present of their own. Present the four lenses below. Then introduce the difference between two ideas students often merge: presentism (judging people of the past only by today's knowledge and values, without asking what they could know) and the plain fact that every interpreter writes from a present. The second cannot be avoided; the first can.

   Four lenses: how a writer's present enters an interpretation of the past (an SVHS teaching tool)

   Lens	What to ask about the writer's present
   1. Events since	What has happened between the past event and the writer's present? What outcomes does the writer know that people at the time could not?
   2. Ideas of the day	What beliefs about people, nations, religion or progress were common when the writer wrote?
   3. Questions of the day	What problems in the writer's own world made some questions about the past seem urgent?
   4. Sources and methods	What records, tools or methods did the writer's present make available, or leave out of reach?

   Part 2: A historian of 1910 on the present. Read Source 1, from Turner's address as president of the American Historical Association. Note for students: a "doctrine" is a widely taught idea; "vantage-ground" means a place from which one sees far. Work the first two examples aloud.

   1It is a familiar doctrine that each age studies its history anew and with interests determined by the spirit of the time. Each age finds it necessary to reconsider at least some portion of the past, from points of view furnished by new conditions which reveal the influence and significance of forces not adequately known by the historians of the previous generation. Unquestionably each investigator and writer is influenced by the times in which he lives and while this fact exposes the historian to a bias, at the same time it affords him new instruments and new insight for dealing with his subject.

   2If recent history, then, gives new meaning to past events, if it has to deal with the rise into a commanding position of forces, the origin and growth of which may have been inadequately described or even overlooked by historians of the previous generation, it is important to study the present and the recent past, not only for themselves but also as the source of new hypotheses, new lines of inquiry, new criteria of the perspective of the remoter past. And, moreover, a just public opinion and a statesmanlike treatment of present problems demand that they be seen in their historical relations in order that history may hold the lamp for conservative reform.

   3Seen from the vantage-ground of present developments what new light falls upon past events! When we consider what the Mississippi Valley has come to be in American life, and when we consider what it is yet to be, the young Washington, crossing the snows of the wilderness to summon the French to evacuate the portals of the great valley, becomes the herald of an empire. When we recall the huge industrial power that has centered at Pittsburgh, Braddock's advance to the forks of the Ohio takes on new meaning. Even in defeat, he opened a road to what is now the center of the world's industrial energy. The modifications which England proposed in 1794 to John Jay in the northwestern boundary of the United States from the Lake of the Woods to the Mississippi, seemed to him, doubtless, significant chiefly as a matter of principle and as a question of the retention or loss of beaver grounds. The historians hardly notice the proposals. But they involved, in fact, the ownership of the richest and most extensive deposits of iron ore in America, the all-important source of a fundamental industry of the United States, the occasion for the rise of some of the most influential forces of our time.

   Part 3: An interpretation of 1888. Read Source 2, the end of the preface to John Fiske's The Critical Period of American History. The book is a history of the years 1783-1789, from the peace with Britain to the start of the new federal government, written a century later. Work the third example aloud.

   1That period was preëminently the turning-point in the development of political society in the western hemisphere. Though small in their mere dimensions, the events here summarized were in a remarkable degree germinal events, fraught with more tremendous alternatives of future welfare or misery for mankind than it is easy for the imagination to grasp. As we now stand upon the threshold of that mighty future, in the light of which all events of the past are clearly destined to seem dwindled in dimensions and significant only in the ratio of their potency as causes; as we discern how large a part of that future must be the outcome of the creative work, for good or ill, of men of English speech; we are put into the proper mood for estimating the significance of the causes which determined a century ago that the continent of North America should be dominated by a single powerful and pacific federal nation instead of being parcelled out among forty or fifty small communities, wasting their strength and lowering their moral tone by perpetual warfare, like the states of ancient Greece, or by perpetual preparation for warfare, like the nations of modern Europe. In my book entitled "American Political Ideas, viewed from the Standpoint of Universal History," I have tried to indicate the pacific influence likely to be exerted upon the world by the creation and maintenance of such a political structure as our Federal Union. The present narrative may serve as a commentary upon what I had in mind on page 133 of that book, in speaking of the work of our Federal Convention as "the finest specimen of constructive statesmanship that the world has ever seen." On such a point it is pleasant to find one's self in accord with a statesman so wise and noble as Mr. Gladstone, whose opinion is here quoted on page 223.

   2To some persons it may seem as if the years 1861-65 were of more cardinal importance than the years 1783-89. Our civil war was indeed an event of prodigious magnitude, as measured by any standard that history affords; and there can be little doubt as to its decisiveness. The measure of that decisiveness is to be found in the completeness of the reconciliation that has already, despite the feeble wails of unscrupulous place-hunters and unteachable bigots, cemented the Federal Union so powerfully that all likelihood of its disruption may be said to have disappeared forever. When we consider this wonderful harmony which so soon has followed the deadly struggle, we may well believe it to be the index of such a stride toward the ultimate pacification of mankind as was never made before. But it was the work done in the years 1783-89 that created a federal nation capable of enduring the storm and stress of the years 1861-65. It was in the earlier crisis that the pliant twig was bent; and as it was bent, so has it grown; until it has become indeed a goodly and a sturdy tree.

   • Both effects of the present (Source 1, paragraph 1)

     Question: Does Turner think a historian's present is only a source of error?

     Result: No. Turner writes that "each investigator and writer is influenced by the times in which he lives," and that this "exposes the historian to a bias," but "at the same time it affords him new instruments and new insight for dealing with his subject" (Source 1, paragraph 1). The present is a risk and a resource at once, and a careful reader of history checks for both.

   • Lens 1, events since (Source 1, paragraph 3)

     Question: Why does Turner say that young George Washington's journey in the wilderness looks different in 1910?

     Result: Turner writes that "when we consider what the Mississippi Valley has come to be in American life," Washington's errand to the French "becomes the herald of an empire" (Source 1, paragraph 3). Washington's journey has not changed; what has changed is what Turner's audience knows came after it. Later outcomes give an old event new significance.

   • Lens 1, events since (Source 2, paragraph 2)

     Question: How did the Civil War, over twenty years before Fiske wrote, shape his judgment of 1783-1789?

     Result: Fiske expects readers to ask whether "the years 1861-65 were of more cardinal importance than the years 1783-89," and answers with an image: "It was in the earlier crisis that the pliant twig was bent; and as it was bent, so has it grown" (Source 2, paragraph 2). He measures the 1780s by a test no one in the 1780s could apply: what their Union grew into after a civil war that had not yet happened.

3. Guided Practice15 minutes

   Read Sources 3 and 4 together. In Source 3, Beard, writing in 1913, describes the earlier "schools" (groups of historians who share an approach) and quotes Bancroft. In Source 4, Beard explains why he printed an unfinished study. Model the fourth and fifth examples, then have pairs fill one row of the four-lens chart for Bancroft and one for the "Teutonic" school (Beard's name for historians who credited American institutions to a supposed inborn political talent of Germanic peoples, the Teutons).

   1Broadly speaking, three schools of interpretation have dominated American historical research and generalization. The first of these, which may be justly associated with the name of Bancroft, explains the larger achievements in our national life by reference to the peculiar moral endowments of a people acting under divine guidance; or perhaps it would be more correct to say, it sees in the course of our development the working out of a higher will than that of man. There is to be observed in the history of the struggle for the Constitution, to use Bancroft’s words, “the movement of the divine power which gives unity to the universe, and order and connection to events.”

   [...]

   2The second school of historical interpretation, which in the order of time followed that of Bancroft, may be called the Teutonic, because it ascribes the wonderful achievements of the English-speaking peoples to the peculiar political genius of the Germanic race. Without distinctly repudiating the doctrine of the “higher power” in history, it finds the secret to the “free” institutional development of the Anglo-Saxon world in innate racial qualities.

   3The thesis of this school is, in brief, as follows. The Teutonic peoples were originally endowed with singular political talents and aptitudes; Teutonic tribes invaded England and destroyed the last vestiges of the older Roman and British culture; they then set an example to the world in the development of “free” government. Descendants of this specially gifted race settled America and fashioned their institutions after old English models. The full fruition of their political genius was reached in the creation of the Federal Constitution.

   [...]

   4Nowhere in the commentaries is there any evidence of the fact that the rules of our fundamental law are designed to protect any class in its rights, or secure the property of one group against the assaults of another. “The Constitution,” declares Bancroft, “establishes nothing that interferes with equality and individuality. It knows nothing of differences by descent, or opinions, of favored classes, or legalized religion, or the political power of property. It leaves the individual along-side of the individual.... As the sea is made up of drops, American society is composed of separate, free, and constantly moving atoms, ever in reciprocal action ... so that the institutions and laws of the country rise out of the masses of individual thought, which, like the waters of the ocean, are rolling evermore.”

   1The following pages are frankly fragmentary. They are designed to suggest new lines of historical research rather than to treat the subject in an exhaustive fashion. This apology is not intended as an anticipation of the criticism of reviewers, but as a confession of fact. No one can appreciate more fully than I do how much of the work here outlined remains to be done. The records of the Treasury Department at Washington, now used for the first time in connection with a study of the formation of the Constitution, furnish a field for many years’ research, to say nothing of the other records, printed and unprinted, which throw light upon the economic conditions of the United States between 1783–1787.

   2If it be asked why such a fragmentary study is printed now, rather than held for the final word, my explanation is brief. I am unable to give more than an occasional period to uninterrupted studies, and I cannot expect, therefore, to complete within a reasonable time the survey which I have made here. Accordingly, I print it in the hope that a few of this generation of historical scholars may be encouraged to turn away from barren “political” history to a study of the real economic forces which condition great movements in politics.

   • Lens 4, sources and methods (Source 4, paragraph 1)

     Question: What did Beard's present give him that earlier historians of the Constitution did not use?

     Result: Beard writes of "The records of the Treasury Department at Washington, now used for the first time in connection with a study of the formation of the Constitution" (Source 4, paragraph 1). Beard worked in Washington, where these old federal records could be examined, and he says he was the first to use them for this question. A new set of sources is one way a present opens a new interpretation.

   • Lens 3, questions of the day (Source 4, paragraph 2)

     Question: What kind of history did Beard want his own generation to write?

     Result: He hopes that "a few of this generation of historical scholars may be encouraged to turn away from barren “political” history to a study of the real economic forces which condition great movements in politics" (Source 4, paragraph 2). He writes for "this generation" and names its task. His question, which economic interests shaped the Constitution, is one his present made seem urgent; the words "barren" and "real" also show his own judgment of the older approach.

   Pair task (5 minutes): for Bancroft (Source 3, paragraphs 1 and 4) and for the Teutonic school (Source 3, paragraphs 2-3), write one sentence for the lens that fits best and copy the words that show it. Look for: an idea of the day that a writer treats as a cause in history, and the difference between Beard's description of a school and the school's own words. Remind pairs that Source 3 is Beard's summary of others, so it is also shaped by Beard's present.

4. Independent Practice20 minutes

   Students work alone with Sources 5 and 6. Source 5 is Beard's plan for testing his idea. Source 6 is a page from the National Archives, the federal agency that keeps the original Constitution, written for today's public. Each student completes the four-lens chart for both sources and writes a three-sentence answer to the question: "What does each writer's present let him or her see about 1787, and what might it lead the writer to miss?" Questions 12-16 of the quiz use these two sources.

   1It will be admitted without controversy that the Constitution was the creation of a certain number of men, and it was opposed by a certain number of men. Now, if it were possible to have an economic biography of all those connected with its framing and adoption,—perhaps about 160,000 men altogether,—the materials for scientific analysis and classification would be available. Such an economic biography would include a list of the real and personal property owned by all of these men and their families: lands and houses, with incumbrances, money at interest, slaves, capital invested in shipping and manufacturing, and in state and continental securities.

   2Suppose it could be shown from the classification of the men who supported and opposed the Constitution that there was no line of property division at all; that is, that men owning substantially the same amounts of the same kinds of property were equally divided on the matter of adoption or rejection—it would then become apparent that the Constitution had no ascertainable relation to economic groups or classes, but was the product of some abstract causes remote from the chief business of life—gaining a livelihood.

   3Suppose, on the other hand, that substantially all of the merchants, money lenders, security holders, manufacturers, shippers, capitalists, and financiers and their professional associates are to be found on one side in support of the Constitution and that substantially all or the major portion of the opposition came from the non-slaveholding farmers and the debtors—would it not be pretty conclusively demonstrated that our fundamental law was not the product of an abstraction known as “the whole people,” but of a group of economic interests which must have expected beneficial results from its adoption? Obviously all the facts here desired cannot be discovered, but the data presented in the following chapters bear out the latter hypothesis, and thus a reasonable presumption in favor of the theory is created.

   1Just a few years after the Revolutionary War, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and George Washington feared their young country was on the brink of collapse. America’s first constitution, the Articles of Confederation, gave the Confederation Congress the power to make rules and request funds from the states, but it had no enforcement powers, couldn’t regulate commerce, or print money. The states’ disputes over territory, war pensions, taxation, and trade threatened to tear the young country apart. Alexander Hamilton helped convince Congress to organize a Grand Convention of state delegates to work on revising the Articles of Confederation.

   [...]

   2One of the fiercest arguments was over congressional representation—should it be based on population or divided equally among the states? The framers compromised by giving each state one representative for every 30,000 people in the House of Representatives and two representatives in the Senate. They agreed to count enslaved Africans as three-fifths of a person. Slavery itself was a thorny question that threatened to derail the Union. It was temporarily resolved when the delegates agreed that the slave trade could continue until 1808.

   [...]

   3On September 17, 1787, 38 delegates signed the Constitution. George Reed signed for John Dickinson of Delaware, who was absent, bringing the total number of signatures to 39. It was an extraordinary achievement. Tasked with revising the existing government, the delegates came up with a completely new one. Wary about centralized power and loyal to their states, they created a powerful central government. Representing wildly different interests and views, they crafted compromises. It stands today as one of the longest-lived and most emulated constitutions in the world.

5. Closure10 minutes

   Read Source 7, two short sample interpretations written for this page. Ask: which one treats the present as only a source of error, and which one treats it as a lens? Students use these interpretations in Questions 17-18 and in the homework.

   Interpretation A (an SVHS-written sample student paragraph)

   Fiske and Beard were both biased, so neither book tells us anything about 1787. Fiske loved the Union and Beard distrusted the rich, and that is all their books show. The only reliable account is the National Archives page, because it was written today and has no point of view.

   Interpretation B (an SVHS-written sample student paragraph)

   Each historian looked at the Convention of 1787 from his own present. Fiske wrote in 1888, after the Civil War, and judged the Constitution by the Union it had made strong enough to survive; Beard wrote in 1913 with Treasury records no one had studied for this purpose and asked who held what property. Their present shaped their questions, and it also opened evidence and angles that earlier writers missed. A page written in 2023 has a present too, so it should be read the same way.

   Exit ticket: "Name one way your own present (the year you live in, what you have seen, what you care about) could shape the way you read the story of 1787. Is it more likely to help you see, or to keep you from seeing? Explain in two sentences."

   Teacher note on the sources' language: Source 3 describes a "Teutonic" school that credited free government to "innate racial qualities" of one people. Beard is describing that school, not endorsing it: he calls its view a "thesis" and goes on to propose a different explanation. The page quotes such ideas exactly and treats them as evidence of their writers' times, not as true claims; say plainly that no race has an inborn political talent. Fiske's phrase "unteachable bigots" in Source 2 is his own insult, aimed at people in his day who, in his view, stood in the way of the reconciliation that had "cemented the Federal Union" after the Civil War. Treat it as evidence of his confident present, not as a fair description of anyone. Source 6 discusses the Constitution's treatment of enslaved people in the words of the National Archives.

   Teacher note on Source 6: three details are simplified, and students can check them against the National Archives transcripts of the Constitution and the Articles of Confederation. The Constitution says the number of representatives "shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand" (a ceiling, not a fixed ratio); the Articles did let Congress "emit bills on the credit of the united states," so "couldn't ... print money" overstates; and the Delaware signer the page calls "George Reed" is George Read.

Differentiation Strategies

Assessment Guidance

1. Question 1 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Which statement best expresses the idea of D2.His.7.9-12?

   AThe facts of the past change whenever a new history book about them is published BInterpreters live in a present that shapes the questions they ask about the past COnly people who lived through an event can interpret it accurately DA recent interpretation is always more accurate than an older one, because it knows more

2. Question 2 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   According to Source 1, paragraph 1, why does each age find it necessary to reconsider part of the past?

   ABecause the documents of the past wear out over time and must be copied again by each generation BBecause each age forgets what the last one wrote CBecause historians are required by their profession to disagree with the teachers who trained them DBecause new conditions reveal forces that earlier historians did not fully know

3. Question 3 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   In Source 1, paragraph 3, why does Turner say that Braddock's march "takes on new meaning"?

   ABecause of the industrial power that later grew up at Pittsburgh BBecause new letters describing the march were found and published shortly before 1910 CBecause Braddock in fact won the battle, a victory that earlier historians had wrongly denied DBecause Turner thought the march was invented

4. Question 4 of 20 · Short Answer

   According to Source 1, paragraph 2, why should historians study the present and the recent past? Give two reasons Turner names and quote him for each.

   Show model answer

5. Question 5 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   In Source 2, paragraph 1, Fiske writes, "As we now stand upon the threshold of that mighty future." What does this phrase show about how he interprets 1783-1789?

   AHe is quoting a delegate of 1787 BHe admits that he does not know what really happened in the years of the 1780s CHe judges the 1780s by the future he expects from his own time DHe rejects the idea that the 1780s mattered

6. Question 6 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Fiske speaks of "the creative work, for good or ill, of men of English speech" (Source 2, paragraph 1). Which school that Beard describes in Source 3 does this phrase most resemble?

   AThe Teutonic school and its idea of a gifted race BThe school of Bancroft, which sees a divine power guiding the course of events CThe economic school, which looks for the property interests behind political changes DNo school; Beard says all agreed

7. Question 7 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   In Source 2, paragraph 2, Fiske says the Union was cemented "so powerfully that all likelihood of its disruption may be said to have disappeared forever." What does this sentence tell a reader about Fiske's present?

   AHe was writing during the Civil War and feared that the Union would soon break apart BHe wrote before the war began CHe believed that the Constitution of 1787 had already failed and would have to be replaced DHe wrote after the war and believed the Union was permanently secure

8. Question 8 of 20 · Short Answer

   In Source 2, paragraph 1, Fiske calls the work of the Federal Convention "the finest specimen of constructive statesmanship that the world has ever seen." Use two of the four lenses to explain how Fiske's present in 1888 shaped this judgment.

   Show model answer

9. Question 9 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   According to Beard in Source 3, paragraph 1, how did the school of Bancroft explain the larger achievements of American national life?

   AAs the result of a long conflict between economic classes with opposed interests BAs the working out of a higher will than that of human beings CAs an accident with no wider cause DAs the careful copying of Roman law and the institutions of ancient Rome

10. Question 10 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    In Source 3, paragraph 4, Beard quotes Bancroft saying the Constitution "knows nothing of differences by descent, or opinions, of favored classes, or legalized religion, or the political power of property." Why does Beard quote this?

    ATo show that he agrees with Bancroft about the place of property in the Constitution BTo prove Bancroft never read it CTo present the view his own interpretation questions DTo show that Bancroft wrote about religion and about nothing else in American history

11. Question 11 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    In Source 4, paragraph 1, Beard calls his study "frankly fragmentary." What reason does he give?

    AMuch of the research it outlines is still to be done BHis publisher limited the length of the book, so whole chapters had to be cut out CHe thought such history could never be finished DHe had lost most of his notes on the Treasury records before he could write them up

12. Question 12 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    In Source 5, what result would count against Beard's hypothesis, by his own test?

    AFinding that it met in secret BFinding that some of the delegates owned land, houses or other kinds of property CFinding that it was ratified DFinding that men with the same property split evenly on adoption

13. Question 13 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Beard asks whether "the major portion of the opposition came from the non-slaveholding farmers and the debtors" (Source 5, paragraph 3). How does this question differ from the way Bancroft describes the Constitution in Source 3, paragraph 4?

    ABeard asks about the Convention's rules of debate, while Bancroft asks about the religion of its members BBeard sorts people by property; Bancroft sees free individuals CBoth ask the same question but reach different numbers DBeard asks about the foreign affairs of the new nation, while Bancroft asks about the states

14. Question 14 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Source 6, paragraph 2, states: "They agreed to count enslaved Africans as three-fifths of a person." Bancroft, as Beard quotes him (Source 3, paragraph 4), says the Constitution "knows nothing of differences by descent." What does comparing the two passages show?

    AThat the Constitution was changed at some point between 1882 and 2023 to add the three-fifths clause BThat Bancroft and the National Archives fully agree about how the Constitution treated enslaved people CThat the 2023 page brings in slavery, which the Bancroft lines leave out DThat the 2023 page is wrong

15. Question 15 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Source 6, paragraph 3, says the Constitution "stands today as one of the longest-lived and most emulated constitutions in the world." Which lens best explains this judgment?

    AEvents since: it depends on what happened after 1787 BSources and methods: it relies on a new 2023 archive CQuestions of the day: it is about the debts that divided Americans in the 1780s DIdeas of the day: it repeats the idea of a divine power guiding events found in Bancroft

16. Question 16 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Source 6, paragraph 1, says that Madison, Hamilton and Washington "feared their young country was on the brink of collapse" under the Articles of Confederation. Which interpretation on this page is closest to this view of the 1780s?

    ABeard's, because it says that the opposition came mainly from farmers and debtors BFiske's, because he treats 1783-1789 as a turning-point CBancroft's, because of his atoms DNone, since no other source does

17. Question 17 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    What is the main weakness of Interpretation A in Source 7?

    AIt quotes Fiske and Beard too often instead of putting their ideas into its own words BIt says Beard used Treasury records CIt mentions that the Convention met in 1787, a date that the sources do not support DIt assumes a recent page has no point of view

18. Question 18 of 20 · Short Answer

    Rewrite the first sentence of Interpretation A (Source 7) so that it explains how Fiske's and Beard's presents shaped their books instead of dismissing the books. Support your sentence with one quotation from Source 1.

    Show model answer

19. Question 19 of 20 · Short Answer

    Compare Fiske (Source 2, 1888) and the National Archives (Source 6, 2023) on why the Constitution of 1787 mattered. Explain how each writer's present shaped the judgment, using one quotation from each.

    Show model answer

20. Question 20 of 20 · Short Answer

    A classmate says, "If the present shapes every interpretation, then history is just opinion." Respond in three or four sentences, using the difference between an interpretation shaped by its present and an interpretation that cannot be checked.

    Show model answer

These standards connect to D2.His.7.9-12: prerequisites to review first, parallel standards at the same level, and next steps that build on it.

Standard text: National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS), The College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards: Guidance for Enhancing the Rigor of K-12 Civics, Economics, Geography, and History (Silver Spring, MD: NCSS, 2013). NCSS was not involved in the production of this lesson and does not endorse it.