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The Coming of the Civil War
Title
The Coming of the Civil War, The Coming of the Civil War
Identifier
dv_00207
Creator
Craven, Avery (lecturer)
Contributor
Frantz, Joe B. (project director), Mischer, Donald L. (television director), Pengra, Mike (assistant director), Hendricks, Lyle (art, set, and titles), Radio/Television, The University of Texas (producer)
Dates
circa 1962-1963
Resource
KLRU-TEMP videotape collection
Description
[Synopsis from "The History of American Civilization By Its Interpreters; A Student Guide to the Television Series" by James A. Bonar, Roger E. Willson, and The University of the State of New York]: The Civil War exerts a strong fascination for most Americans. It provides our history to a unique degree with great drama, mighty events and strong emotions. But in another sense it also provides us with our greatest failure as a nation. For, as Professor Craven points out, the war between the North and the South represents the failure of the American people to adjust their differences through the democratic political process. How it happened that the usual artifices of adjustment, accommodation, and compromise were not possible in the crucial period before the Civil War is the subject Professor Craven takes up in this lecture. Tracing both sectional and national growth from 1815 on Craven finds that the period witnessed the emergence of many important issues of public policy, virtually all of which proved amenable to political settlement. But the isolation of slavery as a sectional issue, cast in moral terms, in the decade of the 1840's proved to be more than the democratic process could handle. Craven explains that the reduction of sectional issues to the level of absolute moral values made it impossible for politicians to treat their differences in a realistic manner that could be settled through traditional political means. As an example he cites the failure of both Northern and Southern politicians to see in the efforts of Stephan A. Douglas in the 1850's what was a practical and realistic solution to the sectional impasse. Instead the politicians reacted in moral terms and, with the emergence of purely sectional parties based on an absolute moral issue, they, along with the rest of the nation, were impelled inexorably toward tragic civil conflict. Tape is dated 1974/11/09, indicating that it is a dub of an earlier recording. Notes from technician: Some slight vertical shifting in scenes. Break up before end credit, at 00:29:38. Tape was baked twice and cleaned 3 times before playback.
The Great Depression & American History
Title
The Great Depression & American History
Identifier
dv_00247
Creator
Hofstadter, Richard (Lecturer)
Contributor
Frantz, Joe B. (project director), Mischer, Donald L. (television director), Hendricks, Lyle (art, set, and titles), Radio/Television, The University of Texas (producer)
Dates
circa 1962-1963
Resource
KLRU-TEMP videotape collection
Description
Professor Hofstadter relates that his generation, born in the twilight of Progressivism, was deeply affected by the Great Depression, a catastrophe which cannot be imagined by the present generation. The depression made him rethink the premises of American liberalism, and evaluate why traditional individualism lasted so long and was only exploded in 1929.The lasting power of individualism is analyzed in his influential "Social Darwinism in American Thought," where he describes how Herbert Spencer's evolutlonary thought captivated and influenced American thinkers, and gave individualism a new lease on life. His reading of the arguments between Social Darwinists and their opponents also led to a new appreciation of the vital force in redefined American liberalism. He finds that the pragmatic temper is the key conceit, a denial of monolithic explanations, where Spencer's or Marx's, and a flexible sense of the possibilities of human experimentation and potential.Writing about Social Darwinism in this framework was also a stage in his education as an historian. His work after this first book aspired to go beyond history as art or science, toward history as analysis. Although he frankly admits weaknesses in this approach, he feels that they are outweighed by the benefits, novelty of concept, and provocative synthesis, that can be achieved in essays on long trends in American history. [Synopsis from "The History of American Civilization By Its Interpreters; A Student Guide to the Television Series" by James A. Bonar, Roger E. Willson]
A Revision of the Civil War
Title
A Revision of the Civil War, A Revision of the Civil War
Identifier
dv_00175
Creator
Craven, Avery (lecturer)
Contributor
Radio/Television, The University of Texas (producer), Mischer, Donald L. (television director), Pengra, Mike (assistant director), Hendricks, Lyle (art, set, and titles), Frantz, Joe B. (project director)
Dates
circa 1962-1963
Resource
KLRU-TEMP videotape collection
Description
Professor Craven has long been identified as a leading figure of the revisionist movement in Civil War historiography. In this lecture Craven tells of his early interest in the agricultural history of the old South that led him to question traditional explanations of the causes of the Civil War. Before his time, most historians saw as the primary difference between North and South, and therefore as the principal cause of the Civil War, the attachment of the one section to freedom and of the other to slavery, a moral difference that made conflict between them irrepressible. But in studying the economic bases of the sections, in particular the thinking and character of a pre-Civil War Southern figure, Edmund Ruffin, Craven came to feel that the assignment of a single cause to the Civil War greatly oversimplified the matter. Craven describes how, in the course of his historical inquiry, he came to discard the easy and simple answers for an explanation that gave weight to more profound and less tractable issues. For Craven, the issue of slavery as a right or a wrong was only representative of the deeper forces of modern life that drove the North and South to confront one another in a regrettable but apparently necessary Civil War. [Synopsis from "The History of American Civilization By Its Interpreters; A Student Guide to the Television Series" by James A. Bonar, Roger E. Willson, and The University of the State of New York] Tape is dated 1974/11/09, indicating that it is a dub of an earlier generation recording. Notes from transfer: Audio is 2 channels mono. There is break up in the beginning of the program, tracking is drifting. Slight RF noise in the picture, recorded into program, example at 00:17:10. The program was recorded with wide horizontal blanking, causing black bars to the sides of the picture. There is a little tearing on the teachers hands and collar, as recorded. There is break up at the edit points at the top and end of program, on the theme song and slide.
Why The Southern States Seceded
Title
Why The Southern States Seceded, Why The Southern States Seceded
Identifier
dv_00176
Creator
Craven, Avery (lecturer)
Contributor
Radio/Television, The University of Texas (producer), Frantz, Joe B. (project director), Mischer, Donald L. (television director), Pengra, Mike (assistant director), Hendricks, Lyle (art, set, and titles)
Dates
circa 1962-1963
Resource
KLRU-TEMP videotape collection
Description
The question of what caused the Civil War often is treated as a long term proposition requiring extended chronological coverage, sometimes going as far back as the initial settlement of the North American colonies. While there is much merit in studying the origin and growth of those sectional differences that played a part in the conflict, it is also illuminating to look carefully at the actual "trigger" of the war--the secession of the Southern states. For, regardless of the nature and degree of the institutional differences between the sections, and aside from the question of whether or not open conflict was inevitable, it required the overt act of secession for the great events to be set in motion. In this lecture Professor Craven examines in some detail the grievances and fears that drove the South to such a desperate step. In the process Craven sheds considerable light on the state of mind of a people willing to take the calculated risk of war with their countrymen for a cause they considered just. Quoting from a wide variety of sources, Craven portrays the South after the election of Lincoln as caught up in a dilemma from which there was no avenue of escape. His account of the secession crisis has the ring of truth and gives to the historical fact the dimensions of human tragedy. [Synopsis from "The History of American Civilization By Its Interpreters; A Student Guide to the Television Series" by James A. Bonar, Roger E. Willson, and The University of the State of New York] Tape is dated 1974/10/24, indicating that it is a dub of an earlier recording.
The Winds of Historical Doctrine; The Winds of Historical Doctrine
Title
The Winds of Historical Doctrine, The Winds of Historical Doctrine
Identifier
dv_00249
Creator
Hofstadter, Richard (Lecturer)
Contributor
Frantz, Joe B. (project director), Mischer, Donald L. (television director), Hendricks, Lyle (art, set, and titles), Radio/Television, The University of Texas (producer)
Dates
circa 1962-1963
Resource
KLRU-TEMP videotape collection
Description
To afford an insight into how historians work, Professor Hofstadter explains certain significant circumstances behind his two influential volumes, "The American Political Tradition" and "The Age of Reform." He relates how his publisher led him to make "The American Political Tradition" more pretentious than he planned, by suggesting an interpretive introduction that connected a set of disparate essays. This introduction suggested that "consensus," a common climate of opinion that supported property, individualism, and enterprise was more important than conflict between different groups. He says that this emphasis came because the previous generation of Beard and Parrington (for example) had overstressed conflict between different groups through American history. Ideally he would stress both in any analysis. He also disclaims that the "consensus" view has conservative implications, as some have charged, for descriptions of a consensus do not imply approval, but only an attempt to understand the reasons for it and the motives of reformist critics who attack it. To illustrate how the concerns of his times influenced his analysis, he contrasts the era in which "The American Political Tradition" (published in 1948) was written, with the climate surrounding "The Age of Reform" (published in 1955). The first was written in the afterglow of the New Deal consensus on reform, the second in the depressing atmosphere of McCarthyism and popular conservatism after World War II. "The Age of Reform," while assuming the basic merit of the liberal reform tradition, is less impressed with the wisdom of the "people" who behaved so disappointingly after World War II. Professor Hofstadter also cautions his readers to weigh his comic sense and his attraction to new and unorthodox contibutory explanations before assassinating his concepts. [Synopsis from "The History of American Civilization By Its Interpreters; A Student Guide to the Television Series" by James A. Bonar, Roger E. Willson, and The University of the State of New York]