ABSTRACT
The 1960s crystallized a dissenting mood within the larger post-war climate of opinion. Particularly among the younger generations, there emerged a significant echo of the early twentieth-century social protest and sympathy for reform. The unusually frank autobiographical essay by Staughton Lynd, a young professor of history who has taught at Spelman College and at Yale and Roosevelt Universities, clearly revealed the relationship between his reformist sympathies and his historical scholarship. Lynd, a greater activist than Beard and even more critical of the United States, found himself confronted by many of the same questions. Convinced that an economic interpretation of history was fundamental, Lynd’s first research project was an examination of Beard’s thesis that the conflict over ratification of the Constitution was a conflict among certain economic groups. Despite the alleged anti-historicism of the New Left, the need for a collective past is felt with particular keenness by young people.
