ABSTRACT
In the essay presented in this chapter, John Higham (b. 1920), professor of history at the University of Michigan, reviewed twentieth-century American historical scholarship and tried to resolve the conflicting demands of the subjectivity of the historian and the objectivity of the past. Explicitly rejecting the view that scholars could or should escape their own times, Higham stressed the vitality and relevance which contemporary involvement gave to a historian’s work. Higham proposed that the historian be a moral critic in the sense that he study the moral aspects of the life of men in past generations. By focusing upon the moral assumptions and decisions made by individuals and societies, the historian would become responsive to the ethical dimension frequently ignored in purely causal analysis of how and why events occurred. In progressive hands American history became not only a struggle between the many and the few but a realm of clashing values.
