ABSTRACT
Scientific history-if we may so designate the formative orthodoxy of the early professional historians-came to America in the third quarter of the nineteenth century. The realistic artist, novelist, or scholar did not necessarily achieve a more truthful representation of human experience than the romanticist did, bur he adopted a more impersonal tone. Romantic artists and historians, endeavoring to concretize universal values, cast their work into a symbolic design. Far from beginning in 1850, scientific influences had been gathering strength for a long time, and in American historical writing had made themselves felt since the early eighteenth century. Scientific history was in fact their explicit raison detre, and they embraced it with a special fervor because it constituted a declaration of independence for their academic discipline. Institutional history exemplified their cult of objectivity by providing an impersonal, external framework for historical events.
