J. Franklin Jameson: A Tribute

Washington DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1965. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Very good/Fair. ix, [1], 137, [1] pages. Scarce copy of Jameson's Festschrift, with a panoply of academic historians, librarians, geographers, and scholars of the 20th Century. A Chronicle of John Franklin Jameson's Life. Bibliography. Among the topics covered are American Religious History, Doctoral Dissertations in History, The National Historical Publications Commission, Scholar, The Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States, The Dictionary of American Biography, The National Archives, and Dr. Jameson as Editor (and otherwise). Among the contributors are. Allan Nevin, David C. Mearns. Boyd Shafer, Fred Shelly, John K. Wright, Verner Clapp, Waldo Gifford Leland and Dumas Malone. John Franklin Jameson (September 19, 1859 - September 28, 1937) was an American historian, author, and journal editor who played a major role in the professional activities of American historians in the early 20th century. He helped establish the American Historical Association. Jameson was a social historian, an expert in historiography, and above all an intellectual entrepreneur and gatekeeper who helped determine the priorities of the history profession in America. His base was the American Historical Association, which he helped found in 1884. He chaired its Historical Manuscripts Commission in 1895 and became the first managing editor of the American Historical Review (AHR), 1895-1901, 1905-1928, serving as information central for academic historiography. After an interlude at the University of Chicago he went to Washington in 1905 as director of the Department of Historical Research of the heavily endowed Carnegie Institution of Washington. At the Carnegie Institution, Jameson found that decisions were largely in the hand of scientists and businessmen. He had some difficulty in conveying the importance to work on American history of archival research and bibliography. He held his position there until 1928. He was not known for his writings, but his small book on The American Revolution Considered as a Social Movement (1926) proved influential. It expressed themes Jameson had been developing since the 1890s which reflected the "Progressive" historiography. It downplayed ideas and political values and stressed the Revolution was a fight over power among economic interest groups, especially who would rule at home. In 1890, Jameson was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society. Jameson was the first professional historian to become the AHA president (1907). Although a number of Jameson's colleagues and friends went on to serve as AHA presidents, they also tended to refer to Jameson as "the Dean," a jocose reference to his influence within the organization. Jameson invited W.E.B. Du Bois to present a paper concerning Reconstruction at the 1909 AHA meeting, which proved controversial; no other African-American was invited to speak before the AHA until 1940. During World War I Jameson edited historical material for soldiers in their training camps, and he published articles in the AHR that supported the Allies. At Carnegie Jameson supervised a series of documentary publications, such as guides to archival resources around the world, documentary editions of the letters of members of the Continental Congress, documents on the slave trade and slave law, and the papers of Andrew Jackson, as well as an atlas of American history. Jameson began numerous annual publications and, with Waldo Leland, started lobbying Congress to create the National Archives, the building for which was first funded in 1926. The National Archives organization was established in 1934.