The Burdens of Urban History: The Theory of the State in Recent American Social History

Louis Hartz summed up the mission of his historical generation when he wrote, as part of the rationale for The Liberal Tradition in 1955, that “the way to fully refute a man is to ignore him … and the only way you can do this is to substitute new fundamental categories for his own, so that you are simply pursuing a different path.” Hartz was referring to the influence of Charles Beard and what Hartz called the “frustration that the persistence of the Progressive analysis of America has inspired.” He was arguing that his generation had to stop honoring the progressives by contending with them; the key to destroying their interpretation of American history was the reinvention of American history by means of new conceptual tools.