Editing Henry Steele Commager (section)

==Textbooks and editing==
Commager was coauthor, with [[Samuel Eliot Morison]], of the widely used history text ''The Growth of the American Republic'' (1930; 1937; 1942; 1950, 1962; 1969; 7th ed., with [[William E. Leuchtenburg]], 1980; abridged editions in 1980 and 1983 under the title ''Concise History of the American Republic'').{{sfn|Adams|1967|pp=251ff}} His anthology, ''Documents of American History'' (1938), reaching its tenth edition (co-edited with his former student Milton Cantor) in 1988, half a century after its first appearance, remains a standard collection work of primary sources. His two documentary histories, ''The Blue and the Gray'' and ''The Spirit of Seventy-Six'' (the latter co-edited with his longtime friend and Columbia colleague [[Richard B. Morris]]), are comprehensive collections of primary sources on the Civil War and the American Revolution as seen by participants.

With Richard B. Morris, he also co-edited the highly influential New American Nation Series, a multi-volume collaborative history of the United States under whose aegis appeared many significant and prize-winning works of historical scholarship.  (This series was a successor to the American Nation series planned and edited at the beginning of the twentieth century by the Harvard historian [[Albert Bushnell Hart]].)

At Columbia, Commager mentored a series of distinguished historians who earned their PhD degrees under his tutelage, including [[Harold Hyman]], [[Leonard W. Levy]], and [[William E. Leuchtenburg]].  They joined together in 1967 to present him with a festschrift, or commemorative collection of essays, dedicated to him, titled ''Freedom and Reform'' (New York: Harper & Row, 1967).  When he moved to Amherst, an elite undergraduate college, he no longer mentored PhD candidates, but he mentored undergraduates, including [[R.&nbsp;B. Bernstein]], who later became a historian of the U.S. Constitution and a specialist in the era of the [[American Revolution]].

===Liberalism===
Commager felt a duty as a professional historian to reach out to his fellow citizens.  He believed that an educated public that understands American history would support liberal programs, especially internationalism and the [[New Deal]] of [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]].  Although he was skilled at scholarly research and analysis, he preferred to devise and expound sweeping interpretations of historical events and processes, while also making available primary sources so that people could study history for themselves. Commager was representative of a generation of like-minded historians widely read by the general public, including [[Samuel Eliot Morison]], [[Allan Nevins]], [[Richard Hofstadter]], [[Arthur Schlesinger Jr.]], and [[C. Vann Woodward]].{{sfn|Jumonville|1999}} Commager's biographer Neil Jumonville has argued that this style of influential public history has been lost in the 21st century, because political correctness has rejected Commager's open marketplace of tough ideas. Jumonville says history now features abstruse deconstruction by experts, with statistics instead of stories, and is comprehensible now only to the initiated, with ethnocentrism ruling in place of common identity.<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Lindstrom |first=Andy |date=Fall 1999 |title=Henry Steele Commager (1902–1998): An American Mind in the American Century |url=http://www.rinr.fsu.edu/fallwinter99/features/commager.html |magazine=Research in Review |location=Tallahassee, Florida |publisher=Florida State University |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101223073033/http://www.rinr.fsu.edu/fallwinter99/features/commager.html |archive-date=December 23, 2010 |access-date=August 23, 2020}}</ref>

Commager was a liberal interpreter of the [[United States Constitution|Constitution]] and [[United States Bill of Rights|Bill of Rights]], which he understood as creating a powerful general government that at the same time recognized a wide spectrum of individual rights and liberties.  Commager opposed [[McCarthyism]] in the 1940s and 1950s, the [[Vietnam War|war in Vietnam]] (on constitutional grounds), and what he saw as the rampant illegalities and unconstitutionalities perpetrated by the administrations of [[Richard Nixon]] and [[Ronald Reagan]]. One favorite cause was his campaign to point out that, because the budget of the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] is classified, it violates the requirement of [[Article One of the United States Constitution|Article One of the Constitution]] that no moneys can be spent by the federal government except those specifically appropriated by Congress.{{citation needed|date=March 2013}}

===Essays===
Commager wrote hundreds of essays and opinion pieces on history or presenting a historical perspective on current issues for popular magazines and newspapers.  He collected many of the best of these articles and essays in such books as ''Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent''; ''The Search for a Usable Past and Other Essays in Historiography''; ''Freedom and Order: A Commentary on the American Political Scene''; ''The Commonwealth of Learning''; ''The Defeat of America: War, Presidential Power and the National Character''; and ''Jefferson, Nationalism, and the Enlightenment.''  He often was interviewed on television news programs and public-affairs documentaries to provide historical perspective on such events as the [[Apollo 11]] Moon landing and the [[Watergate scandal|Watergate]] crisis. Benjamin W. Cramer  states:
{{blockquote|Commager's lifelong advocacy of intellectual freedom, popular knowledge, and the historical interpretation of contemporary issues has had long-lasting influence on scholars and public advocates, though over the years his politics has been seen as either too liberal or too conservative by various detractors. He is ranked among such other great historians of his time as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Allan Nevins, Richard Hofstadter, and Samuel Eliot Morrison [sic].{{sfn|Cramer|2015|p=139}}}}

===Civil rights===
{{more citations needed|date=October 2013}}
Although at first Commager was not deeply concerned with race, he became an advocate for civil rights for African Americans, as he was for other groups.  In 1949 he fought to allow the African-American historian [[John Hope Franklin]] to present a paper at the [[Southern Historical Association]] and agreed to introduce him to the group. In 1953 the [[NAACP Legal Defense Fund]] asked Commager for advice for their argument before the [[Supreme Court of the United States|Supreme Court]] for the case of ''[[Brown v. Board of Education]]'', but at the time he was not persuaded that this litigation would succeed on historical grounds, and so advised the lawyers.

=== Declaration of Interdependence ===

In 1975 Commager wrote a [[Declaration of Interdependence]], and presented it to the [[World Affairs Councils of America|World Affairs Councils of Philadelphia]] on October 24, 1975. It was signed in a ceremonial signing on January 30, 1976, at [[Congress Hall]], [[Independence National Historical Park]], Philadelphia, by several members of Congress.<ref name=founding>{{cite web |url=http://thefoundingfamily.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/WACsigning.png |title=Archived copy |access-date=2013-03-24 |url-status=usurped |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130730174657/http://thefoundingfamily.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/WACsigning.png |archive-date=2013-07-30 }}</ref> It was also "endorsed" by a number of [[non-governmental organization]]s and [[United Nations agencies|United Nations specialized agencies]].<ref name=founding />

The document stressed the importance of [[international law]], conservation of natural resources, disarmament, the world's oceans, and the peaceful exploration of outer space, among other things.<ref name=founding />

When drafting the document Commager was assisted by an "Advisory Committee" including [[Raymond Aron]], [[Herbert Agar]], [[Leonard Woodcock]], [[Archibald MacLeish]], and others.<ref name=founding />