The Dunning School

How one historian altered decades of historical scholarship, impairing race relations along the way

By Morgan York

The best way to tackle racism is to understand its origins. Whether it be the decimation of Native Americans, the invalidation of Catholic European immigrants, the yellow peril, or a southern border wall, the United States has always intertwined itself with practices of inequality, discrimination, and prejudice. Fortunately, with each passing year and social movement, more people understand racism, lessening its effect.

One such origin is in the history textbooks of our youth. Children would never think to question an authoritative source like a textbook, but perhaps they should. After the Civil War, The Dunning School of Thought dominated historical scholarship of slavery and Reconstruction for decades. This racist ideology was often mistaken for the truth because the scholarship upheld the historical industry’s highest standards. These writings made their way to the top of the ‘Best Sellers’ lists and into the textbook curriculum: all the while weaving their racist claims into the very fabric of American society.

Dunning’s Written Work

Dunning was the first scholar to promote the narrative that Reconstruction was a ploy by radical Republicans to take over the southern states, forcing northern rule over the “good people of the south”. He argued that the south was a victim throughout the war, and the emancipation of slaves was just one of many efforts by the Republicans to gain voters. Dunning did not believe in the inherent equality of man but rather in white supremacy. With these principles in mind, Dunning wove his racism into his writings and influenced those around him. What was particularly unique to Dunning’s work was his methodology which included references to Leopold Van Ranke after Dunning spent a year in Germany following the publication of his dissertation. Dunning applauded Ranke’s source-based methodology, embraced narrative history, and worked with empirical evidence. These methodologies granted Dunning a level of credibility and high regard over that of other Reconstruction scholars.

Dunning’s Life

William Archibald Dunning was born on May 12th, 1857, in Plainfield, New Jersey, to Catherine Trelease and John Dunning. As a young man growing up through the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow, Dunning was exposed firsthand to American History’s rapidly changing political and social era. He attended Columbia University for his B.A, M.A, and Ph.D. and then taught at the university as a professor for the rest of his career.

While at Columbia, Dunning studied politics and philosophy. He met John Burgess, a political science professor, who influenced him, and with whom Dunning formed a close friendship. Burgess was a racist and often taught his classes about “germ theory” in connection to the biological superiority of the white founding fathers. Dunning and Burgess would work closely together over the years as Dunning completed his dissertation titled “The Constitution of the United States in Civil War and Reconstruction 1860-1867”. With the publication of “The Constitution” in the Political Science Quarterly (PSQ) in 1886, Dunning’s infamous role in social politics, Reconstruction interpretation, and historiography began.

Throughout the many essays Dunning published till his death in 1922, Dunning was applauded for his incorporation of abundant primary source references and commended for the educational value and topical subject during a time of heightened race conflict. The Supreme Court’s ruling of Plessy V. Ferguson had shaken race-based politics in 1896. Dunning worked to justify white supremacy and support Jim Crow practices of segregation. He claimed that slavery was the only way the two races would live in harmony and that with the abolition of slavery, the nation was now in a state of confusion that could only be remedied by returning to a system that produced the same racial inequality as with slavery. Tommy Song, a research fellow at the University of Columbia states, “ When discussing black Americans, Dunning’s scientific method lost relevance, or rather, lost necessity; the professor, now in his forties, believed racial inequality as natural, unworthy of supporting evidence since it was- and should be accepted as- an innate truism” (Song, par.5,10,15,17,18,21,22,25,31).

Influence

What is unique about the case of William Archibald Dunning was not his blatant racist views but rather his “credibility” and the sphere of influence he commanded throughout his life. Unlike other racist scholars of the time, Dunning worked himself into a position of celebrity-like status through the combination of societal timing, topical subjects, hard work, writing skill, and charisma.

Using the latest historical methods to validate his work, he created an air of credibility about himself and his thinking. This ‘credibility’ would continue to inspire other historians, as they too began to present racism in more of a methodologically sound approach. The contextual timing of Dunning’s work was pertinent to his success as well: the south was still reeling from its loss in The Civil war and societal changes such as the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments brought massive strife to the country nationwide as America struggled to adjust to its new reality. Jim Crow culture shaped many white Americans’ attitudes towards their black counterparts, and black Americans struggled for fundamental rights under the ever-present threat of segregationist politics and the KKK.

One of the leading rationalizations of Jim Crow and other discriminatory practices towards black Americans was the long-standing idea of Social Darwinism- named after the evolutionist himself, Charles Darwin. The idea of science proving racial inferiority did not originate from Darwin’s work. However, Darwin did provide a “credible” source of evidence for those looking to back up their racist claims. Backed by misinterpreting Darwin’s theory, social scientists aruged that evolution favored white skin. Social Darwinism was particularly popular in the United States and England -witnessed in many historical writings- “because it supported policies and practices that both countries justified as congruent with their national interests” (Dennis, 245).

For Dunning, scientific racism was an unavoidable cultural sentiment: “During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, scientific racism formed a vital link in the oppression of American blacks. If established social science defined blacks as inferior beings who could naturally be expected to occupy the position in society which they in fact held, the occasional social reformers could be dismissed as romantic dreamers who had neither knowledge nor appreciation of hard scientific fact” (Taylor, 450).

Dunning’s Legacy

Dunning affected much of the historical community with his wide sphere of influence which became apparent with his students. Students such as James W. Garner and J.G de Roulhac Hamilton would contribute to the historical scholarship of Reconstruction with biased writings and eventually become professors themselves among various east coast colleges.

One student, Walter L. Fleming, would teach at West Virginia University, Louisiana State University, and Vanderbilt University, where he continuously spread Dunning’s rhetoric to large masses of students. Fleming predominantly continued Dunning’s work after his death (Green, 500-502).

Another of Dunning’s most famous disciples was Claude Bowers, whose primary source of fame came from his book, The Tragic Era: The Revolution After Lincoln, published in 1929. In this work, much like other work presented by Dunning scholars, The Tragic Era promoted southern victimhood, the “Lost Cause” legend, and derogatory stereotypes about black Americans. Unlike Dunning’s works, which appealed primarily to other Reconstruction scholars, “Bowers’ colorful, fast-paced, and dramatic writing style, his thorough research, his ability to draw vivid, detailed portraits of important figures, and his skill at weaving into his story brief quotations from contemporary documents produced a narrative which many found both compelling and convincing. The Tragic Era became a great popular success, reached an audience immeasurably larger than had [Dunning’s work]…” (Kyvig, 20-21). Thus, Dunning laid the framework but Bowers spread his rhetoric in what would ultimately accumulate into what Reconstruction revisionists would call the Dunning school of thought.

The Dunning school of thought can as such be classified as a predominant ideology that widely swept through American historical scholarship between the 1890s to 1950s. It advocated for white supremacy, southern victimhood, and the “white” experience of slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. Such a legacy would affect more than just its immediate audience: racist histories would influence public perception and media interpretation. No better example than D.W Griffith’s A Birth of a Nation, which portrayed black Americans as rapists and monsters, and this, in turn, glorified the KKK as heroes against such horrors. A culture of racism and discrimination would also leak into interview responses, as seen directly in the WPA narratives during the Great Depression. Racism would skew the statistical results of the WPA narratives leading to the infamous account of Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman’s Time on the Cross, whereby Fogel and Engerman would falsely conclude that slavery “must not be as iniquitous and brutal as formerly portrayed” (Banks, 558).

The Dunnings, The Revisionists, and The Post-Revisionists

At its core, the Dunning school of thought is a period of racist history that affected historical interpretation and methodologies. It backed social inequality by providing “scientific”, “sound”, and “empirical” research that supported segregation and discrimination. Furthermore, the framework and methodologies found in the Dunning school of thought were far-reaching: influencing hundreds of historians in one form or another and receiving positive reviews from the public. When reflecting upon Reconstruction historiography, Revisionist historians label this era of historical scholarship: The Dunning Era.

Eric Foner, a Reconstruction scholar, would officially describe the Dunning Era as one of three eras that fundamentally differ from their approaches towards Reconstruction scholarship. The Revisionists would arrive at the historiographical debate around the 1940s and 1950s, inspired by the early writings and protests of W.E.B DuBois and Howard K. Beale. DuBois and Beale advocated for the black point of view in Reconstruction scholarship. In contrast to the Dunning era, Revisionists “offered sympathetic accounts of the once-despised freedmen, Southern white Republicans, and Northern policymakers.” Such radical changes did not happen independently in the minds of a few historians, but rather the result of “profound change in the nation’s politics and racial attitudes” with the foundation of the growing build-up of the Civil Rights movement (Foner, xix). Foner writes, “In the 1960s the revisionist wave broke over the field, destroying, in rapid succession, every assumption of the traditional viewpoint” , “So ingrained was the old racist version of Reconstruction that it took an entire decade of scholarship to prove the essentially negative contentions that ‘Negro rule’ was a myth and that Reconstruction represented more than ‘the blackout of honest government’.”

In essence, Revisionists worked towards correcting the racist wrongs of the Dunning Era and instead presented scholarship that radically contrasted in content. No longer were black Americans vilified. Instead, for the first time in American history, black Americans shared their experience and their version of events en masse. Their stories were increasingly credible and even critical to the study of slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction to the prevailing white recollections. Revisionist historians included “Sambo Thesis” Stanley Elkins, “The Port Royal Experiment” Willie Lee Rose, and the “Jefferson-Hemings Scandal” Fawn Brodie.

Foner further extends his analysis of Reconstruction historiography into one final division: The Post-Revisionists. As far as present historical thought goes, most historians practicing today would fall into the category of Post-Revisionists. Beginning in the 1970/1980s, Foner states, “The post revisionist interpretation represented a striking departure from nearly all previous accounts of the period, for whatever their differences, traditional and revisionist historians at least agreed that Reconstruction was a time of radical change” (Foner, xxi). However, for the Post-Revisionist, historiography was more than just erasing racist sentiment from historical writings. It involved critically analyzing the entire system in light of modern standards. The Dunning Era would label Reconstruction a threat to white America. The Revisionist would applaud the good Reconstruction did for black Americans, and the Post-Revisionist would argue Reconstruction did not go far enough.

The Dunning School’s Role in Historiography

The Dunning Era is influential in Historiography and revisionism because it cultivated and promoted racism in academia. This racism, which was backed by “credible” sources, leaked into other aspects of American life which factored into the culmination of the continuation of racism long after the abolition of slavery. From a historiographical standpoint, the Dunning Era exemplified an ethical misuse of source-based and peer review methodologies. This misuse was based on racist biases that are clearly seen in the interpretation of source material and the choice of the source material. Philosophically speaking, personal bias can never truly disappear from historical writings, but in the case of the Dunning Era, the blatant racism found in almost every aspect of American life led many to not only agree with Dunning but not think to question these writings. Because source material was skewed, the American public believed what was essentially lies (by the omission of all the facts) about Reconstruction, the Civil War, Slavery, and black Americans.

Consequently, the works of Dunning, Flemings, and Bowers are less indicative of actual history and more indicative of the attitudes of the historians’ time. Only through societal changes in the desire for Civil Rights was the historical environment ripe for revision. Since the passing of the Dunning Era, Revisionists and Post-Revisionists have worked tirelessly to right the wrongs of past and more forward to include the history of minorities, to value their input as meaningful, and to acknowledge but ultimately stop propagating racism in our modern era. It is important to learn about the Dunning Era because much of these texts still prominently circulate through academia today. When encountering these texts know that their contents are not meaningless, but a reminder and a lesson of America’s long history of fighting for equality among all.

Bibliography

Carol M. Taylor, W.E.B DuBois’s Challenge to Scientific Racism.

David E. Kyvig, History as Present Politics: Claude Bowers’ The Tragic Era.

Eric Foner, Reconstruction, America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877.

Fletcher M. Green, Walter Lynwood Fleming: Historian of Reconstruction.

Rutledge M. Dennis, Social Darwinism, Scientific Racism, and the Metaphysics of Race.

Samuel L. Banks, Review: Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery.

Tommy Song, “William Archibald Dunning: Father of Historiographic Racism Columbia’s Legacy of Academic Jim Crow”.