Book dossier

The Burned-over District

by Whitney R. Cross

This volume is an expansion of the author's Ph.D. thesis at Harvard, where he was a graduate-student compatriot of Arthur Schlesinger Jr., both mentored by Arthur Schlesinger Sr. Dr. Cross grew up in Rochester, New York, and later was able to expand the book by virtue of being the curator of regional source materials at Cornell, during the Second World War--a college-age back injury caused him to be rejected for active military service. However, he taught at the Navy Submarine School at Groten, CN, one of the war years. The "Burned-over District" bore that name even at the time it existed, from the late 1820's to the late 1840's, because of its large and impassioned religious revivals, reported in news items nationwide. The historical question was, "Why had this phenomenon arisen in this locale, who participated, why, and what were the larger context and impacts?" In pursuing these questions, Cross stumbled into being one of the first "American social historians"; others in the discipline would shift their interests in that direction 15-20 years after publication of his work. (His fellow student, A. S. Jr., focused on Andrew Jackson, and became famous for his "Age of Jackson".) In the book Cross describes the many odd religious and communal (today we might say 'cult') groups that grew up in the area, and the great revivals that drew the rural population into urban centers during the parts of the summer when, for the most part, crops could be left to grow with minimal oversight. He ascribed the atmosphere of experimentation and readiness to listen to new thinking, to the people of Western/Upstate New York's having left exhausted New England soils, their easier migration westward being facilitated by the new Erie Canal, and their settlement in a less-defined social and economic environment. He used the Turner (Frontier) Thesis as his takeoff point, but from the vantage point of 2010, we can easily understand how rapid social change can disrupt old patterns and beliefs. One significant point is that these groups, revivals, speakers, and leaders dealt in social and ethical ideas that were "advanced" and "progressive" for the times, and a number of individuals and groups later became strong advocates of Abolition, pushing for the value positions and reforms that increased tensions and pressure on the South, until Secession and the Civil War rent the nation. One might say, although I don't know that Dr. Cross ever did, that "Some of the seeds of war were sown in the Burned-over District thirty or more years previously." This work was notable in some other aspects as well. Serious amateur historians in New York State still consider the book a prime guide to source materials, because of the author's care with citations, and explanations of what characterized, say, a given collection of letters or other group of documents, etc. Of course, many of these materials now reside in the collections of Cornell University. Secondly, an innovator may well be without honor in his own time. This was an unusual focus of scholarship for the time, as noted (it might be called 'Sociological History'), and Dr. Cross failed to get tenure, repeatedly, in the lean days of Academia in the late 40's and early 50's. He was still an Assistant Professor at the University of West Virginia when felled by an abrupt heart attack at the age of 42, in 1955. He had seen, however, that no one was "getting" social history yet, and had shifted his interests toward intellectual history (which often in the field accompanies social history), and the development of ideas in the area of resource development and conservation. A ~1954 paper (?) in the Mississippi Valley Historical Review (Later the American Historical Review), proposed the identity of the man who "invented" the word and concept of "conservation", and got it growing within the small group of Theodore Roosevelt's resource-focused advisers (men like Gifford Pinchot). This book is not the easiest reading, and has been criticized on the grounds that the author did not smoothly tie the incidents and groups he describes to his central thesis. That, I think, can be explained both by the historian's awkward stance between facts and theory--the real stories vs. the ideal big idea which places all the facts tidily in their logical places, and the fact that Dr. Cross' mother was an early women's rights advocate and English teacher--when he laid out a paragraph there must have been a sense of his mother looking over his shoulder (and she was very alive at the time), afflicting him with some anxiety. I have considered re-styling the book because I think I'm a better writer than my father was, but doubt that I will get around to it. A picture will be forthcoming. --Peter R. Cross, civ2100@gmail.com 7/15/2010