Book Description

"'The Idea of Progress in America, 1815-1865' was published in 1944. It traces the American form of the idea from its European background, and in its contacts with foreign though through the years between the second War of Independence and the Civil War, ending where it is proposed this study shall begin with Charles Sumner and Caleb Sprague Henry. However, this study proposes finding an anchorage for the history of the idea before the war in the writings of two persons cited earlier in Mr. Ekirch's chronological scheme, two who by 1860 were no longer dissident evangelical preachers but leading writers in the Catholic press. This essay will also overlap Ekirch's by the choice of some of the later writings of, e.g., Emerson, McCosh, and Bancroft. The benefits of division of labor are hard by using the compact volume of Frederick John Teggart who has fairly gleaned the elucidation of the idea out of the works of the great thinkers who have written upon it, in his 'The Idea of Progress.'"--Chapter I, l.1.