Publisher's Synopsis
American historians of the early national period, argues Eileen Ka-May Cheng, grappled with objectivity, professionalism, and other "modern" issues to a greater degree than their successors acknowledge. Her readings of antebellum historians show that by the 1820s an influential group of practitioners had begun to develop many of the doctrines and concerns that undergird contemporary historical practice. This challenges the notion that America's first generations of historians were propagandists for a struggling young nation.
