The Colonial New England town has always intrigued American historians but, paradoxically, few historians until recently have placed the colonial town under a microscope and studied it in detail. Most, instead, like George Bancroft and Herbert Baxter Adams, simply heaped accolades upon it. Even the Progressive historians, writing in an age of scientific history and seeking to debunk the myth of town meeting democracy, still did not apply a close scrutiny to the actual sources but instead also talked in generalities. The only real exceptions to this pattern and the only persons to delve deeply into local sources were Charles Andrews in his River Towns of Connecticut and G. E. Howard in his Introduction to the Local Constitutional History of the United States, both published in 1889. The next serious professional local study did not appear until 1961. In the intervening seventy-two years hundreds of local histories were written, but by antiquarians who frequently wrote with intelligence and felicity but seldom asked the significant questions that a professional historian would. Indeed, to be involved in local history implied, to people living in this time period, that a person was an antiquarian and not a true historian. However, since 1961 a number of historians have attempted to put the New England town under a microscope and ascertain some specifics to replace the generalities.

Almost every twentieth-century discussion of American history, literature, culture or character makes reference to J. Hector St John de Crèvecoeur's Letters from an American Farmer, a book first published in 1782. Anthologies usually find space for an excerpt from Crèvecoeur. A particular favourite is the third chapter, ‘ What Is An American? ’ Here is the best-known, the most-quoted, the almost tediously familiar paragraph from that chapter:

What, then, is the American, this new man? He is neither an European nor the descendant of an European … He is an American, who, leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds. He becomes an American by being received in the broad lap of our great Alma Mater. Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labours and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world. Americans are the western pilgrims who are carrying along with them that great mass of arts, sciences, vigour, and industry which began long since in the East; they will finish the great circle … The American is a new man, who acts upon new principles; he must therefore entertain new ideas and form new opinions. From involuntary idleness, servile dependence, penury, and useless labour, he has passed to toils of a very different nature, rewarded by ample subsistence. This is an American.

The experiences and impressions of the officially accredited British military and naval observers in the war of 1898 between the United States and Spain have been recounted in an earlier number of this journal. However, in an era when it was still possible for the enthusiastic amateur to take a keen personal interest in such events, even to the point of direct participation, the activities of one such unofficial eye-witness of the campaign in Cuba are worthy of note.

Emerson's notation in his journal: ‘ They look well in July. We will see them in December ’ about the prospects for Bronson Alcott's Fruitlands venture reflects a commonplace caution about communal ventures. Namely, that the heat of co-operative passion is often insufficient to sustain a community through later problems of crowded circumstances, changing perspectives and weak natures.

Historians have undertaken a number of specific investigations concerning the social, economic and geographic backgrounds, as well as their motives for emigrating, of those men and women who emigrated from England to Massachusetts, Virginia and Barbados during the course of the seventeenth century. While they have discussed the origins of the South Carolina charter, described the social and political status of the eight proprietors, dissected the Fundamental Constitutions, and examined the means by which the successful settlement of 1670 was organized, historians have neglected to explore the social backgrounds of those men who emigrated directly from England to South Carolina during the colony's initial decades of settlement. In contrast, not only the political but also the social and economic backgrounds of the Barbadian planters who colonized South Carolina have been the subject of a number of historical studies.

The South was an important partner in the electoral coalition which kept the Democratic Party in power throughout the 1930s and 1940s, but it was rarely a satisfied one. Rumblings of discontent at the allegedly radical New Deal emanated from the region from the earliest days of Roosevelt's Presidency and by 1937 political commentators were talking of a ‘ conservative coalition ’ of Southern Democrats and Republicans challenging New Deal measures in Congress. North Carolina provided a good measure of support for this coalition, especially in the person of Senator Josiah W. Bailey, and it continued to do so when the coalition became more effective than ever during Truman's Presidency. Yet a study of the state in Truman's early years reveals the solid strength which the National Democratic Party still possessed there in 1948. To some extent this strength was unique but some conclusions are valid for much of the South.

On 22 October 1907, the Knickerbocker Trust Company, the third largest trust company in New York City, closed its door and announced itself bankrupt. Panic rapidly spread. On the New York Stock Exchange chaos reigned as a loss of confidence, fed by insistent rumours of further imminent collapses, led to waves of selling, margin calls, and a rapid lowering of share prices. Heavy pressure developed upon the Trust Company of America and the Lincoln Trust Company: through the timely intervention of J. P. Morgan they survived, but lesser banking institutions throughout America, faced with long lines of depositors anxious to retrieve savings, were less fortunate. The supply of national bank notes proved insufficiently elastic to meet the massive, short-run increase in demand. Many banks, lacking adequate emergency reserves of notes and/or specie, were forced to ignore legal requirements and to suspend payments. It is true that the establishment of a New York trust company emergency fund prevented the chain of banking failures from spiralling disastrously onward, that the panic selling on the Stock Exchange was short-lived, and that the financial crises of late 1907 were confined largely to the cities – hence the manner in which the period has been written into American history as the ‘ rich man's panic ’. It is incorrect, however, to assert that its ‘ effects were not widespread ’.

This article is the substance of a report, submitted to the Board of the British Library in 1974, on a short visit to research libraries in the United States made in October and November 1973. The author was at that time in charge of the United States Collection and Superintendent of the North Library in the British Library Reference Division (formerly the British Museum Library); the primary purpose of his visit was to see what implications for the British Library the American situation might seem to suggest. The opinions expressed are, of course, those of the author only, and not of the Board. The original report was prefaced by a detailed acknowledgement of the great hospitality, kindness and co-operation that the author received throughout his visit, and he is glad of this opportunity to express his gratitude publicly, though necessarily less specifically.

The Warren Court induces schizophrenia. On the one hand it is difficult for anybody with a civilized political sensibility not to admire the policy content of the Supreme Court's judgments during Earl Warren's Chief Justiceship. If the three areas of decision-making with which this paper is concerned — segregation, reapportionment, and the rights of the criminal suspect — are examined, the Supreme Court clearly was on the side of the angels. It declared segregation to be unconstitutional. In a series of decisions the Court ended the gross malapportionment of legislative districting both at state and federal levels. Finally, the Warren Court attempted to change the balance between the criminal suspect and the police, by substantially increasing the restrictions on the latter's freedom of action. And yet, despite one's approval for the policy embodied in these decisions, there is something curiously disconcerting about the Court's judgments. One has a very strong sense that something has gone awry. This sense arises from the manner and mode in which the opinions of the Court are constructed. All the judgments under consideration in this paper — Brown v. Board of Education, Baker v. Carr, Reynolds v. Sims, and Miranda v. Arizona — share a common characteristic, a curious lack of substance, a lack of historical, constitutional, and legal substance. In other words, there is an absence of the kind of argument in the Supreme Court's opinions in these cases, which distinguishes a judicial decision from any other sort of decision.

While the question of geographic mobility has long been a mainstay of American historical writing and American myth-making – as evidenced by Turner and his disciples and the general obsession widi the frontier – until recently most historians have done little systematic investigation into it. Nor, indeed, have they been aware either of the enormous degree of movement within the country, or of the complex issues involved in determining why people have moved as they have. However, with the rise of what generally is termed the ‘ new urban ’ or ‘ new social ’ history, historians have begun to view migration as a question central to their analysis. Social scientists recognized the importance of migratory behaviour for many years and have employed sophisticated analytical techniques in their efforts to explain migration patterns, but recently historians approached the problem from another direction.

Gary, Indiana, was the great symbol of urban-industrial America in the Progressive Era, the largest attempt at urban genesis and town planning ever undertaken by American industry. It was an enormous undertaking – nothing less than the creation of the largest integrated iron and steel complex in the U.S.A., complete with its supporting city. Unfortunately, the greatest of America's company towns never lived up to the hopes of its founders, U.S. Steel. Hailed as the New Industrial Utopia, it rapidly degenerated into a dreary industrial conurbation; Gary represented the failure of large-scale industrial city planning.

In two influential books written some years ago William S. White and Donald R. Matthews suggested that the distribution of power within the United States Senate was, to a large extent, governed by certain informal rules of behaviour. Conformity to these norms or ‘ folkways ’, it was argued, was the key to success and influence in the Senate.

The editors of Moby-Dick as Doubloon sagely remark: ‘ Everything written about the book in 1851–1852, when reviews were affecting Melville's audiences and probably himself, is inherently more interesting than everything written in, say, 1951–1952 ’, This view is adequate reason for presenting the full text of over a dozen uncollected, unnoted reviews of Typee, Omoo, Mardi, Red-burn, White-Jacket, Moby-Dick, Pierre, and The Confidence Man, appearing in ten journals of the period: in Philadelphia, the Dollar Newspaper and The Spirit of the Times; in New York, Fisher's National Magazine and Hunt's Merchant's Magazine, Holden's Dollar Magazine, The Golden Rule, The Home Journal, and Peterson's Ladies' National Magazine; in Syracuse, the Literary Union; and in Boston, the Boston Weekly Museum. Five of these titles appear in books and articles devoted to other Melville reviews. The most interesting review is that in the Literary Union, which is unusually ingenious in its presentation of very perceptive comments. In view of the number and diverse nature of the reviews and notices, it seems preferable to group them by journal titles, with brief introductory comments for each, rather than by date or the titles of Melville's novels.

‘ Every loyal American who went abroad during the first years of our great war felt bound to make himself some excuse for turning his back on his country in the hour of her trouble ’, wrote W. D. Howells in 1881. It is a striking coincidence in American literary history that four major writers of the late nineteenth century – Howells, Henry James, S. L. Clemens, and Henry Adams – all failed to serve in the Civil War. Whether or not they believed that they had turned their backs on their country, each made some excuse in his published work. The most notorious is Henry James's statement in Notes of a Son and Brother that ‘ a horrid even if an obscure hurt ’ had prevented him from volunteering to fight.

Recent American experimental fiction, in response to the fictive behaviour of the emerging realities of a technetronic culture, moves beyond the interpretive modernist novel in which the fictionist interpreted the ‘ human condition ’ within the framework of a comprehensive private metaphysics, towards a metamodern narrative with zero degree of interpretation. The mistrust of the epistemological authority of the fictive novelist is mainly caused by the pressures of the overwhelming actualities of contemporary America which render all interpretations of ‘ reality ’ arbitrary and therefore simultaneously accurate and absurd.

The phenomenon of the precipitate decline in popular and critical favour of writers immensely successful in their own day is a familiar one. In due course, however, it often happens that decline is halted, and replaced by some degree of renewed interest. Nowhere has this pattern been more clearly revealed than in the case of the eminent Victorians: and Macaulay is an obvious example. In the present flourishing state of Victorian studies it is hardly surprising that the great liberal historian should be once again receiving at least some fraction of the attention he was accorded in his nineteenth-century heyday. Two book-length studies have recently appeared: Jane Millgate's Macaulay (1973), in the Routledge Author Guides series, mainly concerned with Macaulay's status as a literary artist, and John Clive's highly praised biographical study, Thomas Babington Macaulay: the Shaping of the Historian (1973). Somewhat earlier, George Levine's The Boundaries of Fiction (1968) had included extended treatment of Macaulay along with Carlyle and Newman, and the early volumes of Thomas Pinney's collected edition of Macaulay's letters were published in 1974. It is perhaps surprising that more attention has not been paid to the evidence for Macaulay's widely-acknowledged, extraordinary American vogue and to the reasons for it.

Commonly Ezra Pound's Cantos have been attacked from two main directions. The first claims that the poem is interesting only at the level of technique, the second that the analysis of economics as the poem's thematic basis was either a mistaken choice of material or simply that Pound had inadequate mastery of this material. Both lines of attack agree in identifying a fatal imbalance between form and content which denies die Cantos an acceptable structure, but otherwise diverge: the first placing Pound as an aesthete-hedonist of his own rejected 1920 Mauberley model and the second presenting us with a mid-Western fascist yahoo. Neither proposition stands up to examination. Self-evidently die Cantos are a sensitive record and diagnosis of (and partial programme for) the civilization Pound felt was collapsing around him. The real difficulties confronting the reader lie in die arbitrary resorting to documentation, polyglot quotation and adaptation, the random shifts in time and place controlled by anecdotal maxims and categorizations operating as a formula for die healthy state. As a version of reality the poem does not initially seem to have significant correspondence with our own.

Every historian addressing himself to the study of American slavery immediately confronts the paucity of sources. Significant documents written by slaves or former slaves are sufficiently scarce and difficult to work with that the slaves' view of slavery, in spite of recent publications, is still an underdeveloped area. In the almost fifteen years since Stanley Elkins stirred up swells of controversy by contending that slaves were characterized by a docile, childlike, ‘ Sambo ’ personality, historians have begun to employ concepts developed by psychologists, anthropologists, and sociologists and to examine previously neglected sources such as slave autobiographies and recollections. But even these attempts stop far short of a radical departure from approaches traditionally employed by American historians. Although slave songs have been of interest for decades, with some recent exceptions, they have yielded few significant or surprising insights.