Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,521

This is the grave of Frederick Merk.

Born in 1887 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Merk went to the University of Wisconsin and graduated in 1911. He was into history and went to Harvard to study with Frederick Jackson Turner. He stayed at Harvard. Turner retired in 1924 and Merk was hired to replace him, something Turner had lobbied for.

Like Turner, Merk was interested in the American West and particularly the frontier process, or at least so they thought it was back then. Merk combined that with great interest in 19th century politics, particularly as it concerned the lead-up to the Civil War. Among his books include Albert Gallatin and the Oregon Problem; A Study in Anglo-American Diplomacy, The Monroe Doctrine and American Expansionism, 1843-1849, Slavery and the Annexation of Texas, Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History: A Reinterpretation, and History of the Westward Movement. One of the big figures of his scholarship was John Quincy Adams, who he gave a lot of credit to for his foreign policy work, but also noted his personal flaws (the man was terrible at politics for someone who had so much success) that got in the way of his implementing his vision of America.

Merk would teach at Harvard until 1956. As a teacher, he really tapped into that frontier stuff that people of the time loved. His western history course, which he took over from Turner, was technically titled “The Westward Movement,” but had the nickname from students and other faculty of “Wagon Wheels,” which gives you a sense of what he prioritized. It’s worth a detour here. We often criticize, and rightfully so, Arthur Schlesinger for not mentioning Indian Removal in The Age of Jackson. He was a younger man than Merk, but they worked together at Harvard. How could you write such a book and not mention this gigantic crime against humanity and genocide?

The answer to this is that for Americans of that generation, it just wasn’t worth discussing and that was true across the political spectrum. I’ve never really published much on the New Deal, but I did have a project several years ago (one that I have mostly aborted for the lack of a real story I wanted to write about in the end) that allowed me to explore the papers of a bunch of left New Dealer types. What hit me in the face and was just so much stronger than I expected is how deeply these people believed in the Turner/Merk version of American history. In even the left-liberal or really even the communist imagination of America at that time, there just wasn’t any place in it for Native Americans. Maybe they had to be recognized in the contemporary world, but the process of the frontier was not only something that was seen as conventional wisdom, but something absolutely central to the identity of the United States. To question the inevitable domination of the United States over the North American continent meant questioning everything it meant to be an American. In some ways, one of the issues the left has faced since the late 60s when these myths became targeted in a systemic way for the first time is that there isn’t an AMERICAN STORY that the left or even liberals can hang a hat on to show a patriotic message. We critique America. We should critique America. The Turner/Merk vision of American history was racist bullshit. But it had really universal political appeal and the left has never managed to figure out how to address a truer version of our history in a way that has a positive appeal that leaves people feeling good about themselves. And if there’s one thing the hoopleheads who make up the American population want, it’s too feel good about themselves.

So yeah, it’s a conundrum.

I’ve also never read any of Merk’s books, despite being a historian of the U.S. West and someone who teaches the Civil War, though I am not an expert on the field. But since we have space here, it’s also worth noting, in the wake of yesterday’s historiography list, that it doesn’t much serve my interests or needs to go back and read all the old stuff like this. When I was at the University of New Mexico doing my PhD in the early 2000s, there were a lot of historians of the U.S. West. Like, it was an amazing group. Today, it’s less so due to retirements and of course the desecration of history departments around the country to hire more business professors and leadership studies and other bullshit. But in any case, there were three types of U.S. West seminars. There were the Native seminars that really pushed an alternative way of looking at history entirely. There were the seminars that focused on the latest works, which was more my interest. Then there were the seminars that went all the way back to Frederick Jackson Turner and followed the historiography forward, really only getting to the 80s by the end of the semester. These I avoided, both because I basically didn’t care (which is the usual reason I avoid something) but also because I didn’t see how it was that useful to me to know the slight variations of the Turner thesis that Merk did and then others did in the 50s or whatever. So yeah, I’ve never gotten around to Merk even today. Doubt I ever will either.

Merk became the mentor to a whole generation of American historians at Harvard–John Morton Blum, Rodman Paul, Alfred Chandler, Elting Morrison, and many others. I’ve read Blum and Chandler at least.

Merk died in 1977. He was 90 years old.

Frederick Merk is buried in North Woodstock Cemetery, Woodstock, Connecticut.

In 1959-60, Merk was the president of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, which soon after became the Organization of American Historians. If you would like this series to visit other OAH presidents, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Fletcher Green, who followed Merk, is in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and Paul Gates, who followed Green, is in Dryden, New York. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.