Amateur and professional historians tremendously shaped the United State's history; historians made America what it is today. Historians came to us in many different fashions. From heroes that founded our nation, intelligent inventors, even to the people who just simply wrote down our history so Americans could know what our ancestors went through. .
Historians from America write about a large variety of issues and conflicts that the United States history witnessed: the agriculture, illnesses, leisure, banking, and even the sewer systems of elder times. Historians have helped us to link the past more to the present. An Italian philosopher, Benedetto Croce, observed that "every true history is contemporary history". Croce was trying to cast that history was a science and could recover objective truths if properly practiced; he insisted that the past is unknowable. This does not mean that one cannot find out anything solid about the past, it means that no account of the past is free of perspectives, prejudices, and the priorities of the author.
There were few major groups of historians that dramatically shaped the mold of American history: the Nationalists, Progressives, Consensus, Old Marxists, and the New Left. Each division of American historians includes several people who symbolize what each group stood for.
The Nationalists were the dominant historical school during the 1870-1920 time period. They believed that America was a great country and believed it as a legally constitutional place. The Nationalists were predominantly pro-business and were considered the "captains of the industry". Andrew Carnegie, Walt Whitmen, and Allan Nevins were a few of the Nationalists prized historians.
Andrew Carnegie and Walt Whitmen were both considered as amateur historians, and Nevins was a professional historian. All of these men thought highly of America and its constitutional foundations. Andrew Carnegie, Triumphant Democracy, considered America a leading nation in almost everything.
