Five Habits of Historical Thinking

1. Five Habits of Historical Thinking Learning to Think Like a Historian in Order to Better Understand the Past and Enjoy Its Challenge

2. The story of the past is many things. It is full of dramatic moments and bitter conflict. Here, colonists dressed as Native Americans dump tea into Boston Harbor in a protest leading up to the American Revolution.

3. Often, conflicts in the past led to violence, oppression, and hatred. This is one artist’s view of a bomb going off as police disperse an anarchist rally in Haymarket Square in Chicago in 1886.

4. Yet at other times, history is a story of inspiring heroism or amazing creativity. The first flight of the plane built by the Wright brothers, at Kitty Hawk in 1903. With Orville Wright at the controls, this flight lasted 12 seconds.

5. It is also a story of struggle and triumph over difficult circumstances. Such as this frontier family’s struggle to survive on the Great Plains in the 1800s

6. Sadly, however, students often think of history as a boring subject.

7. Yet history is the story of all of humanity’s great moments. To grasp what the past was like isn’t easy. It takes effort, but that effort can fire your imagination. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation Woman working in a defense plant during WWII Child labor in a Chicago packing house in 1893

8. What was it like to live in past times and through past crises? Photos like these help give you an idea. However, this photo gives us just a hint or two about one individual. What of the stories of the millions of other people in the past? How can we ever hope to understand all of them? We can’t, really… Tombstone of a slave named “Uncle John”

9. The past is gone. All we have to go on are the records we still have. Photos like this are one kind of record.

10. As you learn more about various times in the past, keep this in mind: History is not the past itself. It is the account a historian creates based on evidence left behind.

11. This is the first of Five Habits of Historical Thinking that can help you in studying any history topic. Five Habits of Historical Thinking History Is Not the Past Itself The Detective Model: Problem, Evidence, Interpretation Time, Change, and Continuity Cause and Effect As They Saw It: Grasping Past Points of View

13. The second of the Five Habits is “The Detective Model.” Like a detective, a historian uses clues to solve a mystery, question, or problem. Five Habits of Historical Thinking History Is Not the Past Itself The Detective Model: Problem, Evidence, Interpretation Time, Change, and Continuity Cause and Effect As They Saw It: Grasping Past Points of View

14. For example, here is a question historians ask: “Why did President Lincoln wait until September 1862, to announce the Emancipation Proclamation?” The proclamation freed all slaves in the rebellious parts of the U.S. South. Slavery was the big issue dividing North and South. The Civil War began early in 1861. So why did it take Lincoln so long to issue the proclamation?

15. To answer a question like this, historians must look for clues, or evidence. The evidence is in the primary sources.

16. The problem is that sources do not all agree. For example, some sources depict the proclamation as a political ploy to help Lincoln fight the war. Lincoln’s axe here is labeled “Emancipation Proclamation.” He is saying he will use it to stop the South’s rebellion.

17. Some of Lincoln’s own words seem to back up the view that he cared only about saving the Union. “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.” Abraham Lincoln, letter to Horace Greeley, August 22, 1862

18. Other sources—also including Lincoln’s own words—back up the idea that his goal always was to free the slaves. “I hate it [slavery] because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world…” Abraham Lincoln, in an 1858 speech The First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation, an 1864 painting of Lincoln reading the proclamation to his Cabinet

19. So to decide, historians—and this means you—must make their own interpretations, based solidly on the evidence. Five Habits of Historical Thinking History Is Not the Past Itself The Detective Model: Problem, Evidence, Interpretation Time, Change, and Continuity Cause and Effect As They Saw It: Grasping Past Points of View ?

20. The third of the Five Habits is about time. Over time, some things change, some do not. You need to keep both in mind at once. Five Habits of Historical Thinking History Is Not the Past Itself The Detective Model: Problem, Evidence, Interpretation Time, Change, and Continuity Cause and Effect As They Saw It: Grasping Past Points of View

21. For example, women’s lives changed in big ways in the early 1900s, as the struggle for women’s right to vote succeeded. 1917 1870

22. Yet even after winning the vote, many women continued to build their lives around their domestic roles, as in the past. 1870 1928

23. So to fully understand history as a process over time, you have to see how change and continuity constantly interact. 1917 1870 1928

25. The fourth of the Five Habits focuses on something else historians try to explain, along with describing “what happened.” Five Habits of Historical Thinking History Is Not the Past Itself The Detective Model: Problem, Evidence, Interpretation Time, Change, and Continuity Cause and Effect As They Saw It: Grasping Past Points of View

26. For example, the Great Depression of the 1930s was a terrible time of economic hardship. What caused this economic crisis? Failed bank turns away depositors Out of work, waiting for work Migrant farm worker Breadline

27. Many people think it was the collapse of stock prices that caused the Depression. “The stock market crash did it.”

28. However, no one cause ever really explains an event in history. Historians say all these factors and more helped to cause the Great Depression. “Americans went crazyspeculating.” “The stock market crash did it.” “The huge gap between rich and poor was to blame.” “The Fed limited the money supplywhen it should have increased it.” “It was the disastrous tariff policies.”

29. Some historians mainly blame the private economy. Others blame the government. They use different sources or interpret sources differently to make their case. Private Economy The Government “The stock market crash did it.” “The Fed limited the money supply when it should have increased it.” “Americans went crazy speculating.” “It was the disastrous tariff policies.” “The huge gap between rich and poor was to blame.”

30. Finally, a big challenge in studying history is to understand how people in the past saw things. The fifth of the Five Habits deals with this challenge. Five Habits of Historical Thinking History Is Not the Past Itself The Detective Model: Problem, Evidence, Interpretation Time, Change, and Continuity Cause and Effect As They Saw It: Grasping Past Points of View

31. After all, it’s hard enough to empathize with others around us. How much harder is it to see the world the way these people did?

32. Think about all of the ways their lives and ways of thinking differed from yours today? No running water No cell phones No cars or trucks No TV or Internet Few books, except for the Bible No health clinics No pensions WWorking from sunup to sundown DDifferent ideas about children DDifferent ideas about family DDifferent ideas about religion DDifferent ideas about community

33. A key challenge then for historians is to grasp how like and unlike our own lives are to those of people in the past.

34. Keep the Five Habits in mind as you do the rest of this lesson’s tasks. • Tasks Ahead: • Interpret several primary sources • Read and debate two secondary sources • Draw your own conclusions about this past episode Five Habits of Historical Thinking History Is Not the Past Itself The Detective Model: Problem, Evidence, Interpretation Time, Change, and Continuity Cause and Effect As They Saw It: Grasping Past Points of View