Five Habits of Historical Thinking

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Five Habits of Historical Thinking

• Learning to Think Like a Historian in Order to
  Better Understand the Past and Enjoy Its
  Challenge

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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.

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Often, conflicts in the past led to violence,
oppression, and hatred.

• This is one artists view of a bomb going off as
  police disperse an anarchist rally in Haymarket
  Square in Chicago in 1886.

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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.

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It is also a story of struggle and triumph over
difficult circumstances.

• Such as this frontier familys struggle to
  survive on the Great Plains in the 1800s

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Sadly, however, students often think of history
as a boring subject.
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Yet history is the story of all of humanitys
great moments. To grasp what the past was like
isnt easy. It takes effort, but that effort can
fire your imagination.
Woman working in a defense plant during WWII

• Lincolns Emancipation Proclamation

Child labor in a Chicago packing house in 1893
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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 cant,
really
Tombstone of a slave named Uncle John
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• The past is gone. All we have to go on are the
  records we still have.
• Photos like this are one kind of record.

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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.
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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

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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

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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?

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To answer a question like this, historians must
look for clues, or evidence.

• The evidence is in the primary sources.

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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.

• Lincolns axe here is labeled Emancipation
  Proclamation. He is saying he will use it to
  stop the Souths rebellion.

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Some of Lincolns 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
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Other sourcesalso including Lincolns own
wordsback 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
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So to decide, historiansand this means youmust
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

?
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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

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For example, womens lives changed in big ways in
the early 1900s, as the struggle for womens
right to vote succeeded.
1917
1870
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Yet even after winning the vote, many women
continued to build their lives around their
domestic roles, as in the past.
1870
1928
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So to fully understand history as a process over
time, you have to see how change and continuity
constantly interact.
1917
1870
1928
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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

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

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After all, its hard enough to empathize with
others around us. How much harder is it to see
the world the way these people did?
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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
Working from sunup to sundown Different ideas
about children Different ideas about
family Different ideas about religion Different
ideas about community
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A key challenge then for historians is to grasp
how like and unlike our own lives are to those of
people in the past.
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Keep the Five Habits in mind as you do the rest
of this lessons 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