Pragmatism, as understood by John Dewey and celebrated by contemporary Deweyans, was forged in the crisis of World War I. As much concerned with national unity as was the Committee on Public Information, it is stamped by the same anti-German impressions as moved ordinary citizens to harass German Americans. Dewey bowed to these pressures by removing Hegel from the leading role he actually played in his own development and allying himself with William James, even as he maintained his distance from James’ philosophy. Following Dewey's lead, historians have continued to misrepresent the main contours of American intellectual development by casting pragmatism as a variety of empiricism and, as such, the natural complement of a non-ideological civilization. By this act, both the founder of modern historicism and the ideologues who have shaped American history have been banished from most accounts of American historical thinking.
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