Letter to American Teachers of History

essay by Adams

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June 11, 2026

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The "Letter to American Teachers of History" was an essay written by Henry Adams in 1910. In this essay, Adams, a historian and author known for his autobiography The Education of Henry Adams, presented a theory about the decline of civilization. He proposed that civilization had regressed through four stages: religious, mechanical, electrical, and ethereal. Adams predicted that the world would end in 1921, based on his interpretation of the scientific law of energy dissipation. The extent to which Adams intended this prediction literally remains a subject of debate among scholars.1

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Henry Adams
…Applied to History” (1909) and Letter to American Teachers of History (1910), Adams calculated the demise of the world. Basing his theory on a scientific law, the dissipation of energy, he described civilization as having retrogressed through four stages: the religious, mechanical, electrical, and ethereal. The cataclysm, he prophesied, would…
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…Applied to History” (1909) and Letter to American Teachers of History (1910), Adams calculated the demise of the world. Basing his theory on a scientific law, the dissipation of energy, he described civilization as having retrogressed through four stages: the religious, mechanical, electrical, and ethereal. The cataclysm, he prophesied, would…
Read More