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The Story of America THE STORY OF AMERICA OF STORY THE CURRENT BOOKS History for “We the People” THE STORY OF AMERICA: ESSAYS ON ORIGINS REVIEWED BY BROOKE ALLEN THE ERA WHEN SERIOUS HISTORIANS AS- pired to write works that also qualified By Jill Lepore Princeton Univ. Press as literature are long, long gone. During 416 pp. $27.95 the Enlightenment, David Hume and Edward Gibbon wrote prose as grand as any in our language, and brought sophis- professionalization. Historians, like so- ticated literary techniques to the craft of cial scientists, joined university facul- history writing. Their tradition was car- ties and began to write more for their ried on by the great historians of the 19th peers than for the general reader, and— century: Thomas Babington Macaulay, again like social scientists, not to men- Hippolyte Taine, Francis Parkman, Alex- tion literary scholars—to develop an is de Tocqueville, George Bancroft, Jacob opaque jargon that might almost have Burckhardt, and Thomas Carlyle all com- been designed to repulse the non-spe- posed their epics with an eye to the liter- cialist. “Popular” history was often left ary immortality they eventually achieved. to nonacademic historians, whose work Exciting, mellifluous narrative was, to was enjoyed by readers but looked at them, no insignificant part of the histori- askance by the professionals—viz. the an’s craft, and the result is that while many academy’s snide disparagement of the of their ideas are no longer groundbreak- biographer David McCullough, whose ing, we continue to read them for their work has provided pleasure and edifica- flair, their masterful syntax, and most of tion to millions. all their big-picture perspective. But there continue to be a few aca- The 20th century saw a narrowing of demic historians who write for a broad focus, an increased specialization and public, and one of the most visible is THE WILSON QUARTERLY AUTUMN 2012 THE STORY OF AMERICA OF STORY THE Jill Lepore, the Harvard historian who cussion of John Smith’s famously unre- is also a staff writer forThe New Yorker. liable account of the founding of James- Tellingly, Lepore’s first ambition was to town to a disquisition on the history of be a writer rather than a scholar, and she the presidential inaugural address, cul- did an undergraduate major in English minating with that of Barack Obama. literature before going on for a PhD According to Lepore’s own description, in American studies at Yale. Through- “The essays in this book concern doc- out her career, she has adhered to the uments—things like travel narratives, storytelling standards of an earlier era: the Constitution, ballots, the inaugural Her historical works have garnered nu- address, the presidential biography, the merous mainstream honors (including campaign biography, the IOU, and the a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize), dime novel. Historical inquiry relies on and she contributes frequently to wide- standards of evidence because docu- ly read periodicals apart from The New ments aren’t to be trusted.” Neither, she Yorker. She has even written (along with implies, are grand narratives: fellow scholar Jane Kamensky) a frothy romantic novel set in 1770s Boston. To say that the United States is a The Story of America is a new collection story is not to say that it is fiction; it of Lepore’s essays, almost all of which is, instead, to suggest that it follows initially appeared in The New Yorker. As certain narrative conventions. All with so many essay collections, a rather nations are places, but they are also awkward attempt has been made to cor- acts of imagination. Who has a part ral the disparate pieces under an overar- in a nation’s story, like who can be- ching theme, in this case that of “Ameri- come a citizen and who has a right can origins”—to show, as the jacket blurb to vote, isn’t foreordained, or even informs us, “how American democracy stable. The story’s plot, like the na- is bound up with the history of print.” tion’s borders and the nature of its Not all the pieces quite fit the mold electorate, is always shifting. Laws (there are essays, for instance, on Edgar are passed and wars are fought to Allan Poe, Charlie Chan, and Clarence keep some people in and others out. Darrow that have quite different things Who tells the story, like who writes to say), but there are enough of them to the laws and who wages the wars, make a satisfactory whole, from a dis- is always part of that struggle. THE WILSON QUARTERLY AUTUMN 2012 THE STORY OF AMERICA OF STORY THE A number of the essays in this col- tinue to believe, deep in our hearts, that lection illustrate this contention in the Founders’ “We the People” meant sometimes startling ways. It’s important all the people, not just the propertied for us to remember, in this era of vo- white men. We also seem to believe that cal constitutional “originalists,” that the the act of voting was always an inalien- Founders never foresaw many things we able right, justly administered—hence now consider inevitable—such as uni- our righteous outrage when innovations versal suffrage, to take an obvious exam- such as the Diebold voting machine or, ple. After all, as Lepore reminds us, the currently, the South Carolina Voter ID now-hallowed word “democracy” was law are introduced. Lepore’s fascinating actually considered a slur until the ad- essay “Rock, Paper, Scissors” puts the vent of Andrew Jackson in the 1820s, voting booth into historical perspective, and democracy’s rise “was neither inev- demonstrating that we don’t know near- itable nor swift. It countered prevailing ly as much as we think we do about our political philosophy. If democracy is rule political institutions. In the early years by the people and if the people are, as of the Republic, voters had to write Federalists like John Adams believed, their own ballots, and the potential for ‘the common Herd of Mankind’—the manipulation, intimidation, and falsifi- phrase was a commonplace—then de- cation was enormous: mocracy is the government of the worst, the tyranny of the idle, the ignorant, the Early paper voting was, to say the ill informed.” For a century and a half, it least, a hassle. You had to bring your has been the done thing to deride this own ballot, a scrap of paper. Then theory as reactionary and to poke fun at you had to (a) remember and (b) Adams as a relic of monarchism. From know how to spell the names and the vantage point of the 21st century, titles of every candidate and office. however, as we observe the fruits of 200 If “John H. Jones” was standing for years of Jacksonian democracy in both election, and you wrote “John Jones,” our elected government and our nation- your vote would be thrown out. al discourse, one is tempted to give Ad- (If you doubt how difficult this is, ams credit for a little more sense on the try it. I disenfranchise myself with subject than he normally gets. “comptroller.”) . As suffrage All evidence to the contrary, we con- expanded—by the time Andrew THE WILSON QUARTERLY AUTUMN 2012 THE STORY OF AMERICA OF STORY THE Jackson was elected president in Farewell Address, George Washington 1828, nearly all white men could warned that “the alternate domination vote—scrap-voting had become of one faction over another, sharpened more or less a travesty, not least by the spirit of revenge, natural to par- because the newest members of ty dissension, which in different ages and the electorate, poor men and im- countries has perpetrated the most hor- migrants, were the least likely to rid enormities, is itself a frightful despo- know how to write. tism.”) It was not until the 1890s that America adopted the so-called Aus- A travesty, yes, but the method tralian ballot, “with its radical provi- by which it was eventually improved sion that governments should provide turned out to be a mixed blessing at best. ballots.” Political parties stepped into the breach by printing bal- lots in partisan newspapers (all early American news- papers were openly partisan) that came to be called “party tickets,” and listed the entire slate of candidates for their favored party. For the voter, there was no need to know how to write—or to read, for that matter. This innovation facilitated the rise of the major parties (thus limiting voters’ choices) and led to “massive fraud, corruption, and intimi- dation.” (The development of the party system was anoth- Thomas Nast’s political cartoons helped bring down the New CORBIS er eventuality the Founders York City political machine of William “Boss” Tweed in the did not plan for, and would 1870s. Reformers in many American cities were outraged by the Boss’s blatant manipulation of voting. not have liked; in fact, in his THE WILSON QUARTERLY AUTUMN 2012 THE STORY OF AMERICA OF STORY THE It’s clear that many aspects of our po- litical culture that we look on as sacro- Of the inaugural address, sanct and traditional are in reality noth- James Garfield noted in his ing of the sort, and Lepore is at her most diary: “I have half a mind provocative when she takes these on. In another excellent essay, “To Wit,” she to make none. Those of the discusses the history of the presidential past, except Lincoln’s, are inaugural address, a custom that, like so dreary reading.” many in our political culture, developed almost accidentally. There is no mention of such an address in the Constitution, Lepore’s strength as a popular his- which calls only for an oath of affirma- torian is her ability to make her target tion; Washington inadvertently set a audience—informed but non-special- precedent when he addressed Congress ist readers—take a second look at the after being sworn in at Federal Hall.
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