A Conversation with Bernard Bailyn

EDITOR'S NOTE

B ernard B ailyn

By Bernard Bailyn's definition, the study of history is never a science, always a craft—and sometimes an art. Winner of two Pulitzer prizes in history, Bailyn is this year's Jefferson Lecturer in the Humanities, the highest honor the federal government bestows. He has been practicing the art and teaching the craft to Harvard students for forty-five years. One of them, Jack Rakove, now a Stanford professor and a Pulitzer Prize-winner himself, writes about "the heady experience" of being in a graduate seminar with Bailyn. "For the first half of the course," he writes, Bernard Bailyn, 1998 Jefferson Lecturer "we were never quite sure what the subject was." The sessions would start off in the Humanities. predictably enough with what had been discussed in the previous class, but then "it would be off to the races, as a whole new topic was introduced and Humanities brilliantly sketched, opening up interpretive vistas more rapidly than anyone A bimonthly review published by the could imagine." Bailyn's style was to leave them "to puzzle things out for National Endowment for the Humanities. ourselves, goaded only by his critical eye and his alarming propensity to call Chairman: William R. Ferris us up short with the most famous of all his questions: 'So what?"' Director of Communications Policy: Gary L. Krull The measure of the man shows clearly in his books, Rakove writes. Bailyn's Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, in Rakove's assessment, Editor: Mary Lou Beatty Writer-Editors: Amy Lifson, "transformed the writing of American history." Meredith Hindley, Bailyn won the Pulitzer Prize in history and the Bancroft Prize for Robin Herbst Editorial Assistant: Steven Snodgrass Ideological Origins; he won another Pulitzer in 1986 for Voyagers to the West. Editorial Intern: Erin Erickson Still another, The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson, won the National Book Award. Bailyn did his undergraduate work at Williams College and earned his Editorial Board: George F. Farr Jr., James Herbert, Edythe R. Manza, master's and doctorate from Harvard University. He has been teaching Nancy Rogers, Stephen M. Ross colonial history and the American Revolution at Harvard since 1953 and Marketing Director: Joy Evans is Adams University Professor Emeritus. He is a former president of the American Historical Association, and a member of the American Academy Design: Crabtree + Company of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Historical Society, the Mexican Academy of The opinions expressed in Humanities are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect History and Geography, and the Russian Academy of Sciences. Endowment policy. Material appearing in this History's role, he says, is to establish "in a realistic sense, as far as that's pos­ publication, except for that already copyrighted, maybe reproduced. Please notify the editor sible, what's happened and where we've come from, what experiences we've in advance so that appropriate credit can be given. Humanities (ISSN 0018-7526) is published had." The alternative is the model offered in the nadir of the Soviet regime bimonthly by the National Endowment for the Humanities, 1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, when "the past had to be twisted and turned" to fit the policy of the time. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20506. Telephone: 202/606-8435; fax: 202/606-8451; e-mail: These days Bailyn directs the International Seminar on Atlantic History, [email protected]; http://www.neh.gov which brings together young historians from many countries to discuss Second-class postage (USPS #531-230) paid at Washington, D.C., and additional mailing questions in the history of Atlantic civilization. These young historians, it is offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to United States Government Printing Office, hoped, will become old historians with a common ground. There is always a Superintendent of Documents, Washington, need, Bailyn said in a 1995 lecture, for "the establishment, in some significant D.C. 20402. New subscriptions and renewals: U.S. Government Printing Office, Superinten­ degree, of a realistic understanding of the past, free of myths, wish-fulfillments, dent of Documents, P.O. Box 371954, Pittsburgh, PA 15250-7954. Annual subscription rate: $16.00 and partisan delusions... domestic, $20.00 foreign. Two years: $32.00, $40.00. For new orders, 202/512-1800; for current When asked what history offers us, Bailyn replies: "Sanity. Social sanity." □ subscriber questions, 202/512-1806. —Mary Lou Beatty

2 MARCH/APRIL 1998 HUMANITIES The Magazine of the National Endowment for the Humanities March/April 1998

THE 1 9 9 8 JEFFERSON AROUND THE LECTURE NATION

4 The Past Is Unpredictable Historian 33 State by State Bernard Bailyn discusses the ways in Exhibitions, lectures, which our past is closer than we think. films, and conferences throughout the country. 8 Encountering Bernard Bailyn His unorthodox ways in the classroom 36 W om en in Com ba t changed the course of history for Soviet women who fought generations of Harvard students. in World War II tell their By Jack N. Rakove stories in an exhibition in Ohio. By Erin Erickson 14 The Rallying Cry How the word "Liberty" moved from a spiritual defini­ 39 Georgia Church tion to a revolutionary one. By Eric Foner Becomes Museum A civil rights center of 19 Excerpts: Bailyn in His Own Words the sixties finds a new Passages from his books and lectures purpose. By Erin Erickson offer insights into the historian's craft, the essence of loyalty, and the nature of defiance. DEPARTMENTS 41 Not the Man in the Gilbert Portrait An exhibition shows the lesser-known side 52 Calendar of a young, ambitious George Washington. By Meredith Hindley 54 Noteworthy

55 Deadlines MODERN STRUGGLES Page 14 24 Dissident in Indonesia Visiting the author of the Buru Quartet under city arrest in Jakarta. By David Paul Ragan

28 “When Rain Blackens the Sky” The poetry of Viet Nam connects a land and its people. By Fred Marchant

Page 28

HUMANITIES 3

MARY LOU BEATTY: Congratulations on your being chosen for the Jefferson lectureship. You've had a singular A Conversation with career as a historian, a professor for nearly fifty years at Bernard Bailyn Harvard University, and the author of many highly regarded and influential books. Now, along with your series of books on the peopling of British North America, you've taken on a new project— something called the International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World. What is that?

BERNARD BAILYN: It's an effort to bring together young istorian Bernard Bailyn, historians from all over the Atlantic world to concentrate intensely for a short period of time— ten days or so— on who has been chosen common historical problems, on topics and problems they share. The purpose is to advance the first scholarly efforts as the 1998 Jefferson of young historians of many nations, and to help them form associations during the seminar that will persist, and LecturerH in the Humanities, spoke recently so build up an international cadre of young historians who with editor Mary Lou Beatty about then become not-so-young historians, and will carry on these connections into their later careers— and ultimately, American history— how it is taught, how it through cooperation among historians, to further in some small degree at least, international understanding. is written, and how it fits into a larger Also, it's a way of deepening historical understanding. We understand much more of our own national history by transatlantic context. Bailyn, who is the seeing it in the context of Atlantic civilization as a whole. This is not an entirely new idea, but because of recent research in Adams University Professor Emeritus at historical studies it has become much more important. Harvard University, has written eleven Q: The seminar concentrates on 1500 to 1800?

books, two of them Pulitzer Prize winners, BAILYN: Yes— that is the formative period in which the contacts between the western European nations and the The Ideological Origins o f the American Western Hemisphere were established. In that period, you can see the connections between Western Europe and the Revolution and Voyagers to the West. The Western Hemisphere in their first, basic forms.

Ordeal o f Thomas Hutchinson, based on his Q: Is there an effort to redress the subject of European relationships with Latin America as well? Trevelyan Lectures at Cambridge BAILYN: It's to see the whole of the Atlantic world and its University, won the National Book common characteristics. Slavery, for instance, developed in all of the regions of the Western Hemisphere as part of the Award. A former president of the economic development of Europe, but it took different forms in different places at different times, and those pecu­ American Historical Association, liarities can best, most fully, be seen in an Atlantic perspec­ tive. Similarly, imperial systems and colonial governments Bailyn was elected in 1994 to developed, and the differences and similarities are impor­ tant to notice. The seminar is not formally concentrated on the Russian Academy of the United States, although what became the United States obviously was involved, directly or indirectly, in all of this. Sciences, the first American historian Q: Is there new scholarship emerging? to be elected to that body since BAILYN: It's enormously expanding. One of the most George Bancroft in 1867. striking things about the current work of professional histo­ rians is the amount of technical research that's emerging on all of the great questions related to Western civilization, and in other regions as well. The problem is how to get the tech- bran.

HUMANITIES 5 6 6 — Courtesy Bernard Bailyn MARCH/APRIL 1998 MARCH/APRIL but to the Caribbean Caribbean the to but eoe f h oiis of origins the of before discovered? been Scotland, Ireland, and and Ireland, Scotland, er­ England, G Spain, in many, origins their — migrants westward had never we that now studies are There well. not came, who people we than population more far compo­ initial the about us are telling studies Migration migration. Especially migration. and commerce of history direc­ many in developing It's aspect. one sideisonly puter already has what otherwise— or computers by ing— isaproblem. real generally people reach can that presentations all this into fuse to how writing; and of research deal great a do historians the among technicians The public.a larger reaches that form a into work nical niey W ko an know not We but entirely. quantitative so forth, which is partly is which forth, so as America South and America, North to only of origins the by tracing before, knew ever American the of sition the in Atlanticworld; the in emerged asthey systems state of study the in theory; politicalof examination the in tions: analyz­ of Iscase a it there? already facts the were But Q: BAILYN: There is all sorts of research going on. The com­ The on. going all sorts isresearch of There BAILYN: how America's early development, through the Revolution­ the through development, early America's how noticing in started, I where that's a way, In important. economic and migration of phenomena objective the information? of bases new these to that apply do you difficult.How very is aof world very, lost mentality audience. ato broad conveyed be can that picture general a into scholarship technical the can bring you ishow tion enormous amount about all of this now. As I say, the ques­ Asthe say,now. I all this of about amount enormous development. But the ideological aspect of of it isterribly aspect ideological the But development. simply with do to have but that, to relate directly don't the to back way one's working said that often have You Q: BAI LYN : Some of these problems that we're dealing with with dealing we're that problems these of Some : became absorbed into their into absorbed became world was all about and where where and all about was world and America North in ple peo­ informed of minds the in much very were history British here. pened the about talked have you context. European the from emerged form— text. They are not just quoting just not are text.They con­ this British in were they their what of picture general hap­ of what asantecedents Revolution— Glorious the Britishof passages of effects history, own our of terms In Q: took asnation a principles and our ideas where ary period— BAILYN: Such critical events in critical events Such BAILYN: history— the exclusion crisis,exclusion the history— it is so brilliant a piece of rhetoric and so perverse and chal­ lenging an argument against all of the ordinary notions that As a trustee o f Manhattanrille College in 1967 with its president, Elizabeth McCormack, then Mother McCormack. Americans had as British subjects. Q: He proclaimed the view that we had matured and were ready for independence, that corrupt, antiquated Britain was dragging us down, that we would have progressed faster, been richer and freer, on our own. That is the Paine thesis, isn't it? what happened in those events; they absorbed them into a larger picture. The difficulty— and, I think, the value— of BAILYN: Yes, Paine condemned the entire British world writing about this is to show the way in which the particu­ for all of the evils of a corrupt, monarchical system. There lars of these North American people's British, and more were many Americans in the Revolutionary movement generally European and African, inheritance shaped their who were not so convinced that the established forms were views of the world and then, under certain circumstances, bad, only that they had been corrupted. But Paine laid out led them to certain kinds of actions. That process is as forceful arguments, in brilliant rhetoric, to condemn the applicable to South America and Central America as it is to entire system of European monarchy and aristocracy. the United States. Despite the fact that many Americans—John Adams, for example— couldn't easily stomach what he said, neverthe­ Q: In your book, Faces of the Revolution, I was particularly less, he had a great influence in his early years here. taken with the figure of John Adams. He comes across in unexpected ways; your view of Jefferson also seems an Q: You point out that the colonies were not really so down­ uncommon one. He comes across not as cerebral as I had trodden in the pre-Revolutionary years as they were said thought, but as the consummate political tactician. And by many to be. while Madison seems to be the brains of the operation, you chose not to write about him in this book. BAI LYN: That goes back to a larger issue, which is the degree to which America, before any of the Revolutionary BAILYN: Well, Madison as a personality, as opposed to developments took place, had already moved in directions Jefferson or Adams— especially Adams— is very elusive. that were quite different from the establishments in Europe He is never dramatic. He is not in any way theatrical. He is — in regard to, for example, the position of religion in ordi­ remarkably cerebral. Adams is the most open, as you see in nary life, representative government, and a whole range of his early writings, the diary and autobiography, which is a other traditional conditions. Before people started to apply marvelous self-revelation. You see the emotional, questing, any radical ideas of the late eighteenth century, the targets

" Paine brought over a different kind of combative, flamboyant, completely irreverent, even violent, consciousness into the American picture, and so his initial pamphlet,

Common Sense, had a remarkable impact because it is so brilliant a piece of rhetoric and so perverse and challenging an argument against all of the ordinary notions that Americans had as British subjects."

sensitive, romantic personality behind the facade. One can of reform here were already softening, so to speak, already get at Jefferson too as a personality. But the biographers of changing toward more liberal forms. The way in which Madison have a tougher time finding the person, the inner those early developments reinforced the ideas that came to personality, as opposed to his ideas, which in my mind maturity in the Revolution is one of the important elements seem to be extremely concise and sharp and close to the in early American history. inner grain of the problems that he's dealing with. Q: You have said that the Revolutionary War was not Q: You have written too about Thomas Paine, the "bank­ inevitable. Is the propelling figure, then, Thomas Hutchin­ rupt British corset maker," as some called him. son, the last royal governor of Massachusetts? Or is that too simple? BAILYN: Paine is another character altogether. The thing that interested me in what I wrote about him is the brilliant BAILYN: Hutchinson was the target of all of the radicals rhetoric of his pamphleteering. His writing has an energy and many of the moderate Revolutionaries of the time. In and drama and verbal flair that none of the American pam­ in the research for the biography I wrote, I found him a phleteers had. Paine brought over a different kind of com­ very interesting person, with many sympathetic qualities. bative, flamboyant, completely irreverent, even violent, He was intelligent, extremely well-informed, deeply involved consciousness into the American picture, and so his initial with his family and community, and also, incidentally, pamphlet, Common Sense, had a remarkable impact because Continued on page 44

HUMANITIES 7

Bernard Bailyn in CLASS AT H a rv a rd , 1997. -Photo -Photo by Richard M. Feldman © 1998 Encountering Bernard Bailyn “A Transforming Intellectual Experience”

By Jack N. Rakove

When I entered graduate 1960s would want to carry guished biographer of school in the history depart­ his interest in American Franklin Roosevelt, he sur­ ment at Harvard in 1969,1 politics back to its prised me with his advice. knew almost nothing about eighteenth-century origins "You'll learn a lot more if Bernard Bailyn, nor was I would have struck me you take Professor Bailyn's interested in the field of as quaint. For all I knew seminar," Frank said, early American history that or cared, real American smiling beneath the last flat- he taught. The fact that his history began sometime top haircut sported by any study of The Ideological around the New Deal—the member of the Harvard fac­ Origins of the American rest was prologue, nothing ulty. I dutifully wandered Revolution had received the more. Of course, one might down the corridor of the top Pulitzer Prize in the spring be expected to know some­ floor of Widener Library to of 1968 was lost on me, thing about the colonial Bailyn's office and secured overshadowed by the and Revolutionary eras— the necessary permission. tumultuous events that but who would want to For me, as for literally marked my final semester make them the subject of scores of his students, that of college: the aftermath of his own work? seminar was a transforming the Tet offensive, Lyndon A funny thing happened intellectual experience. It Johnson's abdication and to me, though, on my way also offers something of a C olored engraving made the Gene McCarthy boom- to becoming a historian of key to understanding the in 1793 of the Boston Tea Party, December 16, let, the assassination of modern America. When I distinctive contribution 1773. This is th e earliest Martin Luther King. The went to sign up for my first Bailyn has made to the known American depiction notion that someone im­ graduate seminar with the study of American history o f t h e e v e n t. mersed in the events of the late Frank Freidel, a distin­ in the half century since he

h u m a n ities 9 first came to Harvard, fresh weeks went by, and they prostitutes, Bailyn mustered an from Williams College and guided our work ever after. Christine Keeler admirable patience the United States Army. First, the great conceptual and Mandy Rice- that most professors To an untutored naif like challenge that a working Davies). Sometimes find hard to sustain, myself, Bailyn's seminar historian faces is to define it meant recalling making us kick prob­ was at once mystifying and a good problem, and the the importance'of lems around, false elating. For the first half of essence of a good problem transitions (the leads and all, before the course, we were never lies in identifying two point of reading nudging us (or quite sure what the subject points in time between David Cecil's bril­ sometimes com­ was. Each week's readings which something signifi­ liant Prologue to his manding us, with were so eclectic that we cant (and often surprising) life of Melbourne). an imperious went to class wondering had happened. History is Always it involved "Look!") to consider what we would possibly dis­ primarily about change understanding that the points he cuss. Much of this reading and movement, Bailyn expository decisions wanted us to see. lay in the general field of taught us; however hard are as essential to His undergraduate American and English his­ we have to work to under­ historians as their lectures took a differ­ tory in the seventeenth and stand just what the past mastery of sources ent form. Bailyn was eighteenth centuries. But was like, the deeper chal­ and all the other not a classroom lec­ why were we reading Lord lenge is to explain how one technical skills on turer in the grand Denning's report on the part of the past gave way which our scholar­ style; he never gave Profumo spy scandal of to another. Second, ship depends. the sort of polished 1963, or E. H. Carr's account because change can only With that performance that is of the nineteenth-century be described through nar­ seminar, I was Revolutionary full of bons mots Russian liberal, Alexander rative, historians must be hooked—a com­ War infantryman and witticisms and Herzen, and his circle of sensitive to all the matters mon fate for many carrying a lig h t manages to reach like-minded exiles from of exposition that make of his students. rifle, Yorktown its scintillating con­ tsarist autocracy? Or why narrative effective. The next year I cam p aig n , 1781. clusion seconds should we bother with as Sometimes this meant was a teaching W atercolor from before the bell. THE WAR DIARY OF downright moldy and justly recognizing the importance assistant in two of For the first twenty J ean B a p t is t e d e neglected a piece of scholar­ of adjectives (the point of Bailyn's lecture minutes of class, V e r g e r , F r e n c h ship as Harlan Updegraff's reading Lord Denning's courses. Here I saw OFFICER SERVING IN one barely needed

Origins of the Moving School account, which interrupted a different facet of A m er ic a d u r in g to take a note,

in Massachusetts? its spare legal language to his approach to t h e R e v o l u t io n . because he usually

Two answers began to apply a few salacious mod­ teaching. In his —Anne S. K. Brown spent the time Military Collection, emerge to the puzzle as the ifiers to those two famous graduate courses, Brown University Library restating the

New York harbor, circa 1760. At center, a group of militiamen d rill. A French ship, possibly caught by a privateer, is anchored a t le ft.

10 MARCH/APRIL 1998 problem he had been dis­ transformed the writing of the colonists to give new cussing at the close of the American history. But where shapes and meanings to previous class. But round Beard's interpretive punch such familiar concepts as about twenty-five minutes masked research that was representation, sovereignty, past the hour, it would be off both hasty and flawed, rights, and the nature of a to the races, as a whole new Bailyn's Ideological Origins constitution. And in devel­ topic was introduced and has sources of power that oping these positions, Bailyn brilliantly sketched, opening will preserve its authority suggested, Americans also up interpretive vistas more well into the new century. came to understand how rapidly than anyone could What did it mean to different their society had imagine. Bailyn's inclination say that the origins of the become from the parent cul­ to review and revolve prob­ American Revolution were ture they had long sought to lems gave his students a ideological in nature? Since imitate. Now standing on glimpse of how the analysis the 1950s, other scholars, native ground, Americans and interpretation of the notably Edmund Morgan realized that they had past diverged from the of Yale, had demonstrated already departed in bold simple narratives or stale that the colonists were and progressive ways from controversies that (then and deeply principled and Old World norms. Some now) remain too much the consistent in defending began to sense, too, that stuff of history as it is taught the rights that the British their new republic should in secondary schools. Empire set out to curtail carry this departure further, Teaching has a chemistry after 1763. But Bailyn's use extending the revolutionary of its own, and the personal of the concept of ideology impulse to challenge bonds it forms explain much added a new and potent other sources of power— about how great scholars element to this view. established religion, chattel draw students into their Americans reacted to British slavery, social hierarchies— fields of study. In his early policy as they did, Bailyn that had not been at issue years as a Harvard professor, argued, because they had in 1765. it was the promise of future also absorbed, from English Bailyn closed Ideological scholarship conveyed in his sources, a hard-edged, suspi­ Origins by allowing the teaching that helped Bailyn cious view of politics that loyalist opponents of the attract such talented stu­ emphasized the dangers that Revolution to offer a last dents as Richard Bushman, grasping wielders of power word of rebuke. In their Stanley Katz, Michael always posed to the rights of quite sensible view, the rev­ Kammen, and Gordon their subjects. Rather than olutionaries' clamor for their Wood. But the examples dismiss British initiatives as rights barely disguised the by which scholars teach honest mistakes or miscalcu­ anarchic results to which must ultimately be found lations, the colonists were their protests in their writings. predisposed to interpret must lead. No Bailyn had published his each British miscue as evi­ form of author­ first monograph, a study of dence of a systematic plot to ity, however The New England Merchants turn the virtuous Americans traditional or proper, in the Seventeenth Century, into political slaves. Inde­ would be safe ever after, in 1955, and several influen­ pendence came, Bailyn the loyalists warned. Yet as tial interpretive essays in the concluded, not only because Bailyn's moving conclusion years that followed. But his Americans adhered to their made clear, the future arrival as a major force in principles, but also because deservedly belonged to the American history and letters their ideology—at times near revolutionaries. No intelli­ had to await the publication paranoiac in its obsessions— gent reader could doubt that R if le m a n d e p ic t e d in of the first edited volume of drove them into revolution. Bailyn's own sentiments lay d e V e r g e r ’s diary. —Anne S. K. Brown M ilitary Collection, Pamphlets of the American But the telling of this ideo­ with the revolutionaries and Brown University Library Revolution in 1965. Its logical story occupied only their "refusal to truckle" lengthy introduction, half of the book, for in two before any arbitrary source originally titled "The concluding chapters, Bailyn of authority. Transforming Radicalism of offered a more complicated Yet when Bailyn pub­ the American Revolution," explanation of the radicalism lished his next book, in 1974, was reprinted two years of the Revolution. Its deeper some critics (and even a few later as The Ideological significance lay, he argued, of his students) wondered Origins of the American in the fundamental challenge whether he was either a Revolution. Not since it posed to much of the closet Tory or a budding Charles Beard published received political wisdom reactionary. In The Ordeal his Economic Interpretation of of the age. The decade of of Thomas Hutchinson (the the Constitution in 1913 has "pounding controversy" that next-to-last royal governor a single book so radically followed the Stamp Act led of Massachusetts), Bailyn

HUMANITIES 11 offered an engrossing, habituated as Hutchinson works were based the Revolution—Bailyn sympathetic, and deeply was to the "closely cali­ on close analysis of the examined this outflow moving portrait of the man brated world of status, demography of settlement from Britain from four whom the militant patriots deference, and degree— and the formation of local distinct perspectives. of Boston—the Adamses the Anglo-American politi­ communities, and they Voyagers opens with an and their allies—so detested. cal world of privilege and provided a new and account of the problem that Bailyn's Hutchinson is an patronage and of limited, provocative portrait of British policymakers faced able public servant, equally arbitary access—he could colonial society. Bailyn was when they finally grasped committed to the welfare of not respond to the aroused certainly impressed by the the sheer scale of the emi­ his colony and the empire, moral passion and the opti­ findings of these younger gration to America that their and a thoroughly decent mistic and idealist impulses scholars, some of whom victory in the Seven Years man, the moral superior to that gripped the minds of (like Philip Greven and Lois War (1756-63) had made his detractors, who treated the Revolutionaries and Green Carr) he had trained, possible. Working from the him as a lackey of his imper­ that led them to condemn and all of whom he had survey the government ial bosses and a traitor to his as corrupt and oppressive influenced. But the very commissioned to assay this native Massachusetts. How the whole system by which technical exactitude of this problem, Bailyn turns to a had this capable and decent their world was governed." scholarship, with its obses­ close quantitative assess­ man so gravely mistaken the In social terms, Hutchinson sive focus on family and ment of the volume and nature of the revolutionary was no more exalted a per­ community history, raised flow of the emigration, challenge, Bailyn asked, con­ sonage than his foes and troubling questions for a demonstrating that it fol­ tributing by his very miscues rivals; he was only more historian who remained lowed two distinct vectors. to the political disaster he successful in working the concerned with the With this established, Bailyn hoped to avert? levers of imperial influence imperative of narrative. next explores and details the The answer to this ques­ and privilege. How, Bailyn wondered, structural links that entre­ tion illuminates one of the That was the world to could historians transcend preneurs and speculators recurring themes in Bailyn's which Americans were no the gritty data on which had to forge to transfer writings. From his first book, longer willing to "truckle," so much of this new social this population from one Bailyn has always been fasci­ as they imagined a society in history rested? How could side of the Atlantic to the nated by the difficulties that which privilege and ascrip- they provide compelling other. As in his first book members of the colonial elite tive power would lose their accounts of what these dis­ on the early New England had repeatedly met in trying sway. But how had masses crete social processes meant merchants, this section of to set themselves up as New of colonists come to question both to the participants and Voyagers revealed Bailyn's World avatars of an Old the received wisdom that the societies they were fascination with the dynam­ World aristocracy. In many made hierarchy and defer­ piecemeal creating? ics of commerce in all its ways Hutchinson personi­ ence natural building blocks Bailyn raised these marvelous complexity. fied everything a colonial of the social order? That questions in his presidential Had the book ended aristocracy might have question, too, had long address to the American there, it would have been become, had the Revolution intrigued Bailyn, going back Historical Association in a wonderful study in the not intervened. And that to his early studies of the 1981, and then offered his economics of emigration was the source of his travail New England merchants own solutions in two books and settlement. Yet some­ in Massachusetts, and the emerging cousinry published almost simultane­ thing vital would have and the larger of great planters who gov­ ously five years later. The been missing: an under­ debacle to which erned Virginia. It was a Peopling of British North standing of what migration his political errors question to which he America was a set of three had meant to the men and led. Hutchinson returned as he put lectures designed to illus­ women whose life histories ultimately failed, his studies of the trate the proposition that would be bound with Bailyn suggested, Revolution behind the theme of immigration America's long after the because his very him and took up the provided the one best rubric speculators had lost their success in manipu­ new project on for incorporating all the dis­ investments and other lating his imperial which he is still at parate findings of the new entrepreneurs had moved connections ren­ work: a projected studies into one compre­ on to new ventures. In the dered him unable multivolume hensive framework. It was three hundred concluding to grasp, much study of immi­ quickly followed by the pages—nearly a book in less respond to, the gration into the Pulitzer Prize-winning itself—Bailyn traced a set raw resentment his American colonies. Voyagers to the West, which of voyages and voyagers as own privilege and All the time he represented Bailyn's own they carried emigrants from power evoked. was working on the self-conscious effort to pro­ origins as out-of-the-way as Bailyn writes that Revolution, Bailyn also vide a model version of a the Hebrides and Orkney monitored the flood of monograph in social history. Islands off Scotland's M u sk etm a n fr o m new monographs on Working outward from a northern coast to newly d e V e r g e r ’s diary. the settlement of the single archive—a govern­ opening lands extending — A n n e S. K. Brow n M ilitary Collection, Brown University Library American colonies that ment survey of roughly ten from Nova Scotia and cen­ began to appear in thousand emigrants depart­ tral New York to Florida the late 1960s. These ing for America just before and the Mississippi delta.

12 MARCH/APRIL 1998 — Courtesy Winterthur M useu m

V iew o f B o s t o n H a rbo r eng rav ed in 1768 by P a ul R e v e r e , a nd d e p ic t in g THE GATHERING OF BRITISH SHIPS UNLOADING THEIR TROOPS.

This section of Voyagers plified and reinforced its us up short with the most breathes life into the often- deepest tendencies. For famous of all his questions: arid generalizations of these voyagers were seeking "So what?" social history, thereby a measure of personal Bernard Bailyn has just fulfilling the challenge that independence and self- turned seventy-five, and Bailyn had set in his presi­ sufficiency that Britain had he remains as actively dential address of 1981: to not allowed them to enjoy, engaged in original write a social history that but which, if they were research as he was when would deploy all the tools lucky enough to survive he was the young star of of modern scholarship, yet the tossings and turnings the Harvard history still convey, through vivid of migration, America department in the 1950s. narrative, the sensations of promised to provide. His studies of the peopling movement and experience Teaching Voyagers to the of British North America that are always the ultimate West (as I regularly do) to continue, and for the past stuff of history. our graduate students car­ few years, he has been More than that still, ries me back to the heady conducting a highly ener­ Bailyn meant Voyagers to experience of Bailyn's semi­ gized series of seminars illustrate one of the great nar. For the one lesson I and workshops on the themes of his writings on learned best in 1969 was settlement and economic the Revolution: the extent to that I was preparing to development of the early which the emerging liberal write a book (on what sub- modern Atlantic world. society of eighteenth- ject I hardly knew), and He is, in fact, the youngest century America was predi­ that when I did, Bailyn's historian I know. □ cated on a rejection of the extraordinary lessons and hierarchies and privileges example would set the stan­ Jack N. Rakove won the 1997 of the old imperial regime. dard I would aspire to meet. Pulitzer Prize in history for his Bailyn's voyagers reached That standard was never book, ORIGINAL MEANINGS: America too late, and were imposed, however; Bailyn POLITICS AND IDEAS IN THE too preoccupied with settle­ left us to puzzle things out MAKING OF THE CONSTITUTION. ment, to have much to do for ourselves, goaded only He is the Coe Professor of with the Revolution. But in by his critical eye and his History and American Studies their own way, they exem­ alarming propensity to call at Stanford University.

HUMANITIES 13 TheRallying Cry A NEW BOOK BY ERIC FONER, THE STORY OF AMERICAN FREEDOM,

DESCRIBES HOW THE CONCEPT OF

LIBERTY GAINED NEW DIMENSIONS

IN C O LO N IA L A M E R IC A .

American freedom was bom in revolution. Liberty, of course, did not suddenly enter the American vocabulary in 1776; indeed, few words were as ubiquitous in the transatlantic political discourse of the eighteenth century. Colonial America was heir to many understandings of liberty, some as old as the city-states of ancient Greece, others as new as the Enlightenment. One common definition in British North America saw it less as a political or social status than as a spiritual condition. In the ancient world, lack of self-control was understood as a form of slavery, the antithesis of the free life. "Show me a man who isn't a slave," wrote Seneca. "One is a slave to sex, another to money, another to ambition." This understanding of freedom as submission to a moral code was central to the Christian cosmology that suffused the worldview of the early colonists. Wherever it flourished, Christianity enshrined the idea of liberation, but as a spiritual condition rather than a worldly one. Since the Fall, man had been prone to succumb to his lusts and passions. Freedom meant aban­ doning this life of sin to embrace the teachings of Christ. "Where the spirit of the Lord is," declares the New Testa­ ment, "there is liberty." In this definition, servitude and freedom were mutually reinforcing, not contradictory states, since those who accepted the teachings of Christ became "free from sin" and "servants to God" simultaneously.

(ABOVE) WHERE LIBERTY DWELLS, THERE IS MY COUNTRY COVERLET OF TOILE MANUFACTURED IN ENGLAND FOR SALE IN AMERICA, IN WHICH A SHIELD-BEARING COLUMBIA, SYMBOLIZING THE UNITED STATES, LEADS FRANKLIN IN HIS ELEVATION TO DIVINE STATUS.

— Courtesy Winterthur Museum

(RIGHT) LE DOCTEUR FRANCKLIN COURONNE PAR LA LIBERTIi, FRANKLIN BEING CROWNED BY LIBERTY.

— Courtesy Winterthur Museum

14 MARCH/APRIL 1998 E LIBERTY POLE, 1776. NINETEENTH - CENTURY ENGRAVING BY JOHN C. MCRAE, IN WHICH AMERICANS CELEBRATE THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE BY RAISING PATRIOTIC BANNERS WHILE REMOVING A SIGN BEARING THE LIKENESS OF KING GEORGE III.

HUMANITIES 15 The Puritan settlers of colonial Mass­ ture of Anglo-American political cul­ achusetts, who believed their colony ture and a major building block in the the embodiment of true Christianity, Sense of nationhood then being con­ planted this spiritual definition of solidated in Britain. By self-definition, freedom on American soil. In a 1645 the British nation was a community of speech to the Massachusetts legislature free individuals and its past a "history that epitomized Puritan conceptions of of liberty." Belief in freedom as the freedom, John Winthrop, the colony's common heritage of all Britons and governor, distinguished sharply the British Empire as the world's sole between "natural liberty," which sug­ repository of liberty had helped to gested "a liberty to evil," and "moral legitimize the colonization of North liberty... a liberty to do only what is America in the first place.

good." This definition of freedom as — Courtesy Winterthur Museum Of course the idea of freedom as flowing from self-denial and moral the natural condition of mankind was choice was quite compatible with hardly unknown in a nation that had severe restraints on freedom of speech, produced the writings of John Milton religion, movement, and personal THE LAW WAS LIBERTY’S and John Locke. But British freedom behavior. Individual desires must give was anything but universal. National­ “SALVATION,” NOT ITS ADVERSARY. way to the needs of the community, ist, often xenophobic, it viewed nearly

and "Christian liberty" meant submis­ LIBERTY, WROTE JOHN LOCKE, every other nation on earth as sion not only to the will of God, but "enslaved"— to popery, tyranny, or to secular authority as well, to a well- MEANT NOT LEAVING EVERY barbarism. "Freedom... in no other understood set of interconnected land will thrive," wrote the poet John PERSON FREE TO DO AS HE DESIRED, responsibilities and duties, a submis­ Dryden; "Freedom is an English sub­

sion no less complete for being volun­ BUT “HAVING A STANDING RULE TO ject's sole prerogative." Britons saw tary. The most common civil offence no contradiction between proclaiming in the courts of colonial New England LIVE BY, COMMON TO EVERY ONE OF themselves citizens of a land of free­ was "contempt of authority." The dom precisely when British ships were THAT SOCIETY, AND MADE BY THE unrestrained individual enjoying transporting millions of Africans to

natural rights, whom later generations LEGISLATIVE POWER.” bondage in the New World. "Britons would imagine as the embodiment of never, never, never will be slaves," ran freedom, struck these Puritan settlers the popular song, "Rule Britannia." It as the incarnation of anarchy. "When did not say that Britons could not own each man hath liberty to follow his This equation of liberty with moral slaves, since for most of the eighteenth own imagination," declared Puritan action flourished as well in a secular­ century, almost no one seemed to minister Thomas Hooker, disaster ized form in the Atlantic world of the consider Africans entitled to the rights inevitably resulted, for "all prejudice eighteenth century. If religious liberty of Englishmen. the public good." meant obedience to God, "civil liberty" Nor was British liberty incompatible Communal authority was always rested on obedience to law. As far back with wide gradations in personal weaker in the more secular colonies as the ancient world, Aristotle had freedom at home— a hierarchical, to the south of the Puritan common­ cautioned men not to "think it slavery aristocratic society with a restricted wealth. Even in New England, to live according to the rule of the "political nation" (those entitled to willingness to accept community regi­ constitution." The law was liberty's vote and hold office). The common mentation in the name of liberty soon "salvation," not its adversary. Liberty, law's protections applied to everyone, waned. By the 1750s, the idea of New wrote John Locke, meant not leaving but property qualifications and other England's special place in God's plan every person free to do as he desired, restrictions limited the eighteenth- for humanity had been subsumed in but "having a standing rule to live by, century electorate to less than 5 percent the more general celebration of the common to every one of that society, of the adult male population. (The entire Anglo-American Protestant and made by the legislative power." "right of magistracy," wrote Joseph world as a bulwark against tyranny As Locke's formulation suggests, lib­ Priestley in his Essay on the First Prin­ and popery. Yet the Christian under­ erty in its civil form depended on obe­ ciples of Government (1768), was not standing of liberty as spiritual salvation dience to the law, so long as statutes essential to British freedom. Men "may survived to the Revolution and, were promulgated by elected repre­ enjoy civil liberty, but not political lib­ indeed, our own time. The religious sentatives and did not operate in an erty.") Nor did British law view labor­ revivals of the late colonial era, known arbitrary manner. Here lay the essence ers as wholly free. Vagrancy statutes to historians as the Great Awakening, of the idea of British liberty, a central punished those without visible means reinforced this understanding of free­ element of social and political thought of support, "master and servant" laws dom. On the eve of independence, on both sides of the Atlantic. Until ministers like Jonathan Boucher were the 1770s, most colonists believed insisting that "true liberty" meant "a themselves part of the freest political (RIGHT) LIBERTY, IN THE FORM OF THE liberty to do every thing that is right, system mankind had ever known. GODDESS OF YOUTH. PAINTED and being restrained from doing any By the eighteenth century, the AND ENGRAVED BY EDWARD thing that is wrong," not "a right to "invented tradition" of the freeborn SAVAGE (1761-1817), JUNE 11, 1796. do every thing that we please." Englishman had become a central fea­

16 MARCH/APRIL 1998 required strict obedience of employ­ ees, and breaches of labor contracts carried criminal penalties. The very navy whose domination of the high seas secured the nation's freedom from foreign domination was manned by sailors seized by press gangs from the streets of London and Liverpool. In this sense, British freedom was the lineal descendant of an understanding of liberty derived from the Middle Ages, when "liberties" meant formal privileges such as self-government or exemption from taxation granted to particular groups by contract, charter, or royal decree. Only those who enjoyed the "freedom of the city," for example, could engage in certain economic activities. Whatever its limitations and exclu­ sions, it would be impossible, as one scholar writes, "to overemphasize the degree to which eighteenth-century Englishmen reveled in their worldwide reputation for freedom," an observation as applicable to the American colonies as the mother country. One could, if one desired, subdivide British liberty into its component parts, as many writers of the era were prone to do. Political liberty meant the right to par­ ticipate in public affairs; civil liberty, protection of one's person and property against encroachment by government; personal liberty, freedom of conscience and movement; religious liberty, the right of Protestants to worship as they chose. But the whole exceeded the sum of these parts. British liberty was simul­ taneously a collection of specific rights, a national characteristic, and a state of mind. So ubiquitous and protean was the concept that what would later seem inconsistent elements managed happily to coexist. British freedom, for example, incor­ porated contradictory attitudes about political power. Power and liberty were widely believed to be natural antago­ nists, and in their balanced constitution and the principle that no man, even the king, is above the law, Britons claimed to have devised the best means of preventing political absolutism. These ideas pervaded not just the political sector but far more broadly in British society. Laborers, sailors, and artisans spoke the language of common law rights and British freedom as insistently as pamphleteers and Parliamentarians. By the eighteenth century, the category of "free person" had become not simply a legal status, as in medieval times, but a powerful element of popular ideology. — Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

HUMANITIES 17 On both sides of the Atlantic, liberty sions and desires to the public good. Certainly, in the colonial era, emerged as "the battle cry of the rebel­ "Only a virtuous people are capable "liberty" stood as a meeting point lious." Frequent crowd actions protest­ of freedom," wrote Benjamin Franklin. between liberal and republican under­ ing infringements on traditional If republican liberty was a civic and standings of government and society. rights gave concrete expression to the social quality, the freedom celebrated Moreover, whether liberal, republican, definition of liberty as resistance to by eighteenth-century liberalism was or some combination of the two, most tyranny. "We are Free-men— British essentially individual and private. eighteenth-century commentators subjects—Not Born Slaves," was a According to John Locke, the founding assumed that only certain kinds of rallying cry of the Regulators, who father of modern liberalism, govern­ persons were fully capable of enjoying protested the underrepresentation ment is established to offer security to the benefits and exercising the rights of western settlements in the South the "life, liberties, and estates" that are of freedom. On both sides of the Carolina legislature during the 1760s. the natural rights of all mankind, and Atlantic, it was an axiom of political This tension between freedom as the essentially should be limited to this thought that dependents lacked a power to participate in public affairs task. For Locke and his eighteenth- will of their own and thus were inca­ and freedom as a collection of individ­ century disciples, liberty meant not pable of participating in public affairs. ual rights requiring protection against civic involvement but personal auton­ Liberty, wrote the influential political governmental interference helps omy—"not to be subject to the incon­ theorist Richard Price, rested on define the difference between two stant, uncertain, unknown Arbitrary "one general idea... the idea of political languages that flourished Will of another Man." Protecting free­ self-direction or self-government." in the Anglo-American world. One, dom required shielding a realm of Those who did not control their own termed by scholars republicanism private life and personal concerns— lives ought not to have a voice in (although few in eighteenth-century including family relations, religious governing the state. Political freedom England used the word, which con­ preferences, and economic activity— required economic independence. jured up memories of the time when from interference by the state. Property, therefore, was "interwo­ King Charles I went to the gallows), Critics condemned it as an excuse ven" with eighteenth-century under­ celebrated active participation in pub­ for selfishness and lack of civic­ standings of freedom, as New York lic life as the essence of liberty. Tracing mindedness. "The freedom... that publisher John Peter Zenger put it in its lineage back to Renaissance Florence I love," declared Edmund Burke, "is 1735. The independence entailed by and beyond that to the ancient world, not solitary, unconnected, individual, property was an indispensable basis republicanism held that as a social selfish Liberty. As if every Man was of liberty. Samuel Johnson's dictionary being, man reached his highest fulfill­ to regulate the whole of his conduct defined "independence" as "freedom," ment in setting aside self-interest to and Thomas Jefferson insisted that by his own will. The Liberty I mean is pursue the common good. Republican dependence "begets subservience and social liberty." Yet it is easy to under­ freedom could be expansive and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, stand liberalism's appeal in the hierar­ and prepares fit tools for the designs of chical Atlantic world of the eighteenth ambition." Hence the ubiquity of prop­ century. It called into question all the erty qualifications for voting in Britain legal privileges and governmental and the colonies. The "true reason" for arrangements that impeded individual “t h e FREEDOM ... THAT I LOVE,” such requirements, William Blackstone advancement, from the economic pre­ explained in his Commentaries on the DECLARED EDMUND BURKE, rogatives of chartered corporations to Laws of England, was that men with­ legalized religious intolerance. “iS NOT SOLITARY, UNCONNECTED, out property would inevitably fall Eventually, liberalism and republi­ "under the immediate domination INDIVIDUAL, SELFISH LIBERTY. canism would come to be seen as of others." Not only personal depen­ alternative and contradictory under­ dence, as in the case of a domestic AS IF EVERY MAN WAS TO REGULATE standings of freedom. In the eighteenth servant, but working for wages was century, however, these languages THE WHOLE OF HIS CONDUCT BY widely viewed as disreputable. Many overlapped and often reinforced one years would pass before the idea HIS OWN WILL. THE LIBERTY I MEAN another. Many leaders of the Revolu­ gained acceptance that wage labor tion seem to the modern eye simulta­ was compatible with genuine freedom. IS SOCIAL LIBERTY.” neously republican (in their concern Those who drew up plans to colonize for the public good and citizens' British North America expected to obligations to the polity) and liberal reproduce the hierarchical social (in their preoccupation with individ­ structure of the mother country. But democratic, as when it spoke of the ual rights). Both political ideologies from the earliest days of settlement, common rights of the entire commu­ could inspire a commitment to consti­ migrants from Europe saw in the New nity. It also had an exclusive, tutional government, freedom of World the promise of liberation from class-based dimension, in its assump­ speech and religion, and restraints on the economic inequalities and wide­ tion that only property-owning arbitrary power. Both emphasized the spread economic dependence of the citizens possessed the quality known security of property as a foundation Old. John Smith had barely landed at as "virtue"— understood in the of freedom. The pervasive influence Jamestown in 1607 when he observed eighteenth century not simply as a of Protestant morality, moreover, that in America, "every man may be personal, moral quality but as a will­ tempered what later would come be master and owner of his owne labour ingness to subordinate private pas­ seen as liberalism's amoralism. Continued on page 49

18 MARCH/APRIL 1998 — Photo by Richard M. Feldman © 1998 biases of one's own time, own of one's biases histo­ that naively believe as far asI know, whom, perch, free from the preju­ the from free perch, from past the contemplate attainperfect rians can of actually face, none history— of theorists not historians, rians —working histo­ contemporary that the in problems central the of one with concerned am I theories. postmodern of the as fiction or any topicsas history ionable fash­ such with history, nor S HISTORIAN A none of whom deny that deny of whom none personality; place, and and dices,assumptions, cosmic some immaculate can ahistorian dream that of whom none objectivity; of history practice everyday of philosophy called the might be that anything IMPERFECTIONS I with concerned am not anything abstract, with anything RM T TNGS G ITIN R W E TH FROM EXCERPTS past, free of myths, wish- of myths, free past, the of istic understanding actually happened what all of yet whom knowledge; anless mobilized until by meaning­ and factsare inert they achieve will they never that knowing manship, crafts­ their try to improve they essentially a craft,and art,an is sometimes ence, sci­ a history,never that know socialsanity.They partisan and fulfillments, of a real­ significant degree, some in establishment, the that and others, than of depictions accurate more to be shown can be some views enquiries those to responses the among that enquiries,to useful subjected be can past the reality of the that assume past is interpretative the of all phrase, knowledge delusions, isessential for Ross's Dorothy that, in hence and mind, enquiring instruction, to see schools see to instruction, of formal institutions of role the in variations great see to is prepared to would be ideal the ing to that seek, but they what generations; when one one when generations; transmits itself the across culture a which by process entire asthe but pedagogy ROLE THE 1995.University, Trobe La Victoria, 1).Australia: number Lecture, Bailyn Bernard CONTEXT IN HISTORY fulfill. to equipped are they which mission forfeit the of approximations crude to can they limitations what in inescapable the fact in that like perfection, anything cation not only asformal only not cation EDUCATION OF Studies (North American of realiz­ despair for want do will confine their work their work do will confine I when one thinks of edu­ of thinks one when apparent t becomes

HUMANITIES HUMANITIES 19 and universities fade into relative insignificance next to other social agencies; when one sees education in its elaborate, intricate involvements with the rest of society, and notes its shifting functions, mean­ ings, and purposes. And it becomes evident also only when one assumes that the past was not incidentally but essentially different THE NATURE were not as yet clearly from the present; when OF DEFIANCE depicted; but faith ran one seeks as the points of ow else could it end? high that a better world greatest relevance those HWhat reasonable than any that had ever critical passages of history social and political order been known could be where elements of our could conceivably be built built where authority was familiar present, still part and maintained where distrusted and held in con­ of an unfamiliar past, begin authority was questioned stant scrutiny; where the to disentangle themselves, before it was obeyed, status of men flowed from begin to emerge amid where social differences their achievements and confusion and uncertainty. were considered to be from their personal quali­ For these soft, ambiguous incidental rather than ties, not from distinctions moments where the words essential to community ascribed to them at birth; we use and the institutions order, and where super­ and where the use of we know are notably pre­ iority, suspect in principle, power over the lives of sent but are still enmeshed was not allowed to concen­ men was jealously guarded in older meanings and trate in the hands of a few and severely restricted. It different purposes — but was scattered broadly was only where there was these are the moments through the populace? this defiance, this refusal to of true origination. They No one could clearly say. truckle, this distrust of all reveal in purest form But some, caught up in authority, political or social, essential features which a vision of the future in that institutions would subsequent events compli­ which the peculiarities of express human aspirations, cate and modify but never American life became the not crush them. completely transform. marks of a chosen people, THE IDEOLOGICAL ORIGINS OF found in the defiance of EDUCATION IN THE FORMING THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. traditional order the firmest OF AMERICAN SOCIETY. ©1967, 1972 by the Presidents ©1960 by the University of of all grounds for their and Fellows of Harvard College. North Carolina Press. Reprinted hope for a freer life. The Reprinted by permission of by permission of W. W. Norton. details of this new world Harvard University Press.

20 MARCH/APRIL 1998 a band of followers at understanding in quiet Conestoga; and founded murmurs of assent, he the Ephrata cloister, reversed his chaotic argu­ whose monks and nuns ment to demonstrate he ruled despotically, the incomprehensibility neurotically, and cruelly. of God's truth. And he God-possessed, immersed imposed on his half­ in the writings of the mys­ starved followers— clothed tics, entranced by the secret in rough, Capuchin-like rites of the Rosicrucians, habits designed to hide he was a cyclone of energy, all signs of human shape— and he pursued his dream a rule of such severe self­ of a pure religion, unim­ mortification that some

THE ORDEAL and transforming cause, peded by state, society, went mad, while the OF HUTC HIN SO N he had never understood or church. He was bizarre elite enacted the secret the motivations of the mis­ n 1760, as these changes but unconfined, and the rites of the Rosicrucians, erable, the visionary, and Ibegan, Thomas Hutchin­ fame of his strange sect of to which neophytes the committed, and he was son was at the height of his emaciated celibates spread sought admission by bodily unprepared to grapple with powers. Forty-nine years throughout the English ordeals that lasted forty the politics they shaped. of age, an experienced, as well as the German days and forty nights. Yet successful, and influential THE ORDEAL OF THOMAS population of Pennsylvania ... and y et... the art of public figure who prided HUTCHINSON. ©1974 by and ultimately throughout book illumination was rein­ Bernard Bailyn. Reprinted the Rhineland and in vented in Beissel's Ephrata, himself on his ability to by permission of Harvard France, through Voltaire, and from some spark of withstand the savagery University Press. as well. Beissel preached hidden genius the Vorsteher of politics, he was moving with his eyes shut tight, himself devised a form of toward the fulfillment of A PASSAGE passionately, ungrammati­ polyphonic choral music, his career at the center of TO EPHRATA cally, in incoherent torrents. complete with his own colonial affairs, where it Jo h a n n Conrad Beissel, If by chance his bowed system of notation, which, was expected that his abili­ an ignorant, mystical, congregation indicated when sung falsetto by his ties would once more gain tormented baker's boy him success. And so they from the German Palati­ would have, if times had nate, after flirting with not changed— if politics several of the radical sects had not entered a new that struggled for existence phase. Never having felt in the spiritually burnt-over deep personal discontent— districts of the Rhineland, never having passionately had joined the exodus to aspired— never having Pennsylvania; concocted, longed for some ideal and in a hermit's cabin near total betterment— never Germantown, his own having found in some brand of Sabbatarian utopian vision a compelling Dunkerism; gathered

HUMANITIES 21 followers straining to reach overboard and was imme­ discontinued." Further­ lives of others, he emerged ever higher, more "divine" diately drowned." For more, when it was all over, a distinctive new man, a notes, created an unearthly Dunbar there could Dunbar was distressed to borderland gentleman, effect that enthralled every­ be only one interpretation learn that it was impossible a man of property in a one who ever heard it— of this desperate act— to enforce the colony's raw, half-savage world. and which caught the not that the slave was law providing that when VOYAGERS TO THE WEST. Negroes were executed by imagination, two centuries reacting to the hopeless­ © 1986 by Bernard Bailyn. a proper court their owners later, of another German ness of the situation (four Reprinted by permission of were entitled to compensa­ immigrant in America, of the other suspects were Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. tion for their loss at the Thomas Mann, who, hanged within twenty- public's expense.... brooding on art and the four hours) but that he was JEFFERSON'S Dunbar, the young eru­ PRAGMATISM German soul, immortalized demonstrating "evidence dite, the Scottish scientist Beissel in Doctor Faustus. of his guilt." For, Dunbar earing concentrations and man of letters, was reasoned, the slave must of power, and arbitrary THE PEOPLING OF BRITISH F no sadist. His plantation NORTH AMERICA. ©1986 by have been so "stung with power of any kind— regime was, by the stan­ Bernard Bailyn. Reprinted by per­ the heinousness of his guilt, convinced that America's dards of the time, mild; he mission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. ashamed perhaps to look experimental achievements clothed and fed his slaves a master in the face against in freedom were beset by decently, and frequently THE DEATH whom he could urge no forces that would destroy OF A SLAVE relented in his more severe plea to palliate his intended them— but endowed, punishments. But four hen something strange diabolical plan," that his himself, with an instinct thousand miles from the for power and with T happened. Dunbar's only recourse had been sources of culture, alone exceptional political and accused slave, sitting in suicide. The whole business on the far periphery of administrative skills, and the bottom of the boat was disappointing and British civilization where blessed with many years "with his arms pinioned," disagreeable, it "occasioned physical survival was of active life in politics — managed, when the boat such fatigues both of a daily struggle, where was in the middle of the body and mind, that ruthless exploitation was Jefferson, more than any river, "to throw himself stave making hath been a way of life, and where of the Revolution's original disorder, violence, and leaders, explored the human degradation were ambiguities of freedom. commonplace, he had If the principles that had triumphed by successful emerged in the great strug­ adaptation. Endlessly gle with Britain before 1776 enterprising and resource­ had not been so clear, so ful, his finer sensibilities luminous and compelling, dulled by the abrasions in his mind; or if he had of frontier life, and feeling remained on the sidelines, within himself a sense of commenting like a Greek authority and autonomy chorus on the great events he had not known before, of the day, the world would a force that flowed from his have been simpler for him, absolute control over the the ambiguities less painful,

22 MARCH/APRIL 1998 and his reputation less other regions of the earth, the establishment of suffi­ complicated. As it was, he "the sacred fire of freedom cient national power to remained throughout his and self-government," sustain a stable and effec­ long career the clear voice and to liberate the human tive society, they sought of America's revolutionary mind from every form to preserve the maximum ideology, its purest con­ of tyranny. range of personal rights science, its most brilliant consistent with it. In this "JEFFERSON AND THE AMBIGUI­ expositor, its true poet, fundamental concern for TIES OF FREEDOM." Proceedings while struggling to deal the balance of power and of the American Philosophical with the intractable mass Society 137, no. 4 (1993). liberty— which had been of the developing nation's the central theme of Amer­ everyday problems. In this THE ENDURING ica's earlier struggle with double role— ideologist QUESTION OF POWER Britain— the Federalist and practical politician, writers, conservators of or all its distance from theorist and pragmatist— radical political principles, Fus in time and culture, he sought to realize the are our contemporaries. for all the changes that Revolution's glittering Their constitutional idiom have overtaken the world promise, and as he did so is ours; their political prob­ since 1788, the Federalist he learned the inner com­ lems at the deepest level papers remain relevant, plexities of these ideals as are ours; and we share and acutely relevant, well as their strengths. He their cautious optimism because they address never ceased to fear that that personal freedom and masterfully our permanent the great experiment might national power can be concerns with political fail, that the United States compatible. But maintain­ power— under our might be torn apart by its ing that balance is still Constitution and in internal divisions or over­ a struggle, at times a bitter general. The Federalist whelmed by the pressures struggle, and so we con­ writers knew that a struc­ of the outside world and, tinue to look back to ture of power must exist like so many other nations, what these extraordinarily in the end forfeit its free­ in any stable, civilized thoughtful men wrote dom for a specious security. society, but they knew so hurriedly under such But he did not despair. too that power uncon­ intense pressure two He hoped, with increasing trolled will certainly be hundred years ago. The confidence, that the com­ abused. They had vividly Federalist papers—not mon sense of the people in mind the principles of a theoretical treatise on and their innate idealism political freedom that had political philosophy but would overcome the been formulated in the a practical commentary obstacles and somehow decade of pounding ideo­ on the uses and misuses resolve the ambiguities, logical debate before 1776 of power— still speak and that America would and then discussed again to us directly. □ fulfill its destiny—which in the writing of the state THE FEDERALIST PAPERS. was, he believed, to pre­ constitutions in the years Washington, D.C.: Library serve, and to extend to that followed. Defending of Congress, 1997. Dissident in Indonesia:

VISITING PAK PRAM

: ". . . denied writing

materials, Pramoedya orally

composed

THIS EARTH OF MANKIND/

the first installment BY DAVID PAUL RAGAN

of his BURU QUARTET.

F O R FOURTEEN YEARS, I wanted to talk to him; to do so, He committed the stories to L a w from 1965 to 1979, Pramoedya it was clear I would have to travel Anata Toer was imprisoned without to Jakarta. trial by the Indonesian government, I had spent the summer months to his memory enduring the brutal conditions of a of 1995 as a Fulbright Lecturer in remote island penitentiary. There, Padang, West Sumatra. A teacher- denied writing materials, Pramoedya scholar fellowship from the National and told them to orally composed This Earth of Mankind, Endowment for the Humanities the first installment of his Burn Quartet. had enabled me to extend my stay He committed the stories to to his to begin research on Joseph Conrad his fellow prisoners . .." memory and told them to his fellow and post-colonialism, exploring how prisoners, who retold them from writers in developing societies have barracks to barracks. It was the saga reacted to the literary heritage of Euro­ of a young Javanese hero named pean domination. Pak Pram was one Minke, who fought against the Dutch of the figures I had chosen to study. colonial oppressors. Conrad had set many of his finest The Quartet is complete now, novels in the archipelago now consti­ with the appearance of Child of tuting Indonesia, Almayer's Folly, Lord All Nations, Footsteps, and House Jim, Victory, and The Rescue among of Glass. Translated into English them. Contrasts with Conrad's works by Australian Max Lane, the books are immediately noticeable when achieve a sweep of history and ideas. reading Pak Pram's This Earth of In the epic story of Minke, he is Mankind: narration from the Javanese educated by the Dutch but comes rather than European point of view, to realize that he must confront the intimate acquaintance with the culture injustice and prejudice of the colonial and psychology of the Asian charac­ system. As a journalist, he is intent ters, a more discriminating and critical upon awakening his countrymen to indictment of European influence. its evils. The books also tell a personal Yet tantalizing connections appear story of love and loss, of jealousy and as well: female characters who incar­ misunderstanding, and ultimately, nate the sensual pleasures of life in of persecution and destruction. languid tropical climates, Dutch expa­ The Quartet has been translated triates seduced by those pleasures into twenty languages and has who eventually degenerate into brought international recognition defeated relics, plots which turn on to Pramoedya, known throughout the fates of mixed-race daughters of Indonesia as Pak Pram. There is the two. Finally, both novelists focus even recurring talk of a Nobel Prize on the same historical period (though in Literature. Yet Pak Pram's novels Pak Pram brings his characters into are banned in his own country, and the twentieth century in their strug­ he himself remains under city arrest gles for independence against the in Jakarta. Dutch) and reveal the essential denial

HUMANITIES 25 of human dignity which colonial prepare to surrender any manuscripts regimes in these island cultures or books. Fortunately, I had already required. I was eager to find out if gent Pak Pram a list of questions and these connections were accidental, resolved not to take notes during "The 'obligation to be a function of historical realities, or the interview itself, relying on recon­ reflections of Conrad's influence structing his responses with Nelly's upon Pak Pram's writing. help after the session. We had diffi­ human': this is the theme Nelly Polhaupessy of the American culty locating his residence in the Indonesian Exchange Foundation, maze of one-way streets. But Pak which administers Fulbright grants, Pram is very well known. When Pak Pram asserted is at the agreed to contact the novelist and we got close and asked directions request an interview. of a group of small children, they Heated debates over Pak Pram all turned and solemnly pointed in core of all his books and of had dominated Indonesian headlines unison, as if rehearsed, to a spacious throughout the summer: the Philip­ white house behind a privacy wall. pine Magsaysay Foundation presented Cloth sacking had been woven into his life. His attitudes him its 1995 award for literature, the wrought-iron security gate to journalism, and communication cut off the view from the street. arts. This prestigious honor brought Pak Pram admitted us personally. toward the subjects he has protests from several Indonesian He appeared remarkably vigorous intellectuals who accused Pak Pram and youthful for a man of seventy of having promoted book burnings who had endured torture and years written about and the tri­ and bans of his political enemies of imprisonment. He was thin, tall during the 1960s, while President and athletic, his eyes restless in his Sukarno was in power. Pak Pram leonine head. He ushered us into als he has endured congre­ had been involved in an organization his living room and introduced two of leftist writers and artists called young guests, associates of his pub­ Lekra, which had close links to the lisher. According to Javanese custom, gate around this notion." Indonesian Communist Party, though he ordered drinks and urged us to he has denied having been a party smoke, as he himself did continuously member. He had, however, engaged throughout our conversation. in polemics against literary colleagues, Pak Pram projects himself differently some of them recipients of the same for different interviewers, to some award. Writer Mochtar Lubis returned voicing anger at his treatment by the his medal to the Magsaysay Founda­ Indonesian government, to others tion in protest. offering an expansive and forgiving Despite the attacks, Pak Pram optimism. He has complained of refused to apologize for his involve­ writer's block for the past ten years, ment with Lekra. As his supporters but then told a New York Times pointed out, he had suffered greatly for his opinions, imprisoned first by the Dutch in the 1940s, then briefly by the Sukarno regime in the early 1960s, David Paul Ragan and finally by the Suharto government on Buru Island, where for years he during his visit with had been denied not only writing Pak Pram at the novelist's implements but even reading material except for certain Islamic texts. home in Jakarta. I carefully indicated that my interest was in his work, not his political activities, and was delighted when he accepted the request for an inter­ view. Nelly Polhaupessy would serve as translator, since Pramoedya did not feel comfortable in English and my Indonesian would be quickly exhausted. The Magsaysay award had drawn official attention to Pak Pram, and his house was under con­ stant surveillance. A consular official at the U.S. Embassy warned me not to take papers or packages when I visited, that if questioned to say I was merely paying a social visit, and to correspondent that he is writing. When he apologized for any offense He no doubt is acutely attuned to his criticisms of America during the the audiences who might encounter Cold War may have caused me, I his opinions. In the Indonesian press informed him that an agency of the a few months earlier he had sounded American government was funding affronted, unrepentant, even occa­ my research into his work. He howled sionally disdainful of his critics. With with delight and slapped me warmly international visitors, he had more on the shoulder, appreciating what often assumed the role of the distin­ he clearly took to be a delicious irony. guished and impartial man of letters, I expressed respect for his writing, confident of the authority his artistic congratulations on his award, and vision and accomplishment have hope that his reputation would con­ conferred upon him. With me, he tinue to grow as he deserved. For once was casual and friendly, modest, he responded in English with a quiet, a bit reserved, often humorous. modest smile: "Thank you very much." And often astonishing. Anxious to Throughout our visit Pramoedya explore his acquaintance with Joseph had been warm and open, the pres­ Conrad, I posed the question immedi­ sures of his work and his political ately. Pak Pram recalled having read jeopardy seemingly distant from his a Conrad novel as a youth in central Pak Pram. thoughts. When we departed, he Java fifty years ago. He hesitated a accompanied Nelly and me to the moment, searching for the title, but gate, offering directions on how to only for a moment. It had been find a taxi. When Pak Pram appeared Almayer's Folly, and he proceeded the children fell silent and I recalled to outline the narrative, which has War and of western commercialism that he is a watched prisoner— several affinities with This Earth of as most directly responsible for his an outsider in his own country. Mankind. He disclaimed much direct personal tribulations. He asserted, Indonesia's ban on Pak Pram's influence from Conrad, though, citing though, that "suffering is the same" books has been in effect since 1981. the more prominent roles played in regardless of its causes. When he Possession of them constitutes a crime his development by Steinbeck, Gorky, was arrested in the mid-1960s, rioters punishable by fines and imprison­ and Zola. These writers had taught looted his house and burned all his ment. The censors claim that the Buru him to erase the distinction between books and research notes. He joked Quartet contains Marxist-Leninist art and social realities. Mostly, he that the birth of his son had precipi­ ideas so artfully concealed in Minke's praised the influence of the Dutch tated the crisis and added that the story that the reader may be unaware writer Multatuli (1820-1887), who had infant's diapers were among the arti­ of how he is being swayed. A more first exposed colonial domination in cles confiscated. The irreplaceable rational explanation is that in Minke's Java. For one hundred years, the loss was the fifteen unpublished man­ resistance to the repression of Dutch Javanese had suffered, Pak Pram uscripts destroyed, yet remarkably he colonialism, today's Indonesian may explained, but they had not realized expressed no bitterness or regret. His recognize a modem analogy—the the extent of their suffering until voice became fierce only when he struggle to think independently, to Multatuli had made them aware. detailed the conditions which give grow spiritually as well as economi­ The "obligation to be human": this rise to his countrymen's contemporary cally, and to alert the larger world is the theme Pak Pram asserted is at plight: the evils of what he called the to heroic individual resistance. □ the core of all his books and of his life. New Order—pollution, environmental His attitudes toward the subjects he destruction, poverty. Neo-colonialism, has written about and the trials he the domination of international mar­ David Paul Ragan is chair of the English has endured congregate around this kets, oppresses people as forcefully department at Hammond School in notion. He prided himself on being as the earlier brand: greed leads to Columbia, South Carolina. He was a part of the revolution which created exploitation. For these influences Pak 1995-96 NEH Teacher-Scholar rccipicnt. Indonesia but bemoaned that he Pram blamed his own generation of had lost so many productive years revolutionaries, who accomplished of independence to persecution and the expulsion of the Dutch and then imprisonment. Though his novels "became senile." primarily attack the exploitation of Only briefly did Pak Pram touch European colonialism, in conversation on the controversy concerning the he indicted the excesses of the Cold Magsaysay award. Regarding his critics, he joked "maling teriak maling," the thief screams thief. He expressed no resentment toward them, only a slight condescension. He remained expansive and sensitive to his guests, encouraging Nelly and me to drink and to smoke. I finally accepted one of his clove cigarettes, and he smiled.

HUMANITIES 27

There is a Vietnamese legend that in times still-unrepaired bridge that the soldiers there of distress the nation will be blessed with would hope for a daylight B-52 raid on the bridge. the arrival of a child poet. During the This would mean that the soldiers would have to years of the American war, in what Ameri­ be sheltered in Khoa's village, and this would allow cans then called North Viet Nam, there was such a them to ask the child poet to recite some of his young poet. His name was Tran Dang Khoa. verses for them. Or perhaps it might be more accu­ Born in 1958, he grew up in a village fifty miles rate to say recite his verses "over" them, for my host south of Hanoi in the rice-growing Red River delta. implied that for the soldiers to hear Khoa say his Near the village was Phu Luong Bridge, one of the poems was very much like having him bless them main routes for soldiers heading south into combat. as they went off to fight. This poetry was simple, The bridge was bombed regularly, and whenever the clear, exceptionally musical, and very unwarlike. bridge was down, there would be dented barges to Its primary intent seemed to be to celebrate and ferry troops and supplies across the river at night. savor the enduring delights of agricultural life. Khoa escorted me through the Hai Hung province In "The Alabaster Stork" the stork's appearance on my first visit to Viet Nam in 1994. With him was announces the return of the rains in early spring, a fellow writer who told me as we looked at the and the resumption of rice-planting.

HUMANITIES 29 30 30

— Courtesy Fred M archant MARCH/APRIL 1998 MARCH/APRIL rdMrhn ihTa agKo nHni Mrh 1997. March Hanoi, in Khoa Dang Tran with Marchant Fred when rain blackens the sky the rain blackens when sky the blackens rain when sky the rain blackens When potato plants send up send plants potato Rice in the paddy ripples paddy the in Rice The toads and frogs and toads The opens tree palm the when rain blackens again blackens rain when again blackens rain When away fish flicker and when rain blackens again blackens rain when (Translated by Nguyen Ba Chung and Fred Fred Marchant) and Chung Ba by Nguyen (Translated I see a stork white as alabaster as stork awhite see I take wing and usher in the rain... the in usher and take wing the stork shivering in the cold... the in shivering stork the branches the in sees one no But I see that stork white as alabaster as white stork that see I take wing to proclaim the rain again. rain the proclaim to take wing in the west, west, the in east, the in in the south, the north, the south, the in like a broad flag, a like broad their dark green leaves, green dark their its fronds to catch the drops. the catch to itsfronds sing all day and all night, and allday sing dancing to that tune. that to dancing the sky in the south, the north, the south, the sky in the west, the sky in the the sky in the east, the sky in the bridge I could see the dikes we tried to bomb. The strategic The to bomb. tried dikes we the see could I bridge of the silvery bombers flying overhead. It proclaims that life that It proclaims overhead. flying silvery bombers the of antithesis broad-winged isstork the The present. palpably within them. Beyond were some recently plowed fields. plowed recently some were Beyond them. within storks white and trees, of stands dikes were the Trimming supply. food the disrupt and ricefields the flood to was idea war. by halted not are that laws unvarying certain to according it proceeds that and on, willgo earth the on retreat of the great fifteenth-century poet Nguyen Trai, who Trai,who Nguyen poet fifteenth-century great the of retreat as ponds. lotus used being were they and still bomb-craters, they had that me to out pointed Khoa He was tacitly claiming his poetic lineage, and teaching us teaching and lineage, poetic his claiming tacitly was He sights. provincial the than more us showing was he think I hermitage, mountain Trai's Nguyen Collinsto Martha cen­ authority colonial Chinese the against struggle Nam's Viet in militaryleader and strategist master a been had be themselves accomplished literary accomplished themselves Reading, be writing, people. culturalan act defiance against of Chinese imperialism,been remember at least would poems, publishing or writing with do to nothing had adultswho ordinary and heart, by poems of score a know might schoolchild Any people. Vietnamese the to important inherently always been had poetry how poet American the and me brought Khoa When ago.turies Aside from his prison diary collection of poems, Ho was in was Ho poems, of diary collection his prison Asidefrom a in poetry societya spent week realizedthat I where just had south. As the in Isaidwritersother and good-bye I toKhoa I was leaving to go to only occurredto Hue me when which towaysa forge firstnational identity.my During in week of the one for centuries had been recitation,performance and far threat­ seemed more had century eighteenth the in which poem for Tet, the lunar New Year. In 1948 he wrote: 1948he In Year. New lunar the Tet, for poem Chi Minh. as Ho known commonly more AiQuoc, Nguyen and poets were considered national treasures. national considered were and poets matter distressed Hanoi Ibeing someunnamed remember by for anticolonialof at leadersnot allthe struggle uncommon to As Trai, that of the French. it Nguyen than with wasening anticolonial script struggle.had of Roman language the The them. recite could and a few no one who trusts it will way.or who losehis her one no human isHo order reflectsbeyond saying,an revolution, Their moon. the cyclesof the to according tides,or planting the with or turning is river Ho course, the like following militarya operation.Joining than likenature force of a more than greater something on depends upon embarked have a composing of 1969, in death his 1947 to from habit, the Traiwas Nguyen by provided model the on directly desires or weaknesses, aspirationsor fears.It and isa ordesiresdestiny, weaknesses, is cause Their tactical equipment. and strategic planning Even though the war is unmentioned in the poem, it it is poem, the in is unmentioned war the though Even To the left and right of me as I looked at the bombed-out bombed-out at the as Ilooked me of right and left the To In the distance was a cluster of small mountains, one the one small mountains, of cluster a was distance the In Literacy had been an essential virtue of the centuries' long an essential centuries'virtue of the Literacy been had In the twentieth century, certainly the poet who drew who poet the certainly century, twentieth the In The poem tells us that the enterprise Ho and his comrades and Ho enterprise the tellsthat us poem The full moon. the of boat the on come compass, sellthe Yes, fires. slow burning by strategy talk of We year. the of first fullmoon the comes Now F Rivers rise in mists to join spring skies.spring to mists join riseRivers in (Translated by Kevin Bowen) Kevin by (Translated l l u M n o o

n i J y r a u n a Much of the North Vietnamese poetry of the war years and transform the would have to be classified as inspirational verse. But as terms of struggle is with Khoa's and Ho's poems, such a classification would pivotal to both poem miss the surprising suppleness and subtlety of the work. and culture." Probably the most renowned poems of the war years is Undergraduates in a "Drivers of Lorries Without Windows," by Pham Tien course on the history Duat. Born in 1942, Duat was a literature student at the and literature of the war University of Hanoi when he entered the army. His I co-teach with historian military occupational specialty was poetry. His job was to Ken Greenberg have travel up and down the Ho Chi Minh Trail and recite his consistently responded poems and organize poetry readings for the troops in deeply to Da's poem. transit. "Drivers" strives to capture the feel of life during So, too, with thirty-five the bombing. Duat tells us how his truck has no windows, secondary school no roof, no lights. The night air covers his face with dew, teachers in a 1996 rain, dust. The vehicle is falling apart, Duat says, but as NEH summer seminar long as "there's a heart inside, it's enough." At one point Vo Que with Maxine Hong Kingston in I co-taught with the poet Hue, March 1997. Duat says, "when we pass friends along the trail/we shake Kevin Bowen, and histo­ hands through broken windscreens." At another point, rians David Hunt and Marilyn Young. I am not sure why when the soldiers see how the dust has powdered their this poem should appeal so much to American readers. Lam hair and faces white, they "burst out laughing at one Thi My Da today lives and writes in Hue, and each time I another." Uplifting as they are intended to be, these have told her how much her poem resonates with American images also convey a youthful sense of pleasure in the readers she is genuinely surprised and genuinely intrigued. adventure. If not exactly on a lark, the misery of all this Perhaps it is the quiet tone, the way in which she gently nonetheless makes the poet feel like singing. transforms agony into meaning. There is also no blame in The high spirits of youth, however, do in reality only go My Da's poem, and as a result perhaps we feel freer to partic­ so far. On this trail and elsewhere there is death to meet ipate in the elegy's feelings. My Da also spent ten years of and loss to endure. In "A Piece of Sky Without Bombs" Lam her life on the trail, and this poem seems to be an effort at Thi My Da writes about life and death on the Ho Chi Minh making sure those years didn't deaden the heart. Trail. It is an elegy for a fellow female soldier who was One of the most common themes in Vietnamese poetry blown apart by a bomb. from the war years is the guarding against such hardening of feeling. Of course the war poetry is meant to be inspirational Your friends said that you, a roadbuilder, and morale-lifting, and there isn't much in the way of criti­ had such love for our country, you rushed cism of North Vietnamese government policies. But there is down the trail that night, waving your torch another and perhaps deeper critical function at work in this to save the convoy, calling the bombs down on yourself. poetry. Its purpose is to argue and work against psychic numbing. One can see this function in some poems written We passed by the spot where you died, shortly after the war. Vo Que's "Where the River Flowed," tried to picture the young girl you once had been. written in 1983, concerns a visit by the poet to his native city, We pitched stones up on the barren grave, Quang Tri City, the capital of what had been the northern­ adding our love to a rising pile of stone. most province of South Viet Nam. I gaze into the center of the crater where you died and saw the sky in the pool I returned to the old city, of rain water. Our country is so kind: to where the silver flood waters once overflowed water from the sky washes the pain away. to memories of an afternoon far past, to our native town, yours and mine. Now you rest deep in the ground, quiet as the sky that rests in the crater. That beautiful day still alive in my mind: At night your soul pours down, you and your white hat, the afternoon light in the bright as the stars. small street, your purple dress, your long hair fluttering in the wind, I wonder, could it be your soft skin and the church bells sounding a thousand times. changed into columns of white clouds? Could it be that when we passed that day, Old city destroyed in the war. it was not the sun but your heart breaking through? I ache for your every small street, ache as if my blood ran through those flamboyant flowers, This jungle trail now bears your name; part of me falling away with each lost petal. the skies reach down to your death and touch it; and we, who never saw your face, But in my dreams the city was untouched, each wear a trace of you, bright on our cheek. the streets were alive, rippling like waves. Your smile was a rose just blossoming; (Translated by Ngo Vinh Hai and Kevin Bowen) your eyes burned like stars through my heart. In an essay titled "Some Other Poets of the War" (1994), How I miss those flowing waters, Kevin Bowen remarks that what is central to this poem is a past that can never return, the enduring connection between land and people. "The your look in the weak winter light, belief in the power of the land," writes Bowen, "to sustain the long reeds leaning on the far side of the river.

HUMANITIES 31 How memory and longing fill my heart; of rancor may reflect the intuitive certainty that for all those how the old city fills my mind; involved in a civil war, the enemy of the past would someday how my love for you has remained with the years, have to return and try to live again as brother or sister. and my hair grown grey like the tall reed flowers. Nguyen Ba Chung has written a superb essay on the his­ tory of Vietnamese poetry, an essay to which I am greatly (Translated by Ngo Vinh Hai and Kevin Bowen) indebted. In "Imagining the Nation," Chung writes that in a war for independence which lasted more than a hundred An elegy for the destroyed city, the poem is also an elegy years, "millions of Vietnamese were perished or were dis­ for a lost youth and a lost love as well. The emotional calcu­ placed." He goes on to note that the land "is covered with lus of the poem measures the costs of the war, not only in unclaimed bones and unmarked graves." Quite literally the material, but in terms of feeling. The most remarkable land has been nourished by the dead. This overwhelming image here is that "ache" in the third stanza. It is a pain fact infuses the minds of the poets. From Tran Dang Khoa which feels some connection to every small street, to every through Ho Chi Minh, from Pham Tien Duat to Lam Thi petal falling. It is as if the lifeblood of the tree and the My Da, each of them are what we in this country would call lifeblood of the city and the lifeblood of the poet are for "poets of place." That is to say, the war poetry of Viet Nam that moment bound in one larger, palpable sense of loss. is a poetry of the river and field, the forest and moon, the Quang Tri City was as much a casualty of the Communists' mountain and the plain, the agonized surface of the earth victory as it was a victim of the southern regimes and the and, in Nguyen Duy's words from his poem "Red Earth, American presence. Vo Que himself, when he was a student Blue Water," the honey within. It is rarely crude wartime in Hue, had been active against the war and was involved propaganda, although I am sure such poems may exist. with the National Liberation Front in Quang Tri province. But at its heights, this war poetry bears witness to and fore­ He was arrested and imprisoned in the infamous Tiger grounds love, endurance, sorrow, and ultimately the desire Cages near Saigon, where he was tortured. He wrote poems for peace. If in a literal sense the sweetness of blue water on scraps of paper and had them smuggled out inside of old must come from springs underneath the war-torn earth, toothpaste tubes, after which they would be clandestinely it also must come from deep within the war-torn self. published and circulated among the guerrillas. Now, having won the civil war, Vo Que looks at the city and assesses the cost. There is great sorrow and great loss. But there is also a Fred Marchant is professor of English and director of the creative tacit sense of life, of heart, and of a capacity to feel the loss. writing program at Suffolk University in Boston. He is the author The memory of the streets alive and the roses blossoming is of TIPPING POINT, winner of the 1993 Washington Prize in Poetry. just as real as the ache. An affiliate of the Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social There is even a small, quiet note of reconciliation in this Consequences at the University of Massachusetts-Boston, poem. The poet takes a non-partisan stance, and like Lam Thi Marchant served in the Marine Corps from 1968 to 1970, when My Da does not dispense blame, rancor, or rage. It is worth he was one of the first Marine officers to be discharged honorably recalling—as the poem at least in its title does—Ho Chi as a conscientious objector. NEH funded a 1995 institute for high Minh's 1948 Tet poem. This is where the river has flowed, school teachers at the Joiner Center on teaching the Viet Nam War and this is perhaps what had to be. I also suspect the absence through literature, film, and history. □

the State publishing house. Quang Thieu's The River The poems cited Only in recent years, through co­ here all come from the side Carry River Water, translation projects spon­ that won Viet Nam's defining translated with the author civil war. I wonder what sored by the Joiner Center, by Martha Collins. This More Poetry has this situation started to spring, the University of poems from the South might lie in neglected books and change. In 1994, University Massachusetts Press will from Viet Nam notes awaiting translation. of Massachusetts Press publish Mountain River, In the nearly twenty years brought out Poems from an anthology of Vietnamese since the end of the war, Captured Documents, trans­ poetry written since the most comprehensive lated by Nguyen Thank and 1945. With this anthology, collection of war poetry Bruce Weigl. In 1996 the American readers will have in English translation was same press brought out an a chance to measure for Vietnamese Literature, a anthology of writings by vet­ themselves the startling volume edited by Nguyen erans of both sides, Writing importance of poetry during Khac Vien and Huu Ngoc Between the Lines, and last the last tumultuous fifty years and published in Hanoi by year brought out Nguyen in Vietnamese history. □ A ROUNDUP OF ACTIVITIES OF ARIZONA The first Arizona Book STATE HUMANITIES COUNCILS Festival will be held April 4 at Margaret T. Hance Deck Park in Phoenix. Authors, AROUND THE COUNTRY DURING chautauqua performers, book dealers, and vendors MARCH AND APRIL will participate in this

daylong event. Speakers -Arizona Humanities Council include NEH Chairman

William R. Ferris, who will JUDY TEMPLE PORTRAYS deliver the Lorraine W. Frank Lecture that evening. During WRITER MARY AUSTIN Compiled by Amy Lifson the week, more book-related AT THE FIRST ARIZONA events will be held throughout the state, including programs BOOK FESTIVAL. at the Grand Canyon, Lake Havasu City, Tucson, and Yuma.

CALIFORNIA Chautauqua performances of notable Californians are part of the California Council's sesquicentennial com m emoration of the Gold Rush. Two women of that era, Mary Ellen Pleasant and Juana Briones, will be portrayed in a performance March 25 at the Oakland Museum of California in conjunction with the exhibition "Gold Fever!" at the museum. At San Diego State University, the "Border Voices Poetry and Humanities Fair" April 3 and 4 will include lectures and readings by U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky and novelist Victor Martinez.

COLORADO In conjunction with the exhibition "Brave Little Girls" at the Denver Public Library, several family programs will be held through March 31, including an appearance March 8 by illustrator and Caldecott winner Janet Stevens, followed by a workshop on illustration for

CLOSE-UP OF h an d s children and their parents. Musician and educator Lauren Pelon will demonstrate of ethnomusicologist more than twenty-five ancient and modern instruments in presentations about world culture, March 14 in LAURENPELONPLAYING Trinidad, March 17 in Stratton, and March 29 in Sterling.

THE LUTE.

HUMANITIES 33 An oral history project in newspapers throughout University, the state's century Commerce" will about the San Luis Valley the state. senior military college, be discussed March 26, and will result in a half-hour In March and April, which is celebrating its "The Rise of King Sugar" radio program April 29 at twelve libraries in Delaware 125th anniversary. The on April 23. The series con­ 8:30 a.m. on KRZA-FM, will host a discussion series, keynote speaker is author tinues through December 3. Alamosa and Taos. The "Choices for the Twenty- Bette Bao Lord. A panel valley is the most extensive first Century: Defining Our discussion will feature the LOUISIANA wetland area in Colorado Role in a Changing World," first dean of women from The 1998 Tennessee because of a relatively which addresses public the Citadel, and students Williams/New Orleans untapped ground water policy issues. and alumni from other Literary Festival takes aquifer. Friends of the military academies. place March 12-15 with Saguache County Public An old church gets a FLORIDA theatrical productions, Library and the Nature new life as a monument Polk County, citrus capital master classes, a book Conservancy will conduct to the Civil Rights Move­ of Florida, is the site for fair, and walking tours interviews with second- ment. See page 39. this year's Florida Gather­ in New Orleans. and third-generation set­ ing, March 27-29. The Ogden Museum of tlers to help tell the history weekend event is an HAWAI’I Southern Art in New of the area. A public dis­ opportunity for Floridians How does the history of Orleans hosts a three-day cussion follows on May 13 commerce in Hawaii affect to explore the archaeology, symposium March 19-21 on at the Saguache Com­ family life, ethnic identity, history, and culture of this the meaning of regionalism munity Building. cultural heritage, and com­ in Southern art in "Bound­ part of their state. Activities munity? The Hawaii Com­ aries, Barriers, and Bridges: include an architectural mittee for the Humanities Creating Inclusive Audi­ DELAWARE tour of buildings in Lake­ Four Delaware citizens— is supporting a series of ences for Southern Art." land designed by Frank two Union soldiers, a lectures and public discus­ Continuing through Lloyd Wright; an explo­ Confederate, and a Cop­ sions in Hilo at Lymon May 31 at the Louisiana ration of fossils in the local perhead—are recreated by House Memorial Museum Arts and Science Center phosphate mines guided by performers for a one-hour on "Commerce in Hawaii: in Baton Rouge are sixty a paleontologist; and envi­ "talk show" about the Civil From 'Ohana to Corpora­ works of art created under ronmental tours of the Lake War. The characters in "A tion and Union." Topics the Works Project Admin­ Wales Ridge ecosystem. House Divided," presented range from the economy istration in the exhibition by the Civil War Round before European contact to "New Deal Art in Table of Wilmington, will GEORGIA the impact of sandalwood Louisiana, 1933-1943." share their experiences "Women, Military, and trade, whaling, ranching, McNeese State Univer­ with audiences at Ingleside War" is the topic of a con­ sugar plantations, and sity in Lake Charles will Retirement Center and ference March 4-5 at North tourism. "Missionary offer five lectures and two Padua Academy, April 1 Georgia College and State Influence in Nineteenth- exhibitions as part of their and April 30, in Wilmington. What do Absalom Jones, the first black ordained THIS YEAR'S FLORIDA GATHERING TAKES PLACE IN POLK COUNTY, minister of the Protestant CITRUS CAPITAL OF THE STATE. Episcopal Church in Amer­ ica, Wallace Carothers, one of the people who helped develop nylon, and Mary Ann Shadd, the first black woman in America to pub­ lish her own newspaper, have in common? They are all Delawareans who will be featured in a monthly newspaper series about the state's distinguished citi­ zens. The series, sponsored by the Delaware Humani­ ties Forum, runs through December and will appear

34 MARCH/APRIL 1998 -Louisiana Arts & Science C en ter

THE CHECKER GAME BY WILLIAM PERKINS IS PART OF A NEW DEAL ART EXHIBITION IN LOUISIANA.

Banners Arts and Human­ continues with talks on the Forest Park Branch movements of this century ities Series. Pulitzer Prize- March 6 and 24 and of the Enoch Pratt Free and their roots in early winning authors Robert April 2 at Hood College Library in Baltimore, America; March 29 at Belair Olen Butler and Oscar in Frederick. Priscilla Ramsey discusses Mansion in Bowie, Peter Hijuelos will be featured The Maryland Speakers the themes and techniques Bardaglio discusses the in the series, which runs Bureau presents several of the Harlem Renaissance experience of children and through April 2. new topics this spring. writers; March 27 at West­ adolescents, white and March 11 in Annapolis, minster High School and black, during the Civil War; MARYLAND Judith Smith talks about March 28 at St. Matthew's April 2 at Johns Hopkins The lecture and film series the life and work of land­ Church in Baltimore, Hospital, John Charles "African Women: Between scape designer Frederick Marsha Darling presents an Camp talks about the Tradition and Modernity" Law Olmsted; March 28 at overview of social justice Continued on page 38

HUMANITIES 35 n recent years an unlikely population has been rediscovered— Soviet women Icombat veterans. Great losses of Soviet men during World W ar II made women in the military essential. Their numbers reached nearly one million, in which a few were directly involved in combat. Most of these women volunteered— they loved their Women motherland and would fight to save her. The amazing stories of twenty-seven of them will be told in an upcoming exhibition in Ohio. Combat in H ow the exhibition of Soviet combat vet­ erans came to Ohio is intriguing. In 1990, Noel Julnes-Dahner, an ordained Episco­ palian priest, went to Kharkiv, Ukraine, under the Cincinnati-Kharkiv sister city project. She was graciously received by the Ukrainians, who made an event of her arrival. A lavish reception was held in the veterans hall where the veterans donned their medals, and spoke of their times with the By Erin Erickson Americans during World W ar II. Curiously,

— Photo reproduction by Andrei Plotnikov many of the veterans were women. Had these women been in combat? Could there be an untold story behind these faces? Unfortunately, Noel Julnes-Dehner's stay in the Ukraine would not provide the time to explore the histories of these veterans. Soviet pilot Eugenia Ustimchouk,

She returned to the U.S. with no answers, left, with two of her comrades but armed with a new pursuit— she would in arms. one day go back to the Ukraine and uncover the stories of these women, so their lives [Opposite] Unknown Soviet women — Courtesy o f Eugenia Ustimchouk, reproduction by Andrei Plotnikov could be shared with the people of Ohio. soldiers in World War II. In October of 1996, Julnes-Dehner and knows about my military experience and a colleague, Joanne Lindy, departed for they are proud of me. I brought up my Kharkiv. Ten days with twenty-seven children on the examples of heroism of our women combat veterans produced narra­ soldiers at the front. . . W e love our mother­ tives, photos, newspaper articles and a new land, our beautiful and blooming Ukraine!” perspective on World W ar II. “Their cripples, holding my fellow soldiers as they says Natalia Zakruzhetskaya. poignant stories of the war brought about died in my arms.” Today the women are unable to come to great emotion,” says Lindy. The emotional toll on these women was agreement on the role of women in the mili­ Take the story of Lydia Vasilievna Sitalskaya, great. Lydia Sokolova-Korchmar, a sniper tary. Many feel they had no choice— -they a corporal during the war: “Kharkiv was during the war, describes one experience. had to fight for their motherland. “About taken by the Germans in October, 1941. “The Germans were so close. . . I started going to war," says Zakruzhetskaya, “I would I was there. W e saw everything. There was shooting. They were so close that I thought tell my daughters, ‘Defend our motherland no water on our street. Children went to get if I would aim higher, I might miss. So I aimed and be as brave, honest and courageous as some water and the Germans shot them.” at their legs. That was the thing that saved my generation, as your parents.’” Lydia joined the army in 1943 after Kharkiv me. They were falling down on me, .. . N ot all women combat veterans agree. was liberated. She was a good soldier and The Germans thought I was dead.” “If there were a war now," Lydia Vasilievna after the war received the Order of Glory, Eugenia Ustimchouk was one of the rare Sitalskaya says, “I wouldn't go. . . Let the men the highest medal, for her actions in Mol­ women pilots. She was admitted in January of go, It is not for women. . . W om en exist to davia. It was there, on the border, that she 1942 in the same unit as her husband. Each create, not to destroy.” took five prisoners-of-war, “W e went into flew in their own plane. “W e had a These Soviet women combat veterans the village to find them. Another communi­ wom en’s bomber pilot regiment who flew shared a courage and spirit that even age has cations officer and I had radios and so when heavy planes called P-2.1 remember one, not marred, At the closing reception held in the shooting started, our soldiers came to Liuba Gubena, who studied with me and their honor, they sang old war songs and help us. Then I was left alone and flew that plane. German planes were pursu­ danced throughout the night. □ I had to lead the five German prisoners. ing her and her plane caught on fire. She gave “Under Fire: Soviet Women Combat W hen they realized I was the only one her crew the command to bail out, but her Veterans" is a travelling documentary there, a woman, they started running navigator's parachute got caught on the exhibition of the wartime experiences of through the field. I took a gun and killed plane's tail. Liuba started to do all kinds of twenty-seven Red Army women veterans. three of them. I could do nothing else.” maneuvers to throw off the navigator, to save The exhibition will travel to five sites in Natalia Zakruzhetskaya was seventeen her. Liuba Gubena, in trying to save her Cincinnati and Lorain, Ohio. when her father was killed at Stalingrad. navigator, perished herself." The retreating Germans then burned their Watching so many die made life after the house. She could no longer watch the w ar difficult, but these women retained a atrocities— she had to fight. Natalia spent passion for life and learning. “After the nearly tw o years on the battlefield. O nly a victory, my fiance and I got married in teenager, she was exposed to things that Czechoslovakia. . . I got my education most adults will never see, “Our comman­ degree. . . and worked as a nursery school der, the tankman, and I w ere under a tank. teacher for twenty-one years. My dream A bomb exploded nearby. All of a sudden, came true. Later I got a degree from the I saw the head of our commander, in a uni­ teachers' college. . . and became principal form cap, rolling by." And that was not the at a nursery school. I brought up a lot of worst. “My worst experience? Everything students to be patriotic, kind, honest, was hard. The worst experience was respectful of older people. I raised three burying my friends, our tankmen, seeing good children of my ow n. . . My family Eugenia Ustimchouk today.

HUMANITIES 37 Continued from page 35 importance of domestic MINNESOTA Pierre Arizzoli-Clementel, N E W YORK Four teacher institutes will customs passed on among director general of the "Books in the Morning" be held this spring at the generations of the Amish Museum Chateau of concludes its 1997-1998 Humanities Education season with three meetings community near Redhouse. Versailles and Claire Center in St. Paul: "Into in Bethlehem, New York. Lectures, panels, and a Constans, chief curator the Woods: Folk and Fairy This is the third year of a symposium at the Univer­ of paintings. Tales in Multicultural reading program geared sity of Maryland Baltimore America"—March 1-6; to retired persons and County will explore the "The Information Age: MISSOURI parents of young children. idea of the creative act in How small museums Hype and Hope"—March Meeting at the Bethlehem should display and literature, science, and the 15-20; "Go Tell It on the Town Hall on March 13, arts. The all-day sympo­ Mountain: Spirituals, interpret their "legacy" April 3, and April 24, par­ sium, titled "The Creative Blues, and Gospel"— collections is the topic ticipants will discuss Act: Diverse Perspectives." March 29-April 3; and for a conference held at Henry James's The Ambas­ takes place April 10. "The Jewel in the Crown: the Andrew County sadors, Virginia Woolf's Goucher College, Tow- The Art and Architecture Museum in Savannah, Mrs. Dalloway, and James son University, and the of India"—April 26-May 1. Missouri, on April 24. Joyce's Portrait of the Artist Baltimore Public Library A reception for Nancye Andrew County's own as a Young Man. have teamed up to cele­ Gaj, founder of the collection of nineteenth- brate National Library Motheread program, will century dolls will be used OHIO Week and National Poetry take place on April 17. as an example for designers, The former Soviet Union Month in April by featur­ Motheread/Fatheread architects, and curators to was the first country to ing Maryland poets in a training continues in experiment with. mobilize women in armed series of public programs. March and April. combat as a matter of pol­ icy. "Under Fire: Soviet Activities include a poetry NEW JERSEY Women Combat Veterans" writing contest, readings MISSISSIPPI Author and ABC news cor­ is a traveling photography by established poets and Mount Bayou was estab­ respondent Lynn Sherr exhibition, which docu­ contest winners, interac­ will speak on March 14 at lished in 1887 by former ments the wartime experi­ tive remote learning Trenton's Old Barracks slave Isaiah Montgomery ences and personal classes about poetry, and Museum about the role of as a city where blacks narratives of twenty-seven poetry exhibitions. The could be safe from racial women in the field of Red Army women veter­ interactive program, "Poets hostilities. A public archae­ historic preservation. The ans who served as nurses, and Protegees," takes place ological dig at the site of one-day conference will pilots, and snipers during April 23. A public poetry look at the contributions of the Bank of Mount Bayou World War II. See page 36. program and reception women to historic preser­ will be held March 9-13. Visitors to the Pump will be held April 26 at the vation and changes in the House Art Gallery in Chill- Information discovered by Baltimore County Public field brought about by the icothe can trace routes the dig will be presented at Library in Towson. growth of women's studies. used by fugitive slaves on future public forums. A post-performance An international confer­ the Underground Railroad Two hundred years ago, discussion of the Olney ence on Portuguese litera­ and explore re-created Theater production of the Spanish left the ture runs April 3 and 4 safehouses in a new exhibi­ Amadeus, the story of Natchez Territory, but at Rutgers University tion. Programs related to the Mozart told through rival their contribution to the in Newark. exhibition include history composer Salieri, will take area's culture will be high­ The works of jazz artists performances, seminars, gui­ place April 22 at the lighted in programs Jelly Roll Morton and ded tours, and children's theater center. March 27 and 28 in the James P. Johnson will be workshops focusing on the abolition movement and the Fourth and fifth graders city of Natchez. Lectures, among those featured participants of the Under­ at Carver Elementary parades, and a re-creation at the Rutgers/New ground Railroad. School continue studying of the 1798 encampment Brunswick Jazz Celebra­ colonial Maryland with the on the Rosalie grands are tion on April 17 at New help of living-history inter­ featured activities. Brunswick's Crossroads PENNSYLVANIA preters from St. Mary's An international sym­ Theater. The Rutgers Berks Community Televi­ sion will air six ninety- City, one of the state's early posium about the history Institute for Jazz Studies, minute live television settlements. After the of the Chateau of Ver­ a cosponsor of the event, programs on Seeing Our­ research ends in April, the sailles will take place in houses the world's largest selves: Berks County Media students intend to publish a Jackson on April 3 and 4. collection of jazz-related book on what they studied. Participants include materials. Continued on page 40

38 MARCH/APRIL 1998 he windows of the Old Mount Zion Church have been boarded up for more than twenty years. The T congregation has moved, and the church has stood as an empty memorial to the Civil Rights Movement that had its early beginnings in Albany, Georgia. Within the walls of the church are nearly a century of memo­ ries. At one time the voices of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the freedom singers rang through the stained glass windows. Now, after months of renovation, the church will reopen as The Mount Zion Albany Civil Rights Movement Museum. Photographer Danny Lyon has donated thirty pictures he took of the Civil Rights Movement in Albany. The exhibition will con­ tain artifacts from those days, including the signs designating seg­ regated drinking fountains “colored’’ and “white” and letters written from jail. These relics portray the struggles of those “who were willing to go against the standard of the day, who stepped forward and Georgia took a public stand,’’ says Lee Formwalt, interim dean of the graduate school at Albany State University, an historically black university. The museum will be under the auspices of Formwalt Church and other community members and form er civil Becomes Museum

rights activists. Formwalt participated last year in an NEH- funded seminar at Harvard on “Teaching the History of the Southern Civil Rights Movement, 1865-1965." The movement in Albany had its beginnings in early 196 1, when the Students Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) arrived there to begin a voting rights drive. Local groups joined in; they staged protests that ended with many in jail. Lyon’s photos depict the crowded cells where they spent time. Martin Luther King, Jr. was called to Albany in December of 1961. “Before victory is won," he told the crowd, “some must face physical death to free their children from a life of psycho­ logical handicaps. But we shall overcome.” Although King’s message was one of nonviolent resistance, the protest in Albany got hotter and by July had escalated into open battle between enraged civil rights activists and the authorities. The struggle would go on for years. On March I I , Albany State University will hold a symposium and hear veterans of the Albany civil rights struggle describe those days. A reception will follow in The Mount Zion Civil Rights Museum. The symposium is part of a series sponsored in part by the Georgia Humanities Council. □ — Erin Erickson

HUMANITIES 39 — Photograph © D ann y Lyon Yesterday, Today, and festival and antiquarian continues programs in festival, and Danish film Tomorrow on March 19 and book fair runs April 18 and March and April in scholar and director 26 and April 2 , 9, 16, and 19 at the Carolina Coli­ Roosevelt, Park City, and Esben Hrilund-Carlsen 23. Scholars will interact seum in Columbia. Huntsville. will deliver a talk March 14 with media professionals at the Broadway Perfor­ and the public about how SOUTH DAKOTA VIRGINIA mance Hall in Seattle. the development of news­ The role of Elaine Goodale A fund-raiser for the The Seattle programs run papers, radio, television, Eastman in the history of Virginia Festival of the from March 12 through 15, and the Internet have Indians in the Dakota terri­ Book features a Gershwin and Spokane's from March changed and are changing tory will be discussed concert at the University 28 through 29. Berks County. March 5 at Mount Marty of Virginia on March 6. "Produce for Victory: Michener's Art Museum's College in Yankton. Elaine The festival itself takes Posters on the American lecture series on the his­ was a white woman mar­ place March 18-22 in Home Front, 1941-1945" tory of art in Bucks County ried to Charles Eastman, a Charlottesville. Poet laure­ appears at Goldendale continues with "The New mixed-blood Indian gradu­ ates Rita Dove and Robert Community Library Hope School of American ate of Dartmouth with a Pinsky will appear at an through March 27 and Impressionism" at medical degree from evening poetry event. then travels to Dayton Warminster Township Boston University who Other activities include a Historical Depot, where it Free Library on March 14. served as a physician on panel discussion on African will be on exhibition from Following that will be the Pine Ridge reservation American women's humor, April 4 through May 29. "Twentieth-Century Art during the Wounded Knee a storytelling workshop, and the Development of massacre. Elaine helped the art of the thriller, and WISCONSIN the New Hope Mod­ her husband publish publishing seminars "Shouts from the Wall," ernists" at the Levittown eleven books including and displays. an exhibition of posters Regional Library on March Indian Boyhood (1902), and brought back by Ameri­ 16, and "From Hicks to The Soul of the Indian WASHINGTON cans who volunteered to Hammerstein: A Brief His­ (1911), which have been The Scandinavian Film fight against the fascist tory of the Arts in Bucks republished by the Univer­ Festival takes place in forces during the Spanish County" at Riegelsville sity of Nebraska Press. Seattle and Spokane this Civil War, appears from Public Library on March Arab dance, presented by March to introduce the April 4 through May 18 15, at Northampton Free Jordan choreographer recent works of Scandina­ at the Wisconsin Veter­ Library on April 1, and at Rania Kamhawi, will be vian cinema to the Pacific ans Museum in Madison. Southampton Free Library compared side by side with Northwest. Icelandic The exhibition is accom­ on April 21. Native American dance, director Hrafn Gunnlaugs- panied by four lectures As part of an African performed by Lakota hoop son (In the Shadow of the by visiting scholars American history initiative, dancer Kevin Locke, in the Raven) will attend the and veterans. □ two programs will be pre­ program "The Inter-Con- sented this spring. A lec­ nectedness of Indigenous ture and discussion on Cultures as Seen through "Railroading in Pennsylva­ Dance"—April 12 at the nia: African American University of South Dakota Perspectives" will be held in Vermillion. at the Railroad Museum of Faith Sullivan, author Pennsylvania in Strasburg of Cape Ann and The on March 4; a panel will Empress of One, discusses discuss "Pennsylvania's the impact of a literary Military Experience life on emotional and 1942-1945: African Ameri­ physical well-being, April can Perspectives" at the 21 at Augustana College Best Western in State in Sioux Falls. College on April 4. UTAH SOUTH The library series that CAROLINA explores current events

The South Carolina from a humanities per­ MOVIE STILL FROM IN THE SHADOW OF THE RAVEN Humanities Council's sec­ spective, "Choices for the ond annual statewide book Twenty-first Century," FOR WASHINGTON FILM FESTIVAL.

40 MARCH/APRIL 1998 BY MEREDITH HINDLEY

WASHINGTON BEFORE / 1 / 1 y movements to the chair of PRINCETON (after -A- F JL. Government," wrote George Charles Willson Peale). Washington to Henry Knox in April General Washington's 1789, "will be accompanied by feelings twin victories at Tren­ ton and Princeton in not unlike those of a culprit who is going 1776-77 are credited to the place of his execution." by some with saving the The very self-confidence that pro­ American Revolution. pelled Washington to a successful military and political career, temporarily languished as he prepared to become the first president. It was a stark con­ fession of uncertainty from a man who many believed was the only person capable of leading the American repub­ lic through its first tenuous years. Washington's journey from a loyal British subject to one of the leaders of the American Revolution is the subject of a new exhibition marking the two- Not the M an hundredth anniversary of his death. The Huntington Library, in collabora­ tion with the Pierpont Morgan in the Library, is mounting "The Great Experiment: George Washington and the American Republic." The exhibi­ Gilbert Portrait tion, which opens in October 1998, uses Washington's life as a lens through which to view the American A New Exhibition Revolution and the creation of the United States. The exhibition is on George Washington expressly designed to counteract the idea that the American Revolution was a conservative event and Washington, as the Revolution's leader, a conserva­ tive statesman. Drawing on the work of historian Gordon Wood, who also serves as a consultant, the exhibition

HUMANITIES 41 portrays the Revolution as an event says John Rhodehamel, the Hunting­ that fundamentally altered the politi­ ton curator overseeing the exhibition. cal and social fabric of America. By "Washington as his contemporaries using the class conflicts and peasant knew him was more vital." uprisings of the French and Russian From an early age, Washington revolutions as litmus tests, Wood experienced firsthand the inequities believes that historians have over­ of the British imperial system. Born looked the radical nature of what the into Virginia's gentry, he found his The 1754 revolutionaries were trying to accom­ situation drastically changed at age journal o f plish. As he sees it, in the eighteenth eleven when his father died. His Major George century, most people could not con­ father left him land, but none of the Washington. ceive of a society that was distinct economic resources necessary to from government. Therefore, chang­ maintain it. There wasn't even ing the system of government— enough money for Washington to throwing out the British and setting attend school in England, as had his up a republic—constituted a funda­ half-brothers. mentally radical act that changed the In order to establish himself as a political system and reordered society gentleman, Washington cultivated itself. The Revolution also institution­ relationships with influential Virginia alized basic ideas that continue to shape families. He hoped that social connec­ our society today: the commitment to tions would make up for his paltry freedom, equality, and the general economic resources. In 1749, with the well-being of ordinary citizens. influence of the powerful Fairfax fam­ While highlighting Washington's ily, Washington received a profitable role as a radical statesman, the exhibi­ commission to be the surveyor of tion also explores lesser-known Culpeper County. Working as sur­ aspects of his life and character. "Peo­ veyor exposed Washington to the ple commonly think of Washington colonial frontier, an experience that as the old man in the Gilbert portrait, fueled his interest in land speculation which was done at the end of his life," throughout his life.

REPRESENTATION DU FEU TERRIBLE A NOUVELLE YORCK... 19 SEPTEMBRE 1776. The colonists lost New York City when the British routed Wash­ ington's army at the battle o f Manhattan. A few days later, much o f the city was consumed by afire that colonial arsonists may have set. Painting by Francois X. Habermann, 1778.

-Huntington Library The French and Indian War, which that the Stamp Act opened convinced Britain of the need to the door to more burden­ tighten her military and financial some taxation measures. hold on the colonies, provided the Particularly troubling, how­ deeply ambitious Washington with ever, was the exclusion of an opportunity to make a name for the American people from himself. In 1753, as a twenty-year-old the decision-making process. major in the Virginia militia, Wash­ Britain's actions played into ington carried out a dangerous diplo­ Washington's own beliefs Letter o f surrender matic mission. Rushed into print, The that the British colonial sys from Charles, Journal of Major George Washington tem exploited American Earl Cornwallis to George Washington, documented his exploits and his per­ colonists. While the crises of October 17, 1781. sonal courage, earning him a reputa­ the 1760s helped foster the tion on both sides of the Atlantic. As discussion of republican preacher Samuel Davies noted in a ideas among the colonists, 1755 sermon: "I may point out to the few were willing to admit Public that heroic Youth Col. Wash­ that independence from Britain by Martha Washington describing the ington, who I cannot but hope Provi­ was an immediate goal. hardship conditions in the Continen­ dence has hitherto preserved in so Colonial sentiments grew more tal Army camp, and household items signal a Manner for some important radical in the early 1770s as Britain from Mount Vernon. Service to his Country." continued its attempts to pump Many of the artifacts come directly The Journal also revealed another facet more revenue from its American from the Huntington and Pierpont of Washington's character—his sheer, possessions. Washington attended Morgan's own collections. Of particu­ naked ambition. While ambition had the First Continental Congress in lar note is the inclusion of Charles helped him establish himself as a young 1774, as one of seven delegates Willson Peale's full-length portrait gentleman, it also proved to be limiting. from Virginia. At the congress, of "Washington Before Princeton" In a display of hubris, the newly pro­ the colonies proclaimed their (c. 1780). Private collectors and other moted colonel penned a fifty-page letter autonomous status within the institutions, such as the Mount to the Earl of Loudoun lobbying for a British Empire and launched an Vernon Ladies Association and the commission in the British Army, while economic war against the British. Smithsonian's National Museum of simultaneously complaining about the After fighting broke out between American History, have also loaned lack of respect given to militia officers. Massachusetts militia and the British items for the exhibition. Denied a commission, Washington army at Lexington, Washington was After its October 1998 opening, the regarded the slight as evidence of the unanimously elected "General" of exhibition runs for eight months at inequity of the British system. the Continental Army. No other the Huntington before moving to After the French and Indian War, a native-born American had as much the Pierpont Morgan Library for four disappointed Washington resigned his military experience. Rhodehamel months. Accompanying the exhibi­ military commission and returned notes that by the time Washington tion is a catalog, published by Yale home to Virginia. Settling into Mount assumed command of the Continen­ University Press, a CD-ROM, and a Vernon with his new bride, Martha tal Army, the ambition that had variety of educational and public Custis, he struggled to turn a profit driven him as a young man had outreach programs. Nearly 450 growing tobacco. He also pursued his been subsumed into working for teachers will attend seminars on interest in land speculation, acquiring the American cause. It wasn't that Washington and receive lesson plans tens of thousands of acres of frontier Washington had lost his ambition, for the 1998-99 school year. The lands specifically earmarked for veter­ but that he recognized the success teachers will also take 12,000 stu­ ans of the French and Indian war. of the Revolution would bring him dents to see "The Great Experiment." Washington again soon found him­ personal success. The Huntington plans to host a sym­ self thrust to the center of action as "The Great Experiment" uses arti­ posium and lecture series to discuss colonial America began protesting its facts and Washington's own words to current scholarship on Washington treatment by the British Parliament. illustrate his evolution from gentle­ and the early Republic. "The cause of Boston is the cause of man to military officer to well-known Washington observed to Catherine America," declared Washington after political figure. About 130 items will Macauley Graham in January 1790 hearing about Boston's rebellious be on display, including: handwritten that "the establishment of our new response to the 1765 Stamp Act. "It's letters by Washington, a family tree, Government seemed to be the last hard for us to imagine today," says a first printing of the Declaration of great experiment, for promoting Rhodehamel, "but the idea of taxation Independence, a 1787 edition of the human happiness, by reasonable com­ without representation was terrifying Constitution inscribed by Benjamin pact, in civil society." It may not have because it meant that the British Franklin, portraits used to create been the last experiment of its type, could do anything to the American Washington's likeness on the dollar but no other has endured for more colonists." Many colonists feared bill and twenty-five cent piece, letters than two hundred years. □

HUMANTTIES 43 .. .Franklin was remarkably bifocal. He loved England, although not its aristocracy. He had a limited circle of friends and acquaintances in and around London, and what he knew of them and of their England he liked. But he was devoted, too, to the American world, and knew better than anyone else of his time what its potential was, what its future could be.

Continued from page 7 Q: Was Franklin a born-again Tory? an excellent historian. But despite all that, he was the most accursed figure of the Anglo-American establishment. BAILYN: No, but Franklin was remarkably bifocal. He loved Many decent people never changed their belief that he was England, although not its aristocracy. He had a limited cir­ the villain behind all of the evils attributed to Britain. For all cle of friends and acquaintances in and around London, his talents and real devotion to America, he failed, as a and what he knew of them and of their England he liked. politician and as a thinker. His failure was his inability to But he was devoted, too, to the American world, and knew sense the motion of the time, people's feelings toward the better than anyone else of his time what its potential was, public issues of his age, and a new kind of political moral­ what its future could be. So he saw the conflict both ways. ity. He was deeply committed to things as they were, and Until about 1774, he was hoping for and trying to bring insensitive to the deepest moral issues of his time. He acted about a reconciliation. When that clearly failed, he landed on traditional, received assumptions about how politicians with both feet in the American camp. should behave and how public life is organized, when all those things were being undermined and were moving in Q: I want to play some theoreticals with you. What if Britain new directions. He could not respond to the issues that had won the war? There was an upper Canadian rebellion were moving to more sensitive and imaginative people. that preceded our own and had a quite different outcome. Consequently, being in power when the crisis exploded— a position he came to hate and tried to evade — he ended up, BAI LYN: I've written a bit about this. If there hadn't been in public opinion, as one of the great villains of his time. But a Revolution, America would still have modernized politi­ as I say, I found him a complex and interesting person, much cally and economically, in the same way that Canada and more tragic than villainous. Australia have done. These settler societies of the British world developed into modem, capitalist democracies, Q: Did Ben Franklin do him in? Was he the agent provoca­ and so would we have done without the Revolution. But teur in pushing us toward a permanent break with England? the fact that the Revolution happened, with the ideas, the BAILYN: That has to do with Franklin's publication — ideological commitments, and the institutions that came rather devious publication — in 1773 of letters out of the Revolutionary upheaval, has made an enormous Hutchinson had written in the late 1760s to an official in difference. We were formed by that experience as others England. Read in a certain way, they seemed to were not, and we emerged into the modern period with basic indicate that Hutchinson sym­ commitments — to constraints on the use pathized with, even encour­ “America in Distress,” an engraving of power and to the equality of access and aged, constraints on liberty in by Paul Revere, which was adapted opportunity — as others did not. America. In fact, that was a mis­ f rom a 1770 British cartoon. Thomas Q: So the Revolution, though not the interpretation. For Franklin, Hutchinson is at far left. who had once worked with upheaval that the French Revolution Hutchinson but who appar­ was, made a difference. ently believed it, it was a very useful thing to publicize. By BAILYN: Yes, the Revolution made a attributing the evils of British great difference. As I say, we would have policies to the recommenda­ become a modem liberal democratic cap­ tions of this American official italist nation in any case, but the speed of and other such people, it that development and its peculiar insti­ would take the blame off the tutional and ideological character were British crown and Parliament in large part the result of the Revolution. and create some cooling off of But the Revolution, though it was for­ the controversy. Franklin him­ mative in our life, did not do everything. self was very much involved Its social effect was initially circumscribed in backstairs negotiation in — it did nothing to improve the lot of the months before the final slaves or women, for example. It was break; he wanted room to focused on the single, basic question of maneuver, and was still hoping what a free political system should be. The for reconciliation. way that question was answered has per­

44 MARCH/APRIL 1998 Popular hatred o f Thomas Hutchinson is vividly depicted in

a cartoon in T h e M assachusetts

C a l e n d a r s 1774.

manently shaped our public life, and in the end has affected would itself limit the abuses of power, and they were well all the elements of our society that were once excluded. aware of what those abuses could be. The areas that seemed peripheral in the eighteenth One of the most interesting aspects of all this is that it century were gradually affected, as the effects of the Revo­ happened more than two hundred years ago, and in a very lution's radicalism radiated out. We are still, to this day, different world— preindustrial, preromantic. Despite that groping with the Revolution's implications. The greatest fact, so much of their thinking remains relevant to us. If you problems of our time, the most vital contemporary issues stop to think about it, it is astonishing that people should we struggle with, are implicit in the Revolution: the mean­ still read The Federalist as some kind of deep expression of ing of equality and the uses and misuses of power. what America is all about politically, some kind of pro­ foundly relevant commentary. That's extraordinary. The Q: Was the overriding notion the idea that power itself is reason for that, I think, is because in the end they were con­ inherently evil? cerned very much with what we're concerned about, namely, the uses and abuses of public power with respect BAILYN: The most fundamental issue that they had to to the rights of individuals. That's what it was all about. deal with was how to construct a state system that has And their comments on that remain not only relevant but the power that's necessary in a civilized society and that truly penetrating despite the fact that they lived in a very at the same time does not impair individual freedom— different world. in fact protects it. They recognized perfectly well the need for power. That's why we have the Constitution we Q: I remember as a newspaper editor going back to The have, which created a national power system. But they Federalist to try to understand English common law regard­ hoped that the system would work in such a way that it ing high crimes and misdemeanors.

HUMANITIES 45 BAI LYN: People do that all the time. There are very few together into some kind of coherent general picture of people concerned with French political life who draw their what our historical development has been? ideas from what went on in 1790. And in Britain, they don't Q: In refocusing history we inevitably raise issues such as celebrate Pitt or Burke in contemporary politics the way we poverty, social inequalities, racism. And in delving more do Jefferson or Washington. deeply, historians seem to be making moral judgments. We're thought of often as a "young" people who Is this valid for a historian to do? don't have much history and are not much involved with what history we do have. But in fact our references BAI LYN: Historians are people, and consequently they're in public life back to that historical period are continuous going to have their own views, moral and otherwise, on and significant— our eighteenth-century past is more these and other issues. But their obligation is to describe deeply relevant than equivalent periods are for any and to analyze properly, as far as they can, what happened. other nation I can think of, with the possible exception Their own views will emerge, and they will comment on of Ireland. such things. But it isn't a profession that's devoted to work­ Q: You mentioned earlier, in talking about your seminar on ing out moral codes for humanity. the Atlantic world, that new information is emerging on the Q: I want to quote Professor Bailyn back to Professor Bailyn. roles of people— slaves and women, for instance— who have not been featured in our history before. Is that chang­ BAILYN: What did I say? ing our understanding of the period? Q: In your book, On the Teaching and Writing of History, BAI LYN: I think we have a much richer history now you wrote, "Without presenting the past in the correct than we had when I started studying history. In the past context of its own time, and somehow disengaging it from twenty-five years, there's been an immense broadening of one's present— without grasping the past as the present it understanding of areas of history we hadn't probed before. once was— one can never understand what really hap­ All of that is deepening our understanding of how we got pened or how that distant present changed . . . eventually, to be the way we are. The difficulty is, as you expand these into the present we ourselves are experiencing." Isn't that subjects— and should do— how can you bring everything virtually impossible to achieve?

" There are very few people concerned with French political life who draw their ideas from what went on in 1790. And in Britain, they do not celebrate Pitt or Burke in contemporary politics the way we do Jefferson or Washington."

46 MARCH/APRIL 1998 I still have students reading Macaulay; otherwise, I don't think they'd ever look at it. His .are wonderfully crafted With Prince Charles at Harvard’s 350th anniversary pieces of literature, which is why they were so widely read in celebration in 1986. his own time. I don't think anybody reads Gibbon now in order to understand Byzantine history — there are modem books that are technically more up to date, more accurate, deeper — but one reads Gibbon for pleasure because of the art that's involved in it. Those are classic works. Some mod­ BAILYN: First of all, I approve of that saying (laughter). em historians have that literary capacity as well, and they are I'm glad to hear it. Sure, it's impossible, in any pure sense. read for that reason. There's no perfect recovery of a past situation. It's impossible Q: Arthur Schlesinger's Age of Jackson? to get wholly into other people's minds or to appreciate fully the conditions that shaped their experience and sensi­ BAILYN: That was a very popular book for the right reason. bilities. But to try— to approach that ideal as far as possible — is part of the obligation that historians have. Q: And Oscar Handlin's The Uprooted? It doesn't take a philosopher, an epistemologist, to note that it's impossible to recover fully a past situation if only BAI LYN: These are books that were, and I think still are, because we know what the outcome was while the people widely read because they're written so well and because at the time did not. That lack of knowledge of the outcome they reach into large problems and have something impor­ is the most profoundly shaping element in any past situa­ tant to say. But however history is written, it is essentially a tion, just as it is for us now. Nevertheless, it is still the oblig­ craft, which has established methods and controls, a disci­ ation of historians to get as close to that past reality—whose pline and a basic intellectual responsibility. future we know but they did not—as they can. That this can be done in any pure and perfect sense, as I say, is Q: But there are intellectual limits. You quoted the impossible. Nobody can do that, but you try to approach it, physicist Richard Feynman, "Creativity in science is simply to know what happened and why, to better under­ imagination in a straitjacket." And you added, "So, too, stand where we've come from and what our present world is creativity in history." is composed of. BAILYN: Exactly.

Q: You have talked about the teaching of history helping in Q: How did you come to be interested in history? the writing of it. In fact, one of your books carries a dedica­ tion to your graduate students. I'll quote you to you again: BAI LYN: My interest developed when I was in college, "When you say something aloud to another person or a doing mainly English literature and some philosophy and group of people, you can hear falsenesses that you other­ discovering more and more that the kind of literary studies wise aren't aware of." I thought that was a wonderful that interested me were really contextual, that is, what moment, and all too true. interested me most were the circumstances, the contexts, of literary works. And I was involved with a professor of phi­ BAILYN: I've often brought in some of my own research losophy at Williams College, where I was a student, who to my students. When you're alone working on material, was a Hegelian and very much an Emersonian aphorist. He your critical powers get was quite brilliant, but very difficult to absorbed in your own con­ pin down. Nothing he said was within centration, but when you any kind of critical control, and so while hear yourself saying it, you he was himself pretty rigorous, as far as can clearly hear things that I could tell, his students were not. They are simply repetitive or bor­ were given to saying anything that came ing or off the point. I found into their heads, with no kind of control, it very useful to be able to and the more impressive it sounded, the lecture on things that I was better they liked it. I reacted pretty writing about. severely against this, and it seemed to me that history was a way of studying Q: History, both written and many aspects of life that had some kind taught, you refer to as a craft. You say that, at its best, it of control and where one could be can be an art form. Setting proved right or wrong to some extent. It your own books aside for the seemed to me, as I went through those moment, what books do you At Villa Serbelloni in Bellagio, Italy, in 1983, two and a half years of college, inter­ think have achieved art? with Lotte Bailyn. She is T. Wilson Professor of rupted by the war, that it made more Management at Sloan School o f Management, sense for me to study history than either BAILYN: Well, there are Massachusetts Institute o f Technology. literature or philosophy. And during the classic books that survive as war years, I was even more convinced of literature — Macaulay's His­ that. By the time I was out of the army, it tory of England, for example. was clear that I would do history.

HUMANITIES 47 48 48

— Courtesy Bernard Bailyn MARCH/APRIL 1998 MARCH/APRIL intelligence? in in that for sometime,in that I but alsowas for German trainedin was calledon what trafficworked analysis, is the which Q: Your military biography is a little cryptic. Were you you Were cryptic.a is little military biography Your Q: links is really quite striking. I was surprised to notice this notice to surprised striking.I was quite links isreally briefly. Germany in up ended and occupation the forces,I tracking was and their movements. involvedenemy analysis scattered radio of among contactsintercepted in the academic world? academic the in forty-five years now. years forty-five trade. transatlantic of history study the to I began when commercial of transoceanic study historical the to analysis Q: fordisciplined clues things. So to were hunting you in the BAI Brook. This year he has spent most of his time in Russia. in time his of most spent has he year This Brook. Arethey sons. two have say.You to thing a lovely That's Q: for professor distinguished ato married been You've Q: BAI BAILYN: enclosed, tyrannical or negative utopian world, as Orwell as world, utopian ornegative tyrannical enclosed, a completely design who people that interesting It's had. we've experiences what from, come we've where and happened what's possible, that's asasfar realisticsense, a in establishes it that sense the in socialsanity to tributes us? of rest the to contribute torian his­ a does What historians? of role the see you do How Q: iscontinuing. family tradition The Q: at Stony Slavic languages and linguistics teaches other BAI BAILYN: BAI LYN: LYN: LYN: LYN: I theArmywas with Security I Agency, where Exactly. And the similarity trafficof military the Exactly.And She gets more distinguished by the year. the by distinguished more gets She Sanity. History, in some very basic way, con­ way, basic very some in History, Sanity. to be. seems It the at Yale, astronomy of isa professor One Yes. At Seoul National University, 1996. AtSeoulNational in Korea, being manipulated — falsified manipulated — being to support current policy,— be twisted and turned in whatever seem twistedtowould sup­ way in whatever and turned be falsify history. in did what our valuesexperienceswhat have and been. ain willthat way pened allowto realisticallypeople under­ wasstability a to threat the of soregime, tothe past the had could which legitimatebe groundsfordissent,happened, as a truth of had kind of control overThe what thepresent. that the past is past that the was unpredictable. knew They derfully saying intellectualsprofound among bitter and — port present policies. port present It seems that historians to me aredoing ing of life. of ing control their own lives.Historians aim toestablish course the exactly are opposite.the trying They to establish hap­ what and the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. Smithsonian Gallery, Portrait the National and Inc., Foundation, Memorial Thomas the Jefferson Monticello, courtesy Washington, left,George p.46, Books; Dover Franklin, appeared organization historical international an ago years all those changes, demographic slow like conditions, lying the is future, the in more much develop will but pening hap­ already is which Ithought, One, be. might lines new dominant the of some what or atleast be, might ways new those thought I what sketch to Itried ago years Some ways. all?us await explorations new What years? fifty next the in us taking of history profession the see you understand­ a broader sohave and would, otherwise they than of life ways and values other and situations other and people other about more know people that so ence, explains that are,of aredevelopment we and we what why stand theirworld, own to choices, informed so make and to Illustrations: P. 7, Thomas Paine, Dover Books; p. 44, Benjamin 44, p.Books; Dover Paine, Thomas 7,P. Illustrations: subjective of study isthe future the to in continue certainly allof sorts in broadening moment, at the road expansive do Where moment. afor future the to turn to going I'm Q: called the Forum on European Expansion and Global Inter­ Global and Expansion European on Forum the called Two isolation. in discussed were once that phenomena together bring studies which comparative and national trans­ are as example, isan history Atlantic on project own My developments. global even international, toward units, or national local from away study, they of what units the of enlargement the perspectives— historians' of range broadening the is lives. Another their conditioned and limited, shaped, basically that of but aware not were time the at people that movements shiftsand underlying deep, under­ events— latent called be might of what exploration Winterthur Museum; p. 46, right, Thomas Jefferson, courtesy Thomas Jefferson, right, 46, p. Museum; Winterthur fascinating. □ been has This much. very you thank Well, Q: past the sense, this In appear. willpast the about thinking of ways new approaches, new ideas, new what telling no There's knows? Who ones? only the be will these But history.of field whole the enrich and future the in strongly continue think, of thiswill,I experiences— will and developing is that line third a And world. the over all from members hundred two about has already it action; BAILYN: In theworst timesIn Soviet the in aregime there was won­ And beyond that, historians broaden ordinary experi­ ordinary broaden historians that, And beyond 1984, That's very hard to say. I think we're on an on we're say.Ithink to hard very That's always show the necessity in those worlds toworlds those in necessity the show always mentalite, peoples' deeper, interior Alllives. interior deeper, peoples' is unpredictable.

Continued from page 18 and land." During the whole of the colonial era, most free immigrants expected to achieve economic auton­ omy in America. The visions of liberty that emigrants brought to colonial America always included the promise of economic independence and the ability to pass a freehold on to one's children. Defining freedom in terms of eco­ nomic independence drew a sharp line between those classes capable of fully enjoying its benefits and those who were not. In the eighteenth cen­ tury, economic autonomy was far beyond the reach of most Britons. Even in colonial America, most of the population was not, by this standard, truly free. Lacking a hereditary aristoc­ racy like that of England, colonists prided themselves on having "no rank above that of freeman." But there were many ranks below. The half million slaves who labored in the mainland colonies on the eve of independence obviously stood outside the circle of free persons. For free women, whose identity was dependent upon that of their fathers or husbands, opportuni­ ties for economic autonomy barely existed. Women, moreover, were deemed by men deficient in rational­ ity, courage, and the broad capacity for self-determination— the qualities necessary in the public-spirited citizen. Whether in the economy or polity, autonomy was a masculine trait, dependence the normal lot of women. ENGRAVED ENGLISH TOBACCO LABEL, CIRCA 1700, DEPICTING SLAVES ON Even among the white male popula­ A VIRGINIA TOBACCO PLANTATION. tion, it is sometimes forgotten, many varieties of partial freedom coexisted in colonial America, including inden­ tured servants, apprentices, domestic Like slaves, servants could be bought the widespread reality of economic laborers, transported convicts, and and sold, were subject to corporal independence, and therefore freedom, sailors impressed into service in the punishment, and their obligation to for propertied male heads of house­ British navy. Freedom in colonial fulfill their duties was enforced by holds. This was most obvious in the America existed along a continuum the courts. "Many Negroes are better case of slaveholding planters, who from the slave, stripped of all rights, used," complained one female inden­ already equated freedom with master­ to the independent property owner, tured servant in 1756; she went on ship, but also true of the countless arti­ and during a lifetime an individual to describe being forced to work sans in Northern cities who owned a might well occupy more than one "day and night... then tied up and slave or two and employed indentured place on this spectrum. Indentured whipped." But, of course, unlike servants and apprentices. (In New York servants, who voluntarily surrendered slaves, servants could look forward to City and Philadelphia, artisans and their freedom for a specified time, freedom from their servitude. Assum­ tradesmen, who prided themselves on comprised a major part of the ing they survived their period of labor their own independence, dominated non-slave labor force throughout the (and many in the early years did not), the ranks of slaveholders.) And the colonial era. As late as the early 1770s, servants would be released from vaunted independence of the yeoman nearly half the immigrants who dependency and receive "freedom farmer depended in considerable mea­ arrived in America from England and dues." Servants, a Pennsylvania judge sure on the labor of women. The cook­ Scotland had entered into contracts for remarked in 1793, occupied "a middle ing, cleaning, sewing, and assistance in a fixed period of labor in exchange for rank between slaves and freemen." agricultural chores by farmers' wives passage. Indentured servants often The prevalence of so many and daughters often spelled the differ­ worked in the fields alongside slaves. less-than-free workers underpinned ence between self-sufficiency and

HUMANITIES 49 economic dependence. In the house- The American Revolution was ples (no taxation without representa­ hold-based economy of colonial fought in the name of liberty. On the tion, trial by jury) and employed America, autonomy rested on com­ road to independence, no word was modes of resistance long familiar in mand over others. more frequently invoked, although it the mother country, from petitions The eighteenth century witnessed rarely received precise definition. - and pamphlets to crowd activity. an increase in social stratification in There were liberty trees, liberty poles, British measures of the 1760s such as colonial America and the rise of a Sons and Daughters of Liberty, and the Stamp Act, Quartering Act, and wealthy gentry exercising more and an endless parade of pamphlets with Townshend Duties were sometimes more dominance over civil, religious, titles like A Chariot of Liberty and assailed in terms of natural rights, but and economic institutions and Oration on the Beauties of Liberty. far more frequently in the name of demanding deference from their social Throughout the colonies, British the "rights and privileges of freeborn inferiors. Nonetheless, by the time of measures like the Stamp Act of 1765 Englishmen," especially freedom from the Revolution, the majority of the were greeted by mock funerals of lib­ arbitrary government, security of nonslave male population were farm­ erty, carefully choreographed specta­ property, and the right to live in a ers who owned their own land. With cles in which a coffin was carried to a political community to whose laws a the household still the center of eco­ burial ground only to have the occu­ people, through their representatives, nomic production, the propertyless pant miraculously revived at the last had given consent. As late as 1774, were a far smaller proportion of the moment (whereupon the assembled appeals to natural law were often population than in Britain and wage combined with a hodgepodge of other labor far less prevalent. Among the claims to liberty, as in the "ancient, free population, property was more constitutional, and chartered Rights" THUS, AN ABHORRENCE OF PERSONAL widely distributed than anywhere in invoked by Virginians. In the same

Europe. In colonial America, writes DEPENDENCE AND THE EQUATION OF year, the first Continental Congress one historian, lived "thousands of the defended its actions by appealing to freest individuals the Western world FREEDOM WITH AUTONOMY SANK DEEP the "principles of the English constitu­ had ever known." tion" and the "liberties... of free and ROOTS IN BRITISH NORTH AMERICA NOT Thus, an abhorrence of personal natural-born subjects, within the realm

dependence and the equation of free­ SIMPLY AS PART OF AN IDEOLOGICAL of England." dom with autonomy sank deep roots As the conflict deepened, however, in British North America not simply INHERITANCE, BUT BECAUSE THESE BELIEFS colonial leaders came to interpret met­ as part of an ideological inheritance, ropolitan policies as part and parcel of ACCORDED WITH SOCIAL REALITY. . . but because these beliefs accorded an immense conspiracy to destroy the with social reality— a wide distribu­ liberty of America, and their own resis­ tion of productive property that tance not merely as a struggle over made a modicum of economic inde­ multitude repaired to a tavern to cele­ specific legislation but as an episode in pendence part of the lived experience brate). Liberty was more than an idea a global conflict between freedom and of large numbers of colonists. What for those resisting British authority; it despotism. The Intolerable Acts of the French essayist Hector St. John was a passion. Sober men spoke long­ 1774, which suspended the Massachu­ Crevecoeur identified in 1782 as the ingly of the "sweets of liberty." All setts legislature and closed the port of hallmark of American society— its sorts of hopes and expectations came Boston, represented the final stage in "pleasing uniformity of decent com­ to be embodied in the idea of freedom. this British design "for enslaving the petence"— would form the material Commented a British emigrant who colonies." Now, the right to resist arbi­ basis for the later definition of the arrived in Maryland early in 1775: trary authority and the identification United States as a "producer's repub­ "They are all liberty mad." of liberty with the cause of God, so lic," as well as its corollary, that wide­ Americans during the age of revolu­ deeply ingrained by the imperial spread ownership of property was tion did not start out to transform the struggles of the eighteenth century, the social precondition of freedom. rights of Englishmen into the rights were invoked against Britain itself. With its wide distribution of of man. The very first colonial The coming of independence ren­ property (and therefore a broadly charter—Virginia's, in 1606— had dered the rights of freeborn English­ participatory political life), its weak granted settlers the same "Liberties, men irrelevant in America. As late as aristocratic power, and an established Franchises, and Immunities" as if they March 1775, Edmund Burke assured church far less powerful than in resided "in our Realm of England." the British Parliament that the colonists Britain, colonial America was a society And a century and a half later, Ameri­ were devoted not to "abstract liberty" with deep democratic potential. But it can colonists shared in the intensifica­ but to "liberty according to English took the struggle for independence to tion of British nationalism, reaffirming ideas, and on English principles." The transform this society not only into a their loyalty to king and constitution. deepening crisis inevitably pushed republican polity without a king, but Resistance to British revenue measures Americans to ground their claims in into a nation that enshrined equality of the 1760s began by invoking Ameri­ the more abstract language of natural and opportunity as its raisons d'etre cans' "rights as British subjects" within rights and universal liberty. In a merg­ and proudly proclaimed itself an asy­ the framework established by the ing of the evangelical belief in the New lum for liberty for all mankind. The British constitution, "the best that ever World as the future seat of "perfect Revolution unleashed public debates existed among men." At the outset, freedom" with the secular vision of the and political and social struggles that opposition to imperial policies Old as sunk in debauchery and arbi­ democratized the concept of freedom. invoked time-honored British princi­ trary rule, the idea of British liberty was

50 MARCH/APRIL 1998 THIS CERTIFICATE OF INDENTURE IS DATED MAY 1 3, 1784, RELATIVELY LATE IN THE HISTORY OF INDENTURED SERVITUDE IN AMERICA. THE PRINTED FORM SUGGESTS THAT THE SYSTEM WAS BECOMING STANDARDIZED. ORIGINALLY, CONTRACTS WERE WRITTEN IN TWO IDENTICAL PARTS ON A SINGLE SHEET WHICH WAS TORN IN HALF, GIVING THE DOCUMENTS INDENTED (OR “INDENTURED”) EDGES, A TERM BY WHICH THE CONTRACTS AND THE ENTIRE SYSTEM LATER BECAME KNOWN.

transformed into a set of universal would spring the nineteenth-century judge existing institutions and a justifi­ rights, with America a sanctuary of free­ idea of the United States as an "empire cation for their overthrow. No longer a dom for humanity. Ironically, it took an of liberty." Unburdened by the institu­ set of specific rights, no longer a privi­ emigrant from the lower classes of Eng­ tions that oppressed the peoples of the lege to be enjoyed by a corporate body land, who only arrived in America in Old World— monarchy, aristocracy, or people in specific social circum­ 1774, fully to grasp this breathtaking hereditary privilege—America, and stances, liberty had become a univer­ vision of the meaning of independence. America alone, was the place where sal, open-ended entitlement. And the As Thomas Paine proclaimed in January the principle of universal freedom contradiction between the ideal of 1776 in the most widely-read pamphlet could take root. Six months later, the universal liberty and the reality of a of the era, Common Sense: Declaration of Independence would society beset with inequalities would O! ye that love mankind... stand legitimate American rebellion not bedevil American public life during forth! Every spot of the old world is merely by invoking British efforts to the Revolution and long thereafter. □ overrun with oppression. Freedom establish "absolute tyranny" over the hath been hunted round the globe. colonies, but by referring to the nat­ Asia and Africa have long expelled ural, unalienable rights of mankind, Eric Toner is the DeWitt Clinton Profes­ her. Europe regards her as a among which liberty was second only sor of History at Columbia University. stranger, and England hath given to life itself. In the Declaration, "the This article is adapted from THE STORY OF her warning to depart. O! receive Laws and Nature and Nature's God," AMERICAN f r e e d o m , to be published in the fugitive, and prepare in time an not the British constitution or the her­ October by W. W. Norton. Research for asylum for mankind. itage of the freeborn Englishman, justi­ the book was supported by an NEH grant. Written, as Paine later observed, to fied independence. The idea of liberty Toner won the Bancroft Prize for an ear­ help men "to be free," Common Sense as a natural right became a revolution­ lier work, RECONSTRUCTION: AMERICA'S announced a prophecy from which ary rallying cry, a standard by which to UNFINISHED REVOLUTION, 1863-1877.

HUMANITIES 51 52 52 Allen Memorial Art M useum, Oberlin, O hio MARCH+APRIL Calendar MARCH/APRIL 1998 MARCH/APRIL S nt in a S ebastian West" features nearly nearly features West" Inventing the Middle the Inventing Museum of of Art atthe Museum by Hendrick Ter Brugghen.Ter by Hendrick "John Steuart Curry: Steuart "John Wisconsin-Madison. paintings, including including paintings, fifty drawings and and fifty drawings A The exhibition isexhibition The at the Elvehjem Elvehjem the at ttended Tornado University of University

by (1929). S nt in a I e e ren (1625)

"Masters of Light: Dutch Painters in Utrecht during the during Utrecht in Painters Dutch Light: of "Masters "Masters of Light" is at the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore Baltimore in ArtGallery Walters the isat Light" of "Masters others. and Vermeer, Rembrandt, influenced who masters from paintings seventy-two together brings Age" Golden through April 5. through in interracial democracy is democracy interracial in Virginia Historical Society Society Historical Virginia and Politics after the Civil the after Politics and Andrew Johnson's Masonic apron. Masonic Johnson's Andrew Museum, the exhibition exhibition the Museum, examined in "America's "America's in examined Reconstruction: People People Reconstruction: History in Tallahassee. in History War." Created by the the by Created War." A national experiment experiment A national opens April 17 atthe opens Museum of Florida Museum and the Valentine Valentine the and BY STEVEN SNODGRASS STEVEN BY ENDOWMENT-SUPPORTED EVENTS

Welcoming Spring from the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368) is featured in "When Silk Was Gold." Tapestries, silks, and embroideries from China and Central Asia are on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Welcoming Spring.

"Agayuliyararput (Our Way of Making Prayer): The Living Tradition of Yup'ik Masks" is at the Seattle Art Museum. More than two hundred face and finger masks of the Central Yup'ik Eskimos of Alaska are on display.

Paddle-shaped mask.

HUMANITIES 5 3 live video, audio, and interactive capability; it was underwritten by Sun NOTEWORTHY Microsystems. Twenty state humani­ ties councils helped coordinate the BY AMY LIFSON local downlinking and distribution of the program around the country. According to the White House, "Millennium Evenings are part of the White House programs running until the year 2000 to celebrate the arrival of the new century. People who are great thinkers, great artists, and great vision­ aries will reflect the millennium theme: Honor the past, imagine the future."

H umanities by the N umbers Now available through the NEH website are statistics about humanities education. The Endowment recently An O scar M illennium Partnership acquired and indexed more than Long before the sequined spectacle of Two hundred years ago, Bernard Bailyn one hundred datasets maintained by Academy Awards night, the Academy noted to a White House audience, the U.S. Department of Education, of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences "transportation and communication libraries, and educational organiza­ paid tribute to a scientific advancement were essentially the same as they had tions. The datasets carry statistical that will extend the life of acetate film. been at the time of the first millennium. information on education from pri­ Director James Reilly and his colleagues Washington, D.C. was a rustic waste­ mary through postdoctoral programs, at Rochester Institute of Technology land. A muddy, disease-ridden collec­ ranging from bibliographies to surveys. won an Oscar for a device for the early tion of rubbish heaps, tree stumps, bogs, The index includes the nature of the detection of film deterioration. The marshes, and rows of bleak wooden information, who maintains it, in what project, supported by NEH, received a houses hastily thrown together. Hogs form it is available, and how frequently Technical Achievement Award at a rooted in the refuse and wandered it is updated. Material already online is daytime awards ceremony. around the one, unfinished hotel. linked through the NEH website. The device, called an A-D strip, is "The carriages of diplomats, in full placed in the film canister and changes regalia, got stuck axle-deep in mud. M ore P rizes color to indicate the level of acetic acid And the secretary of state recorded Books resulting from two NEH-funded being given off by the film, an indication success in trapping a two-foot snake research projects have received acco­ of deterioration known as "vinegar at the foot of his staircase." lades. David E. Kyvig's Explicit and syndrome." The A-D strip will enable So began the first of the Millennium Authentic Acts: Amending the U.S. conservators to determine which films Evenings at the White House, a series Constitution, 1776-1995 received the need different kind of storage and cosponsored by the National Endow­ 1997 Bancroft Prize for distinguished which may need duplication. An accom­ ment for the Humanities. The first work in American history and diplo­ panying guide for storing acetate film, speaker was our Jefferson Lecturer macy. Steven B. Smith's Spinoza, produced through five years of NEH- Bernard Bailyn on February 11. The Liberalism, and the Question of Jewish funded research, is available through second is physicist Stephen Hawking Identity won the Phi Beta Kappa 1997 the Image Permanence Institute at RIT. on March 6. Ralph Waldo Emerson Award for the Bailyn's talk was the first event to be outstanding book on the intellectual G oing U nderground cybercast from the East Room, with and cultural condition of man. □ The exhibition "Steel, Stone, and Back­ bone: Building New York's Subways 1900-1925" received the Society for the History of Technology 1997 Dibner Award. The prize recognizes museums Building the that effectively interpret the history of New York technology in order to teach and stimu­ subway at late the public. The NEH-supported Lexington exhibition opened on March 26, 1996 at Avenue and the New York Transit Museum, which 42nd Street, is housed in a decommissioned 1930s 1900. subway station in Brooklyn. Through photographs, videos and artifacts, "Steel, Stone, and Backbone" tells the story of the thirty thousand workers who built New York's vast subway system.

54 MARCH/APRIL 1998 —New York Transit Museum Archives, Brooklyn DEADLINES DEADLINES DEADLINES

DIVISION OF PRESERVATION AND ACCESS George F. Farr Jr., Director • 202-606-8570 e-mail address: [email protected] Deadline Projects beginning

All applications for preservation and access projects...... July 1, 1998 May 1999

DIVISION OF PUBLIC PROGRAMS Nancy Rogers, Director • 202-606-8267 e-mail address: [email protected] Deadline Projects beginning

All applications for public programs (planning, scripting, and implementation) ...... January 12, 1998 September 1998

DIVISION OF RESEARCH AND EDUCATION PROGRAMS James Herbert, Director • 202-606-8373 e-mail addresses: [email protected], [email protected] Deadline Projects beginning Fellowships and Stipends • 202-606-8466

Faculty Graduate Study Program for Historically Black Colleges and Universities...... M arch 15, 1998 Septem ber 1998 Fellowships for University and College Teachers and Independent Scholars...... May 1, 1998 January 1999

Summer S tipends...... O ctober 1, 1998 May 1999 Education Development and Demonstration (includes technology-related projects) • 202-606-8380

Schools for a New Millennium Planning Grants ...... A pril 1, 1998 Septem ber 1998 Humanities Focus G rants...... A pril 17, 1998 Septem ber 1998

Education Development and Demonstration Projects ...... October 15, 1998 May 1999 Research • 202-606-8210

Collaborative Research...... September 1, 1998 May 1999 Fellowship Programs at Independent Research Institutions...... September 1, 1998 September 1999 Seminars and Institutes • 202-606-8463

Participants ...... March 1, 1998 Summer 1998 Directors ...... March 1, 1998 Summer 1999

OFFICE OF CHALLENGE GRANTS Stephen M. Ross, Director • 202-606-8309 e-mail address: [email protected] Deadline Projects beginning

All applications should be submitted to the Office of Challenge Grants ...... May 1, 1998 December 1998

FEDERAL-STATE PARTNERSHIP Edythe R. Manza, Director • 202-606-8254 e-mail address: [email protected]

Each state humanities council establishes its own grant guidelines and application deadlines.

World Wide Web Home Page: http://www.neh.gov

To receive guidelines for any NEH program, contact the Office of Publications and Public Affairs at 202-606-8400 or by e-mail at [email protected]. Guidelines are available at least two months in advance of application deadlines.

Telecommunications device for the deaf: 202-606-8282.

HUMANITIES 55 SECOND CLASS MAIL NATIONAL ENDOWMENT POSTAGE & FEES PAID FOR THE HUMANITIES NATIONAL ENDOWMENT 1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW FOR THE HUMANITIES Washington, D.C. 20506 PUB. NO. 531-230 Official Business Penalty for Private Use, $300.00 ISSN 0018-7526