Neil Jumonville. Henry Steele Commager: Midcentury Liberalism and the History of the Present. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999. xviii + 328 pp. $49.95, cloth, ISBN 978-0-8078-2448-1. Reviewed by R. B. Bernstein Published on H-Law (October, 1999) In December of 1998, midway through the foremost participants in that great public argu‐ House Judiciary Committee's hearings on the im‐ ment was the historian Henry Steele Commager, peachment of President Clinton, the Committee and virtually nobody questioned Commager's called as witnesses a panel of historians and legal place in the fray. Not only was Commager proba‐ scholars who sought to cast light on the history bly the most famous historian of his time; he also and purposes of the impeachment process. Mem‐ was a highly respected participant in public de‐ bers of the H-LAW community would have recog‐ bate. Indeed, his fame was rooted at least as much nized such names as Bruce Ackerman of Yale Law in his engagement with great public issues over School, Jack N. Rakove of Stanford, and Sean nearly six decades of lecturing and writing--from Wilentz of Princeton. The odd thing about this the era of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal panel, and about the other efforts of historians through the age of Ronald Reagan--as in his work and other scholars to take part in the public con‐ as a historian or as a professor. troversy about impeachment, was that they either Commager's role as a public intellectual takes seemed or were treated as being out of place. In‐ center stage in the biography under review. Its au‐ deed, in his new book on the impeachment con‐ thor, Neil Jumonville, who teaches American his‐ troversy, Judge Richard A. Posner argues that one tory at Florida State University, previously wrote lesson of the Clinton impeachment is just how un‐ Critical Crossings: The New York Intellectuals in suited historians are to offer guidance on matters Postwar America (Berkeley: University of Califor‐ of public policy.[2] nia Press, 1991), a significant examination of Twenty-five years before this puzzling "public intellectuals" and their role in public de‐ episode, the nation was roiled by another crisis bate. In his new book, Jumonville juxtaposes two posing the risk of Presidential impeachment--the worlds: "As few have been able to do in the past Watergate controversy that fnally drove Presi‐ half century, Commager brought together the two dent Richard Nixon to resign his office. One of the worlds of scholarship and public intellectual ac‐ H-Net Reviews tivity" (p. xiii). He defines these two worlds in views were innocuous and not worth the effort. sharply different terms: "... I've used the example 'There is an unvarying formula, ... and I guarantee of Commager to ask whether the intellectual life is to write an 800 word review of any book within compatible with scholarly life. Can an intellectual 12 hours.'" Jumonville continues, blending quota‐ (who writes as a partisan generalist for the wide tion and paraphrase (p. 15): public on contemporary issues) still operate as a First, from the book's dust jacket copy you scholar (who is a "neutral" archival academic who talk about the title and author. You note that the writes for his or her professional peers)?" (p. xii). book and its style are fair, "point out typographi‐ In some ways, Jumonville's sharp dichotomy cal errors at great length," discuss the bibliogra‐ makes sense--particularly when historians have phy, "noting with sorrow" its missing mono‐ come under increasing fre for writing only for graphs, and "end up saying that all students of the one another and not for the general reader, and period are under debt to the author for his piece when young historians seeking to bridge the gap of research." He assured Duus that this latter com‐ between professional and general audiences are pliment is "bunk because students of the period regularly advised not to do so, at least until they do their own research and no one else cares to have won tenure. However, Commager would read the book as it is too dull." have rejected Jumonville's dichotomy. Indeed, as Jumonville structures his book largely by ref‐ Jumonville acknowledges, Commager is notable erence to two interlocking chronologies--that of precisely because he scorned gaps separating pro‐ Commager's life and career, and that of the public fessional and general audiences and rejected the controversies and political battles in which Com‐ idea that a historian had to choose between clois‐ mager took part. He traces Commager's life from tered pursuit of scholarship and vigorous, even his birth in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on 25 Octo‐ polemical discourse in the public realm. Ju‐ ber 1902, his orphaning at an early age and his monville's stark distinction between the role of struggles to put himself through the University of the historian and that of the public intellectual Chicago (where he earned the B.A., M.A., and poses problems for his attempt to understand a Ph.D.), through his teaching stints, frst at New historian who not only was also a public intellec‐ York University and then at Columbia (1936-1956) tual but saw no contradiction between those and fnally at Amherst College, which he joined in roles. 1956 and where he taught through the early Jumonville ably chronicles Commager's ca‐ 1990s, dying on 2 March 1998. reer, showing him as a man with a foot in both Jumonville weaves around the central thread worlds who seemed effortlessly to maintain his of Commager's career a rich but uneven account balance between them. He also conveys at least of Commager's participation in many pivotal con‐ some of Commager's inspiring energy, his ability troversies. He is effective on Commager's coura‐ to write vigorous yet elegant prose, his scholarly geous stand against blacklisting in the 1940s and and political enthusiasms, and his wry, sardonic 1950s, a campaign that Commager undertook at humor. In this last connection, one passage of his some personal risk but with thorough disregard book is of special relevance for the writer or read‐ for that risk. Jumonville also ably limns Com‐ er of book reviews. In 1925, the young Commager mager's other forms of political activism, includ‐ reported to his friend Hans Duus that, while so‐ ing his enthusiasm for Adlai Stevenson in the journing in Europe and paging through his host's 1950s and for John, Robert, and Edward Kennedy extensive fle of back issues of the American His‐ in the 1960s and 1970s, and his longstanding op‐ torical Review, he had realized "that all book re‐ position to the Vietnam Conflict on political and 2 H-Net Reviews constitutional grounds. He is somewhat cursory his revered senior colleague Samuel Eliot Morison as his book enters the 1970s--in particular, devot‐ and then with his protege William E. Leuchten‐ ing surprisingly little attention to Commager's ex‐ burg.[9] And yet Jumonville mostly limits his com‐ tensive activism during the Watergate crisis of ments on these books to contemporary reviewers' 1973-1974 and his vigorous criticism of the Rea‐ assessments, with little sustained effort to inte‐ gan Administration throughout the 1980s.[3] grate them into an interpretation of Commager's Jumonville presents his biography of Com‐ evolving work as a historian or his place in the mager as an extended meditation on the clashing historiography of the felds to which he contrib‐ roles of the historian and the public intellectual. uted. Jumonville notes Commager's admiration Unfortunately, the book's focus means that it lacks for Vernon L. Parrington, whose Main Currents in or slights discussion of other questions and topics American Thought was both the inspiration and equally important to understanding Commager's the model for The American Mind and, to a lesser role in the intellectual life of his time--in particu‐ degree, The Empire of Reason.[10] But Ju‐ lar, his work as a historian and the relationship monville's specific attempt to situate Commager between his status as a professional historian and in the currents of American historiography by ref‐ his enthusiastic engagement in public debate. erence to Parrington is the exception rather than the rule. First, Jumonville brackets Commager with other notable historians who were also public in‐ Many readers of H-LAW may know Com‐ tellectuals--principally Commager's longtime mager's scholarship best through his coeditorship friend and Columbiaccolleague Allan Nevins, as with the late Richard B. Morris of the New Ameri‐ well as Richard Hofstadter (also of Columbia) and can Nation series, which eventually produced Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. (of Harvard and later of more than forty volumes covering the span of the CUNY Graduate School). All these men func‐ American history from the earliest civilizations in tion as prisms through whom Jumonville can re‐ America to the "unraveling of America" in the count and analyze the roles of historians as public 1960s and the emergence of the "New South" be‐ intellectuals. Indeed, sometimes Jumonville focus‐ tween the 1950s and the 1990s.[11] (Although es so much on Nevins or on Hofstadter that Com‐ Morris was a close friend and a valued Columbia mager vanishes from his own biography for pages colleague of Commager's, Morris appears rarely at a time. in this biography--perhaps because he was more firmly planted than Commager or Nevins or Hofs‐ A second, more important gap is Jumonville's tadter on the "scholarly" side of Jumonville's di‐ apparent reluctance to engage much of Com‐ vide.) Jumonville does not address the signifi‐ mager's work as a historian.