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Home , Allan Nevins, Bernard Bailyn, Henry Steele Commager, Samuel Eliot Morison

Neil Jumonville. : Midcentury 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 panel, and about the other eforts of historians through the age of --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 ofer guidance on matters Postwar America (Berkeley: University of Califor‐ of public policy.[2] nia Press, 1991), a signifcant examination of Twenty-fve years before this puzzling "public intellectuals" and their role in public de‐ episode, 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 to resign his ofce. One of the worlds of scholarship and public intellectual ac‐ H-Net Reviews tivity" (p. xiii). He defnes these two worlds in views were innocuous and not worth the efort. sharply diferent 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 , , 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 (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 , 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 efortlessly 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 efective 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 Confict on political and

2 H-Net Reviews constitutional grounds. He is somewhat cursory his revered senior colleague 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 efort 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 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 specifc 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 , as with the late Richard B. Morris of the New Ameri‐ well as (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 frmly 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 signif‐ mager's work as a historian. To be sure, he men‐ cance for American historiography of the series as tions Commager's major contributions to histori‐ a whole or of such notable individual volumes as cal scholarship his 1936 biography of the Unitari‐ 's Reconstruction: America's Unfnished an minister and abolitionist, [4], Revolution, 1863-1877 , David M. Potter's The Im‐ his 1943 lectures on judicial review, Majority Rule pending Crisis, 1848-1861, Arthur S. Link's and Minority Rights[5], his 1950 monograph The and the , American Mind[6], his 1977 study The Empire of 1910-1917, or William E. Leuchtenburg's Franklin Reason: How Europe Imagined and America Real‐ D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932-1940.[12] To ized the Enlightenment,[7] and his 1993 series of be sure, the correspondence among authors, edi‐ lectures, Commager on Tocqueville.[8] And he also tors , and publisher pertaining to the series is still notes the famed Growth of the American Repub‐ sealed -- but the lack of access to those sources lic, the textbook that Commager wrote, frst with does not preclude an assessment of the series'

3 H-Net Reviews place in American historiography or of Com‐ question that forms the core of Jumonville's inter‐ mager's role in it. Furthermore, Jumonville pretative enterprise.[19] nowhere refers to Commager's editorship of Doc‐ Third, Jumonville often characterizes Com‐ uments of American History,[13] for more than mager as a Jefersonian, but his use of the term forty years the leading documentary sourcebook refects a surprisingly uncritical adoption of Com‐ for anyone studying the history of the United mager's use of the term. Commager's Jeferson States. Nor does he mention Commager's two was an enlightened and far-seeing philosophical great documentary histories--The Blue and the statesman, a tolerant man with a sweeping com‐ Gray, on the Civil War,[14] or The Spirit of Seven‐ mitment to human freedom and a confdent, ty-Six, on the (the latter philosophically-rooted pragmatism about politics coedited with Richard B. Morris),[15] nor Com‐ and governance.[20] But other historians have mager's programmatic Living Ideas in America, discerned other, more complex, and sometimes [16] a book that its editor deliberately designed as less recognizably modern versions of Jeferson. both a window onto the American past and a [21] Indeed, Commager's Jefersonianism was re‐ statement of Commager's vision of enlightened fracted through his admiration for Franklin De‐ "midcentury liberalism" (to use Jumonville's own lano Roosevelt and the New Deal -- just as his phrase) for its time and posterity. With these doc‐ friend and counterpart Arthur M. Schlesinger has umentary anthologies, Commager not only set often been accused of rendering in The Age of standards of rigor and usefulness that are models Jackson[22] a portrait of Andrew Jackson unnerv‐ of their kind, but also helped to shape the teach‐ ingly reminiscent of Roosevelt. This is not to deni‐ ing and study of American history for generations grate Commager's interpretation of Jeferson or of teachers and students. his presentation of himself as a Jefersonian. In the 1960s, following the publication of Rather, it is simply to recognize, as Jumonville Arthur M. Schlesinger's A Thousand Days: John F. surprisingly does not, that Commager was repre‐ Kennedy in the White House,[17] a spirited contro‐ sentative of his time in following Roosevelt's oft- versy raged over whether, as Commager put it in quoted prescription of applying Hamiltonian two essays he wrote at that time, "the historian means to Jefersonian ends, and in regarding Jef‐ should sit in judgment" and "the historian should ferson and many of the other great fgures of the write contemporary history." At issue in the Thou‐ Revolutionary generation almost as contempo‐ sand Days controversy (which eerily presages ele‐ raries and intellectual compatriots. ments of the current controversy over Edmund Finally, Jumonville often notes that Com‐ Morris's Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan[18]) mager acted as a public intellectual while main‐ was Schlesinger's remarkable access to a sitting taining an academic and professional base as a President, his use of the information he gleaned historian--but he does not address sufciently the that way, and the efects of his relationship with relationship between the two. Nor, despite his ap‐ Kennedy on his interpretation of the Kennedy parent intention to do so, does he suggest whether Presidency. Commager collected these essays and Commager's linked roles as historian and public a series of others on various aspects of history intellectual are worthy of anything more than re‐ and historiography in his 1967 collection The spectful study. To what end does Jumonville pro‐ Search for a Usable Past -- a book valuable for un‐ pose that we understand Commager as a public derstanding Commager's approach to such mat‐ intellectual and "midcentury liberal"? Is it solely ters, yet again one that Jumonville cites only in to study Commager as a representative fgure of a passing, despite its potential to illuminate the body of thought that is of historical interest only?

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Or does Jumonville have a more prescriptive aim indeed subjects and occasions, as Jumonville in view? notes, in which Commager's political views ob‐ For one thing, Jumonville overlooks that Com‐ scured certain complexities from his view. For ex‐ mager's status as a professional historian an‐ ample, as Garry Wills acidulously complained in chored his credibility as a participant in the pub‐ his study of religion and American politics, Com‐ lic controversies into which he threw himself. For mager never fully grasped the power of religious another, as already noted, Commager would have currents in American life and thought-- a point insisted both that his work as a historian in‐ usefully noted by Jumonville.[24] Even so, Com‐ formed his engagement with contemporary politi‐ mager's achievement--his ability to distill the his‐ cal afairs, and that his engagement with the poli‐ tory of the , in particular the confu‐ tics of his day inspired his most creative and efec‐ ence of ideas and politics, with skill and elegance-- tive explorations and interpretations of the Amer‐ is of continuing value despite, or perhaps because ican past. Commager saw these two roles not as of, the clarity with which Commager's formal his‐ divided realms but as points on a spectrum of ac‐ torical writings express his values and political tivity. It is thus not surprising that Commager was preferences. most often drawn to two earlier generations of Thus, although Jumonville's biography is en‐ engaged intellectuals who also worked closely lightening and perceptive, he does not succeed in with history--the Progressives of the early twenti‐ his stated central mission: to consider the chal‐ eth century and the Revolutionary generation of lenges facing those who would, as Commager did, Americans of the late eighteenth and early nine‐ blend scholarship with engagement, who would teenth centuries--nor that he also devoted careful view taking part in professional discourse about and respectful study to two other nineteenth-cen‐ the past and seeking to reach that oft-yearned for, tury fgures who were both scholars and engaged oft-scorned "wider audience" as equal parts of the intellectuals, Justice Joseph Story and Alexis de academic historian's mandate. Tocqueville. Notes: Even so, Commager's primary professional [1]. A disclosure of potential confict of inter‐ identity--the way he saw and defned himself--was est is in order. I knew Henry Steele Commager as a historian, and it was that sense of himself from 1971 till his death in 1998. He was my frst and of the historian's calling that he sought to mentor; throughout my career as a historian he communicate to generations of students, both at provided encouragement and moral support, and Columbia and Amherst, and to thousands or mil‐ he remains a profound infuence on my work as a lions of readers of his books, articles, essays, lec‐ historian and teacher. I have tried to draw on my tures, documentary collections, "op-ed pieces," familiarity with Commager as a historian and a and letters to the editor. Indeed, he thought of, teacher in preparing this review, but I have also and often referred to, those activities--which Ju‐ tried not to let it prejudice me either for or monville too neatly cabins of as those of a public against the book or its subject. intellectual--as teaching by other means. I am grateful to Professor Joanne B. Freeman In addition, Jumonville's too-neat characteri‐ of and to Felice J. Batlan for their zation of the work of the scholar, which stresses nuanced and constructive advice in the prepara‐ the scholar's neutrality, does not ft with our tion of this review. recognition today that "neutrality" or "objectivity" [2]. Richard A. Posner, An Afair of State: The are goals and aspirations rather than realities eas‐ Investigation, Impeachment, and Trial of Presi‐ ily and unrefectively achieved.[23] There were

5 H-Net Reviews dent Clinton (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univer‐ [9]. Samuel Eliot Morison and Henry Steele sity Press, 1999). Commager, The Growth of the American [3]. Jumonville also scants Commager's work (New York and Oxford: , as a teacher at Amherst while he held the Simp‐ 1930); Samuel Eliot Morison, Henry Steele Com‐ son Lectureship from the 1960s through the 1980s mager, and William E. Leuchtenburg, The Growth -- partly due to his reliance on interviews with col‐ of the American Republic, 7th ed. in 2 vols. (New leagues in Amherst's history and American stud‐ York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980). ies departments. Had Jumonville also secured the Leuchtenburg assumed primary responsibility for input of students in his seminars in those years, a the abridged edition. Samuel Eliot Morison, Henry diferent portrait of an active, engaged, and in‐ Steele Commager, and William E. Leuchtenburg, spiring teacher would have emerged. This sketchi‐ The Concise History of the American Republic ness contrasts with Jumonville's evocative picture (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, of Commager as a mentor to such Columbia stu‐ 1977; 2d ed., 1983). See also Allan Nevins and Hen‐ dents as Milton Cantor, Harold M. Hyman, ry Steele Commager, The Pocket History of the William E. Leuchtenburg, and Leonard W. Levy. United States (New York: Pocket Books, 1942; ninth ed., with Jefrey B. Morris, 1993). [4]. Henry Steele Commager, Theodore Parker (: Little, Brown, 1936). Commager also edit‐ [10]. Vernon L. Parrington, Main Currents in ed a modern anthology of Parker's writings: Hen‐ American Thought, 3 vols. (New York: Harcourt, ry Steele Commager, ed., Theodore Parker: An An‐ Brace, 1927-1930). On Parrington, see Richard thology (Boston: Beacon Press, 1960). Hofstadter, The Progressive Historians: Turner, Beard, Parrington (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, [5]. Henry Steele Commager, Majority Rule 1968), part IV. Parrington left his volume III, The and Minority Rights (New York: Oxford University Beginnings of Critical Realism in America, unfn‐ Press, 1943). ished at his early death; Commager deliberately [6]. Henry Steele Commager, The American launched The American Mind at the point when Mind: An Interpretation of American Thought and Parrington laid down his pen. Character Since the 1880s (New Haven: Yale Uni‐ [11]. Allen U. Matusow, The Unraveling of versity Press, 1950). America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s [7]. Henry Steele Commager, The Empire of (New York: Harper & Row, 1984); Dewey W. Reason: How Europe Imagined and America Real‐ Grantham, The South in Modern America: A Re‐ ized the Enlightenment (New York: Anchor Press/ gion at Odds (New York: HarperCollins, 1994). Doubleday, 1977). Commager planned but did not [12]. Eric S. Foner, Reconstruction: America's complete a second volume that would address the Unfnished Revolution, 1863-1877 (New York: American Revolution's efects on the United States Harper & Row, 1988); David M. Potter (completed and the American people. In 1991, Gordon S. and edited by Don E. Fehrenbacher), The Impend‐ Wood published The Radicalism of the American ing Crisis, 1848-1861 (New York: Harper & Row, Revolution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991); his 1976); Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson and the prize-winning and controversial study comes re‐ Progressive Era, 1910-1917 (New York: Harper, markably close to the book that Commager envi‐ 1960); William E. Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roo‐ sioned as the complement to Empire of Reason. sevelt and the New Deal, 1932-1940_ (New York: [8]. Henry Steele Commager Commager on Harper & Row, 1963). Tocqueville (Columbia: University of Missouri [13]. Henry Steele Commager, ed., Documents Press, 1993). of American History (New York: Appleton, 1934;

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9th ed., in 2 vols., New York: Appleton Century Legacies (Charlottesville: University Press of Vir‐ Crofts, 1973); Henry Steele Commager and Milton ginia, 1993). Cantor, eds., Documents of American History, [22]. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Age of 10th ed. (Englewood Clifs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Jackson (Boston: Little Brown, 1945). 1988). [23]. has quoted his Harvard [14]. Henry Steele Commager, ed., The Blue colleague, Donald Fleming, to this efect: "Perhaps and the Gray (Indianapolis and New York: Bobbs- we cannot achieve perfect objectivity, just as we Merrill, 1950). cannot achieve perfect antisepsis. But that does [15]. Henry Steele Commager and Richard B. not mean that we perform brain surgery in the Morris, eds., The Spirit of Seventy-Six (New York: sewer." See generally, Peter Novick, That Noble Harper & Row, 1967; bicentennial ed., 1975). Dream: The "Objectivity" Question and the Ameri‐ [16]. Henry Steele Commager, ed., Living can Historical Profession (Cambridge, Eng., and Ideas in America (New York: Harper, 1951; rev. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989). ed., Harper & Row, 1967). In this connection, it [24]. Garry Wills, Under God: Religion and should also be noted that Commager published a American Politics (New York: Simon and Schuster, pioneering anthology drawn from the revised edi‐ 1990). tion of Living Ideas in America: Henry Steele Copyright (c) 1999 by H-Net, all rights re‐ Commager, ed., The Struggle for Racial Equality served. This work may be copied for non-proft (New York: Harper & Row, 1967). Jumonville does educational use if proper credit is given to the au‐ not mention this anthology, either, nor does he thor and the list. For other permission, please con‐ note Henry Steele Commager and Elmo Gior‐ tact [email protected]. danetti, eds., Was America a Mistake? An Eigh‐ teenth-Century Controversy New York: Harper & Row, 1967). [17]. Arthur M Schlesinger, Jr., A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (Boston: Houghton Mifin, 1965). [18]. Edmund Morris, Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan (New York Random House, 1999). [19]. Henry Steele Commager, The Search for a Usable Past: And Other Essays in Historiogra‐ phy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967). [20]. See, e.g., Commager, Empire of Reason, passim; Henry Steele Commager, Jeferson, Na‐ tionalism, and the Enlightenment (New York: George Braziller, 1976). [21]. The classic study remains Merrill D. Pe‐ terson, The Jeferson Image in the American Mind (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960; reprint, with new foreword, Charlottesville: University Press of , 1998). See also the superb sym‐ posium volume, Peter Onuf, ed., Jefersonian

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Citation: R. B. Bernstein. Review of Jumonville, Neil. Henry Steele Commager: Midcentury Liberalism and the History of the Present. H-Law, H-Net Reviews. October, 1999.

URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=3457

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