American History, or some of it

the next stage of the journey

2009-05-21T14:49:00.000-07:00

Right now, only 15 companies in the Fortune 500 have women as CEOs. The top ranking company with a female CEO is no. 27.

Just to do the math, that means that only *3%* of the Fortune 500 has a woman in charge. This is better than the 1% figure that was true not so long ago, but is still a stark illustration of how far we have to go before we achieve gender parity.

Back to Atlanta

2009-05-03T06:07:00.000-07:00

Recently the film "Driving Miss Daisy" entered the rotation on cable TV. I caught large parts of it again, and find it still to be a real champ.

Through the miracle of Wikipedia, I'm almost effortlessly informed that DMD won the Oscar for best picture some 20 years ago, and Jessica Tandy won for best actress. Morgan Freeman was nominated for best actor but did not win.

Wonderful as Tandy and Freeman are in this movie, I have to say that I always think of Martin Luther King as its top star. A recording of his voice is heard at a key part of the narrative (with the premise that he's the speaker at a dinner Miss D is attending). MLK's image is not shown. The message he delivers, with unmatched eloquence, is that the real tragedy of the South during the civil rights struggle was that of the many good people who stood by and did nothing. It is an evergreen message, applicable to all times, and hits home with me still. I struggle to find ways not just to stand by.

More from "Finland Station"

2009-03-28T06:18:00.000-07:00

Here's Wilson with an anecdote about Mikhail Bakunin, a Russian expatriate revolutionist, rival to Marx, proponent of universal destruction and father of anarchism. Bakunin was passing through a German town where the peasants were revolting, but just [Wilson quoted A. I. Herzen] "making an uproar around the castle, not knowing what to do. Bakunin got out of his conveyance, and, without wasting any time to find out what the dispute was about, formed the peasants into ranks and instructed them so skillfully ... that by the time he resumed his seat to continue his journey, the castle was burning on all four sides."

I had never had any idea what anarchism was all about, but now I gather it stems from a belief that the human world is so rotten that it would be best destroyed.

* * * * *

Am now in the last part of "To the Finland Station", which part tells the stories of Lenin and Trotsky. My perception is that Wilson's writing is less vibrant here, as if he were mainly paraphrasing traditional Communist Party accounts of their "great founders". Wilson writes of Trotsky in the present tense--it seems that Trotsky must still have been alive when the book came out in 1940, though he was to be assassinated later that year by an agent of Stalin.

In the introduction to the 1971 edition, Wilson attempts to balance his earlier benign depiction of Lenin by relating many examples of Lenin's cruelty and contempt toward his opponents. For the first tiime Wilson suggests that revolutionary ideals may have been tools in aid of a fierce pursuit of power on Lenin's part, rather than his primary motivation.

A diversion from American history

2009-03-21T10:12:00.000-07:00

My airplane reading to and from AZ was "To the Finland Station" by Edmund Wilson. Here are a few nuggets.

The first is relevant to the earlier discussion of history telling and myth. Wilson quotes the great French historian Jules Michelet on the story of Joan of Arc:

"What legend is more beautiful than this uncontestable story? But one must be careful not to make it into a legend. One must piously preserve all its circumstances, even the most human; one must respect its touching and terrrible humanity. . . . However deeply the historian may have been moved in writing this gospel, he has kept a firm hold on the real and never yielded to the temptation of idealism."

* * *

Nugget no. 2:

"[The communitarian leader Robert Owen] attended in 1817 a Congress of Sovereigns..., and he met there a veteran diplomat, the secretary of the Congress. Owen explained to this personage that it was now possible, through the extraordinary progress of science ... for the whole of the human race, and no longer merely the privileged few, to be well-educated, well-nourished and well-bred. ... Yes, the veteran diplomat said, they all knew that very well--the governing powers of Europe which he himself represented--and that was just what they didn't want. If the masses became well-off and independent, how were the governing classes to control them?"

~~Fortunately for the powers-that-be, the culture wars and scandals de jour were invented, sometimes adequate replacements for the constraining effect of grinding poverty.

* * *

Monty Python aside, one doesn't usually associate comedy with Karl Marx. But consider this incident (Cologne, 1848 or 9, where Marx was a revolutionary leader):

"Two non-commissioned officers appeared to beard [Marx] in his house one day, declaring he had insulted their rank; but he held them at bay in his dressing gown by the threat of an unloaded revolver."

The expounding prophet of the class struggle as Quick-draw McGraw? *He'll* do the thin'in' around here...

The first pre-nup--myth or fact?

2009-03-08T09:33:00.000-07:00

As the room was emptying after my lecture to the New Rochelle Historical Society a few weeks ago, I managed to get embroiled in brief but spirited disputation with the estimable woman who had chaired the meeting. My interlocutrice, long a stalwart of the NR LWV as well as the Historical Society, was eager to inform me that Carrie Chapman Catt had "invented the pre-nuptial agreement". The story was that CCC and her second husband, George Catt, had agreed in writing prior to their wedding that CCC would be free to travel around campaigning for suffrage several months of the year.

I had come to regard this tale as a legend, rather than some well-established fact--something in the cut-down-the-cherry-tree or threw-the-dollar-across-the-Potomac category. I did not believe CCC (or Carrie Lane Chapman, as she then was) would have married any man whose promises needed to be put in writing. I also knew that CCC had regularly and often exceeded the supposed 4-month per year limit in traveling away from home. But for the LWV veteran who raised it, that Carrie had invented the prenup was evidently a cherished belief.

Anyway, while preparing this blog post I engaged in a bit of research. Here's what Jacqueline Van Voris has to say on the subject in her biography of Catt (page 20): "A story circulated that the Catts signed a contract that guaranteed her two months each spring and fall to work on woman suffrage. If such a contract existed, perhaps it was one of their quiet jokes, or perhaps they drew it up to illustrate to others the nature of their private agreement."

Thus the best informed historian seems to portray the prenup story as a myth. What is fact is that George Catt's financial support for Carrie was vital to her career as a suffrage leader.

In sum, CCC invented many things--the LWV, the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, the organization committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, the women's physical education program at Iowa State University--but the prenup? I don't think so.

another missing book

2009-03-03T10:10:00.000-08:00

And where is the full scale (but not *too* long, if you please) biography of Alice Paul? I don't think I'm alone in considering her to be the most interesting personality that the suffrage movement produced. Her genius for publicity alone would make her fascinating.

I thought and hoped that book was the recently published "Alice Paul and the American Suffrage Campaign" by Adams and Keene, but the scope is rather narrowly focused on her suffrage work, and it is deadly dull besides. (Someday with luck and added diligence I *will* finish reading it.)

So we have this odd situation: (A) Carrie Catt has three good to very good adult level books about her, and three kid bios as well, but no *movie*, whereas (B) Alice Paul has no complete book-form treatment of her life, but has a widely seen HBO "feature film" about her, Iron Jawed Angels. (While that vid-flick is ludicrous in many ways, IJA is probably ultimately worthwhile because of its harrowing--and I believe pretty accurate--portrayal of the unjust imprisonment, mistreatment, force feeding, etc. of the militant suffragists.)

Come on woman/woman-squared historians, can't you give Alice her due?

the book that wasn't there

2009-03-03T08:30:00.000-08:00

Quite some time ago I had what I thought would be a great idea for a kid's book--maybe at the advanced jr. high, beginning high school level. The subject would be the diplomatic history of the relationship between the U.S. and Britain. My concept assumed that kids at that age (and even earlier) are well attuned to the "he/she used to be my best friend but now so-and-so is my best friend" type of narrative.

My plan, such as it was, was to find a good book for adults on the subject and then rewrite and recast it for a younger audience. But here's the thing (aside from my general lack of time and energy), no such book for adults appears to exist.

I thought I had found that book when I learned of God and Gold by Walter Russell Mead. I read a fair part of it and found that it was more of an essay/intellectual history of what Mead believes to be the ascendancy of the Anglo-American mindset, and the reaction to the same by the rest of the world. I also gathered from Mead's discussion of the existing literature that the book I sought had yet to be written.

So, if you know a specialist in diplomatic history, you could let her/him know that there's a fat target out there. If someone could write it well and bring it in within 300 pages, it could be a major classic.

I'll also imagine some of the high points of such a book:

--the founding of the English colonies and their development

--the perception of English pundits by the mid 18th century of the potential for rivalry between the colonies and the homeland. (Viz. A Struggle for Power by Theodore Draper, another book that I failed to finish.)

--the Revolutionary War and the 1812 War, and the treaties in between.

--commercial rivalry/British investment in the American economy

--the British tilt toward the Confederacy during the Civil War

--the rise of Germany and the Fish treaty

--alliance in WWs 1 and 2; FDR/Churchill

--the middle east, Sinai and beyond to the second Iraq war

--along the way, Reagan/Thatcher and Clinton/Blair/Bush

Undoubtedly it would take a master of compression and pith to bring this in under the page limit, but what an achievement that would be. At least let us hope if this book ever happens, the author will avoid the 500 page + behemoth.

a history buff navel-gazes

2009-03-01T12:56:00.000-08:00

Recently I was privileged to have dinner with two history professors. One was scathing, and rightly so, about how movies with historical themes tend to go for uplift, and prettify the facts, thereby distorting history for the purpose of making an appealing product. He tends to avoid using movies in his courses because part of his goal as a teacher is to try to counteract the prevailing view of history as a series of happy endings.

I asked him if he felt that Ken Burns also tended to distort history in this way, and he said he did. Having seen much of the Civil War series, I would be inclined to agree. Mainly, I think the enormous human cost of that war has been allowed to escape from our mental landscapes. We tend to think in terms of noble sacrifice, the preservation of the union, and the emancipation of the slaves. The hundreds of thousands of dead and maimed, and their gravely afflicted families, remain to the back or the side of the stage as the curtain comes down.

But now I ask myself, am I guilty of the same malpractice as an amateur historian? My most favorite historical subjects are the woman suffrage movement and the civil rights movement, both of which had "happy endings". Or more accurately--as both movements are part of larger stories that remain unfinished--both movements have come down to us with hopeful legacies for a completion, at some point, of their ultimate goals.

I think maybe I should cop a plea to "second degree prettification" and hope to be sentenced to community service. Both truthfulness and optimism are human obligations, but when one is playing the historian's part, the truth has a first claim on one's honor.

A very grim subject--genocide

2009-02-03T09:13:00.000-08:00

On my way in to the (terrific) NYC history meetup I was reading the last chapter in "Fateful Choices" by Kershaw. This chapter cuts to the horrible essence of WW2, as it deals with the process by which the Nazis decided to build death camps for the Jews. One thing that struck me was the Nazis' interim intention to displace Jews to "reservations" in Eastern Europe, preferably in Russia. This intention was disrupted by the German failure to knock out the Russians in 1941.

In any case, the word "reservation", mentioned in the context of the Nazi genocide, sent my thoughts to the North American genocide of the Indians. Of course, reservations played and still play a large role in this tremendously shameful aspect of the European settlement of the New World.

Mainly what I was meditating on was how (evidently) the Germans have rather creditably striven to come to grips with the crimes of the Nazi era in contrast to what is a rather oblivious attitude in American culture to what was done to the aboriginal population of the US and Canada. While American crimes against the Indians are of course not totally ignored, they tend to be masked by a general attitude of American self-congratulation. To quite a large extent, this reflects the writing of history by the "winners", but I believe a certain jingoism also plays a role.

I think, as a country, we engage in way too much talk about how great we are, effectively shrugging off a sober and realistic view of our past. Only slavery seems to be substantially acknowledged as a dreadful crime, and that too is somewhat overshadowed by the prevailing "USA! USA!" mindset. The incarceration of the nisei barely registers in the public mind.

When will we start learning, and teaching, the truth?

The art of not being too far in front

2009-01-26T09:42:00.000-08:00

For the upcoming NYC history meetup, I read the chapter on FDR and lend lease in "Fateful Choices" by Ian Kershaw. A dominant theme is FDR's caution and concern about getting ahead of public opinion on US involvement in WW2. Many of FDR's closest aides were greatly distressed, fearing that cowardice on FDR's part would lead to England's defeat. But in the event, FDR's cautious approach paid dividends, as public opinion remained quite unified behind him. With the outrage over Pearl Harbor, and Hitler's follow up declaration of war, FDR enjoyed overwhelming support for the all-out war effort, when it came.

The current parallel, I suppose, is that Obama also needs to move carefully, take a long-term approach, and keep the public in his corner. Liberals who are urging bolder action should reflect that if Obama gets out of step with the public, he may have trouble recovering the support he needs.

A step not noted

2009-01-23T08:05:00.000-08:00

The appointment of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State is a classic "celebrity appointment" and in a way echoes that of Colin Powell. But what seems not to have been much remarked is that Clinton is the third female Secretary of State. In other words, it has become "normal" for the Secretary of State to be a woman.

And this raises the question, when will it be normal to have a female Secretary of Defense, or Treasury, or Attorney General?

John Wesley Powell, a man for dry seasons

2008-04-10T09:52:00.000-07:00

After many diversions, I finally finished reading A River Running West, Donald Worster's full-scale biography of John Wesley Powell. This was my follow-up to several reads of Wallace Stegner's classic account of Powell's career--Beyond the Hundredth Meridian. Undoubtedly it was brave of Worster to attempt to follow in Stegner's footsteps, and his book is far from bad, though not nearly as readable or compelling as Stegner's.

If one were to read only one account of Powell's famous expedition down the Colorado river--which made him a national hero--Stegner's would be the one to select for its thrilling narrative. Stegner doesn't take all of Powell's journals at face value. Nevertheless, he casts the break-up of Powell's party, and its differential consequences, in lines of high drama, to etch one of the great legends of the exploration of the West. Worster, as a careful professional historian, is constrained to acknowledge the uncertainties about why Powell's party broke up, and what became of those who left Powell's command. The result is a somewhat mushy story, though likely more accurately reflective of what is really known about the first Powell expedition.

Worster's careful historiography pays dividends in his description of the battles between Powell and his nemesis, Senator Stewart of Nevada. Stegner portrays Powell as a tower of enlightenment in regard to the appropriate policies for settlement of the arid West, and his downfall at the hands of Stewart as the triumph of benighted boosterism in a flawed political arena. No less than Stegner, Worster acknowledges Powell's ground-breaking work as a senior Washington bureaucrat. He also rightly praises Powell's unmatched appreciation of the challenges raised by lack of water in the plans for development of the West. But Worster's account also provides the insight that Powell's policy prescription--collective planned settlement on a watershed-by-watershed basis--was hopelessly quixotic, and out of touch with the social, economic and political realities of the late 19th century in the U.S. In my mind the key question was, where would the capital have come from to finance the water management infrastructure that would have permitted Powell's plan to come about? To put the question another way, why would the political forces provide a subsidy from the federal government for the collectives of small holders that Powell proposed?

Without having read up on the long aftermath of the boosters' triumph, I infer that what actually happened was that moneyed interests in the West influenced more-or-less corrupt Congressional representatives to provide the federal subsidy for water projects, but to the benefit of the large-holders, and not for settlement by collectives. The result was the proliferation of monopolies that Powell feared. A great many disputes over water rights also developed, and remain acute.

In other words, the West was bound to be exploited, even as the Indians were bound to be pushed out and marginalized. Since exploitation of the West would require government capital, and since the vested interests had the power to control the application of government capital, the exploitation came about to the advantage of the vested interests. Not a pretty picture, but what else could possibly have happened, given the way Washington works?

"Leading feminists opposed the Great Emancipator--details at 7"

2008-03-26T14:05:00.000-07:00

Here's the not-so-hot scoop, as dished in Chapter 3 of Votes for Women, edited by Jean H. Baker--

In 1863 the radical wing of the Republican party were wary of Lincoln's apparent wobbling on emancipation. Leading suffragists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony founded the Women's Loyal National League in part to provide support for a possible alternative candidate who would adopt the radicals' uncompromising position on emancipation.

Lincoln invited Stanton and her husband to Washington for a "long talk" (in Stanton's words), in which the President sought to win her support for the Republican nomination. Stanton came away from the meeting with an improved opinion of "Abraham" (as she referred to him in a letter), but still favoring a radical alternative candidate.

In the event, however, the radical alternative John C. Fremont proved to be a dud of a candidate, and when the Democrats nominated McClellan on a peace platform, the radical Republicans "came home" to Lincoln, much as some say the conservatives will this year "come home" to McCain.

The same chapter in Votes for Women also includes a lot of interesting stuff about Republican factions in New York State at the time, and corruption thereamong. Most sensationally, Stanton's husband and son were caught up in a bribery scandal, and Stanton harbored deep suspicions that Lincoln had allowed her husband's downfall to occur. This was prior to the Lincoln-Stanton meeting mentioned above.

There is nothing new under the sun

2008-03-14T14:05:00.000-07:00

I don't actually believe the title to this post (was not the Internet once new, and not so many years ago?), but I don't imagine much of what I post in this new blog of mine will startle or amaze with its novelty. Mainly I will look back to the past, perhaps fifty or hundred years or so, while noting "current events in the field of history" as I happen to come across them.

I'm encouraging myself to start this blog since my searches for U.S. history blogs have turned up, to my mind, a rather small number of blogs in the field.

I should acknowledge one fellow blogger, however...David O. Stewart, a distinguished (and relatively *new*) historian and old friend of mine. For my money (or should I say time and attention) Stewart's Constitutional Journal is the best blog going.