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January 2011
On October 19, 1720, was born one of the few saints and prophets this country has produced. John Woolman, the Quaker, of Mount Holly, New Jersey, is still relatively unknown in his own land though his Journal is extensively read in England, Germany, and France. That he lacks fame in his own land is not surprising. Too many of his ideas ran counter to those held by a majority of the population in his own time. His greatness lay in his compassionate humanity, a quality that is only rarely in fashion.
It was compassionate humanity that led Woolman to make journey after journey south through Virginia and the Carolinas and north to Providence, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts to plead with slaveowners to set free the fellow humans they held captive. It was compassionate humanity that led him to journey westward to regions where he was in danger of losing his scalp: he wished to bring a message of peace and brotherhood to the Indians.
This fall Harvard inaugurated its twenty-fifth president. Taking note of that event, John T. Bethell, editor of the Harvard Bulletin , decided to recount briefly the travails of the university’s presidents over the past 334 years, often, as he did so, finding familiar themes. Herewith is the amusing minihistory by Mr. Bethell (Harvard, ’54): When Derek Curtis Bok was installed in October as Harvard University’s twentyfifth president, tradition dictated that he sit briefly on a hallowed relic known as the President’s Chair. Knurled and knotty, crafted by some anonymous artificer of Puritan England, the chair was not designed for comfort. Luckily for the presidents of Harvard, they are only required to use it during inaugurations and on Commencement Day.
Complaints about changing outlooks, of course, have been with us always. One rather charming one is this short preface that the once-famous American novelist, Winston Churchill, wrote in 1914 for a new edition of his excellent historical novel, Richard Carvel . After fifteen years of reprinting, the plates of Richard Carvel have worn out. My publishers are suggesting that I write a brief introduction for the new plates. There is still, strangely enough, a demand for the book. And the question is, how to account for the demand? For Richard Carvel must plead guilty, I suppose, to the gravest of all charges in these days—of being mid-Victorian. It was first published in 1899, when mid-Victorianism was already quite out of date.
The city of Philadelphia, which artist David J. Kennedy has so winningly recaptured for us in this issue (see pages 17-32), has not always been the only place where the Liberty Bell could be viewed. In mid-June of 1903, the venerable noisemaker (below), bedecked with wreaths- including one shaped like the bell itself—was put on a special railroad flat car and transported to Boston for the 128th anniversary celebration of the Battle of Bunker Hill. Lewis S. Milts of East Hartford photographed the strange cargo as it passed through Plainfield, Connecticut, obviously much admired by a surprised public.
Pondering Mr. Shannon’s essay further, it occurs to us that the young may have tuned out on the study of history in some part because what we have to say about it these days keeps changing so radically and so abruptly. At least it does on the surface, in popular literature, in the movies, and on television. The mode is so destructive that heroism has become a joke, moral courage an aberration, democracy a satire. Heroes turn into villains overnight, from Custer in the film Little Big Man to Kennedy in the Pentagon Papers. The most terrible bad actor of all, in the litany of youth, is the white man, who has been transformed into a heavy out of melodrama; in his manifold sins and wickednesses a new generation bathes in a kind of orgiastic guilt.
Speaking of Indians, Mr. Ewers’ remarks bring to mind a story told by Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona during a speech before the Western History Association in Tucson in the fall of 1968. It goes as follows: Senator Carl Hayden … was sheriff of Maricopa County before Arizona became a state. … After the federal government had firmly imposed its restrictions against polygamy upon the Mormon settlers, some nosey person observed that the Pima and Maricopa Indians living in the desert were following this practice, which also had been commonplace in Biblical times. Charges were raised against an Indian chief living several miles from Phoenix who was known to have more than one wife. Sheriff Hayden rode out to the reservation to warn the chief against the practice. He found the man resting under a cottonwood tree while his two wives were hoeing a patch of corn. Squatting in the shade with the Indian, Carl exchanged pleasantries and offered the makings of a cigarette before finally getting around to the subject of his visit.
Concern over an apparent lack of interest in history on the part of today’s youth prompted William V. Shannon, a member of the editorial board of the New York Times , to write the following essay, entitled “The Death of Time,” for his newspaper this past summer. We commend it as a thoughtful analysis of the reasons behind that trend. It is not astonishing that today’s high school students regard history as the “most irrelevant” subject and that, according to a [recent] story, … undergraduate history enrollment at leading colleges has dropped as much as a third in recent years. Ignorance of history and disdain for history are symptomatic of the malaise of today’s youth culture and of the larger society which nurtured it. This malaise is the logical outcome of intellectual trends which began with the onset of the modern industrial age.