January 2011

He was such a man as legend is made of —and when first we see him, in Bennington’s Catamount Tavern on the evening of May i, 1775, his gaudy legend is already so thick and close around him that we can only imperfectly distinguish it from the man himself. Must we do so in order to know him as he “really” was? After all, his legend was no imposed creation of professional image-makers. It emanated from him directly, naturally, for the most part spontaneously—though he was not above adding to it now and then by playing a quite conscious role. In all probability, the legend illuminates more of his essential character than it distorts.

Of all the American eagles ever born in the north woods, the one that came closest to becoming the authentic and accepted National Bird was undoubtedly a fowl named Old Abe. Old Abe was an opinionated and rather self-satisfied creature who seemed quite aware that he was the only eagle in the country to be recognized as a regular veteran of the American Civil War, in which he served as a member of the 8th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry.

We often describe our neglected heroes as “unsung,” but surely the most “sung” hero in American history—taking the adjective literally—is a legendary Negro laborer from West Virginia named John Henry.

We often describe our neglected heroes as “unsung,” but surely the most “sung” hero in American history—taking the adjective literally—is a legendary Negro laborer from West Virginia named John Henry.

Gloomy enough, all of this, to be sure. Yet the automobile can be blamed too much. The development of the American city has followed its own pattern, and “urban sprawl” had set in well before the requirements of the automobile had had any substantial effect. If urbanization has brought a host of grave problems it appears that it is the city itself, rather than the means men use to get in and out of it and to and fro inside it, that needs examination.

Such an examination, much less emotional and also much more comprehensive and scholarly than the one just cited, is provided in The Urbanization of America, 1860-1915 , by Blake McKelvey, who undertakes to study what might be called the metropolitan character in America and tries to see just what was going on in the period before the motorcar took over.