The Meaning of “When”

Aaron Astor

I was recently asked to join a local committee to plan the centennial celebration of our local school district. The City of Maryville, Tennessee's public system was poised to commemorate its 100th anniversary in 2013 with lots of festivities and a nice, photo-filled book fleshing out the district’s long and storied past. But then the project hit a strange snag.  It came to the attention of the centennial committee chair that 2013 might not actually be the centennial of the Maryville City School system after all.

In somewhat of a panic, the chairwoman sent me an email detailing her extensive search for the “true” date of the school system’s founding. The first schoolhouse appeared in Maryville as early as 1797.  Still, 1913 was important. It was the year Tennessee passed a compulsory education law (southern states were quite late in the game).  It was also the year that Maryville High School first planned its four-year curriculum, though the first class would not graduate until 1919.  However, the state approved a “special school district”, with taxing authority, for the city as early as 1905.  And the first major schools were not built until 1911.  Adding to the confusion is the fact that there had been some semblance of schooling on the site of Maryville High School as early as 1867. Interestingly enough, it was known as the Maryville Freedmen’s Institute, and it served the relatively small ex-slave population of the county. As a final irony, the high school’s nickname is, you guessed it, the Rebels—despite the staunchly pro-Union leanings of Maryville and East Tennessee during the Civil War. The commemorative volume will surely delve into that oft-controversial piece of history.

But the question of dates persisted.  Before we could get into the thorny questions surrounding the school’s nickname, or the warm and fuzzy memories of graduating classes in years gone by, we had to determine if this was even the right time to do it.  And if we “discovered” that 1913 was the wrong founding date, should we then change our school district seal, which has the 1913 date on it?

And so the question boiled down to the meaning of “when”—as in, when was the school system founded? And more importantly, why does that matter?

Amusingly, this very same question—the meaning of “when” —came up when an old friend and colleague from grad school—Greg Downs of City College of New York—came down to the University of Tennessee and delivered a fascinating lecture on the “Ends of the Civil War.”  As he pointed out in colorful detail, the question of “when did the Civil War end” is a very difficult one to resolve. Lee’s surrender? What about Johnston’s surrender? Or a General in Texas who surrendered? Or when President Johnson declared an end to the state of war (in 1866)? Or myriad other times in between? (See Heather Cox Richardson’s recent post on a related matter.)  As Downs pointed out, this was not a mere antiquarian question. It had real legal consequences. After all, if a state of war still existed, the US government could still apply martial law.  Local court systems could still be suspended. And so on. The question of “when” was inextricably bound to the question of “why”, “how” and, of course, “so what?”

Maryville's first school, founded in 1797

My answer to the Maryville City Schools Centennial Committee chair, then, was to declare that it is up to us, as historians, to declare “when” the school system was founded. As long as we could make a compelling argument for why that date made sense, then there was no reason we couldn’t stick with that date. The chairwoman was clearly relieved to hear from a professional historian that it was OK for us to “pick” a date. Any date, as she also concluded, would be somewhat arbitrary.

Much of the historical profession focuses on how events unfold, why they take the shape they do, what their significance is for later history, and how people of the time—and perhaps later on in the collective memory—make sense of those events. But it is quite rare that we really interrogate the “when” part of history, except insofar as we “complicate” earlier chronologies.   The reality is that every time we select a set of dates to bookend a historical phenomenon—a war, a revolution, a religious awakening, the establishment of the Maryville City School district—we are making a profoundly important argument about the very significance of the event itself.    
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Aaron Astor is Associate Professor of History at Maryville College in Tennessee, just a few miles from Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  He is author of Rebels on the Border: Civil War, Emancipation, and the Reconstruction of Kentucky and Missouri, 1860-1872 (LSU Press, 2012), which examines the transformation of grassroots black and white politics in the western border states during the Civil War era.  He earned his PhD in History at Northwestern University in 2006 and lives in Maryville with his wife, Samantha, and two children, Henry and Teddy.

A Leadership Legacy: Happy 138th, Winston

Philip White

November 30 was Winston Churchill’s birthday. 138 years after his birth, historians, politicians and the public are still as fascinated as ever about this most iconic of British Prime Ministers. Of course, as with every major historical figure, the

Ivor Roberts-Jones statue of Churchill, Oslo, Norway

amount of one-sided deconstructionism has increased over the past few years, no more useful to the reader than one-sided hagiography. The truth, of course, lies somewhere in the middle–a deeply flawed (aren’t we all!) larger-than-life figure who botched a lot of decisions–notably his resistance to home rule for India and well-meaning but ill-conceived support of Edward VIII during the 1936 abdication crisis–who got the big things right.

Among the latter was Churchill’s foresight over the divisions between the democratic West and the Communist East. Since the inception of Communism and its violent manifestation in the Russian Revolution, Churchill had despised the movement, calling it a “pestilence.” Certainly, his monarchial devotion was part of this, but more so, Churchill believed Communism destroyed the very principles of liberty and freedom that he would devote his career to advancing and defending. Certainly, with his love of Empire, there were some inconsistencies in his thinking, but above all, Churchill believed that the individual should be able to make choices and that systemic freedom–of the press, of religion, of the ballot, must be upheld for individuals to enact such choices. That’s why he vowed to “strangle Bolshevism in its cradle,” though his plan to bolster anti-Communist forces was quickly shot down by Woodrow Wilson and David Lloyd George as another of “Winston’s follies.”

In this case, his plan to oppose Communism was indeed unrealistic. There were a small amount of British, Canadian, and American troops and a trickle of supporting materiel going to aid the White Russians toward the end of World War I, but once the Armistice was signed on November 11, 1918, the Allied leaders wanted to get their boys home, not commit more to a seemingly hopeless cause.

But over the next three decades, Churchill’s ideas on how to deal with Communism became more informed, more realistic and, arguably, more visionary. Though he reluctantly accepted Stalin as an ally when Hitler turned on Russia in the fateful summer of 1941, Churchill’s pragmatism and public admiration of the Marshal did not blind him to the ills of the Communist system. The Percentages Agreement he signed with Stalin in a late 1944 meeting has since been blamed for hastening the fall of democratic Eastern Europe, but what Churchill was actually doing there was essentially recognizing that the Communist takeover was a fait accompli, and guaranteeing Stalin’s agreement to largely leave the Greek Communists to their own devices in Greece after World War II. Though Moscow did supply arms and it took the Marshall Plan to prop up the anti-Communist side in Greece, Stalin largely honored this pledge.

He was not so good on his word with many other things, however. Among the promises he made to Churchill and FDR were to include the London Poles (exiled during the war) in a so-called representative government in Poland. In fact, the Communist puppet Lublin Poles ran the new regime after the war, and the old guard was either shunned or killed. In fact, horrifyingly, many of the leaders of the Polish Underground were taken out by Stalin’s henchmen, and others were held in former Nazi camps that the Red Army had supposedly “liberated.” At the Potsdam Conference in July 1946, Stalin showed that his vows at Yalta were mere lip service to the British and American leaders.  He made demands for bases in Turkey, threatened the vital British trade route through the Suez canal and refused to withdraw troops from oil-rich Iran.

Churchill, still putting his faith in personal diplomacy, believed he could reason with Stalin, particularly if Harry Truman backed him up. But halfway through the Potsdam meeting the British public sent the Conservative Party to its second worst defeat in one of the most surprising General Election decisions. Churchill was out as Prime Minister and Clement Attlee was in. Off Attlee went to Germany to finish the dialogue with Truman and Stalin. Churchill feared he was headed for political oblivion.

Yet, after a few weeks of moping, he realized that he still had his pen and, as arguably the most famous democratic leader of the age (only FDR came close in global renown), his voice. And so it was that he accepted an invitation to speak at a most unlikely venue in March 1946 – Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri – not least due to the postscript that Truman added to Westminster president Franc “Bullet” McCluer’s invite, offering to introduce Churchill in the President’s home state. There he described the need for a “special relationship” between the British Commonwealth and the United States, which was needed to check the spread of expansionist Communism and the encroachment of the “iron curtain” into Europe. 

As I explained

Philip White speaking at the National
Churchill Museum, Fulton, Missouri, Nov 11, 2012

when I spoke at the National Churchill Museum on, fittingly, Armistice Day, last month, this metaphor entered our lexicon and was embodied in the Berlin Wall–the enduring image of the standoff. Yet the “special relationship” outlived this symbol, as did the principles of leadership Churchill displayed in his brave “Sinews of Peace” speech (the real title of what’s now known as the “Iron Curtain” address). Churchill was willing to speak a hard truth even when he knew it would be unpopular and then, a few days later, after a police escort was needed to get him into New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel as demonstrators yelled “GI Joe is home to stay, Winnie, Winnie, go away,” to boldly declare, “I do not wish to withdraw or modify a single word.” His critics again called him an imperialist, an old Tory and, in as Stalin said, a warmonger. The same insults he had endured when sounding the alarm bell about Hitler in the mid- to late-1930s. And in 1946, just as in the 1930s, Churchill was right.

Not only did Churchill define the Communist-Democratic divide, he also had a plan for what to do about it. Though his more ambitious ideas, including shared US-UK citizenship, did not come to fruition, the broader concepts were embodied in the creation of NATO, European reconciliation, and the Marshall Plan. He also understood not just the Communist system he criticized but the democratic one it threatened, and, the day after the anniversary of Jefferson’s inaugural address, gave a memorable defense of the principles that were, he said, defined by common law and the Bill of Rights. This is something leaders of any political persuasion must be able to do–to articulate what they and we stand for, and why.

As I think of Churchill just after his birthday, that’s what I’m focusing on: vision, understanding and bravery. Such leadership principles will be just as valid 138 years from now as they were on that sunny springtime afternoon in Fulton.

History and Memory of American Slavery Roundup

Eastman Johnson, "A Ride for Liberty: The Fugitive," 1862

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"Piecing Together Stories Of Families 'Lost In Slavery,'" NPR, July 16, 2012

For decades, slavery tore apart African-American families. Children were sold off from their mothers, and husbands were taken from their wives. Many desperately tried to keep track of each other, even running away to find loved ones. After the Civil War and emancipation, these efforts intensified. Freed slaves posted ads in newspapers and wrote letters — seeking any clue to a family member's whereabouts.

In Help Me to Find My People, author Heather Andrea Williams examines the emotional toll of separation during slavery and of the arduous journey many slaves took to reunite their families.>>>

Christian Boone, "Controversial slavery mural gets new home," Atlanta Journal-Constitution, July 16, 2012

A controversial mural depicting slavery that until recently greeted visitors to the Georgia Department of Agriculture will be back on display starting in August.

The Georgia Museum of Art, located on the University of Georgia campus, has rescued the painting — part of a series of murals produced by Atlanta-based artist George Beattie in 1956 chronicling the state's agricultural history — from a state storage facility and will debut the collection Aug. 1.>>>

Amy Wimmer Schwarb, "U.S. conference highlights slaves' southern path to freedom," Reuters, June 20, 2012

With the North Star as the guiding light for runaway slaves and Canada as the Promised Land, the underground railroad that U.S. schoolchildren read about in textbooks points to freedom in just one direction - the north.

But scholars gathering this week for the National Underground Railroad Conference will head south to St. Augustine, Florida, home to the former capital of Spanish Florida and a flight-to-freedom story rooted in the 17th century that is unknown to most Americans.>>>

Ira Chernus, "Slavery and 'Big Government': The Emancipation Proclamation’s Lessons 150 Years Later," History News Network, July 12, 2012

One hundred fifty years ago today, on July 13, 1862, Abraham Lincoln went out for a carriage ride with his Secretary of State, William Seward, and his Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles. Lincoln told them (as Welles recalled it) that he had “about come to the conclusion that it was a military necessity absolutely essential for the salvation of the Union, that we must free the slaves.” That was the seed of conception for the Emancipation Proclamation, which came to birth five and half months later, giving Lincoln his greatest legacy: “He freed the slaves.” It’s a story everyone knows.

But it’s not quite accurate. Only the slaves in the Confederate states were emancipated. Citizens of the Union could still own slaves.>>>

Dawn Turner Trice, "First lady's ancestry an American story," Chicago Tribune, June 18, 2012

Many Americans are fascinated by the family history of Michelle Obama, a descendant of slaves who is the nation's first African-American first lady.

You've learned a lot about her ancestry in this newspaper. Now, add to that a new book due out Tuesday, "American Tapestry: The Story of the Black, White, and Multiracial Ancestors of Michelle Obama.">>>

Anniversaries and Birthdays, 2012

Randall Stephens

2012 marks "the bicentenary of Dickens's birth, and the planned programme of events is huge," writes Dinah Birch in the TLS.

It will reach far beyond the literary world, encompassing exhibitions, debates, documentaries, theatrical performances, public readings, and television and radio programmes. Films will include a major new Great Expectations. In Houston, there is to be a half-marathon especially for Dickens enthusiasts. No one with a taste for history, books, public events, or dressing up need feel left out.

Dickens shares his birth year with Dorothea Dix, Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, and Harriet Martineau. But to paraphrase The Smiths, some names are bigger than others. These others will generate relatively minor celebrations as compared with Dickens birthday. As far as I know, though, the adjectives "Dumasian" or "Hugoian" do not roll off the tongue or conjure a whole range of ideas. Why do we commemorate and celebrate what we do? What make some events, birthdays more important than others?

What other anniversaries can we expect will be celebrated/commemorated in 2012? (The following sampling is collected from historyorb.com)

1852

Mar 20th - Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" published (Boston)

May 18th - Massachusetts rules all school-age children must attend school

1912

Feb 8th - 1st eastbound US transcontinental flight lands in Jacksonville, Fla

Apr 2nd - Sun Yet Sen forms Guomindang-Party in China

Apr 15th - Titanic sinks at 2:27 AM off Newfoundland

Sep 27th - W C Handy publishes "Memphis Blues"

Oct 8th - 1st Balkan War begins - Montenegro declares war on Turkey

1952

Feb 7 – Elizabeth II is proclaimed Queen of the United Kingdom

Mar 27th - Sun Records of Memphis begins releasing records

May 8th - Mad Magazine debuts

Nov 4th - Eisenhower (R) elected 34th pres beating Adlai Stevenson (D)

Alumination

Chris Beneke

Since you’ve paused here to gaze upon this blog, dear web traveler, I presume that you possess some interest in history, and perhaps even for the things previously appearing on this site. From that I will speculate that might enjoy this recently published Boston Globe piece by Chris Marstall on Massachusetts’ aluminum historical markers: “History, Preserved in Sturdy Aluminum: Eighty Years Ago, What Did We Want to Remember about Massachusetts?”

In 1930, Marstall notes, “[s]ome 275 markers were erected … to mark the state’s 300th birthday,” and identify “places which played a leading part in the history of the colony.’” Marstall’s interest in the subject appears to have been sparked by the work of Robert Briere, president of the Sturbridge Historical Society, who is leading an effort to preserve and restore the 81 year-old signs. Another part-time historian, Russell Bixby, is “recording GPS coordinates for the 144 or so markers remaining in place,” which are then displayed with other information at HMDB.org.

Marstall’s piece makes it clear that he’s dealing with historiography, as well as history. The renowned Harvard historian, Samuel Eliot Morison, was responsible for most of the text on the signs, and his goal was to rehabilitate the Puritan image. To this end, Morison portrayed the commonwealth’s founders as “literate community builders, industrialists, and pathmakers,” rather than dogmatic prigs. Morison may have met some modest, temporary success in this regard. But what he could not account for was our judgment on his own work, including the observation that his many commemorations of Puritan and Indian battles severely minimized Indian deaths.*

The article brought to mind the first local historical marker that I recall noticing: a small stone monument that had been erected in a corn field on a back road in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. I was seventeen when I caught my first glimpse of the marker from the passenger side of my buddy’s Toyota Celica. The gently undulating field in which it squatted was not unlike the dozens of others that we rocketed past on the 10-mile trek between our rural homes and the ramshackle gym we frequented. But one summer evening, on the back leg of this teenage orbit, I noticed this greyish stone protrusion. Initially, as we hurtled pass at roughly twice the posted speed limit, I was able to decipher only a word or two. But after several passes, the entire text came into view: “Last Battle of Shays Rebellion was here Feb. 27, 1787.”

I’m pretty sure that I knew almost nothing about Shay’s Rebellion, but the name was familiar enough to trigger the curiosity of someone who prematurely fancied himself to be serious about things that happened in the past. To my adolescent mind, battles were the essence of serious history—you know, Caesar, Napoleon, George Washington, Dwight Eisenhower—all that. I had certainly passed markers before, but this one made an impression. The words engraved on that midget obelisk produced an intimation that my humble corner of the American continent possessed historical significance.

I’ve been an historian too long now to believe that a single sign can have any direct causal impact, like for instance, launching a seventeen-year-old on a career path. But also long enough also to appreciate the debt we owe to the resolute preservers of stone, aluminum and memory.

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* Not coincidentally, Marstall’s article was passed along to me by the incomparable Eric Schultz who blogs about business, innovation, and history at The Occasional CEO and who also happens to have written an excellent book on King Philip’s War.

An Interview with John Fea on the Historian's Public Role and the Christian Nation Debate

Randall Stephens

With the 4th of July just around the corner, it's a good time to reflect on how Americans conceive the settlement and founding of their nation. John Fea has been thinking and writing about colonial America and the Revolutionary Era for quite some time. (He writes on that and related matters at his popular, always interesting blog Way of Improvement Leads Home.) Fea is the author of The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian and the Rural Enlightenment in Early America (U of Pennsylvania Press, 2008) and an editor of Confessing History: Explorations in Christian Faith and the Historian's Vocation, with Jay Green and Eric Miller (University of Notre Dame Press, 2010). His most recent book, Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? A Historical Introduction (Westminister John Knox Press, 2011), uncovers the historical roots of the Christian nation question and offers much-needed, timely insight. I recently caught up with Fea and asked him about his book, contemporary discussions on the matter, and his experience lecturing on the topic.

Randall Stephens: Gordon Wood has commented on the strange fascination Americans have with their founders. Other westerners, he observes, are not so obsessed with the lives and values of their nations' progenitors. Why do you think it matters so much, to so many Americans, that the founding fathers and the nation itself was and is Christian?

John Fea: As a I argue in the first four chapters of Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?, the overwhelming majority of Americans have always seen themselves as living in a Christian nation. Though the idea of America as a "Christian nation" has been understood in different ways by different groups, I think one could make a pretty good argument that today's advocates of a "Christian America" have a large chunk of American history on their side. This is more a statement about the influence of Christianity on American culture and less a statement about whether or not the founders believed that they were creating a uniquely Christian nation or whether those who believe today that America is a Christian nation are correct in their assumption.

Anyone familiar with the historiography of American religion knows that American evangelicalism and American nationalism have, in many ways, grown-up together. A lot of Christians today have a hard time separating the two. Since this book came out I have talked to several people—both on the radio and on the lecture circuit—who have a hard time distinguishing their patriotism from their Christian faith. One radio host told me point blank that if America was not a Christian nation he could not be a patriot.

Stephens: You write about the difference between what the public wants out of the past and how historians actually practice history. Is this difference at the heart of the Christian nation debate?

Fea: Yes, I think it is. Before I wrote this book I was aware, at a cognitive level, that most people were in search of a usable past. But the reaction to this book has really opened my eyes to the way ordinary Americans think about history. I don't believe that there is anything wrong in searching for a past that helps us achieve our present-minded agendas. Lawyers do it all the time. But those who only approach history in this way miss out on the transformative power that the study of the past can have on our lives and our society. In a world in which self-interest, individualism, and even narcissism reign supreme, history forces us to see ourselves as part of a larger human story. It has the potential to humble us. Its careful study has the potential to cultivate civility as we learn to listen to voices that are different from our own. I am working on a book on this topic which should be out sometime in late 2012.

I would like to start a crusade to promote good historical thinking as a means of contributing to civil society. Now if only I could find a wealthy philanthropist or foundation who might be willing to fund my project. (If anyone wants to talk more about this let me know).

Stephens: What do you think accounts for the widespread popularity of amateur Christian nation historians like David Barton and the late Peter Marshall?

Fea: I can think of three reasons for their popularity. First, as I mentioned in my answer to a previous question, Barton and Marshall are reinforcing the God-and-country narrative that many American Christians feel comfortable with. Christians can read these authors and breathe a sigh of relief because someone is affirming their already held beliefs about the American past.

Second, I think both Barton and Marshall are/were effective communicators. Barton is smooth. He can be very compelling. I have watched him on television and have found him to be an effective salesperson. Marshall and his co-author David Manuel were excellent writers. When compared to your average history textbook, their million-selling The Light and the Glory reads like a page-turner.

Third, I think Barton and Marshall have been so successful because, frankly, they are the only game in town. Most scholars, academics, and intellectuals have not stepped up to the plate to provide an alternative narrative. Scholars do not go out on the lecture circuit or write for popular audiences. They do not have public relations people or connections with local churches. They don't have the time or inclination to do these things.

When most Christian academics think about being public intellectuals they think in terms of writing for The New Republic or The Atlantic or a similar venue. Don't get me wrong, I think that Christian intellectuals should be writing in these venues. I also think that Christian intellectuals should be publishing with major university presses and trade presses, but if they want to serve the church and society they need to think about their careers, or at least part of their careers, in a different way.

Stephens: How do you address the Christian nation debate in the classroom?

Fea: I have had several opportunities in the classroom to address this issue. I usually don't dive into it in any great depth in my U.S. survey course (although this could change since I have now written this book), but I do explore it a great deal in my upper-division course on the American Revolution and a seminar I teach on religion and the founding. I teach mostly Christian students so many of them come to my classes with some opinion about the whole Christian America debate. Since I am a history professor, I usually try to approach the topic without a strong opinion one way or the other. (In other words, I don't come into class with my proverbial guns blazing and tell my students that I am going to try to debunk their false views about the relationship between Christianity and the American founding). Instead, we usually handle the issue through the reading and discussion of primary sources.

Stephens: You've lectured extensively on the subject of your book. Could you comment briefly on your experience? Would you recommend going on the lecture circuit?

Fea: My experience on the so-called "lecture circuit" has been mixed. I have thoroughly enjoyed the speaking and engagement with those who come to my talks. On the other hand, I have realized just how difficult it is to get people to think historically about this topic. Most people who come to one of my lectures come with their minds already made up about the question in the title of my book and are thus looking for me to confirm their position. When this does not happen (for those on both sides of the debate), I think folks get a bit uncomfortable or perhaps even defensive. I welcome this response. After all, history is complex and messy. Any type of education or learning should make us a bit uncomfortable.

Would I recommend the lecture circuit? Yes. I think that academics and scholars should be able to take their research and explain it to a popular audience in an enthusiastic and passionate way. On the other hand, such an approach to an intellectual or academic life requires taking the time to leave the ivory tower and get on the road in order to meet people in all kinds of settings. Needless to say, I have had my share of cookies and punch in church basements, chicken dinners on college campuses, tours of local historical societies, microphone problems at revolutionary-era round tables, and long car rides listening to E-Street Radio on XM. I have enjoyed it all and hope to do more of it, but I also realize that not all academics will want to do this, nor should they.

Revere, Revisited

Chris Beneke

Now that public interest has shifted to the contents of Sarah Palin's email account, it appears that the dust has settled on her imaginative reconstruction of Paul Revere’s Ride. It was fun while it lasted. The high point may have been Steven Colbert’s demonstration of how Revere could have rung a bell and fired multiple warning shots from a front-loading (single shot) musket, while riding on a rocking, coin-operated steed.

The editors of Revere’s once relatively sedate Wikipedia page were kept very busy with this extra attention. Palin supporters descended upon them with Palin-friendly edits. Then the gawkers, like me, stopped for a look. The page saw as many as 140,000 visitors on June 6.

At least we were all motivated to learn something about Paul Revere and the American Revolution (how many of those 140,000 were history professors and teachers making sure they had their stories straight?). The chief authority on this topic might be David Hackett Fischer, author of the magisterial book with the deceptively quaint title Paul Revere’s Ride. But Fischer appears to have (wisely) made himself scarce during this controversy.

Though the subject was one on which very few, outside of the Minute Man National History Park, are expert, Palin’s Revere comments gave some very respectable historians and pundits a chance to address the public on an early American history topic and to reflect more broadly on our commitment to education.

Here, forthwith, is a brief snapshot of the historically informed media attention:

In the New Yorker, Jill Lepore described Revere’s ride as a form of “hyperlore, which passes from one computer to the next, along a path best called hyperbolic.” Lepore provides a helpful link to Revere’s 1775 deposition for the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, which is held at the venerable Massachusetts Historical Society. It’s well worth the few minutes it takes to read Revere’s account, charmingly laden with contemporary expressions and the variety of spellings for which early Americans are justly known.

On Salon.com, Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg were in grading mode, awarding Palin an "'F' on the Paul Revere quiz." They continue: "Okay, Sarah. Here's your guide to what you need to know about Paul Revere. He did not ring bells or fire warning shots. He did not warn the British. He did not defend ‘freedom.’ And he did not yell, ‘The British are coming!’ because he was a British subject in 1775. As Professor David Hackett Fischer explained in his book 'Paul Revere's Ride,' Revere would have shouted, ‘The regulars are coming!’ That is, the regular army. Americans in and around Boston were called ‘country people.’ Revere was not defending a nation, because the nation we became did not exist yet. Before the phrase ‘United States of America’ was born with the Declaration of Independence, those resisting British power, identifying with the Continental Congress, were collectively known as the ‘United Colonies.’"

Burstein and Isenberg’s larger point is that Palin, who lacks “a basic respect for knowledge” should be, but is decidedly not, “embarrassed by her ignorance.”

Robert Allison, was more sympathetic to Palin in his New York Daily News oped, finding several nuggets of truth in her understanding of Revere’s Ride: “[S]he was, in a sense [right]. Revere, in fact, was warning the British Empire—of which Massachusetts was part—that it could not invade the rights of Americans. Revere himself did not ring bells or fire shots, but the colonists he alerted did. The British troops beginning their march westward heard the bells, and knew the alarm was out. The rest of it—the warning about being secure and being free, was metaphorical . . .”

Allison’s larger point is that historians should take responsibility for failing to educate the public and be grateful for this opportunity to share what they know. "Sarah Palin is not a historian. . . . She is a politician, and quite emphatically a representative of ‘ordinary Americans.’ If her reading of Revere is too subtle for the professoriate, and if she comes across to many as woefully misinformed after visiting these sites, whose fault is it? Hers, or ours, as tour guides and historians?"

Acknowledging how much we all could do with more learning, Pulitzer-Prize winning commentator Leonard Pitts, Jr., observes that "while it is comforting to think Palin’s gaffe speaks only to her own considerable limitations, it is also short-sighted. The evidence suggests that she is less an exception to, than a reflection of, a nation that is in the process of forgetting itself."

Which, I now editorialize, makes Congress’ recent decision to gut the Teaching American History (TAH) program especially disappointing. I just assisted with a TAH proposal and was looking forward, as part of the proposed program, to take local elementary school teachers on a tour of the battle sites at Lexington and Concord, showing them where Paul Revere was likely to have been captured—and where he warned the Regulars that colonial militia were mustering—as well as discussing Paul Revere’s Ride with them.

The alarm has rung, but getting the actual message out will now be more challenging.

Ronald Reagan vs College Students, 1967

Randall Stephens

"NEW HAVEN, Dec. 4 [1967]--Gov. Ronald Reagan of California, who said he had never taught anything before except swimming and Sunday school, sat on a desk at Yale University today and conducted a class in American history." So reported the New York Times on the Gipper's visit to the ivy, where he was met with student protests and plenty of probing questions (December 6, 1967).

"Should homosexuals be barred from holding public office?" a senior from LA asked. The governor was surprised by the question. Rumors had been swirling that his administration had fired two staff members after their sexual preferences came to light. "It's a tragic

illness," said Reagan, after a pause. And, yes, he did think that homosexuality should remain illegal. Some students earlier had demanded that the school rescind its invitation to Reagan. The governor, who visited Yale as a Chubb fellow, gave his $500 honorarium to charity.

The confrontation between the 56-year-old governor and Yale students in 1967 speaks to the culture wars that roiled the decade and continue to reverberate to this day. In the video embedded here the students, with haircuts that make them look like clones of Rob from My Three Sons, square off with Reagan on poverty, race, and Vietnam.

The commemoration of the one-hundredth birthday of the 40th president brought with it the usual fanfare of radio specials, documentaries, guest editorials, and the like. The new HBO doc
Reagan, like PBS's American experience bio, spans the actor-turned-politician's career. (Watch the latter in full here.)

Lost in the telling, sometimes, is the scrappy, intensely ideological cold and cultural warrior from the 1960s and early 1970s. To correct that a bit, see the governor go at it with the somewhat nervous Yalies. Or, observe him lashing out against that "mess in Berkeley." (A clip from the HBO doc showing the governor dress down Berkeley administrators shows that pretty well.) The public memory version--rosy-cheeked, avuncular, sunny--overshadows that more fiery aspect of his personality and politics.

Americans remember their leaders as they choose. (The myths and legends are as stubborn as a Missouri mule.) But it is good to remind ourselves that the politicians and public figures we revere and/or study are rarely as one-dimensional as we'd sometimes think they are.

Counting Flowers on the Wall

Randall Stephens

The Associated Press site has a "Today in History" page. History Today regularly features it-happened-on-this-day posts on its blog. The History Channel, the purveyor of pop and trivia history for the masses, has something similar. (I wonder if they feature the days on which ancient aliens completed the construction of pyramids or the dates on which Nostradamus's predictions came true.)

A fun twist on the theme comes from a computer scientist trained at the University of Cambridge. In an interview, William Tunstall-Pedoe tells All Things Considered that after he had run 300 millions facts through a program he had come to the conclusion that April 11, 1954, was "extremely notable for having almost nothing happen."

A little from the transcript of the interview:

Mr. TUNSTALL-PEDOE: It's not that nothing happened. It's that it was spectacularly unnotable in terms of the events that happened that day. So it was the most boring day in recent history.

SIEGEL: Well, perhaps someone in our audience knows of something that happened on April 11th, 1954, that might lead some revision of this judgment.

Mr. TUNSTALL-PEDOE: I'm totally up to the challenge.

SIEGEL: You're up to the challenge.

Mr. TUNSTALL-PEDOE: Up to the challenge, yeah. A lot of people have tried already in the last few days. So but yes, absolutely.

SIEGEL: There was, I think, an exhibition baseball game between the then-New York Giants and Cleveland Indians, who would go on to play in the World Series later that year.

Mr. TUNSTALL-PEDOE: And you think that counts as...

Listen to the full story here.

Oral History and Iconic Red Desk Objects

Heather Cox Richardson

Morgan’s post on oral history struck a chord. (Among other things, he observes how valuable information is lost from one generation to the next.) I was shocked, recently, when talking to a high school student about her National History Day project, to learn that she had never heard of the Cold War hotline between the US and the USSR.

Indeed, why should she have? She was born after the end of the Cold War, and knows the USSR only from history books, most of which are too general to mention the hotline.

But in the 1960 and 1970s, everyone knew the story of the Red Telephone. It was such common knowledge that no one, apparently, has bothered to make a point of passing it down.

The significance of that loss goes far beyond understanding the mechanics of the connection. Indeed, the actual hotline was not a red telephone on the President’s desk; it was a teletype machine at the Pentagon. (The history of the hotline is told wonderfully here, by Webster Stone, now producer and executive of the American Film Company.)

The mechanics of the line are far less important than the cultural context it evoked. Imagine watching TV or films from the era of the Cold War without the knowledge of what a red telephone meant. Everyone who lived during that time understood that when a red phone sat on a desk, it was not a fashion accessory. It was a symbol of an enormously important link on which hung the fate of the world. (See this clip of a 1967 episode of Batman, for instance.)

But to a more recent generation, it’s just a red telephone.

For younger readers who don’t see why this matters, think of a red Swingline stapler. It’s a key prop from the black comedy Office Space. It represents the stifling bureaucracy of the modern office, cut into cubicles staffed with faceless paper pushers. (This is also the film that gave us “Didn’t you get the memo?”) To a certain generation, a red stapler carries an indictment of the soul-crushing big business of the early twenty-first century. Ignorance of that meaning tears a critical understanding away from modern popular TV and film.

But will anyone bother to tell their children what a red stapler signifies?

It seems to me that such cultural context is one key aspect of history that is lost without oral history. People simply don’t write down what is common knowledge. It is more likely to get recorded in a passing comment made to an oral historian.

Death, Memory, and Oral History

Morgan Hubbard

A recent piece in The Root on World War II-generation African Americans got me thinking about memory.

When people die they take their memories with them. Their memories become inaccessible forever. Our understanding of events that shaped our world can be lost with the death of one woman, man, or child.

When memories have contemporary political valence, this can be dangerous. Allesandro Portelli’s The Order Has Been Carried Out: History, Memory, and the Meaning of a Nazi Massacre in Rome (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) illustrates this point well. Portelli shows how nationalist Italians have purposefully misremembered the circumstances of a Nazi massacre sixty-five years ago for present political purposes. In 1945, anti-fascist Italian partisans attacked a column of German soldiers in Nazi-occupied Rome. The Nazis retaliated less than 24 hours later by massacring more than 300 Italians. Pro-fascist Italians at the time concocted a counter-narrative that blamed the partisans, not the Nazis, for the massacre, alleging that the partisans ought to have turned themselves in to forestall the murders. The documentary record demonstrates that this was never possible, but the counter-narrative is persistent, even among young right-leaning Italians today. Portelli's work rescues the truth, but only in the nick of time—the citizens of Rome who remember what really happened are now elderly. Many have already passed away.

Granted, most cases of memory are not so politically and morally fraught. But the fact remains that the loss of memory accompanying a person's death is also tragic for the historical record. Since the inception of large-scale oral history projects in the 1940s like the Works Progress Administration's Federal Writers Project—and the cultural turn in the humanities since the 1960s—academic historians in America have increasingly considered this. This is a good thing; memory enriches the documentary record.

The next step is to understand that generational memory loss is no longer as inevitable as it once was, thanks to technology, which has made democratized/amateur oral history a reality. If you have a laptop, or even a smart phone, you can conduct an oral history. StoryCorps has an excellent Do-It-Yourself guide to oral histories; the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress is another good place to start.

Disappearing History, Reappearing History

Randall Stephens

A recent TNR review, NYT essay, and a piece in the Chronicle shed light on the contested nature of history and memory here and across the pond. Mostly dark business. On the bright side, long-lost reels from the dark classic Metropolis are finally being shown. Der Spiegel reports on the recovery of the reels from the 1927 Fritz Lang film. Berliners recently previewed the restored classic. Turns out that this more than 20 minutes of extra material alters the story. (Hat tip to my wife Beth on the latter.)

Mark Mazower, "History's Isle," The New Republic, February 3, 2010

Cosmopolitan Islanders: British Historians and the European Continent
by Richard J. Evans

The effects of a great financial crisis ripple in many directions and last long. After a decade of expansion, for example, austere times lie ahead for British universities, with deep cuts on the horizon. There will be consequences for British scholarship and British culture. Richard Evans’s new study of the historical profession in Britain serves as a timely reminder both of what Britain’s historians have achieved over the past half-century, and what may be lost if their legacy is squandered. In particular, Evans celebrates his colleagues’ outward-looking mindset and their love-affairs with Europe, an engagement that is striking when compared to the introversion of their peers across the Channel, and—though he does not come out and say so—with the parochialism of contemporary British political and cultural life. read on >>>

Russell Shorto, "How Christian Were the Founders?" New York Times, February 11, 2010

The Christian “truth” about America’s founding has long been taught in Christian schools, but not beyond. Recently, however — perhaps out of ire at what they see as an aggressive, secular, liberal agenda in Washington and perhaps also because they sense an opening in the battle, a sudden weakness in the lines of the secularists — some activists decided that the time was right to try to reshape the history that children in public schools study. Succeeding at this would help them toward their ultimate goal of reshaping American society. As Cynthia Dunbar, another Christian activist on the Texas board, put it, “The philosophy of the classroom in one generation will be the philosophy of the government in the next.” read on >>>

John Castellucci, "The Night They Burned Ranum's Papers," Chronicle Review, February 14, 2010

At about 2:30 a.m. on May 22, 1968, as New York City police entered Hamilton Hall, on Columbia University's Morningside Heights campus, to clear it of demonstrators, files belonging to Orest A. Ranum, an associate professor of history, were ransacked, and papers documenting more than 10 years of research were burned. . . .

The papers were irreplaceable. They dated back to Ranum's time as a student at the University of Minnesota, where he got his Ph.D. in history. The notes were going to lay the basis for a textbook on early modern European history that he had been commissioned to write for a series edited by the British historian Sir John Plumb. read on >>>

Siobhán Dowling, "Back to the Future in Berlin: Restored 'Metropolis' Comes Home," Der Spiegel, February 13, 2010

After 83 years, Fritz Lang's Sci-Fi classic "Metropolis" has returned to Berlin in its full glory. On Friday night 2,000 fans braved the snowy weather to watch the restored classic at the Brandenburg Gate. It took restorers a year to repair the damage to the newly discovered scenes. They say the original film was much more complex and interesting than just a sci-fi cult classic. read on >>>

See Roger Ebert on streaming the restored version.