American History

Review: We the People

/ rtrube54 / 1 Comment
Cover image of "We the People" by Jill Lepore

We the People

We the People, Jill Lepore. Liveright (ISBN: 9781631496080) 2025.

Summary: A history of the Constitution, focusing on the amendments and how difficult it has been to amend the constitution.

Do you know what amendment took the longest time to ratify? It was the most recent, the 27th Amendment, concerning congressional pay, which took 203 years to ratify, finally in 1992. Do you know the last amendment to be proposed and ratified in modern times? It was the 26th Amendment, which was ratified in 1971, giving eighteen-year-olds the right to vote, just in time for me to vote when I turned 18! Depending on how you count, it has been 34 or 55 years since the last amendment proposed was ratified. It’s not for lack of trying, as historian Jill Lepore observes in this book. Notably the Equal Rights Amendment, broadly favored by Americans never was ratified by enough states. Although a majority would like to see this, no amendment has passed out of Congress to abolish the electoral college.

We the People is a constitutional history which focuses the history of constitutional amendments of which there have been only twenty-seven in our 250 year history. But why so few? It all comes down to Article V of the constitution. First, two thirds of both houses of congress must approve an amendment. Then either legislatures or special conventions of three-fourths of the states must ratify the amendment.

Lepore observes that amendments tend to come in clusters. The first twelve were between 1791 (the Bill of Rights, numbers One to Ten) and 1804. The next amendments, Thirteen to Fifteen, followed the Civil War, between 1865 and 1870. Then Sixteen to Twenty-One, which included Prohibition and its repeal, income tax, and women’s suffrage dated between 1913 and 1933. Finally, the most recent group came between 1951 and 1971, Amendments Twenty-Two to Twenty-Six, addressing presidential term limits, DC electors, eliminating poll taxes, presidential succession, and voting for 18-year-olds. Then there was that oddball, the 27th, on congressional pay raises, resurrected from 1789 and finally ratified in 1992.

Lepore traces the periods of amendment and the intervening periods of quiescence. Of particular interest is the growing significance of the Supreme Court, at various times treating the constitution as a living document, adapting it to changing cultural needs. Then at other times, especially more recently, originalism treats the constitution as “dead, dead, dead” in Justice Scalia’s words. All the court may do is interpret and apply it original meaning. Everything else must be addressed by Article V.

But how are amendments possible in such a polarized congress and society? And what happens when neither amendments nor court interpretations address emerging societal realities? Lepore expresses concern about the possibilities of unrest as well as moves away from constitutional democratic governance. She sees neither an activist or originalist court as the answer but a return to a more robust embrace of amendments as the needed “safety valve” that properly allows for constitutional rule that grows with the needs of the country.

She concludes:

“No constitution can be kept forever, like a butterfly under glass, tacked down with pins. In danger of wilting. To constitute is to become or establish; to amend is to mend, correct, repair, and improve. Americans might learn again to amend, or else they could invent a new instrument to guarantee liberty, promote equality, nurture families, knit communities, thwart tyranny, and avert the destruction of a habitable earth” (p. 581).

Lepore has done a tremendous work of historiography. She also has left us with good questions. But I have a hard time seeing a way forward in our current political context and that concerns me. Attempting to draft a new constitution scares me more, the implication of “invent a new instrument.” Some of the basic premises about human nature and political philosophy that the original drafters shared are no longer shared. I cannot foresee anything but chaos ensuing. It seems to me that a critical beginning is a renewed sense of shared congressional vision, leadership, and collaboration. But will we awaken to that necessity?

Review: Brave Companions

/ rtrube54 / 2 Comments
Cover image of "Brave Companions" by David McCullough

Brave Companions

Brave Companions, David McCullough. Simon & Schuster (ISBN: 9781668003541) 2022 (first published in 1991).

Summary: Short profiles of exceptional American men and women from biologist Louis Agassiz to writer Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Recently, I reviewed a posthumously published collection of essays by David McCullough. I’ve loved his work ever since devouring his mammoth biography of Harry Truman. But in browsing the list of his books, I discovered there was one I had missed–this one! Obviously I’ve now remedied it.

In this work, McCullough offers brief sketches of a number of extraordinary historical figures, mostly Americans. Collecting these essays for this book, McCullough observed:

“Reading these essays again, selecting and arranging them as a book, I am struck by how much they have in common. In my way, I see now, I have been writing about the same kinds of people all along. And I see, too, the extent to which they have revealed the world and times past for me, and things about myself, that I would not have known otherwise” (p. xi).

It was indeed the case that this collection revealed more than the people, but also glimpses of our world and history in five sections.

First, he addresses “Phenomena.” He begins with the extraordinary journey of Alexander von Humboldt in South America from 1799-1804, accompanied by Aime Bonpland. Essentially, the pair rediscovered rediscovered South America. He follows with a portrait of biologist Louis Agassiz, whose first instruction to students after giving them a preserved fish was “Oh, look at your fish!” He and Asa Gray were friends and phenomena at Harvard who came to loggerheads over Darwin’s theories, which Agassiz couldn’t accept. He concludes the section sketching the life of Harriet Beecher Stowe. McCullough portrays the extraordinary renown for a woman she achieved as well as her renunciation of her father’s Calvinism.

Part Two on “The Real West” portrays life in the cattle town of Medora, in North Dakota’s Badlands. He does so though the lens of two figures, both who lost a fortune there–Teddy Roosevelt and the Marquis de Mores. Roosevelt went there an asthmatic stripling. Work alongside cowboys exhilarated him and turned him into the adventurous, robust figure we know. The other vignette is of artist Frederic Remington, through whom many Americans saw the West portrayed.

In Part Three, McCullough turns to “Pioneers.” He begins with the pioneer railroad engineers who built the first Panama Railway in the early 1850’s, overcoming both topography and disease. The next two essays concern the Brooklyn Bridge, on which McCullough wrote a full-length book. The first focuses on the Roeblings, father and son. Washington Roebling’s extraordinary engineering accomplishment, despite the effects of Caisson’s Disease, is underscored in the second, in which McCullough chronicles his discovery of the meticulous engineering plans for the bridge. Many bore Roebling’s initials and are works of art. McCullough describes his efforts to preserve this treasure. Finally he portrays a trio of early aviators who also wrote: Charles Lindbergh, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, and Beryl Markham.

Then in Part Four, McCullough turns to contemporaries in “Figures in a Landscape.” The first essay is a peril for anyone who already has too many books on the TBR pile. He profiles Conrad Richter, a novelist portraying life on America’s extending frontier. I learned he even wrote a trilogy on the early settlement of Ohio. Then he sketches the work of lawyer Henry Caudill and his fight against strip mining interests denuding the landscape of eastern Kentucky (which continues to this day). We meet zoologist Miriam Rothschild who has studied marine biology, entomology, and farming. Finally, he accompanies photographer David Plowden in his efforts to capture small town America.

The concluding Part Five, “On We Go” is different in not focusing on biography. First, McCullough remembers Washington, DC as he knew it–a very different place from today. The next is a from a magazine assignment, summarizing fifty years of history between 1936 and 1986. I lived through thirty-two of those years and the essay makes me think what I’d write about the next forty. Then McCullough advises Middlebury College graduates in a commencement speech to learn history by traveling. Finally, “Simon Willard’s Clock” is a reflection on the U.S. House of Representatives that I wish all present members of the House would read.

A few of these essays reprise material from McCullough’s longer books. Sometimes a snack rather than a full meal is just right and that is what these essays were. I was particularly fascinated to learn about Alexander von Humboldt, Conrad Richter, and Henry Caudill, a co-belligerent with Wendell Berry. But the particular strength of this book was the chance in brief to glimpse a number of seminal figures, and perhaps find one or two to probe more deeply. We all need our pantheon of brave companions.

Review: The Life of the Mind in America

/ rtrube54 / 2 Comments
Cover image of "The Life of the Mind in America" by Perry Miller

The Life of the Mind in America: From the Revolution to the Civil War, Books One Through Three, Perry Miller. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (ISBN: 9780156519908) 1965.

Summary: The first three books of an intellectual history of the influences that shaped the American mind.

American intellectual historian Perry Miller is most famous for his work on New England intellectual history, particularly that of the Puritans. In the year of his death (1963), Miller proposed to his publisher an ambitious project under the title of this book. It was a proposal consisting of ten books including a Prologue:

  • Prologue: The Sublime in America
  • Book I: The Evangelical Basis
  • Book II The Legal Mentality
  • Book III: Tension: Technology and Science
  • Book IV: The Battlefield of Democracy: education
  • Book V: Freedom and Association: Political Economy and Association
  • Book VI: Philosophy
  • Book VII: Theology
  • Book VIII: Nature
  • Book IX: The Self

Tragically, Miller was an alcoholic, struggling to recover until the assassination of John F. Kennedy, after which he basically drank himself to death, passing on December 10 of that year. He had completed only the first two books, and an outlined plan for the third. The Prologue was never written, which would have been interesting. His wife Elizabeth published his work posthumously, in 1965. It was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in History in 1966. We are left thinking, “If only…”

Book I explore the influence of revivalism in America. Most significant in this section is Miller’s account of how revivalism undermined the sectarian character of early American Protestantism, contributing both to a common evangelical mind and to the separation of church and state. A corollary to the latter is the rise of the voluntary spirit in American Christianity. Finally he traces the movement of revivals from rural settings like Cane Ridge to the urban setting of New York City in 1858 on the eve of the Civil War.

Book II then traces the parallel development of law. In this case, Miller offers an account that moves from a common sense approach and a reliance upon English common law to an increasing codification of civil and criminal law. In addition, he traces that transformation of the profession from reading Blackstone under an attorney’s tutelage to the rise of legal education. The growth of the nation exposed the inadequacies and contradictions in the English traditions of common law, equity, and civil law. Ultimately, this led to codification efforts.

Finally, Miller only completed chapter one of Book III. Above all, in this section, Miller traces out the transition of science from a contemplative study of the handiwork of God to the technological advances of the time. But what happens to God? Advances in geology anticipate the Darwinian controversies to follow. However we also glimpse a shift of finding the sublime in heavenly glories to the experience of technological wonders.

Although the work is dense, one senses the breadth of Miller’s own intellectual reach. It would have been fascinating to see Miller parse out his understanding of the American quest for the sublime in the other projected books. However, I wonder if this might have underscored the contradictions inherent in the tensions with which our nation has struggled. In addition, Miller’s decision to lead with the significance of revivals is striking. He stands apart from the intellectual squeamishness to deal with the importance of religion in the American experience, from which many are only now awakening. Thus, it doesn’t surprise me to find the book still in print sixty years after publication.

Finally, thanks for visiting Bob on Books.  I appreciate that you spent time here. Feel to “look around” – see the tabs at the top of the website, and the right hand column. And use the buttons below to share this post. Blessings! [Adapted from Enough Light, a blog I follow.]

Review: The Story of America

/ rtrube54 / Leave a comment
Cover image of "The Story of America" by Jill Lepore

The Story of America, Jill Lepore. Princeton University Press (ISBN: 9780691153995) 2012.

Summary: Essays on American origins from Jamestown and the Constitution to the IOU and Webster’s dictionary.

Nations as well, as individuals strive for self-understanding. Much of this comes through the stories we tell of ourselves, particularly the stories of our origins. That is, we try to understand how we got here as a way of understanding who we are. This is what Jill Lepore strives to do in this collection of essays on the story of America. Rather than a comprehensive, beginning to the present account, she offers a variety or origin stories, arranged roughly in chronological order.

Most of these essays first appeared in The New Yorker. Lepore says, “I wrote them because I wanted to learn how to tell stories better. But mostly, I wrote them because I wanted to explain how history works, and how it’s different than politics.” She adds to this her definition of doing history: “History is the art of making an argument about the past by telling a story accountable to evidence.”

She begins with the primal origin story, the settlement of Jamestown through the lens of Captain John Smith, who gave us our first account of the settlement, concluding that while he was an “Elizabethan gallant,” he was not a fraud. The colony was a mixture of success and catastrophe, American dream and American nightmare.

Subsequent essays consider the Puritans and the succession of historians who have tried to tell their story, Franklin’s The Way to Wealth, and the career of Thomas Paine, hailed for Common Sense and excoriated for The Age of Reason. She writes on the 4,400 words of the Constitution, often not read and even less understood, and the meanings that have accrued, including originalism as one form of interpretation.

From key events and ideas, Lepore moves to origins less noticed but also significant, for example, the origins of the I.O.U. and the development of bankruptcy law. Particularly fascinating is Lepores avvount of Noah Webster and his dictionary, begun in 1800 and ended in 1828. She reflects on his singular effort in defining 70,000 words compared to Johnson’s 43,000. He defined American words using American examples in his definitions and dug into the etymology of words. And Webster, a religious man whose faith was implicit in the work, reaped the benefit of the religious revivals coinciding with the dictionary’s publication.

She turns to the art of presidential biographies, particularly those on Washington to Jackson. And then there is that inferior item, the campaign biography! She weighs in on Jefferson and the Hemings family. She chronicles Charles Dickens’ journeys in America and his decided dislike for the country. Paired with Dickens in the following essay is Edgar Allan Poe. No love lost between the two men. She charts Poe’s struggle with poverty, his drinking and the question of whether Poe was a genius or mad. Then there are our heroes and the accounts that make them bigger than life, from the dime novels on Kit Carson to Longfellow’s Paul Revere. Added to these is Earl Derr Biggars’ Charlie Chan based on Hawaiian Chang Apana. Chan was hailed as great crime fiction in the day and for invidious racial stereotyping today.

Along the way are essays on the development of voting ballots and Clarence Darrow on a major labor case. One essay discusses the Great Migration. the subject of Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns, another on homicide and the death penalty. She concludes with the daunting task of writing inaugural addresses. Certainly, James Garfield was daunted, reading his predecessors. Only Lincoln really excelled. Most were mediocre to awful. Most address some version of history as they look to the future. But even the best speakers are rarely at their best here.

One of Lepore’s observations is the role of literacy in these stories. The story of our democracy is a story of reading and writing. She believes “Americans wrote and read their way into a political culture….” This, for me begs the question of the future of our democracy in our post-literate culture that wallows in an epistemic crisis. Instead of “stories accountable to evidence” we resort to fake news memes created with increasing visual sophistication. And it seems we are recreating our origin stories, engaging in both erasure and fable, attacking the history that is accountable to evidence. If nothing else, what Lepore does is remind us, in engaging story, of our real origins. And she reminds us of what we may easily lose.

Review: Unlikely General

/ rtrube54 / Leave a comment
Cover image of "Unlikely General" by Mary Stockwell

Unlikely General: “Mad” Anthony Wayne and the Battle for America, Mary Stockwell. Yale University Press (ISBN: 9780300251876) 2018.

Summary: A biography of “Mad” Anthony Wayne centered on his successful campaign to defeat Native tribes in the Northwest Territory.

For three years I lived one block from the Anthony Wayne Trail (part of US 24) in Toledo, Ohio. I knew little more than that it was the fastest way to downtown Toledo from our apartment, and that Anthony Wayne had fought against Native tribes in that part of northwest Ohio, and that Fort Wayne, southwest on US 24, was named after him.

Mary Stockwell’s biography of Wayne renders a far more complicated portrait of this man and explains why he succeeded where others before him failed on what was then the northwest frontier of the young country. Wayne had been one of Washington’s “warhorses” during the War for Independence. He led successful campaigns at Ticonderoga, Germantown, Stony Point (a signature victory against a British strong point), and after Yorktown, in Georgia, leading to the disbanding of British forces in the South.

Yet Washington was ambivalent about him. He reminds me of Grant. He was an aggressive fighter in contrast to the more cautious Washington, sometimes exposing himself to risks. Stockwell describes this ambivalence. Wayne did all asked of him by Washington and would do more. Yet others advanced past him. Stockwell interleaves Wayne’s Revolutionary War career with the account of Wayne’s campaign in the Ohio country of the Northwest Territory. By doing so, we meet a general at once an aggressive fighter and disciplinarian, yet one who struggled with self doubts.

Like Grant, Wayne struggled with what to do when he was not fighting. He endangered his estate in Pennsylvania with bad land acquisitions in the South. He briefly served in Congress. He at least flirted with an affair. He drank, suffered from old war injuries, and gout.

Yet American affairs were going badly. The British refused to settle a string of forts in Ohio and what is now Michigan. They enlisted a confederacy of tribes to fight for them in an effort to prevent settlement north of the Ohio River despite an agreement in 1785 by some tribes to allow settlers to settle in the southern half of what is now Ohio. In 1791, General Arthur St. Clair who was also governor of the Northwest Territory, was routed in a battle against Little Turtle near Fort Recovery in western Ohio near the present Indiana border. General Harmar, who had preceded him also was defeated in 1790.

Stockwell recounts how now-President Washington, after rejecting other candidates called Wayne out of retirement in the spring of 1792. She narrates the formation of a new, larger force, the Legion of the United States and Wayne’s move to Pittsburgh, at the head of the Ohio River, to recruit the army.

Both in his initial training camp in Legionville, near Pittsburgh, and later in Greenville, in western Ohio, Wayne built a fighting force for a different kind of warfare, marked by vigilance, discipline, and drills. Other troops had fled under fire. He wanted his to hold or advance and to know what to do. He became known by native scouts as “the General that does not sleep.”

Stockwell recounts the adversity he endured, from delayed supplies to desertions of Kentucky volunteers. Worse was the covert betrayal of General James Wilkinson, his second in command, who was secretly feeding negative reports to congressmen about Wayne and undercutting supply efforts. It later came out that he was collaborating with a foreign power, Spain.

By the summer of 1794, Wayne was ready to advance north. Natives fled ahead of him as he marched north to the Maumee River, building Fort Defiance at the junction of the Auglaize and Maumee Rivers. He then marched downstream toward the British Fort Miami. The Native tribes of the Confederacy sought refuge but the British, not wanting open war with the United States, shut them out, betraying their alliance. This led to the decisive Battle of Fallen Timbers, where Wayne defeated the Confederacy on the battlefield. He subsequently seized a center of the Confederacy, Kekionga, which he transformed into Fort Wayne.

Stockwell shows how Wayne transitioned from winning on the battlefield to wooing tribal leaders who had been abandoned by the British. He offered a settlement with minor adjustments of the 1785 agreement, allowing tribes to remain in northern Ohio while Americans could settle in the south. The Treaty of Greenville was agreed to in 1795. The location of my home in central Ohio is on land ceded by this treaty. Following the treaty, Wayne supplied food and farming supplies to the Native people.

Sadly, Wayne’s wife, from whom he was estranged, died during this campaign. His daughter and son were as well, although he re-established a relationship with the latter. A year later, Wayne was dead, from his old war wounds. Stockwell portrays a man good at one thing, winning battles and securing territory for his country.

While Stockwell offers an illuminating portrayal of Wayne, and one that portrays him magnanimous in peace with tribal leaders, she treads lightly on the larger issues at stake in America’s advance on tribal lands. She mostly focuses on the British exploitation of the tribes. There is little about their displacement from eastern lands. Nor does she discuss how quickly settlers moved north of the treaty line, displacing the tribes further west after the defeat of Tecumseh. By 1803, Ohio as it is presently configured, achieved statehood.

She observes Wayne’s apprehension of the threat the British and their tribal allies posed on the American frontier. Part of it was that the British had not honored their agreements from the Treaty of Paris in 1783 and were using the tribes for both trade benefits and to hold onto what was no longer theirs. But there seems to be no questioning of the fact that all of the conflict was over who would control these tribal lands, assuming the eventual displacement of Native tribes, first in southern Ohio, then all of the state, after Wayne’s death.

What Stockwell does do is establish Wayne as one of our outstanding early military leaders, despite Washington’s uncertainties. We also see a man whose love of country left little room for family. Like Grant, he was really good at one thing–fighting.

Review: The Buster Clan

/ rtrube54 / 1 Comment

The Buster Clan: An American Saga, K.P. Kollenborn. Kindle Direct Publishing, 2023.

Summary: What began as genealogical research into the Buster family turns into an account of the American story from the Revolutionary War to the present.

It began as a genealogy project by the author to trace her family roots in the Buster Clan. From the first generation of William Buster, she traced 3,380 who carried the name and estimated over 100,000 descendants. As she traced the migration of subsequent generations from their Virginia roots to Kentucky, Missouri, Texas, and to California and learned their stories, she recognized that this family story was the American story in microcosm.

William arrived from Northern Ireland as an indentured servant on a tobacco plantation, completed his indenture and married and migrated to the Shenandoah Valley. Intermarrying with the Wood’s clan, one son fled to the Carolinas and four served in Revolutionary War militias. After the war, they established comfortable livings as farmers. In the third generation, Joshua would migrate to Kentucky, become a general in the War of 1812, fighting along with Anthony Wayne, and a senator.

Living in the South, the history of the Busters was the history of slaveholding, as well as slaves who were given the family name, including Garret, a racially mixed servant of Joshua, eventually being permitted to purchase his freedom. It is fascinating how many Busters are named Claudius, including one who joined Stephen Austin’s migration to Texas, fighting in the Mexican-American War. Other Busters were part of the gold rush, mostly unsuccessful. Another Buster descendent was the product of intermarriage with the Chickasaw fought to represent Native American interests. George Washington Buster, meanwhile, was at work creating the Greenbriar Spa, with sulfur waters reputed to have healing powers.

Of course, a number of Busters fought for the South in the Civil War, and some, in border states remained loyal. In Missouri, they were divided. They sought to reconstruct themselves after the war. Some became cattle drovers. They contended with or went along with the rise of Jim Crow and the Klan. Others migrated to the mining towns of Colorado. There were Busters among the Texas rangers. Another, a descendant of slaves started an automobile company. Busters fought in World War I and returned with shell shock. During the depression, Floyd, who was deaf, would play professional baseball while his brother Budd became an actor in the burgeoning film industry. The story of post-World War II is the advance of Buster women as teachers, doctors, and even a governor! In the latter half of the twentieth century, a Buster led research on in vitro fertilization, another, Bobette, in research on the film industry, and Kendall in the area of sculpture.

Busters fought in every American war, represented different sides in our most fraught internal struggles, helped push the nation westward and contributed to education, film, scientific research, government and politics, and the arts. Kollenborn’s tracing of the lineage and their representative stories makes her case that these three hundred years of a family’s story is in fact the story of America.

The one thing that would have been helpful, given how many Busters there are and all the different branches of the family would be to have some genealogical chart or system for keeping it all straight–who was related to whom. You know how it is when you hear a large extended family talking about their relations–aunts, uncles, nephews, great grandparents, first and second cousins. You may get it if you are part of the family. Otherwise you just nod your head.

Kollenborn’s basic idea is fascinating–to see how a family can tell something of a nation’s story in miniature, including all the fraught details. She skillfully links family, local, and cultural, and national history together in a fascinating narrative. And she makes you wonder if you could do this with your family.

________________________________

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from BookSirens.