Joseph Ellis
For a history wonk, it almost doesn’t get any better than the talk given last night (Wednesday, Dec. 5) at the First Congregational Church in Manchester Village by Pulitzer Prize winning historian Joseph Ellis.
Despite one blemish on his record — he exaggerated his participation in the military when it came to discussing his service in Vietnam in his classroom lectures, for which he acknowledged a lapse in judgment and was suspended from his professorship at Mt. Holyoke college for a year — Ellis is one of the superstars of the history business. He’s a great writer, and not just in terms of output. He’s written extensively about the American Revolutionary period, mining what would seem to have been a pretty exhausted shaft for new insights into what is arguably the most significant moment in the nation’s history. And he’s done it in an enjoyable, readable way that doesn’t sacrifice content.
The Revolutionary generation has my vote for the greatest American generation. Indeed, to digress — I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m getting really weary of all the “Greatest Generation” stuff heaped on the Depression-World War II generation. They probably are getting a little embarrassed by it too, if their legendary humility is any guide. Not to take anything away from their accomplishments, but every generation, I think, is great in its own way — each historical period brings forth different challenges that each generation in a leadership role has thrust upon it. I may be biased but I happen to think my own “Baby Boomer” generation — once celebrated, now seemingly responsible for all the world’s ills, will one day be once again recognized as a remarkable group of people who busted through the dead nonsense of the past and pointed the way to better attitudes towards all kinds of things. And, oh yeah, there’s all that other stuff, like personal computers and the Internet, that came into being on our watch.
This is a circular way of addressing the fact that if any generation deserves the accolade of ‘the greatest,” it’s arguably the Revolutionary War generation - the first Americans - Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Hamilton and the rest. Of course, age-wise they spanned several generations, but we think of them as being one group. When you think of what they accomplished — as Ellis guides us through in his latest book “American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic” — it stirs anew a sense of wonder. The odds of them successfully carrying out the Revolution seem in retrospect to have been laughably small. While all history, if only because it’s largely written by the winners, always seems to take on an air on inevitability, the American Revolution could easily have ended, at several points, far differently and less gloriously. This “what-if” game is a fascinating parlor game for history buffs, but it does help create a context for appreciating how amazing our Revolution really was.
Ellis cites two huge accomplishments of the Revolutionary generation — they were the first to successfully wage and win a war against Great Britain, the world’s biggest, baddest superpower of the time, and they were the first to create a democratic and large republic. The prevailing wisdom of the 18th century was that republican governments were viable only if smallish, city-state type affairs, not big countries like the 13 colonies created. We tend to take it for granted but every time I read an account of the Constitutional Convention I am struck anew by how amazing that was. The cluster of ideas, the compromises that made it possible, is truly one of the greatest stories every told.
Set against those successes are two large failures — the failure to point the way to ending slavery and the mishandling of the Native American question. The Founders said they didn’t want to deprive the “savages” of their land without some form of compensation, but that is exactly what happened. Washington considered that failure to be the greatest stain on his record. And they knew slavery was the evil seed that could one day unravel all their hard work and sacrifice.. The price was steep — more than 600,000 deaths by the next great generation of Americans — the Civil War generation. That’s a big price to pay. But as Ellis points out, it was probably inevitable. Slavery just wasn’t going to be done away with through legislative fiat. They hoped to contain it in the southeastern U.S. and have it wither away gradually. Instead, it went out with a big bloody bang, and then we lived for more than another 100 years with de facto segregation and only very recently, within the past 20-30 years, have we begun to overcome the legacy of racism in any kind of meaningful way.
Beyond being a great writer, Ellis is a gifted speaker, at turns funny, engaging, changing tones, calling on the students in the audience for questions, and clearly, prepped in advance by the student’s history teacher, joking about asking questions for extra credit. You can imagine him being just great in the classroom.
All in all, another great night at “First Wednesdays,” the lecture series sponsored by the Vermont Humanities Council, the Northshire Bookstore, the Green Mountain Academy for Lifelong Learning and the Mark Skinner Library. You can’t beat the setting either. The first Congregational Church is one of those places that oozes New England — you can almost feel the tug of history sitting in the pews where earlier generations sat for worship all the way back to - well, the Revolution. It’s perfect.
Especially the speaker speaking from the pulpit. Both Ellis and Frank Bryan, the UVM professor who spoke last month made some pretty good introductory ice breaking jokes about being Biblical or waiting for lightning to strike. It must be kind of cool to face the audience of “worshippers” and hold forth.