History by the Letter (Page 2)

Richard Gilder and Lewis Lehrman have always had a passion for American history. For decades the two millionaires, one the head of an investment brokerage firm and the other the president of Rite Aid and managing director of Morgan Stanley, have separately collected manuscripts, books and prints. They have also sought to advance a conservative political agenda. Gilder is founder of the Manhattan Institute, a think tank devoted to promoting free enterprise and private initiatives. The institute has the ear of New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and has exerted considerable influence over reductions in government activity, the dismantling of welfare and the reconfiguration of public space in the city. Lehrman nearly defeated Mario Cuomo in the 1982 gubernatorial race, sought the nomination in 1994 and, most recently, served as co-chair of Phil Gramm's Presidential Campaign Committee.

The two men have combined their resources to form the Gilder Lehrman Collection (GLC) of historical documents, housed at the J. Pierpont Morgan Library. In 1994 they established the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, which, among other activities, provides fellowships for scholars wanting to work in the collection, supports lectures and exhibitions, and sustains the two most extravagant prizes in American history: the $50,000 Lincoln prize for the best book on the Civil War era and the $25,000 Frederick Douglass prize for the best book on slavery and abolition. Flashing cash and treating historians like young executives, Gilder and Lehrman have rapidly become influential players on the American history scene.

The mission of the GLC is to "collect, preserve, and study the historical record" of the nation, and The Boisterous Sea of Liberty presents some of the highlights of the collection. It is a measure of Gilder's and Lehrman's clout that Oxford University Press has published and widely promoted this handsomely produced volume and that David Brion Davis, the distinguished Pulitzer Prize-winning Sterling Professor of History at Yale, and Steven Mintz, also a widely respected historian, have edited the collection. Looking at the volume and reading Davis's panegyric to Gilder and Lehrman (he calls their collecting "philanthropic spending"), I thought of the old beer commercial in which the pool hustler makes a fabulous shot and declares that he's "just showing off."

What the volume shows off is a wealth of traditional documents that reiterate a familiar narrative of American history. While it purports to be A Documentary History of America From Discovery Through the Civil War, this anthology of 366 documents might better be subtitled Letters From Famous Men. The pre-Revolutionary documents include selections from Christopher Columbus, William Bradford, William Penn, James Otis and Benjamin Franklin. Of the 266 documents that carry the story from Revolution through Civil War, eighty-eight are by Presidents of the United States. And the bulk of the remainder are from well-known politicians and generals. Collections reveal the interests of collectors, and Gilder and Lehrman clearly have little desire to gather manuscripts and books by those outside the American History Hall of Fame. If this were a baseball-card collection, it would consist entirely of Mickey Mantles.

To their credit, Davis and Mintz recognize this difficulty and try to add some diversity and complexity to the GLC documentary record. The introduction and headnotes identify tensions and conflicts and allude to those outside the main avenues of power. The historians mention New World "Encounters," refer to a "land of contrasts," identify "the popular protests and upheavals of the age of revolution" and allude to the "antitheses" of the ideals of liberty, equality and democracy. "Ordinary farmers, small shopkeepers, and artisans" are mentioned. Few of the texts, however, speak to these issues or record the experiences of these people.

The Boisterous Sea of Liberty will be extremely popular among some readers because its documents contribute to a heroic narrative of responsible politicians laboring in earnest to address the nation's problems. Here are the familiar words of Jefferson in regard to slavery ("we have the wolf by the ear & feel the danger of holding or letting loose"), of Andrew Jackson in response to nullification ("disunion, by armed force, is treason") and Lincoln on race ("in the right to put into his mouth the bread that his own hands have earned, [the Negro] is the equal of every other man, white or black").

There is nothing wrong, of course, with letters and speeches written by members of a political elite. Some of the most important and moving words ever written, words that have changed the world, appear in such documents. That Gilder and Lehrman own original copies of some of these famous texts certainly makes their private collection priceless, but it does not add significantly to the conventional historical record. The two deserve more credit for using their resources to recover manuscripts from private collections and make them available to scholars, although it is unclear which documents in this anthology fall in this category.

The tone of the documents, whether they are known or unknown, is monotonous, and it is all too easy to succumb to the letter writers' best intentions. Even Davis, for all his effort to acknowledge the dark side of American history, seems to get caught up in rose-colored readings of these texts. In his introduction, he quotes George Washington vowing in 1786 never "to possess another slave by purchase." Yet the document as quoted in the book states, "I never mean (unless some peculiar circumstance should compel me to it) to possess another slave by purchase." Much of the history of the nation is embedded in that "unless," which Davis too casually omits.

• « Previous
• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next »

• Get The Nation at home (and online!) for 68 cents a week!
• If you like this article, consider making a donation to The Nation.
• Reprint this article. Click here for rights and information.