NATIONAL CONSCIENCE
Schickel, Richard
National Conscience The American Conscience, by Roger Burlingame. Knopf. 420 pp. $6.75. Reviewed by Richard Schickel A N attempt to describe the con-science of an individual, as any biographer...
...It is Burlingame's thesis that the American conscience has been shaped mainly by the Calvinism of New England, the rationalism of the Enlightenment, and the hardships of the frontier—an odd hybrid indeed...
...About his historiography one is not quite so certain...
...Reviewed by Richard Schickel A N attempt to describe the con-science of an individual, as any biographer or novelist will tell you, is an extremely difficult job...
...The difficult task of evaluating the Constitution's effect on our conscience is by-passed, as are Jack-sonian Democracy and the flowering of New England...
...There are surprising gaps in his story...
...One cannot quarrel with the craftsmanship of his style...
...Despite its numerous faults, The American Conscience is a well-written first reader in that fascinating, never settled, never-ending study of the American mind...
...The rise of industrialism and the reformist reaction to it are given skimpy treatment...
...That he has been even modestly successful in his vast work of selection and emphasis is a tribute to his skill...
...The great insight the book contributes is into the constancy of our highest ideals, from 1620 to the present, in the face of multitudinous perversions of them...
...To define and explain a national conscience, as Roger Burlingame has attempted to do, is an almost impossible one...
...This is the period in which the modern American conscience was largely shaped, but such movements as Social Darwinism and the Progressive Party are not mentioned...
...In the Thirties the issues of the previous 75 years were brought, at last, to a denouement...
...Missing from the story too are such figures as William Graham Sumner and such incidents as the Scopes trial...
...As told by Burlingame, this is a thrilling conflict...
...His is a study of the dialectic between the national conscience and the rude noises of materialism which have at various times all but drowned out that still, small voice...
...A history of the American Conscience without a consideration of the New Deal is like a symphony without a coda...
...Finally, one is disappointed that Burlingame chose to end his story with the Great Crash...
Vol. 21 • July 1957 • No. 7
