The Meaning of America

...The overall title of Burns' trilogy tells readers where he stands Collectively, the thicc volumes are called The American Experiment Burns' response is unusually radical because even our most venerated principles and institutions appear to be part ot that experiment Others have argued in the name of liberalism that the country has to learn to abide by its beliefs In Burns' view, absolutely everything, including thebehefs themselves, seems to be up for grabs This is a cunously insubstantial notion of the country, and one Likely to lend credence to Republican contentions that the Democrats are no longer the party of ideas Final judgment, however, on whether The American Experiment is truly a vision for the future or only a burial of the past, must await the appearance of the remaining two volumes WILLIE LEE ROSE'S fine, stimulating collection of essays, Slavery and Freedom (Oxford, 224 pp , $17 95), edited by her colleague William W Freehling following her stroke, tackles the Burns question in the very first piece, "The Impact of the American Revolution on the Black Population ' Asked by an editor whether American blacks had any reason to celebrate the Bicentennial, she reviews her considerable knowledge of the U S past to determine if our ideas of liberty have "failed the test of 20th-century problems " Like Burns, albeit more moderately, she concludes that our history must be taken as incomplete, that the generation of the Founding Fathers bequeathed us a promise unfulfilled "The road to realization of the full meaning of the Revolution is far from its goal That thought might lead to pessimism, but might it not lead as easily to renewed understanding of a generation who had a view of the relationship of property to freedom at considerable variance from our own, and to gratitude for the words they articulated but only partially implemented in their time...

...All things considered, 1 take heart, and vote for the words " Throughout the book, Rose is alert to the contemporary significance of earlier events Probably the most troubling of the essays in this regard is her discussion of John Brown, entitled "Killing for Freedom " Brown was a fanatic, in modern terms a "terrorist," nevertheless he won the support of some of the leading, most ethically-aware thinkers of his time The day he was executed, bells tolled and offices closed in Northern towns Union troops marched to war with his name on their lips Historians have perpetuated his legend, showing, as Rose indicates, an "astonishing" indifference to Brown's innocent victims From the other side, one cannot feel comfortable simply condemning him, as the slavehold-ing South was so swift to do, and Rose's ultimate word on the North's martyr reveals a possibly necessary ambiv-alence He was "a man who mav have been a saint, but who was also by any definition accepted bv civilized nations in peace or war, a cold-blooded killer " Such difficult, perplexing contradictions emerge repeatedly in Slaien and Freedom, its author delights in them There is much here lor scholars and laymen alike 10 brood over, yet one could not ask tor a more lair-minded or idelicious guide into the darkest corner ot our nation's history than Willie Lee Rose...

...Writers & Writing THE MEANING OF AMERICA BY BARRY GEWEN JAMES MACGREGOR BURNS' The Vineyard of Liberty (Knopf, 741 pp , $22 95) is the first of a projected three-volume history of the Umted States as told by a celebrated scholar, the biographer of Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award Nothing m the book can be called genuinely original Yet, like a new recording of a Beethoven symphony, if the material is familiar, there is pleasure in the performance Spanning the period from the framing of the Constitution to the Emancipation Proclamation, Burns' study moves at an almost breathtaking pace, taking a few pages or only a few paragraphs to discuss events that other historians have devoted books, or careers, to Like an impassioned impresario, Burns hurries his characters onstage for a moment in the spotlight, then pulls down the curtain to make way for the next act Shays' Rebellion, the Alien and Sedition Acts, the Missouri Compromise, "Fifty-Four Forty or Fight," bleeding Kansas, The Dred Scott case, all rush by so that 75 crucial and formative years may be contained within 625 pages of prose In this respect, it may be said that the Vineyard of Liberty reads like a textbook—except no textbook was ever so well written Burns is old-fashioned enough to believe that history is an art, an exercise in narrative as well as research It is not sufficient for him to state that the first U S Congress assembled in 1789 in New York City Under his pen, the city comes alive, a crowded, bustling, provincial metropolis, already on its way to being a collection of clashing yet cooperative ethnic communities "Somehow," he declares, the ghostly presence of Walt Whitman by his side, "in fine mansions and reeking grog houses, amid a jumble of crooked streets, shop fronts, hitching posts, refuse piles, dingy stoops, amid the sledges and derricks and carts and barrows of construction sites, amid the smells of hogs and goat manure and outhouses, and out of the pushing and hauling of ambitious legislators, aroused interest groups, rival factions, elitist manipulations—the government of a young republic emerged " Burns can be lyrical about cities, or rhapsodic about economic growth, but he saves his best for human beings A firm humanist, he writes out of the conviction that individuals matter in history They not only embody economic and social forces, they make choices that shape events, possessing the potential to be heroes, or knaves The Vineyard of Liberty is a dramatic book, filled with people launching enterprises, hatching schemes, succeeding, failing, and a panoramic book, reaching from the elite heights of American society down to the abysses of forgotten men (and women) There is a quality of reverence in Burns' treatment of James Madison, the right man at the right time when a constitution had to be produced, and a feeling of poignancy as he tells of the almost unknown Ephraim Bull, who developed the Concord grape, lost his business to more commercially minded competitors and had carved on his gravestone, "he sowed, others reaped " Burns can capture a life in a phrase or a quip Commenting on their similarity, he describes the Founding Fathers unforgettably as "the well-bred, the well-fed, the well-read, and the well-wed " He even discusses persons who never existed, lamenting the leaders who failed to appear at moments of crisis Chometncians and other modern historians of a more determinist bent may disapprove of Burns' way of doing history, but they are unlikely ever to produce works as appealing or as humane In creating his panorama, Burns reminds us that the story of the United States is a tale both of groups that made it and those who got left behind—blacks, Indians, women, immigrants, workers, poor whites, the masses that constitute what he calls "the majority that never was " Throughout the early years of the Republic, justice struggled against injustice and, as Burns pointedly relates, did not always triumph Issues of discrimination and oppression, of social and economic inequality, were evaded or mishandled, maybe as often as they were resolved Indeed, wherever Burns looks in antebellum America he sees confusion and ambiguity of purpose, festering problems and missed opportunities Even the principles on which the country was founded proved too amorphous to be clearly applied to matters at hand The much-discussed failure of the Founding Fathers to confront slavery extended, says Burns, to the entire "question of liberty in all its dimensions, complexities and paramountcy " Revered leaders like Jefferson and Lincoln were inconsistent Jackson, though he acted forthrightly and decisively, lefta"hazy and vacuous" legacy of little use to his successors The political parties that formed in the 1840s focused on winning elections, not articulating ideologies or implementing programs Finally, the nation's greatest writers—Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville?achieved their greatness by " the manner in which they wrestled with transcending philosophical dualisms and ambivalences,' rather than by how they settled the questions they posed Burns stresses the tentativeness, the incoherence of the national heritage, the past as hodgepodge Only a liberal could have written The Vineyard of Liberty Conservatives, either convinced of the American system's eternal verity or in thrall to a presumed Golden Age they wish to recover, would not embrace this version of our past Yet in producing such a work, Burns exposes a pressing problem for his political allies It is easy enough for liberals to muckrake our nation's history, to prove, for example, that the Norman Rockwell/Walt Disney Utopian vision of smalltown America so beloved by Rightwingers is a laughable and dangerous fiction But what is the image of the country that they offer in its place' If, as Burns suggests, the events and principles of the first 75 years add up to a jumble, what is the meaning of the United States'' Burns' answer is the one liberals have traditionally given, though he seems to be taking it to an extreme The meaning of America lies in its future, not in its past, everything up to the present must be seen as prologue A vineyard, Burns explains, once meant "asphereof moral activity", American history is the drama, for good and evil, within that sphere Elsewhere he enunciates an important dichotomy "Some Americans thought of their country, or at least of their new young republic, as a received design, as a sanctified destiny, as a sacred mission for a selected people Others saw it as a venture in trial and error, as a gamble, above all as an experiment Sacred Mission or Grand Experiment—by what yardstick, by what purposes or principles or moral values, would American leadership be measured...