LESSER LUMINARIES
Clough, Wilson O.
Lesser Luminaries A Baker's Dozen: thirteen unusual Americans, by Russel B. Nye. Michigan State University Press. 300 pp. $5. Reviewed by Wilson O. Clough IS HISTORY the "lengthened shadow" of a...
...Russel Nye's book, A Baker's Dozen, manages something of this realism by its portraits of thirteen also-rans, thirteen names rescued from a mere footnote in history, thirteen who missed importance by some fluke of character or circumstance...
...or Vallandigham, man of uncompromising principle who made Lincoln's lot a more difficult one...
...What is the line that separates the eccentric from the creative, the truly liberal from the crackpot...
...Here is John Fries, early tax-re-sister, whose life hung on the integrity of John Adams...
...or Jacob Coxey, whose panacea for depressions was marches on Washington...
...for the value of the book lies in jmt this fact, that minor figures may il-luminate the pages of history, public sentiment, or popular behavior more than profound generalizations...
...Nye has aimed at neither sensationalism nor patriotic evangel, but at a truthful glimpse of these lesser luminaries...
...Here are the sinister ones, Simon Girty, atavistic savage, and John Murrell, cold killer and schemer of slave uprisings...
...Yet somehow, with that great good fortune which has seemed to follow American history, popular judgment reasserts itself and confidence returns...
...In these men was stubbornness enough for great assignments, drive enough for massive deeds, persistence deserving of better causes, even human shrewdness that might have been turned to serviceableness...
...Nye sets the stage for each figure by a paragraph or two of analysis of contemporary issues...
...Or, finally, samplings of America's passion for Utopias, are Noyes of the Oneida colony, or "King" James Strang, autocratic offshoot of Mor-monism, or Phineas Quimby, more abstract, who all but uncovered a psychosomatic 'theory of illness...
...This was Jefferson's faith, and, narrow though the escapes have been, it must continue to be ours, else we lose our central meaning among nations...
...Reviewed by Wilson O. Clough IS HISTORY the "lengthened shadow" of a few greats, or is it, like the coral atoll, the cumulative labors of countless unnamed units...
...Without attempting debate, we may at least concede, I think, that we need more books that lie somewhere between definitive biography and sweeping fictional generalization of the economic, the sociological, the national man...
...Here is Blen-nerhasset, trapped by the plausible Burr to the loss of his island Eden...
...and Edward Bonney, sturdy nemesis of frontier wrongdoers...
...Often the balance hangs delicately for the moment between disaster and wisdom...
...Less sinister are Elijah Lovejoy, whose murder aroused the issue of freedom of the press...
...and Ledyard, amazing symbol of American endurance on land and sea...
...Unflattering as some of these accounts may be to the individual or to the era, they possess a reality that makes them deserving of reflection...
...America, it seems, can be counted on to provide a good show, provided the observer maintains his sense of humor and his confidence in the outcome...
...This intermediate study can be that of actual men and women who did not loom much above their neighbors, but whose lives do impart the living warmth of history, whose very crudities convince more than marble statues...
...These studies, he admits, arT by-products of his historical researches, but that is not to denigrate them...
...Thus each portrait reminds us for an uneasy moment how precarious are the winds that blow on national events, how nearly the many following the eccentric can come to wrecking the ship of state...
...A second reading, therefore, could provide matter for thoughtful reflection on the body politic and its health...
...Yet in each was some flaw, some lack of final balance or sanity or clarity as to ends...
...or Nat Turner, fanatic Negro who hastened Southern fears...
...To see them clearly is to see the better why the founding fathers demanded checks and balances, why they wanted provisions for suspended judgments...
...Nye has given us a sampling of a useful kind of social and political investigation, full of interest and point...
...It is a curious assortment, this baker's dozen, all of them slightly odd, sometimes dangerous, yet American enough in their very individuality and their preoccupations...
Vol. 21 • April 1957 • No. 4
