THREE HISTORIANS PROBE THE MEANING OF AMERICA
Hesseltine, William B.
Three Historians Probe The Meaning Of America THE AMERICAN: The Making of a New Man, by James Truslow Adams. Scribner's. $3. AMERICAN HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP, by Gerald W. Johnson. Harper and...
...Strange indeed are the heroes whom the people worship, and stranger still, they worship their heroes for the wrong things...
...and Mrs...
...With scholarly weapons and Socratic incisiveness he demolishes alike the imperialists and the impractical slicers of globaloney...
...His theme is the irony of fate and the paradox of popular opinion...
...James Truslow Adams has written another book— one might almost say that he has written a part of his book again...
...Viking Press...
...Carefully, he explains how Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln exemplified the principle of civilian supremacy by refusing to avail themselves 6f extraordinary power...
...And through it all, with anecdote and argument, with principle and precedent, Charles A. Beard answers affirmatively the oft-raised question whether the Constitution is still adequate for the nation's needs...
...Such ironies— and some of them are true, believe it or not—are fun, but the volume is slight...
...Readers of his March of Democracy and Epic of America will find this volume characterized, by little insight and less news...
...Reviewed by William B. Hesseltine IT IS NO NEWS when Charles A. Beard, James Truslow Adams, and Gerald Johnson write books...
...Smyth) the American people...
...Nor is it remarkable that, in this questioning year, when a whole nation is seeking for direction and struggling for sanity, that these well-known writers should have tried, each in his own way, to give an answer...
...Johnson to point out a series of misrepresentations of great Americans, and Beard to survey the nature of the American experience in government...
...THE REPUBLIC: Conversations on Fundamentals, by Charles A. Beard...
...Carefully, he explains the intent of the Founding Fathers in balancing authority between the branches of the government...
...More tragic is the paradox of the South, which once produced liberal leaders but now turns out Tom Watsons and Huey Longs...
...Then there was William Henry Harrison, a farmer who couldn't farm, a gambler who made money, a soldier who was hailed for victories he didn't win and damned for those he did, and who, an aristocrat untrained and inept in politics, defeated the most skillful politicians by appearing a proletarian...
...They have timeliness, theme, and impetus in common, but there the resemblance ends...
...These Conversations on Fundamentals review the functions of government in the United States, the power of President, Congress, and the courts, the role of political parties, the economies of public affairs, and the future of the republic in the world of nations...
...Altogether, the story is trite...
...Carefully, he explains that the Founding Fathers were seeking to avoid the dangers of a military dictatorship and of an elective despotism...
...Harper and Brothers...
...One of them, as he points out in the finest book written in the last decade, is that the Founding Fathers at Philadelphia builded better than they knew...
...and Bryan, always a loser, whose principles have all been put into practice...
...We should not at all be surprised that three prolific writers should write, in this troubled year, on the meaning of America...
...With care and insight, he evaluates the practices of the government...
...So many varieties of men make up the American population that generalizations about them are either absurd, superficial, or mystical...
...His theme is the American, and his avowed intent is to present those features in the national experience which have had effect on the "American" character...
...Add to the catalog: Theodore Roosevelt, the winner whose victories have all melted away...
...In content, the volume surveys certain familiar material relating to colonial and pre-civil war history...
...These are neither profound nor interesting, and his frequent tub-thumping against the isolationists is remarkable only for the fury of the sound...
...More interesting in interpretation and more entertaining in presentation is the volume by Gerald Johnson...
...Charles A. Beard is not unaware of the ironies of American history...
...The Constitution, and the government under it, is the subject of a "fireside seminar" to which Beard invites (in the persons of Dr...
...We should only be profoundly thankful that one of them has an answer at once sane and in accordance with the American way of life...
...The subject is a bit shopworn, and the style is not scintillating, but the mellow wisdom of America's ablest scholar has a fascination which transcends either novelty or literary embellishment...
...We, the people," begins Beard, "have a covenant to live together in a reasonable way, to govern ourselves in the civilian way, to adjust our conflicts of ideas and interests by civilian methods, all for the great purposes announced in the Preamble to the Constitution...
...Adams has attempted to answer Crevecoeur's old question: "What then is the American, this new man...
...These three prolific writers on American history and public affairs have new volumes for the Fall catalogs with remarkable regularity...
...Henry Clay is a statesman, whose excursions into cheap polities were always disastrous, while Martin Van Buren, a scheming politico, only met failure on the rare occasions when he tried to be an honest statesman...
...Then, in Johnson's facile and persuasive manner, Jefferson becomes a hard-headed practical realist and Alexander Hamilton a poet idealist—an impracticable and incurable romantic...
...and Woodrow Wilson, who died repudiated, but who lives again in a new crusade...
...Adams resorts most frequently to mysticism, and fills his pages with editorial comments on the American "dream" and the American "spirit...
...The attempt, of course, is futile...
...Johnson begins with the story of Pierre Samuel Du Pont de Nemours, physiocrat, a philosopher, a scholar and a democrat, who paradoxically founded the Du Pont industrial empire...
...He has, in fact, written a new Federalist— abler and more learned than the old—advocating the readoption of the Constitution...
Vol. 7 • November 1943 • No. 47
