Our popular estimate of history and the value of a general historical background was defined a few years ago by Henry Ford. Mr. Ford, having made a dozen flivvers go where none went before and having gained untold wealth out of the motor-car industry, had been appointed an ex-officio and highly esteemed member of our national Council of Wise Men. His opinion was eagerly asked upon such subjects as child-raising, irrigation, the future of the human race, and the plausibility of the Einstein theory. During a now memorable trial the subject of history came up for discussion, and Mr. Ford (if we are to believe the newspaper accounts) delivered himself of the heartfelt sentiment that “history is bunk.” A grateful country sang Amen!
When asked to elucidate this regrettable expression of dislike, the average citizen will fall back upon reminiscences of his early childhood and in terms both contrite and unflattering he will thereupon describe the hours of misery which he has spent reciting “dreary facts about useless kings,” winding up with a wholesale denunciation of American history as something dull beyond words.
We cannot say much in favour of late Stuarts, Romanoffs, and Wasa’s, but we confess to a sincere affection for the history of these United States. It is true there are few women in it and no little children. This, to us, seems an advantage. “Famous women of history” usually meant “infamous trouble” for their much perturbed contemporaries. As for the ever-popular children motif, the little princes of the Tower would have given a great deal had they been allowed to whitewash part of Tom Sawyer’s famous fence, instead of waiting in silken splendour for Uncle Richard’s murder squad.
No, the trouble is not with the history of this land of endless plains and a limitless sky. The difficulty lies with the reader. He is the victim of an unfortunate circumstance. The Muses did not reach these shores in the first-class cabin of the Aquitania. They were almost held up at Ellis Island and deported because they did not have the necessary fifty dollars. They were allowed to sneak in after they had given a solemn promise that they would try to become self-supporting and would turn their white hands to something useful.
Clio, our revered mistress, has tried hard to live up to this vow. But she simply is not that sort of woman. An excellent counsellor, the most charming and trusted of friends, she has absolutely no gift for the practical sides of life. She was forced to open a little gift-shop where she sold flags and bunting and pictures of Pocahontas and Paul Revere. The venture was not a success. A few people took pity on her and tried to help. She was asked to recite poetry at patriotic gatherings and do selections from the “Founding Fathers.” She did not like this, being a person of shy and unassuming character. And so she is back in the little shop. When last I saw her, she was trying to learn the Russian alphabet. That is always a dangerous sign.
And now, lest we continue to jumble our metaphors, let us state the case with no more prejudice than is strictly necessary.
The earliest settlers of this country brought their history with them. Little Snorri, son of Gudrid and Thorfinn Karlsefni, playing amidst the vines of his father’s Labradorian garden, undoubtedly listened to the selfsame sagas that were being told at the court of good King Olaf Tryggvason in distant Norway. The children of San Domingo shared the glories of the Cid with the boys and girls who visited the schools of Moukkadir’s ancient capital. And the long-suffering infants of the early New England villages merely finished an historical education that had begun at Scrooby and had been continued at No. 21 of the Kloksteeg in Leyden.
During the 17th century, the greater part of the Atlantic coast became English. The Dutch and the French, the Spanish and Swedish traditions disappeared. The history of the British Kingdom became the universal history of the territory situated between the thirtieth and the fiftieth degree of latitude. Even the American Revolution was a quarrel between two conflicting versions of certain identical principles of history. Lord North and George Washington had learned their lessons from the same text-book. His Lordship, of course, never cut the pages that told of Runymede, and George undoubtedly covered the printed sheets which told of the fate of rebels with strange geometrical figures. But the historical inheritance of the men who fought on the left bank of the Fish Kill and those who surrendered on the right shore was a common one, and Burgoyne and Gates might have spent a profitable evening sharing a bottle of rum and complimenting each other upon the glorious deeds of their respective but identical ancestors.
But during the ’twenties and ’thirties of the 19th century, the men of the “old régime”—the founder and fighters of the young Republic—descended into the grave and they took their traditions, their hopes, and their beliefs with them. The curtain rose upon a new time and upon a new people. The acquisition of the Northwestern Territory in 1787 and the purchase of Napoleon’s American real-estate in the year 1803 had changed a little commonwealth of struggling Colonies into a vast empire of endless plains and unlimited forests. It was necessary to populate this new land. The history of the Coast came to an end. The history of the Frontier began. English traditions rarely crossed the Alleghanies. The long struggle for representative government took on a new aspect in a land where no king had ever set foot and where man was sovereign by the good right of his own energy.
It is true that the first fifty years of the last century witnessed the arrival upon these shores of millions of men and women from Europe who had enjoyed a grammar school education in the land of their birth. But dukes do not emigrate. Those sturdy fellows who risked the terrors and horrors of the Atlantic in the leaky tubs of the early forties came to the country of their future that they might forget the nightmare of the past. That nightmare included the biography of Might which was then the main feature of the European text-book. They threw it overboard as soon as they were well outside of the mouth of the Elbe or the Mersey. Settled upon the farms of Michigan and Wisconsin, they sometimes taught their children the songs of the old Fatherland but its history never. After two generations, this migration—the greatest of all “treks” since the 4th century—came to an end. Roads had been made, canals had been dug, railroads had been constructed, forests had been turned into pastures, the Indian was gone, the buffalo was gone, free land was gone, cities had been built, and the scene had been made ready for the final apotheosis of all human accomplishment—civilization.