I completed my reading of C. Vann Woodward’s marvelous book, Thinking Back: The Perils of Writing History. I’ve long been an admirer of Woodward. He stands alongside David Potter, David Blight and David Brion Davis in my regard. It’s an elegant book, a retrospective view of Woodward’s experiences as a historian. He considers his own books and the critical dialogue they engendered and how the history of the South was viewed and written about during the early years of the century and how those views have changed over the decades. He describes his university years at Emory and Chapel Hill, at Columbia and then, Yale. He arrived on campus two years after I graduated. How I would have loved to take courses from him.
There were many nuggets of wisdom in the book. I’ll cite just a few:
Woodward tackles the controversy of history’s having a “purpose.” He writes, “If the implied alternative be writing history without a purpose or an unacknowledged or unconscious purpose, then the indictment (that I write with a purpose) will have to stand.” As one historian noted: “Unless there is some emotional tie, some elective affinity linking the student to his subject, the results will be pedantic and perfunctory.” And this, “The man who does not feel issues deeply cannot write great history about them.”
I like what Carl Degler, one of my favorite historians, once wrote: “All questions of continuity are relative. All history is a combination of varying degrees of continuity and change.” That has certainly been true of the history of Russia and China as I’ve experienced it over the last 30 years.
I identify closely with this from Woodward: “If foresight had been enriched by hindsight (thinking of how he wrote history), I admit that I might have done it differently—and I am sure, more correctly. But I am more disturbed to admit that if hindsight had preceded foresight, I might not have done it at all. And that would have been to miss an experience, an adventure, that I perversely continue to cherish.”
I think about the Freedom Center. If I had the foresight to see the financial challenges we have had, I’m sure we would not have built the building we did. And, yet, looking back, it’s probably good that we did.
Or, if I had had the foresight to see what would happen in Russia, I probably would not have brought the degree of enthusiastic commitment to it which I did, persuaded as I was then that Russia was on the path to some form of democratization. But seeing it the way I did, however incompletely and incorrectly it has turned out, underpinned our actions to become the clear-cut leader. I am glad I had that perception.
In capturing a motivation that had animated my writing, I cite these words from Woodward: “No matter how parochial its bounds, the historian is tempted to feel that his findings have meaning and value for a larger public than his fellow specialists and that he should share his arcane insights more widely. It is a critical moment, a temptation best resisted, until wisdom ripens.”
Wise or not, these were my instincts as I’ve written the books which I have written.
It’s striking to read what characterized the attitude of Americans in the 1950s: “Unified, confident, and powerful, Americans prided themselves on their military prowess, their economic productivity, their diplomatic triumphs, and their vindication of their high ideals. In this mood, America presented herself to the world as a model for how democracy, power, opulence and virtue could be combined under one flag.”
We no longer carry such an unvarnished view of our exceptionalism or the inevitability of our winning. The Vietnam War, Watergate, Afghanistan, Iraq, the polarization of the body politic, have put a dark cloud over any naïve view of life. Yet, we cannot allow this to darken the appreciation and pursuit of those values which characterize us at our best.
Woodward rejected this notion that we had “unparalleled power and unprecedented wealth” which led to “unbridled self-righteousness and the illusion of national innocence.”
That risk no longer prevails.
Reinhold Niebuhr, my favorite philosopher, balances it right. He understands that America’s ironic plight rests in the midst of seeming innocence.
In the 1960s and ‘70s, as a result of Vietnam and Watergate, Woodward writes, “It did seem as if history was at last about to catch up with Americans, and it was doubtful that they could much longer find refuge in their peculiar legends and myths. A malaise seemed to sap national self-righteousness, self-confidence, and complacency.”
But as history was quickly to show, that did not last. The 1980s witnessed another shift in the national mood under President Reagan that assured Americans that they were making a miraculous recovery. Not only were all American wars righteous, but they all ended in victory. Yet, that attitude turned again with Iraq and Afghanistan and Donald Trump.
As always, we see reversion and retreat. We’re seeing it now in the pushback against what is described as identity politics and a waning in some quarters in the commitment to DE&I training.
We have to keep the few most important values in front of us and not retreat: Everyone counts, love trumps hate, continuous improvement is possible, but not inevitable. We’ll always have to contest pushback and recognize the force of continuity in embedded cultures.
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