Click On Title To Link To Wikipedia's Entry For John Dos Passos.
Book Review
The Shackles Of Power: Three Jeffersonian Decades, John Dos Passos, Doubleday&Company, New York, 1966.
I have spent gallons of ink around this July 4th celebratory time every year, and I believe justifiably so given the objectives of this site, drawing some strong distinction between various periods of the common American historical experience. I have extolled the early days of the American Republic when it held out, to paraphrase what Lincoln noted later in the crucible of the Civil War, another high point in the American experience, the promise that the “America democratic experiment represented the last, best hope of mankind”. And Lincoln was right then. In contrast I have heaped scorn, and that is an appropriate word here, on later periods lambasting the turn to the American imperium that we still suffer under. Of course, none of this periodization is all cut and dried but today; at least, I want to go back to that earlier, more hopeful period of the birth of the American Republic.
Normally, when one thinks of the early period of the American Republic one’s thoughts turn to the struggle for independence from impetuous British imperialism, the subsequent fights to create some workable form of government and the consolidation of the American state, against all comers, as a factor in world history. The names Washington, Adams, Morris, Franklin and the like come easily to mind in that narrative. Moreover, lately, that period had been worked over almost to exhaustion as if resurrecting that heroic period will shed some reflected light on today’s ugly political scene.
Today, though, in reviewing John Dos Passos’ older historical narrative (1966), “The Shackles Of Power”, I want to look at the period just after that consolidation when the contours of the disputes that would form the two major political philosophies that govern American politics got pushed center stage. This is the time of Jefferson and his acolytes, Madison and Monroe, and their partisans in the various state Democratic Republican organizations centered on the plebeian-supported local newspapers. And it is also the time when the original federalist impulse that governed the firs period of American life petered out in that form with the passing away of its old leadership, its cranky secessionist politics and its elitist conceits. That is a good enough time span for our work, basically the period from Jefferson’s hotly contested election in 2000 (oops, 1800) through the period formerly known as “the era of good feelings” (quaint, right?) to the period, today, now, tentatively, in the academy known as the period of the rise of “Jacksonian democracy”.
For those not familiar with the novelist John Dos Passos it should enough to know that he first came onto the American literary stage in a big way with his USA trilogy that both chronicled the changes in American life brought about by World War I and created a literary style, using slogans, headlines, brief bios and the like to present his story. This literary technique was later used, most famously, by E.L. Doctorow in such historical novels as “Ragtime” and the thinly-veiled Julius and Ethel Rosenberg story, “The Book Of Daniel”. Moreover, Dos Passos did more than his fair share of literary work for the defense in the famous Sacco and Vanzetti case on the 1920’s and later in the 1930’s in reportage on the Spanish Civil War. Alas, as is all to familiar among the American literati and intelligentsia from that period (and today, as well), Dos Passos turned against those strong social impulses of his youth and at the end became a devotee of the likes of Barry Goldwater in the 1960’s, as well as a “godfather” to the conservative youth then organized in the Young Americans For Freedom.
Those last points in the paragraph above are germane to Dos Passos’ view of the Jeffersonian story. This is, after, all the age where the Alexander Hamilton-led Federalist pro-mercantile strong central government policies and the Jefferson-led Democratic Republican weak central government, strong state governments pro-“yeoman farmer” policy fights came front and center. Those trends, in various guises, have continued to this day in the hurly-burly of every day democratic politics. Needless to say, this little capsule comment of mine concerning the outlines of the disputes is merely that, an outline. However, the contrasts presented here are central to Dos Passos’s views of Jefferson in the 1960’s when he would have been a Goldwaterite “small government” man. In the 1930’s, while he may have admired Jefferson and his coterie on other grounds, I believe that he would have taken a much different view on Jefferson.
One of Dos Passos’ virtues as a literary man is that he, unlike many professional historians then and now, brings a snappy literary style to his narrative. Thus, he spends less time on the arcana of the internal politics of the Federalist and Democratic Republicans and more on outcomes. Thus, although Thomas Jefferson is the central character of this work, plenty of space is given to other secondary characters central to this narrative like the on/off relationship between Jefferson and his predecessor John Adams, the rise of James Madison and James Monroe in the early 1800’s as adherents of the Jeffersonian tradition. The dog fight between Virginia and Massachusetts, as exemplars of contrasting governing styles, gets full play. As does the early work of rising politicians like John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay who really do not come into their own until that later “Jacksonian” period mentioned earlier.
Of course no history of this period is complete without a nod to Jefferson’s inspired acquisition of the Louisiana Purchase as an important, if not defining, aspect of creating what would be come the American nation-state, the development of an internal transportation system, the rise of public education fostered by the post-presidential Jefferson and the increasing politicization of the governing process through increased literacy, broadening the suffrage franchise and the formation, in embryo, of the party system. The various problems with ‘Mother’ England (most notably the impressments of American sailors into the British navy during ‘their” Napoleonic wars) culminating in the almost forgotten War of 1812 also receive plenty of coverage, including the knotty maneuverings on the diplomatic front (Treaty of Ghent).
Obviously a history book, well written or not, that dates from the 1960’s will neither reflect the evolving tendencies in historical studies, such as they are, or the incredible increase in material sources to be drawn from that have become available since then. For example, the now “hot” issue of Jefferson’s relationship with his slave mistress, Sally Hemings, and their children is a case in point. Dos Passos, reflecting the received wisdom of the time (read: cover-up) passes on a rather agnostic view of their relationship, if not outright acceptance of the ‘evidence’ for denial of the relationship. Also far too little is mentioned about the importance of slave ownership to Jefferson’s personal financial fate, whatever his philosophical views on the matter. No historian today, other than one who wants to whitewash the slave-dependency common to many of the “founding fathers”, would make such an “omission”.
Finally, Dos Passos spends far too much time on the character, exploits and legal difficulties of one Aaron Burr, former Vice President of The United States and possibly “the once and future king” of some Trans-Louisiana state. Burr is set up, in fact is made to order, as the prime rascal of the age. And, perhaps, he was although this was an age of swashbucklers, solders of fortune, swindlers and confidence men. Hell, how do you think most nation-states got formed? I think Gore Vidal’s fictional treatment of Mr. Burr in his novel “Burr” is the place to go if you want to “learn” about that man. With these caveats, if you want a readable narrative about a key, if relatively neglected, period of the American historical experience this is not a bad place to start. If this read perks your interest this book is definitely not the place to finish though.
No comments:
Post a Comment