Man Of History

David McCullough, who died recently at the age of 89, was one of America's most passionate and patriotic historians.  In addition to his books about the Brooklyn Bridge and the Wright Brothers, he wrote definitive biographies of some of this country's greatest leaders.

His biography of Harry Truman made it clear that Truman was not the simple, gray-matter politician with absolutist views and plain old horse sense that many people remember him to be.  McCullough showed how complicated Truman was, and also how his peers greatly respected him; part of the reason Truman was nominated for Vice President in 1944 was because Democratic leaders knew President Roosevelt would not live through a fourth term in the White House and they wanted someone the could trust to be a heartbeat away from the Presidency. 

Similarly, McCullough sought to make it clear that John Adams was an acerbic country lawyer, not a Boston blueblood in the matter of future Boston Brahmins such as the Holmeses and the Lodges.  McCullough explained that Adams was in fact a brilliant legal thinker who contributed much to the founding of the United States and always held a grudge that his role in the Revolution was overshadowed by Washington, whom he greatly admired, and Benjamin Franklin, whom he disliked intensely.  Adams, ever the critic of the king of England, was nonetheless appointed as minister to Great Britain, a post brilliantly handled not just by himself but by his son and grandson.  Yet McCullough also showed how Adams made a name for himself as a lawyer, defending the British soldiers on trial for murder as a result of the Boston Massacre showing that, despite a strong desire for a rush to judgment, even the hated British soldiers deserved a fair trial.  

McCullough held history sacred, so much that he was one of many historians who publicly denounced - and helped stop - a Disney historical theme park that the Disney company had planned for Virginia near Civil War battlefields.  As an historian of great integrity, he will be very much missed.  RIP.    

Don't Know Much About History

Remember the Bicentennial minutes on CBS? Between July 4, 1974 and December 31, 1976, just before nine o'clock at night in the East and eight in the Central Time Zone, CBS aired educational segments commemorating the two hundredth anniversary of the American Revolution and American independence explaining what had happened two hundred years earlier to the day. Thus, for example, the April 19, 1975 Bicentennial minute was devoted to Lexington and Concord. They were usually narrated by a star of a CBS series, and I think Walter Cronkite might have done a few. They were wonderfully entertaining and they told the story of the Revolution right up to Washington's crossing of the Delaware and the Battle of Trenton, with President Ford - who, like the Bicentennial minute, would be gone in 1977 - narrating the last one.

I bring this up not out of nostalgia for the seventies (though I have some, believe it or else), but out of disgust with the present. According to a recently released Marist poll, one out of four Americans can't name whom we fought to gain our independence. Given the disinterest Americans have, er, historically shown for history - and given the battles over how to teach it, especially the "Eurocentric" and "cultural bias" charges from the left, and also the right's "white man's world" approach - maybe I shouldn't be surprised. Appalled, yes. Surprised, no.

Anyway, I think it's time that one of the broadcast or cable networks do something like the Bicentennial minutes of the seventies. Rather than just have a Black History Month or a Women's History Month, we should have a plain ol' American History Month to get people interested in and appreciative of all American history. In such a month - July, when Independence Day falls and the kids are out of school and thus not learning anything - a television network should have a one-minute look at a major event in our nation's history and focus on making Americans understand why they should know and care about it. It would get American television viewers to ponder something about our country and ourselves before the next show on the tube, just as CBS did so many years ago.

Ironically, the Bicentennial minutes almost didn't make it on the air. Ethel Winant and Louis Friedman, the series's creators, had to overcome the objections of CBS executives who considered it to be an unworthy use of program time.

And by the way, we declared our independence from Great Britain.

Gee, and I always thought we declared our independence from the United Kingdom! ;-)

Here's the Bicentennial minute about the Liberty Tree, aired on August 31, 1975, featuring actress Jessica Tandy.