Don’t know much about history …
Sam Cooke, Wonderful World
The Education Of DrHGuy
Sam is partially correct in my case. At least, I don’t know much about one specific era of American History, an era roughly equivalent to – oh, let’s call it the second half of all American History. I maintain that this failing is, in part, due to the timetable on which history was taught in my school years. Perhaps this pattern was endemic only to the educational system of Diamond, Missouri (”Gem City Of The Ozarks”) and perhaps even there the teaching of history has undergone a change or two during the past 30+ years. Nonetheless, my lessons in American History, from first grade through the final semester of high school, were taught on an absolutely reliable schedule of six consecutive stages:
- A perfunctory but unhurried consideration of the multiple discoveries of America (e.g., Columbus, the Vikings, Native Americans), a theme much in vogue that year
- A relatively careful look at the period from the antecedents of The Revolutionary War to its completion
- A montage composed of several early presidents, the British burning the Capitol in 1812 while Francis Scott Key is writing those semi-hallucinogenic lyrics of The Star Spangled Banner, westward expansion (AKA Manifest Destiny), Lewis & Clark, Indians getting screwed, new states here and there, remembering the Alamo & the Maine, Six Flags Over Texas, and a few hints that slavery could turn into a bit of a problem
- A prolonged review of the Civil War, organized around the crucial role played by the southwest Missouri as a hotbed of neutrality in a neutral state, ending with Lincoln’s assassination.
- A week or so of selected topics from the last half of the 19th century so quickly covered that they were more a checklist than a curriculum: carpetbaggers go south, cattle drives go north, railroads, wagon trains, and young men who read the NY Tribune go west, more states are admitted, several presidents grow substantial facial hair, Indians really get screwed, labor unions protect working man and cause riots
- Then, on the final day of school before summer vacation, a mad sprint from the onset of the 20th century to the present.
Consequently, one should feel free to ask me about early American History, say, the nuances of Ben Franklin’s relationship to his brother, his treatment of his wife while he was ambassador to France, or his early sexual dalliances. That I know. Anything happening after 1900, such as basic concepts of the causes of the first World War – not so much. Most discomforting was my discovery almost a decade ago that I understood embarrassingly little beyond my personal experience about the period between the World War II and the departure of United States troops from Viet Nam.
DrHGuy: Autodidact
To correct this educational lacuna or at least reduce the chances that I would commit more than my share of humiliating faux pas, I began a reading program obsessively orchestrated around whatever books dealing with that period fell in my path.
Early in this process, through sheer good luck, I stumbled onto Robert Caro’s awesomely detailed and thorough biography, LBJ, that was fascinating (not a modifier I cavalierly apply to a biography) to the point that I raced through the first two volumes and was frustrated to find that, at that time, the third volume was yet to be published.
If you have any interest in this period and haven’t read LBJ, you’re missing a treat. And, since this work has been out for a few years, it can be picked up on the cheap. On Amazon’s used book list this morning, one could buy all three volumes for a hot $7 plus shipping.
No Ordinary Book
Today’s selections, however, come from another book that caught my interest by happy accident as a result of my self-administered history program, No Ordinary Time1 by Doris Kearns Goodwin. The subtitle, “Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front In World War II,” is a tad incomplete2 but sufficiently descriptive of the content for our purposes.
Although I was blithely and blissfully ignorant of this volume until recently, it nevertheless managed to score a place on the NY Times Bestseller list and win a Pulitzer as well as a number of other prizes, so it may not be a surprise to those perusing this post that Ms Goodwin produced a pretty good read overall. I have, however, three specific points from No Ordinary Time that I found particularly delectable.
1. Mother Knows Best
The first is an anecdote that tells us something about FDR, England’s King George, and mothers in general:
A year before WWII began, King George VI & Queen Elizabeth paid a call to the Roosevelt home at Hyde Park. FDR’s mom was anti-alcohol so any drinking he did at home had to be accomplished surreptitiously. When the British monarchs visited, however, FDR insisted on having liquor openly available, leading to this scene,
Franklin greets George & Liz with “My mother does not approve of cocktails and thinks you should have a cup of tea.” King George VI (or, as he would be known in Chicago, “Da King”) reflects on this for a moment and then replies, “Neither does my mother.” Then both he and Roosevelt suck down a couple of martinis.
I only wish Frankie and George could have met my mother.
2. It Could Have Happened Differently
It’s held by some, including me, that the primary benefit of studying history is understanding that history is not an inevitable chain of events (i.e., things didn’t have to turn out the way they did). The second morsel is a fine example of that idea.
Until I read this Goodwin’s description of FDR’s decision to send aid to Britain prior to the US entry into the War, I had always thought, “What’s the big deal? Why not send aid to England? What could it hurt?”
Well, for one thing, it could have led to the failure of Roosevelt’s government. Almost everyone (including FDR’s own cabinet, the overwhelming majority of both house of Congress, respected advisers and news analysts, and, well, everybody else) held the perfectly logical position that sending 25-50% of America’s tanks, planes, machine guns, etc. to post-Dunkirk Britain when it seemed all too likely that that England might be overrun by Germany in a matter of weeks could cripple the US and its plan to defend its “own back yard,” leaving this country vulnerable to attack. I suspect, in fact, that, had I been present at that time, I would have been convinced that Roosevelt had needlessly and foolishly put the country’s future at risk. (Just to clarify, I would, in that case, have been wrong.)
Thankfully, FDR, by wisdom, prescience, or just luck, stayed the course and successfully overcame the massive opposition, probably saving Britain and perhaps the Allied cause in the process.
3. Sensitive Dependence On Initial Conditions
The third selection postulates that discrimination against Poles in Buffalo was 1941’s Butterfly Effect, AKA sensitive dependence on initial conditions in chaos theory.
Only when confronted with the threat of a NAACP-sponsored 100,000 man march on Washington did FDR agree to a specific executive order forbidding discrimination against blacks applying for jobs in the defense industries. At that point, as Goodwin writes,
… Joe Rauh, a young government lawyer, was called in by presidential asst Wayne Coy to draft the actual language of the order. “As Coy was leaving,” Rauh recalled, he said: ” ‘Hey, Joe, if we’re doing this don’t forget the Poles.’ The Roosevelt administration had been under fire for discriminating against the Poles in Buffalo. So Coy wanted me to throw them in as well, which I did, changing the phrase to read forbidding discrimination on grounds of ‘race, color, creed or national origin.’ “
And that, fellow citizens, is how the specific wording of that pivotal anti-discrimination clause came to be. Is that cool or what?
Footnotes
