Ohio History Journal

The OHIO HISTORICAL Quarterly

VOLUME 65 ?? NUMBER 3 ??  JULY 1956

 

 

 

 

A New Horizon in History

By BRUCE CATTON*

 

 

 

When Ulysses, the wise old man of Greek mythology, prepared

to take off on his final voyage beyond the sunset, he summed up his

knowledge of life in the one remark, "I am a part of all that I

have met."

By this, I suppose, Ulysses was simply saying that history was not

a thing apart from him. He had lived; he had contributed his bit

to the life of his times, and in turn had been shaped by that life

around him--and he had been part of it all, he had been a living

figure in the history of his time, an actor in what later would be

seen as the grand pageant of the Homeric Age.

There seems to be very little of Homeric scope or grandeur

to the life we have known, here in the Middle West of America;

yet we still live by Ulysses' watchword, for we must say, with him,

that we too have been a part of all that we have met--that is, that

we do not exist apart from the daily life that moves about us--

and we may as well go on, with Ulysses, to say (in the words

Tennyson gave him), "And all experience is an arch where through

gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades forever as I

move."

I would like to suggest that in these words we have nothing more

nor less than an appreciation of what history is: an understanding

 

* This is the text of an address delivered at the seventy-first annual meeting of the

Ohio Historical Society on April 28, 1956. Mr. Catton is the editor of American

Heritage: The Magazine of History and the author of a number of books on the Civil

War, including A Stillness at Appomattox.

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of what the historic process really means to us, regardless of whether

or not we care to use the word "history."

For we are a part of all that we have met, and what we have

experienced is little more than a medium by which we can look ahead

into the future. Life, in other words, is a continuous process. The

present grew out of the past, and the future will grow out of the

two put together.

In these troubled times we want very much to know where we

are going. We are worried about the future, and rightly so; for

in our own lifetime we have seen a good part of mankind turn its

back on the standards and the values which, however imperfectly,

the human race has tried to follow during the past thousand years

and go off on a strange new tack which is obviously unpredictable

and very possibly full of profound danger. We have also seen that

the human race has unexpectedly laid its hands on a force which,

if used wrongly, may destroy mankind in its entirety and return this

globe to its primal condition of a whirling mass of flaming gas.

The old familiar guide lines seem to be gone. More than ever

before, the whole future of mankind appears to be hidden in a grim

uncertainty wherein the least that can be said is that we can destroy

both ourselves and the earth which we inhabit if we do not use

pretty good judgment.

This nagging, chilling fear is a thing our generation is being

compelled to learn how to live with--and I would like to suggest

that it is perhaps the principal reason for the immense revival of

interest in history which has developed in this country during this

last decade.

The revival of interest is very genuine. I am speaking as a man

who wrote several books in the field of history and came to discover

--to his delighted surprise--that a certain number of people were

actually prepared to buy them--a phenomenon which has nothing

to do with the intrinsic worth, or otherwise, of the books themselves,

but which simply reflects the existence of a widespread desire on the

part of the general public to familiarize itself with the American

past.

Much more significant has been my experience with the magazine,

American Heritage.

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A NEW HORIZON IN HISTORY         223

 

This magazine is devoted to the pleasant task of presenting

American history to the general reading public. When we began

to print it, we were not at all certain about the reception we would

get. We hoped that we could attain a circulation of perhaps as

much as sixty or seventy thousand--it did seem that if we presented

American history properly, we should be able to find that many

people who would be willing to pay for the privilege of reading it.

We have found, I am happy to say, that we underestimated the size

of our audience. Currently, the magazine has a circulation of more

than 150,000, and there seems to be good reason to believe that if

we do our part properly it can rise substantially above that figure.

So when I say that there is a broad new interest in history in

America, I believe that I know what I am talking about. That

interest does exist; and to all of us who work in the field of history,

it presents a challenge that calls for the best and most intelligent

effort we can make in response.

I suspect that it is a challenge that needs to be met very simply.

By this I mean that the public which wants to know more about

history is not especially interested in seeing history presented in the

traditional manner. I believe this public has learned to look on

history as essentially a somewhat dull subject. It fears that to be-

come familiar with history may mean being called on to memorize a

great many dates, to be compelled to carry in the mind dry details

about treaties, acts of congress, and similar matters--that there is

something about this discipline which is both as taxing and, essen-

tially, as lacking in human interest as an exercise in higher

mathematics.

Yet, at the same time, this public which is looking to us for light

does very much want to know what only history can tell it; and

what it wants to know, I think, can be summed up in a few fairly

simple questions. Such questions as: How did we get where we are

today? What is there in our past that may shed light on the future?

How have people behaved before in times of great stress? What,

in short, has our human family been up to--has it ever been through

an equal time of peril before, and if so, what can we find out by

reading about it?

To answer these and similar questions we need all of the knowl-

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224   THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

edge which our study of history has given us, and we need to use all

of the techniques which the discipline of history affords. But I be-

lieve that above all else we need to understand that it is the human

story which our audience is demanding.

In simple terms, what people are asking of us today is that we

present history as a simple, interesting subject that has a direct bear-

ing on the American present and the American future. They are

not especially worried about the details, and I do not think they need

to be worried about them. For instance, I do not believe that any

American really needs to be letter perfect about the exact dates,

names, and details regarding the Civil War battle of Antietam. I

do think, however, that he very much needs to know what the real

meaning of that battle was--what came out of it, how it affected the

course of the life he himself is leading today. If we can show him

--and of course I am taking one example at random and taking it

simply because it happens to be one with which I have intimately

concerned myself--how that prodigious fight in the fall of 1862

led to the Emancipation Proclamation, and so involved all of us in

the tremendous obligation to solve the race problem in this country,

I think we have given him what he really needs.

I don't think we give that sort of thing to him by a lot of solemn

talk about trends, economic currents, and so on. I think we do it,

finally, simply by showing that the great events in history turn on

what ordinary men and women do when the pressure is on. The

story of history is in the end nothing more than the story of people.

Many people meet many separate challenges--and, at last, we realize

that because this is so the race itself has met a great challenge.

That has happened over and over again in the past. I suspect that

it is happening again today. Out of many small triumphs a great

triumph can develop. Out of the individual human being's ability

to dare, to endure, and to hope, come reason for courage, for en-

durance, and for hope for all the race.

All of which means that the little bits and pieces of history are

important. What, for instance, was life like for the men and

women who had to live through it on a central Ohio farm in the

1820's? What did people have to put up with when they left estab-

lished homes in the East and came West to open a new country?

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A NEW HORIZON IN HISTORY          225

 

What did they have to eat; what were their houses like; how did

their children get an education; what was a frontier storekeeper up

against; what sort of games did people play and what sort of songs

did they sing? All of these things are history--not "sidelights on

history," as people sometimes condescendingly say, but history itself.

They are the story of the American people--doing, and being, and

becoming--and anything we can learn that sheds new light on any

of that is the kind of contribution to history for which people are

looking to us. We can tell the story by writing books and articles,

by exhibiting pictures, by displaying old tools and bits of furniture

and toys, by presenting songs or pageants, by recreating old houses

--it does not matter. What does matter is that we make human

life in the past real and interesting to human beings in the present.

I believe that this means there can be, and must be, a substantial

expansion in all of the things which local history groups do. We

need to get at the past more intimately--through diaries, old rec-

ords, artifacts, all of the materials which can be dredged up on the

local level--and having done so we need to present it in every way

possible--verbally, visually, by displays, or by re-creations--so that

the life of the past can be seen and felt and understood. For when

we really succeed in opening a new vista into the everyday life of

the past, we are very likely to find that we are opening a vista into

the future as well.

I hope I may be pardoned if I talk briefly about my own experience

in this field. I do it simply on the theory that a man who talks in

public ought to know what he is talking about, and therefore it seems

to me to be safest to stick to my own field.

I undertook, a few years ago, to try to write about the experience

of northern soldiers in the American Civil War. I may add that

when I began that venture it never once entered my head that I was

going to be writing history. I simply wanted to find out how the

war looked and felt and smelled to the ordinary soldier of the

1860's--and through him, to the people back home, who had to

stand the gaff and foot the bill. But this search led me, ultimately,

I think, to a new understanding of what the American people are

all about, and what they bought for us, and for our descendants, by

their response to those terrible years of challenge.

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What were these men doing in our Civil War? They were

fighting, of course, for causes which they did not talk about very

much but which they nevertheless believed in with all their hearts--

independence and states' rights for the South, union for the North.

But that was only the smallest part of it. Ultimately, they were

fighting to pay off a terrible debt which they themselves had not in-

curred--fighing to pay a price which, in God's providence, was de-

creed for the people of America to pay on their way to greatness.

For the Civil War was the fearful payment America had to make

on its road to the future. It is idle to talk of victory and defeat,

as if we were discussing a football game or a prize fight. How

could "we" have won? We were fighting ourselves. We were not

driving back a foreign enemy; we were at grips with our own spirit,

paying the terrible price that had to be paid to bring us a few steps

closer to final realization of the American dream. It is hardly pos-

sible to overestimate the cost; a nation less than one fifth the size

of our nation today lost 500,000 lives in that struggle, and left a

heritage of misunderstanding, resentment, and antagonism of which

we are still feeling the effects.

And yet, somehow, it was worth it. For two reasons.

First and foremost, we learned that the American people can

meet a challenge when it presents itself. Those young men who put

on the blue or the gray and went out laughing under the flags to

meet agony and disillusion and heartbreak and extinction--they

proved something for us, once and for all. They faced the worst

men can face, they did it without heroics and without indoctrination,

they fought to the death without giving way to hatred; and because

they were able to do that, all of us are better off today. For we

know now what our American soil can breed. It can produce

character, a carefree and debonair way of walking up to fate and

daring it to do its worst, an ability to respond to a challenge, which

is the most priceless possession any race can have. A wise man said,

long ago, "The readiness is all." Those boys were ready. They

confirm our faith in the American character.

But there is more to it than that. If we paid a great price in the

Civil War, what specifically did we pay it for? What did we get out

of it, beyond certain intangibles, that we can carry into the future

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A NEW  HORIZON IN HISTORY        227

 

with us? It is all very well to say that this was what we paid for

nationhood; precisely what does that mean?

I think it means simply this: that we got, from the Civil War, a

commitment to two of the loftiest ideals that any people in all

history were ever committed to. These are the concept that human

society is indivisible--that no man lives for himself alone, that we

get along better working together than we do if we work separately,

that we are members one of another, and that there is no way to

escape from that bond--and the concept that human freedom is

something that goes all across the board, something that applies to

men of every race and creed and condition. On those two ideals we

can someday build the final greatness of our American democracy.

We shall not reach our goal for generations to come, probably, but

we have to keep working toward it. That, in the last analysis, is

what the war of the 1860's meant to us; that is why we can say that

it was worth its fearful cost. However hard it may be to travel, and

however long it may take us to get to the end of it, our path has to

lead toward the stars. Too many young Americans died to let

it lead anywhere else.

It is hardly necessary to remark that we have not yet come even

moderately close to the realization of this ideal. It may well be that

generations will have to pass before we can be even partly satisfied

with our progress in that direction. But the 500,000 graves which

were filled by the Civil War are significant markers along the road.

By the infinite grief and sorrow which the filling of those graves

cost, we are committed to an eternal effort to reach this goal. We

will have many setbacks along the way. There will be times when

the hideous old banner of racial superiority is raised afresh--when

men born in America will deny everything America stands for in

order to try to preserve a remnant of the old theory that some of

us belong to a master race and that some of the rest of us were born

to inferiority and oppression. But men who raise this banner are

fighting a rear-guard action and they cannot win. The decision was

made nearly a century ago, and it can never be reversed.

That is the sort of thing we learn from our study of history. We

see today as an outgrowth of the past, and we see tomorrow,

whatever it may be like, as something that will grow inexorably

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out of what we are and do today. That is why there is such an

intense interest in history in this country today. That is why we, as

members of the historical fraternity, are under the highest obligation

to meet this interest in every way we can. History is not simply a

matter of the backward glance. It is a study of the worth and the

prospects of the human race itself. Like Ulysses, we are a part of

all that we have met--of the experiences of our forefathers, of all

that men before us have dared and hoped for and achieved. History

is a continuous process, because life is continuous. Out of what we

can tell people about the road that has already been traveled, we

can give them a priceless measure of assurance that the road ahead

will continue to lead upward.

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