“Behold, your king comes to you…”

-Matthew 21:5, better known as the perspective of Parson Weems and George Bancroft on the Founders

Yes, it has been a long time since either of us has written, and you have our sincere apologies. We have been suffering from blogger’s block and more urgent historical matters have also captured our attention (like thesis prospectuses and outlines and other papers…..) But I had some thoughts on our studies in Historical Method that I wanted to share.

Historical Method is a class required of all history majors in which we study the history of the art and science of researching and writing history. We have readings from various historical works written throughout history, (fascinating) case studies in United States history that illuminate various points and problems in researching the past, and lectures from all the members of the department on historiography as it relates to their fields of specialization. About a month or so ago, in anticipation of Dr. Miller’s lectures on Early American historiography, we read excerpts from Parson Mason Weem’s Life of Washington and George Bancroft’s History of the United States. They were pretty amusing, to say the least. Parson Weems struck me as part historian, part hagiographer, and part Dr. Spock; his biography, as Dr. Miller explained, served to create the larger-than-life Founding Father that we know and love and was part of the general atmosphere of idolizing all of the founders. Weems was pretty clear in his writing that one should follow George’s father’s parenting techniques if one wants to raise children who are as virtuous as the great George Washington, and as an example of this great virtue, Weems provides the anecdote of George chopping down the cherry tree and then owning up to it when questioned by his father. This incident, along with many of Weem’s other mythic episodes, didn’t actually happen. This ideal continued throughout the 19th century, and even into our own day, and is present in art as well as writing. Dr. Miller showed us some pretty amusing images extolling George Washington, Brenna and I thoroughly enjoyed The Apotheosis of Washington (check it out here. You can also see it illustrating an article in the issue of Newsweek dated March 17, 2008). If you look closely at the left side of the picture, you can see the Virgin Mary looking on. It also looks like George is rising in glory out of a tomb while soldiers look on (sound familiar, especially this weekend?). Don’t get me wrong, I admire George Washington a lot, and there is definitely a lot we can learn from him, but the cult of George Washington and of the other Founders can be slightly over the top. And it’s still alive and well today.

George Bancroft was even more interesting than Parson Weems. He wrote about how every event during the entire 300 year history of colonial America was moving toward the revolution, and even the early 17th century settlers had freedom on their minds in some way. I was most amused when he started talking about freedom as “the breath of life,” how “a band of exiles, keeping watch by night, heard the glad tidings” brought by the revolution, and the prophets declaring these ideas. His idea of the revolution is a divinely ordained event that he likened to the coming of Messiah, and the language he used illustrated this belief even more than what he said about it. Bancroft did make some good points about how the colonial leaders believed that the British Parliament did not have the knowledge or the ability to govern the colonies by the 1760s and 1770s, which are points that I think most historians would consider valid and relevant; unfortunately, these kernels of substance are generally lost among his messages of deliverance through Washington and the other Founders. When discussing the Bible, the term “typology” refers to the study of events that prefigure the coming of and ministry of Jesus as the Messiah, especially His death and resurrection, like the deliverance of Israel from slavery in Egypt can be understood as a type of the salvation of mankind won by Jesus. Apparently, in the minds of Bancroft and his ilk, Jesus was a type of George Washington.

So that’s a sampling of Historical Method. We’ve also heard lectures about Hegel, Ranke, Marx (the best explanation of Marxism that Brenna and I have ever heard), how history came to be a profession, and twentieth-century debate between Consensus and New Left/Revisionist historians. We’ve also discussed the use of psychological analysis, interviews, and photographs in history, and we will soon have our exam and write our introductory thesis chapters. In other news, there was an article in the Baltimore Sun this past week about a recent survey that concluded that college students experience a lot of stress. It’s a pretty funny article and my classmates and I can attest to its accuracy, although we’re shocked that it seems to have taken this long for someone to declare that which is incredibly obvious. To read it, click here.

Hopefully one of us will write again soon about a conference we went to a few weeks ago and the lecture we will attend this coming Tuesday, but until then, have a very happy Easter!