Historian by Happenstance: One Scholar's Odyssey
Author(s): Jacob Ernest Cooke
Source: The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 52, No. 3 (Jul., 1995), pp. 466-472
Published by: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2947299
Accessed: 24-05-2016 01:05 UTC
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted
digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about
JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture is collaborating with JSTOR to
digitize, preserve and extend access to The William and Mary Quarterly
This content downloaded from 132.77.150.148 on Tue, 24 May 2016 01:05:01 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Historian by Happenstance:
One Scholar's Odyssey
Jacob Ernest Cooke
B] ORN and raised in tidewater North Carolina, I never thought of continuing my education at any place other than the state university of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill. My stay there was ended after two
years by the onset of World War II and induction in the armed forces. After
assignment to various military schools at several airfields in the Midwest, I
was sent off to fight the Japanese from the safety of posts in India and
Burma. The most important (and only lasting) benefit I derived from military service was eligibility for the G. I. Bill, which in a rather convoluted
way prompted my career as a historian.
After the war, I re-enrolled at the University of North Carolina, where
(perhaps to compensate for my previous mediocre performance there) I
became something of an academic grind. Although I majored in history,
largely because I could garner high grades in that subject, I also took a smattering of economics courses to improve my chance of admission to business
graduate school.
After graduating, I was persuaded by a classmate to accompany him to
New York City, where he was contagiously confident that we would get rich
quickly. He did, but I didn't. With or without money, New York in the late
I940s and on into the early sixties was an enchanting city. In order to remain
there I decided to get a graduate degree in history at Columbia University.
Columbia's history department glittered with talent, including such stars
as Garrett Mattingly, Jacques Barzun, Robert Livingston Schuyler, Henry
Steele Commager, Richard B. Morris, and Allan Nevins. Whether because I
was starstruck or became intellectually involved, I decided after getting a
master's degree to stay on at Columbia. My dissertation was directed by
Nevins, who furthered my career in decisive ways. As a graduate school advisor he was neither particularly solicitous nor accessible, but in other ways he
was cooperative and generous. When I told him I had not settled on a dissertation topic, he recommended a biography of Frederic Bancroft (gentleman
scholar best known for his Slave Trading in the Old South), whose papers,
along with a generous financial bequest, Nevins was instrumental in securing
for Columbia.1 Although Nevins provided little guidance while I was .writing
the dissertation, he made copious editorial changes and recommendations
once it was submitted. A close and frequent study of these was the most
rewarding instruction I ever received in the craft of writing.
I (Baltimore, I93I).
The William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Series, Vol. LII, No. 3, July I995
This content downloaded from 132.77.150.148 on Tue, 24 May 2016 01:05:01 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
EARLY AMERICAN EMERITI 467
While completing graduate studies, I began teaching at Columbia's School
of General Studies, whose largely adult student body, including many World
War II veterans and drawn from all over the New York metropolitan area,
was diverse in background and eager to learn. I never again experienced an
assignment as intellectually stimulating and personally rewarding. It initiated
a continuing focus on teaching, which has been the most satisfying aspect of
my career.
Nevins arranged for the publication of my dissertation by the University
of Oklahoma Press. He also persuaded Charles Scribner's Sons to select me
to succeed him as author of an annual history that had been initiated by
James Truslow Adams, investment banker turned historian, as a supplement
to his popular March of Democracy. I wrote these annual records (a pale imitation of the famous English publication of a similar title) for many years,
and they became the basis of two volumes, The Age of Responsibility,
1946-I960 and The Kennedy Years.2 The assignment was Nevins's way of providing an opportunity to demonstrate the soundness of the advice he gave
his graduate students. "Write for the general public," he repeatedly told
them, "not for other scholars." For a writer as gifted and prolific as Nevins,
the advice was demonstrably sound; for me it was manifestly less so.
Soon after I completed graduate work, the acceptance of an unexpected
invitation permanently changed the focus of my scholarly career, which had
centered on the late nineteenth century and the history of the South. The
invitation came from Harold C. Syrett, under whose direction I had written
my master's essay, to join him in editing The Papers of Alexander Hamilton,
a project sponsored by Columbia, financed by the National Historical
Publications Commission, and commissioned for publication by Columbia
University Press.3
Work on the Hamilton Papers and part-time teaching fully occupied my
time. Little was left for independent research and writing, although as spinoffs from the Hamilton project I published a number of articles and edited
three books: The Reports of Alexander Hamilton, Alexander Hamilton: A
Profile, and The Federalist. The latter is, gratifyingly, still in print four
decades later.4
Historical editing has fallen somewhat out of favor lately. Although
unglamorous and often tedious, it remains among the most enduring schol-
arly contributions one can make. Publication of editions of the papers of
important historic figures facilitates the research of countless other scholars
by collecting in one set of volumes essential primary sources that had previously required time-consuming and costly trips to numerous libraries and
historical societies. Further, the elaborate annotation (sometimes too lavish)
2 Frederic Bancroft: Historian (Norman, I957); March of Democracy, 5 vols. (New York, I932;
reprinted i965); Age of Responsibility (New York, i965); Kennedy Years (New York, i965).
3 Syrett, Cooke, et al., eds., The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, 27 vOls. (New York,
i96i-i987)
4 (New York, i964); (New York, i967); (Middletown, Conn., i96i).
This content downloaded from 132.77.150.148 on Tue, 24 May 2016 01:05:01 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
468 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY
that has become de rigueur for historical editors lightens much routine
research while providing in the form of headnotes or introductory essays a
survey of historical literature on the subject at hand.
Rewarding though the Hamilton Papers assignment was, immersion in
such work necessarily entailed isolation from colleagues and only minimal
teaching. Aware by the early i96os that it would be exasperatingly frustrating
to confine my career to historical editing, I readily accepted an offer to head
the history department of Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon) while also
devoting as much time as possible to the Hamilton Papers. The new post
conveyed an unexpected bonus. It greatly broadened my lamentably limited
knowledge of European history, required of all students at Carnegie and thus
the department's principal teaching responsibility. My classroom participation led to the subsequent publication of Problems in Western Civilization.5
Administrative work, teaching, and historical editing, I quickly realized, do
not mix well and so, when offered a chair professorship at Lafayette College,
I accepted. With Lafayette's encouragement and support, I continued my
editorial responsibilities on the Hamilton Papers until i969.
In the meantime I took on another, quite different editorial project. This
was a thirteen-volume history of the American colonies (one volume for each
colony) co-edited by Milton Klein and commissioned by Charles Scribner's
Sons. Klein and I assumed that the project would be completed in time for
the Bicentennial of the American Revolution in I976. As things turned out,
the last of the volumes was published in i986.6
The professional decision I most regret was agreeing to write a biography
of Tench Coxe. I was persuaded to do so by Julian Boyd, editor of the
Thomas Jefferson Papers and a former president of the American Historical
Association, and Philip Hamer, head of the National Historical Publications
Commission, who flatteringly assured me that I qualified as "the established
and recognized scholar" whose selection as biographer Coxe's descendants
had made a condition of access to the collection that had remained,
unshared, in the possession of his family for some I50 years. I acquiesced,
less out of altruism than because of the challenge offered by exclusive access
to the single most important untapped manuscript source for early American
history.
It was a much greater challenge than I had assumed. The sixty thousandodd manuscripts, some of no consequence and others of incalculable historical importance, had been thrown randomly into large tin boxes and had to
be sorted, identified, and catalogued, an essentially clerical and tediously
long task. Also disheartening was the discovery that Coxe had made no
copies of much of his personal correspondence, so that much was lost.
Having overcome these and other obstacles, I wound up writing enough
material for two stout volumes. Convinced that no commercial publisher
(not even the one with whom I had an informal agreement) would invest in
5 With Ludwig F. Schaefer and David H. Fowler, Problems in Western Civilization: The
Challenge of History, 2 VOlS. (New York, i968).
6 A History of the American Colonies, I3 vols. (New York and White Plains, N. Y., I973-I986).
This content downloaded from 132.77.150.148 on Tue, 24 May 2016 01:05:01 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
EARLY AMERICAN EMERITI 469
such a lengthy work on a second-string historical player, I cut the manuscript by at least a third. In this truncated state the book finally appeared,
happily for me, under the imprimatur of the Institute of Early American
History and Culture, as Tench Coxe and the Early Republic.7
Having buried Tench Coxe in hard covers, I turned to a far more congenial task-a biography of Alexander Hamilton. Two principal historiographical assumptions underpin the work: In the first place, I was a committed
disciple (though preconsciously, I think) of Louis Hartz's brilliant analysis of
The Liberal Tradition in America, accepting with few reservations his insistence that "new fundamental categories" of thought must replace the outmoded and false "progressive analysis of America."8 Agreeing with Hartz that
in the United States the ideas of John Locke had become a national cliche', I
concluded that the dispute between Federalists and Republicans, Jefferson
and Hamilton, had been all sound and fury signifying fundamental agreement. In the second place, I believe that many biographers mistakenly avoid
any theory of human behavior, relying instead on their singular personal
experience or common sense. Convinced that the latter is often a synonym
for nonsense, I aimed to substitute Freudian and neo-Freudian theory, relying most heavily on Erik Erikson, whose Young Man Luther (I958) I consider
one of the finest biographies of our time. Not wishing to encumber readers
uninterested in or hostile to such theory, I avoided the jargon of psychoanalysis while borrowing its insights.
The decision to leave theoretical concerns implicit backfired. Few reviewers commented on my commitment to the "cult of consensus," and none
alluded to my reliance on Freud and Erikson. From the perspective of today,
these issues are germane only as aspects of my scholarly odyssey. Although I
still believe that the consensus approach helps to explain the distinctiveness
of United States history, I was off target in endorsing Hartz's contention
that the celebrated Hamilton-Jefferson conflict was mere shadow boxing.
This assumption was flawed not by any conscious affinity for Hamilton but
by the fact that for decades I had soaked myself in his writings and those of
other prominent Federalists, not their detractors. Fundamental and enduring
issues were at stake in this political and ideological clash, though not those
some proponents of the "republican synthesis" insist on. The latter, I think,
are merely casting in different language the time-worn Jefferson-Hamilton
duality so brilliantly analyzed by Merrill Peterson in The Jeffersonian Image
in the American Mind. Nor would I again rely on Freudian theory. Since it
has over recent years been mortally challenged by so many distinguished
intellectuals, I now believe that its continued acceptance requires a leap of
uncritical faith that I am unwilling to make. At the same time, I think that
some of Freud's fiercer assailants deny him the important place he deserves
in twentieth-century intellectual history. Some of his creative ideas have continued utility for historians.
7 (Chapel Hill, I978).
8 Hartz, Liberal Tradition in America (New York, I955), 28.
This content downloaded from 132.77.150.148 on Tue, 24 May 2016 01:05:01 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
470 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY
With what do I replace these theories? Finding none, I am left with the
unexciting commonplace that the historian's best bet is skepticism, the
determination to challenge accepted "facts" and traditional and current
interpretations alike (as I attempted to do, with mixed results, in a number
of articles, some of which appeared in this journal). To this end, one should
wear darkly tinted glasses to shield one from the inescapable glare of presentism while at the same time remaining aware of the daunting, perhaps
impossible, task of accurate historical reconstruction.
In any event, during a career of three decades or so at Lafayette College
such concerns were secondary to my preoccupation with teaching, from
which I continued to derive singular satisfaction. That this may have been
atypical was recently brought home to me when I reread the autobiographical sketches of Early American Emeriti that appeared in the William and
Mary Quarterly in i984 and i988. Unsurprisingly, I discovered that the
undergraduate classroom as distinguished from the graduate school seminar
was usually mentioned only in passing, dutifully acknowledged as "an
invaluable experience" but manifestly regarded as an academic obstacle
course that had to be run before entering the greener pastures of university
graduate schools. I had no such experience, partly by preference and also
because the principal responsibility of Lafayette's faculty is teaching,
including both introductory surveys and a variety of other courses. Not that
the college discouraged scholarship; it was quite reasonably expected and
rewarded, particularly as a condition of tenure. But it was possible to make
a comfortable compromise between the demands of the classroom and the
more exacting demands of scholarship.
In i990, I retired from Lafayette, and although I continued to work on
and did complete a commissioned book begun some years earlier, "The
Philadelphia Biddles: Biography of an Aristocracy" (now in the hands of an
agent), I lacked the incentive and interest to resume work on any other of
several unfinished projects. But a fairy godmother provided both. Karen
Day, publisher of Charles Scribner's Sons reference books, invited me to
serve as editor-in-chief of a three-volume work on North American colonial
history, a project that Jacques Barzun, on behalf of Charles Scribner III,
had broached to me as early as i985.
Thanks to the indispensable and expert aid of six associate editors, the
counsel of a number of consultants, and the instrumental labors of a managing editor and his assistant at Scribner's, the Encyclopedia of the North
American Colonies was published in October I993. What had started out as a
reference work on Great Britain's North American colonies was expanded
to include New Netherland, New France, and, most innovatively, the
Spanish Borderlands. Readers were thus provided, if sometimes only implicitly, with a comparative approach to the Dutch, French, Spanish, and
English North American empires.
The Encyclopedia provides an excellent source for an assessment of the
present state and future direction of research and writing on colonial
This content downloaded from 132.77.150.148 on Tue, 24 May 2016 01:05:01 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
EARLY AMERICAN EMERITI 471
America. When Michael McGiffert asked me to undertake just such as
assignment for the William and Mary Quarterly I declined, largely because I
concluded that I was too caught up in judging the quality of each article to
appraise the overall historiographical significance of the whole. I am not
sure I can do so now, save by repeating comments that to most historians
may seem hackneyed.
Over recent decades, historians of both New France and Great Britain's
North American colonies have strongly emphasized social and economic
history at the expense of constitutional and political. Research and writing
on the Spanish Borderlands, though still comparatively neglected, has burgeoned. Led by prominent scholars like David J. Weber and Ramon A.
Gutierrez, the subject promises to attract more and more colonial historians
and in time to take its place in.history departments alongside other offer-
ings in American studies. Among studies of Britain's North American
colonies, an affinity for the methodology of the French annalistes has continued, though it has abated. At the same time, historians have challenged
the version of history written from the perspective of a white male elite by
centering on the differences that separated Americans-gender, race,
national origin, class, and traditions. The fastest-growing academic industry
has been women's history, followed closely by the history of African
Americans and Native Americans. There has also been an enhanced emphasis on demography, quantification, ecology, literary analysis, cultural
anthropology, ordinary people and everyday life, and the family and the
stages of life. In the process, economic friction and social tensions have
replaced the consensus of the I950s and i960s in historians' appraisal of
many subjects, including the sharp contrast among poverty, middle-class
comfort, and upper-class luxury, riotous mobs and complacent upholders of
the status quo, whites against blacks, and unscrupulous speculators against
settlers and Native Americans. Historians have also challenged the traditional image of the frontier process and the history of the American West,
altering them almost beyond recognition.
The "new" social history, as I said earlier, has existed alongside a widespread rejection of the Beardian connection between politics and economics
and an insistence on the explanatory power of ideology, specifically "classical republicanism." A survey of the Encyclopedia of the North American
Colonies indicates, however, that republican revisionists have not yet (with
the appropriate exception of articles on "Colonial Political Philosophy" and
"Ideologies of Revolution") significantly influenced the writing of colonial
history.
What we now need is a gifted historian who will turn the fruits of recent
scholarship as exemplified in the Encyclopedia into a general history of the
North American colonies, including New Spain and New France. In other
words (and as a number of Early American Emeriti observed in this journal
a decade ago), the time is ripe for another James Harvey Robinson, Charles
Beard, or Louis Hartz to synthesize, summarize, and thus provide for us
This content downloaded from 132.77.150.148 on Tue, 24 May 2016 01:05:01 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
472 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY
and future historians a sweeping narrative that encompasses the great
wealth of research and innovative interpretation that has since World War
II enriched our knowledge of the colonial era.9
9 WMQ, 3d Ser., 4I (i984), 434-35, 443, 453-
This content downloaded from 132.77.150.148 on Tue, 24 May 2016 01:05:01 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms