Correspondence |
||
|
Dear Colleagues, You invited responses about the Bellesilles affair. Since the only extended commentary (of many) that was posted on the webpage was Jon Wiener's article for the Nation, I assume you also invite a response to that. Wiener's article strikes me as disingenuous. It casts aspersions on those historians who reviewed the case and does so by misrepresenting the Bellesilles' transgression as a minor one having only to do with the omission of an item of information. Even those like me who have followed the affair sporadically, know that there is much more to it than that. Using a rhetorical strategy that reminds one of the weird syllogisms of Joe McCarthy, Wiener milks the fallacies of ad hominem and guilt by association (the NRA) for all that they're worth. Because he happens to agree with Bellesilles' opinions about guns in American culture, he is ready to do polemical battle (how is his strategy different from the NRA's?) even if it means skirting the very serious question of tendentious and manipulative historical interpretation that Arming America raises. Does Wiener really think that the estimable scholars who reviewed the Bellesilles case, and the editor at Knopf, were responding to some sort of public opinion rather than real problems? Publishers love controversy--look at the career of Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners, which grinds a heavy axe and has conspicuous interpretive flaws but never came close to an editorial rescission. Would Wiener be as quick to defend an empirically questionable book by a conservative historian? One senses that politics and not professional ethics are the focal point of his article. I find it disturbing that he is so eager and even zealous to sacrifice the reputations of Gray, Katz, and Ulrich, among others, at the altar of political journalism. Sincerely, Dear OAH: Arming America was the spearhead for a strong campaign by Bellesiles and prominent historians to promote a pro-gun control interpretation of the Second Amendment in the precedent-setting Supreme Court case United States v. Emerson. The historians' primary arguments (Yassky brief, Constitutional Commentary, Chicago-Kent Law Review articles) had extensive citations to Bellesiles' findings. (Bellesiles' Chicago-Kent article was a slightly-rewritten version of chapter seven in Arming America.) The Chicago-Kent articles were also cited extensively in the Ninth Circuit Court's recent ruling that citizens have no right to own firearms (Silveria v. Lochyer) and are being promulgated in a book by Carl Bogus. Bellesiles' questionable history, now a significant part of those two precedent-setting court rulings, has many more serious errors than were discussed by the Emory Committee--although Bellesiles' probate study results may have been the result of a honest mistake. Americans like Emerson should not be convicted as felons on the basis of false history. OAH has an obligation to review and correct the Bellesilesean history in those court rulings because OAH is directly responsible for this situation. OAH gave Bellesiles' findings credibility by publishing his seminal article (the basis for Arming America) in its 1996 Journal of American History (JAH), by refusing to publish Clayton Cramer's early critique of Bellesiles 1996 article, by awarding Bellesiles the Binkley-Stephenson award for the 1996 article, by publishing Roger Lane's uncritical review of Arming America in 2000, and by publishing Bellesiles' assertions ("Disarming the Critics") in the November 2001 OAH Newsletter. The Emory Committee Report criticized JAH's editorial checking of Bellesiles' 1996 article. I posted detailed discussions of the above issues to H-OIEAHC in 2003 (24 January, 30 January) and in 2002 (10 April, 1 May, 10 May, 21 June, 20 July, 12 August and 19 August). See <http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=lm&list=h-oieahc>. Don Williams To the Editor: I enjoyed George McGovern's reflections on Steve Ambrose whom I first met when he was a young scholar trying to look older by smoking long cigars and attempting a mustache. This was at a Southern Historical Association meeting in 1960. I later became a fan of his work but never was quite impressed with his view of President Eisenhower as opposed to General Eisenhower. I first remember seeing Ike during the campaign of 1952 during a political appearance with the despicable senator from Indiana, William Jenner, sitting on a platform with him at Butler University when Jenner attacked George Marshall as a man "not fit to have worn the uniform of a general" and calling him a traitor. Eisenhower's career had been saved by Marshall four times, first after MacArthur ordered the attack on the bonus marchers when Ike was MacArthur's number two, transferring him far away from the Washington scene; next jumping him over several others to be promoted to general; then agreeing to step aside to let him head D-Day; and finally telling him he could not get a divorce and marry his British Wren driver without ruining his career and reputation. Ike simply sat smiling vapidly during Jenner's speech and his only retort was "Well, we don't have to agree with all of the Senator's conclusions but he is entitled to his opinions." Next, I witnessed his assurance to Air Force personnel during the campaign later that fall that as a military man he understood concerns over the rumors there would be Reduction in Force and he would see to it there were no rifts in the Air Force. They came almost immediately after he assumed office. Finally, years later on an airplane flying over the midwest my seat neighbor noted the papers I was working on and asked if I were possibly an academic. I said yes and he said, "You may be interested in the story of how Eisenhower became president of Columbia University when I was head of its board." I said I would he recounted that he and a colleague who was sure the other board members were intent on hiring some retired corporate executive who knew nothing about higher education plotted to bring in a proven academic administrator and so they settled on suggesting Ike's brother Milton Eisenhower. "We made the mistake of saying we wanted to suggest Eisenhower without saying Dwight. Other members said that this was a superb idea, General Eisenhower would be a great choice and the bandwagon steamrollered before we could explain he was not the Eisenhower we had in mind. Later I was conducting tour of the campus when Dwight Eisenhower pointed to a building and asked what was that big building. I said it is the library and he said he liked its style and location and that perhaps we could turn it into administrative offices and that is pretty much the way he ran the university. Thank God he wasn't there long." I admire Steve's work on Eisenhower as General I still think his political acumen in the realm of domestic decision making was akin to his view of the Columbia University Library, the good things happened by accident the bad things were by accident as well. Edward M. Bennett To the Editor: In a letter published in the OAH Newsletter (November 2002), Paul Buhle castigates us for daring to ask him to document his outrageous claim that "among those Americans wounded or killed in battles protecting Israeli gains from Arabs [during the 1948 War of Independence] Communists played a prominent role." He sneers that had we done our "homework in the Daily Worker files" we would have found lots of proof. Buhle neglects, however, to cite a single article, story, name or date to support his assertion. We posted a challenge to him on the History News Network to do so and he declined. If he has the evidence, why won't he tell us where it is? And why, when asked more than a year ago in a private e-mail to reveal his evidence, did he direct us to an oral history interview that failed to support his claim? And why has no other scholar or journalist or political activist--including the Daily Worker's Palestine correspondent at the time--ever heard of this evidence? We once again ask Paul Buhle to supply his evidence or withdraw his claim. He should also supply evidence or withdraw his equally false claim, made in this newsletter, that the "Communism in American Life" books, authored by such distinguished scholars as Theodore Draper, Daniel Aaron, Clinton Rossiter, and David Shannon, was "secretly planned" by a CIA-linked entity. Harvey Klehr |
||