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CLIO, MINERVA AND THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC
Zuckert, Michael
Zuckert, Michael
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Abstract
Gordon Wood’s Creation is surely one of the most successful first books of the twentieth century. It made an immediate impression when it was published in 1969, and it has remained a seminal study of the founding era. As is true for all other scholars of that era, it has been a tremendous influence on my own work. On rereading it in preparation for this event I was once again impressed by the net-full of sources he caught up in his researches, and even more by the large number of truly impressive insights he presents to his readers. Even after the almost 60 years during which the book has been in circulation, so much of what he says still has the aroma of freshness and the power of revelation.
My rereading also brought back to mind some of my abiding thoughts about differences of perspective traceable to the different disciplines from which we approach the material. These differences are real, despite the fact that we share a basic concern with the intellectual or, as Bailyn put it, “ideological” origins of the American republic. And, despite the fact that we also agree that the Americans had created a “system without a precedent,” as Madison once put it, and a new political science to match.
One manifestation of the difference in perspective is formal. As I have already suggested, Gordon, like historians in general, casts a wide net; he quotes small passages from many sources. He does not normally spend much effort in interpreting or analyzing the individual intellectual quotations he garners. I think of this as horizontal history. We political theorists are inclined to a more vertical sort of history. We don’t scan so wide a horizon, but drill down into the bits we find. “Drill, baby drill,” is our motto. Now, I think the two, the horizontal and the vertical, do not necessarily contradict each other, but should instead complement each other, each adding something to what the other brings.