Transcripts For CSPAN2 Abram Van Engen City On A Hill 20240713

Happy may day. Thank you for joining us this afternoon in helping us make this program a great success. We have had over 350 people register for this from across the country and from places as far away as japan. I think it is about 4 00 a. M. In japan, so im not sure if that person made it, but still impressive that program has that much reachle i has that much reach. I would like to extend a special welcome to anyone who might be attending Virtual Program for the first time. Considering the size of the virtual crowd and the geographic spread, im sure there are some that are interacting for the first time. If you are not familiar with us, we are the oldest Historical Society in america. Were founded in 1791 and have been an independent Nonprofit Institution dedicated to collecting, preserving, publishing and sharing our state and nations history for the past 229 years. In these days of social distancing, we have been we have taken to hosting Virtual Events. We have Online Events planned for every week through june. Our Program Next Week is also on friday at 2 00 in the afternoon and is a virtual tour of plymouth, massachusetts, and the early pilgrims home. This year is the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the pilgrims. We hope you will be able to join us for that program as well. You can find details about this program on our website. Today we have a great program. Were joined by an associate professor of english at Washington University in st. Louis. He received his ma and phd in Northwestern University and his ba from calvin college. Hes published widely on religion literature focusing on the 17th century pure century puritans and the way they are remembered. We offer books for sale for our normal author talks. However while hosting Virtual Programs we cant do that. We encourage everyone to buy a copy of the book and we have an agreement with a local bookstore to sell and ship copies of the book. If you enjoy the talk, please consider buying a copy and supporting our locally owned bookstore. Before we welcome the professor, i will quickly run through a few points about how to use features of our zoom webinar. If you are interested in contacting us, this is some information for the Historical Society. Thats my name and the Public Program coordinators and our website and ways to contact us. As i mentioned, the massachusetts Historical Society is an independent nonprofit, so if you enjoy our work, we would also hope you would consider joining or supporting the organization with a donation. As Many Organizations are, we are collecting stories of peoples covid19 experiences. If you have a moment and are willing to share your time, we would encourage you to visit our website and check out our covid19 experiences page. During this program, there will be two ways for people to ask questions. The first is to use the q a function which you will see at the bottom of the screen, a little q a box. You can click on that, and you will be able to type in the question and we will present them [inaudible]. We have 200 or so people signed on already. Im not sure that we will get to every question thats asked, but we will do our best to answer as many of them as we can. If you would like to ask the question in person, theres also a raised hand function. You can click on that. We will be alerted that you raised your hand and we will try, time permitting, to allow a few people to ask questions in person as well. Once we click to allow you to ask a question, you will probably need to unmute yourself, so you know. Without further adieu, please join me in welcoming our speaker this afternoon. Thank you. Thank you all for being here. It is lovely to be able to give a talk to the mhs today and thank you gavin and sarah as well. I appreciate you all joining me today. Before we begin, i want to say a couple quick things. First were living in a world of uncut hair, so i appreciate that. Were also living in a world of faulty internet connections. Thats been known to happen to me at this house. If that happens today, i appreciate your patience, and please know that i will be back. What were going to do today just to begin is talk a little bit about what i mean by american exceptionalism and what is this history of american exceptionalism that im telling. To get us into that k i wanted to ask a question at the beginning. You can type answers to this question or think of an answer yourself. Im going to circle back to this question in a little bit. Heres the question what is the origin of america . When you think about where america begins or when it begins or with whom it begins, how do you start your story of america . Where do you start this story . Im going to circle back to that question in a bit and think about why that question matters. First, let me explain what were going to do today. As gavin mentioned, we have a fairly broad audience. Sol some folks are fellow scholars of history and literature, some folks are interested in the topic, we have mom out there. It is a broad audience today. Were going to talk about what we mean by american exceptionalism, what gets entailed in that concept, what its general history looks like, why that matters and what it has to do with a sermon in 1630. A sermon in where he says we shall be a city on a hill. Let me share my screen, and lets get started. All right. So what is american exceptionalism . When were talking about it, the general idea here is that were identifying the United States here referred to as america as a nation that is different from or distinct from or unique from all the other nations in the world, usually with an understanding of it as superior to those other nations and also with a sense of its role then in relation, the consequences of that distinctive superiority for its relation to all these other nations in the world. Theres a few ways to think about this. First and these have had salients at different times in American History. One way to think about this is that the United States is as a light to all other nations in the world. This was very prominent following the american revolution, so in the early years of the nation, 1790s, early 1800s, there was a strong feeling among a lot of prominent people that the United States had achieved something that other nations would want to achieve and would be seeking to achieve. And there was a feeling that they would be the model then for other nations, that other nations would want to emulate what we had done. This is the concept of the United States as a model nation. So here the concept of american exceptionalism is rather passive, that is, well model or demonstrate something that the rest of the nation can choose to emulate or not, as they see fit. Theres another sense of american exceptionalism that comes to the fore especially after world war ii. Theres this rise to power and wealth and prosperity and prominence that happens after world war ii, and you get a much more active sense of american exceptionalism. This is the concept that whatever blessings, prosperity, whatever weve got that we think is great, it is our duty and responsibility to bring those things to other nations. So this is the concept of the United States as a redeemer nation. The United States has a kind of duty or responsibility to save the other nations of the world, you know, whether theyve asked for it or not in a certain sense. In both of these concepts of american exceptionalism, theres often, though not always a religious sense entailed. This is the concept that its god and providence that has set apart this nation to have these kinds of roles, to have these kinds of distinctive features. And so this is the concept of the United States as a chosen nation. So a model nation, a redeemer nation, a chosen nation. When were talk about american exceptionalism, one of these concepts is at play almost always. Theres also two other elements behind american exceptionalism that are always at play even if they dont become explicit. That is first and foremost it is a comparative assessment. What youre basically saying when you set apart the United States as distinct is that you have in a certain sense looked at all the other nations of the world, that you know something about all the other nations of the world and therefore can claim that the United States is distinct. This is in a certain basic way youre making an implicit claim that you have knowledge about what all other nations of the world are like, in order to claim american exceptionalism. The second element also take here, though, and that is the historical claim. This is the part that really interested me most when i was writing the book. When we make claims to american exceptionalism, almost always what happens is we write a story of america that explains the exceptionalism. We claim that the United States is distinct, and we claim it because of x, y, and z history. It began here, moved here, did this and that, and it all depends upon the historical story of america, thats what sets it apart from other nations and gives it a particular role to play in human affairs. And just to give a sense of how that is actually a super crucial part of the idea of american exceptionalism, heres the definition of american exceptionalism that was given by the Republican Party in 2012. This is when mitt romney was candidate. The party platform, one of its planks was american exceptionalism which they defined as the conviction that our country holds a unique place and role in human history. So we could see the history is always at stake in the concept of american exceptionalism. What really interested me when i was writing this book, what the book is largely about is the writing of National History, how do we do that . Why do we do that . Whats at stake when we do that . Why is that such a fraught concept . And what are the various ways that it has been done over time . I was also particularly interested since im a scholar of puritanism and pilgrims in the 17th century, what role they have been given in the National Stories that have been written. Thats really what drew me to this project to begin with. That brings us back to the question with which we began, where and when does america begin . And you could think of your own answers to this question. The answers that are coming in, but if youre going to be telling a history of america, youve got to start the story somewhere, at some point in time. You have got to begin the story. The story has to have a beginning. I open my class on american exceptionalism with this question, and so ive done that multiple times, but we also set up a survey of 2,000 people, where we could track the answers with Demographic Data and Political Data and see how it all sort of shakes out. A whole bunch of answers come in of course to this question of where and when america begins. But some of the standard answers you might expect, the answers tend to congregate around certain answers, native americans, the first people in the americas, thats where america begins. Or you get an answer like columbus, so the european the first europeans in the americas. The story of america begins with european discovery of america. Or you get an answer sometimes, though, not as frequently, jamestown, virginia, that is the First Permanent English Settlement is the really the beginning of the story of america. Of course the may flower, the may flower compact and Plymouth Rock which i will return to in a moment and then an answer like the declaration, american revolution, constitution. So one of the things to see about this question is the question doesnt really make sense. What the question does is it tells us what you mean by america, sort of like a test, your answer to this question gives us your sense of the definition of america itself. And a lot is at stake in that sense of definition. A lot of my book is about origin stories and how we begin National Histories and why we begin in certain places and not others. One of the things at stake in this is the question of identity, so if you, for example, if you start the story of america with columbus, with your european discovery, what happens to native americans . How do they fit the story . How are they not part of the story before and suddenly become part of the story only when europeans arrive . How do they get then woven into the narrative that you are telling . But just as importantly, and this is the part that really drew me to this question, their accounts of purpose. Over and over again we see that what well see is that a certain origin story is given and the motive that started the people there is understood to be the motive that still drives and defines the nation now. So what purpose inspired america to come into being . And then the question becomes how do i now much later relate to that original purpose, which then defines what america stands for . So whatever people came for is what we now stand for. This is a claim thats frequently made especially in the histories that first get written in the 1800s. So this returns to the question of the pilgrims and the puritans, why are they such a prominent role in these origin stories . If you think about it, it doesnt really make sense, so native americans make sense. They are the first people in the americas. Columbus makes certain kind of sense, right, the first european in america, if you want to start there. Or you could start with the first english or the First Permanent English Settlement or the first this or that. The pilgrims and the puritans are not the first of anything. They are not the first europeans here, not the first english here, not the First Permanent English Settlement here. They are just not the first. And so how come they get woven into origin stories about what america is and what it stands for . And here the primary answer turned on a sense of purpose. So well see this again and again especially beginning in the early 1800s that by turning the origin of america to the puritans, you could isolate a purer purpose. You could claim that america was founded on a higher purpose and then use that to define what america now stands for, so you could make the claim, the claim is often made, that the pilgrims came for freedom so they were fleeing religious persecution. They came here for religious liberty and so on. They came for god, not gold. They came for selfgovernment and so on. These are all stories that get written about the pilgrims, and these are all of course good things. We like freedom. We like religious liberty and toleration. We like selfgovernmentful these are good things. We like selfgovernment. These are good things. By making the argument that the pilgrims began these things, we could then say that is the true story of america. What happens, though, that gets set in the way that Everything Else that happens in America First of all you need to make sure the story sticks. The puritans often made a lot of money often shipping slaves to the south, these parts of the story dont get mentioned, in order to make this sort of purer purpose stick. But the other thing that happens is that it allows us to not start with these questions. So the spanish we can claim gets claimed in these stories they came for gold and for all the wrong reasons and they are not really the true story of america. What also happens of course is that the south then gets dismissed as not really the true story of america. One person i study in this book a lot is a guy named perry miller. I will return to him in a little bit. He plays an Important Role in making the sermon famous. All he says about jamestown is it lacked the coherence which i could coherently begin. What happens then is slavery is not really the true story of america, if the true story of america starts with pilgrims and starts with the sense of freedom, then, yeah, theres slavery but not part of the true story of america, and it will disappear over time. In other words, whats at stake in these origin stories is a National History that leads us one way instead of another, that can elevate one history and down play another. Thats part of what im tracking in this book. When does this begin to happen . It begins to happen once you finally have a nation that needs a National History. Following the american revolution, you have this unique sort of interesting problem. Just think about this for a moment. The 13 colonies are all primarily related to england. They dont necessarily have a great deal to do with one another. The culture of virginia, the people of virginia and so on, it doesnt necessarily have a lot to do with the culture and people of massachusetts, but suddenly they are bound together as one nation. Well, how do you sort of elevate a sense of belonging together thats going to be greater than your sense of belonging to your state . It is one thing to claim youre virginian. It is another thing to claim that youre american in a way that has anything to do with massachusetts. Theres widespread recognition of this problem and a lot of cultural work goes into creating a National Identity that can be salient for people now that you have actually got a nation. Theres a lot of ways to approach this or understand this. Im just going to isolate three here, three things that begin to happen. First, people start making a ton of maps. Think about it, if your picture of your homeland or your country or your most sort of salient political identity is the borders of virginia, then what does it mean when they start unfurling maps, hanging maps in taverns painting maps on teacups that show you in a country with a political boundary that includes massachusetts, georgia and Everything Else . So they put maps all over the place so that people can picture themselves as one people. The other thing that happens is they start to emphasize civic rights and rituals, so the 4th of july, for example, becomes a really important holiday because its the one holiday that everybody in every colony can celebrate. They might celebrate it in their own ways, but it is a way of saying we belong together. Were one National Identity. We can practice and rehearse this National Identity together. Then the other thing that happens and the part that im interested in is they start to write a National History. Whats interesting of course about that is they dont have much National History yet. If you think about it, the 1790s, early 1800s, you only have a nation for about 10 to 20 years at this point. How do you write a National History of it . What happens in the first National Histories is the writers begin reaching back to the colonial era and beginning to pick and choose what is the origin of this thing that we now call the United States of america . Where does it really begin . How do we go back to that time and to those people who never thought of starting an independent nation and explain that they were in fact the roots o and the origins of this thing that we now have, this new nation . That begins to explode, this writing of history and National History in particular begins to explode, especially in the 1820s. This just gives you a little sense of that. In each decade from 1790 to 1830, historical works including historical fiction accounted for a quarter or more of americas best sellers, climbing to a peak of more than 85 in the 1820s. People were reading history like mad. The other thing that happens is that you have new state laws to teach history in Public Schools. First of all, you have new Public Schools and sending everybody to school is a new thing that begins to happen. And second of all, when they go to school, the states start requiring the teaching of history and of American History. Whats interesting about this is that they of course do have private schools still at that time. The folks who go to private schools are told to read and study the classics because the point is that they are supposed to become gentleman and the way you become a gentleman is by reading and studying the classics. The folks who go to Public Schools are supposed to be good citizens. The way to become a good citizen is to read and study history. The way the things get sorted out in the early 1800s. You also have new schools. You have new students. You have new state laws requiring the teaching of history. And for all these reasons, you just have a booming textbook market that begins to dominate. The thing about these textbooks is they are often the only way people get education. Teachers come and go. Students come and go. They have got to get to the fields. Theres a lot going on, but a textbook is forever. They take these textbooks home and pass them around to their family. You can see on the cover pages of these textbooks that they were not just written for students. They were written as a reference work for the entire family. These history textbooks become hugely important ways of embedding a cultural and national narrative. Heres a picture i love to talk about and teach. Theres a woman named emma willard in the 1800s who is really important and famous. She is a major proponent of womens education. She starts a school she basically says look weve got to educate women to the same standards we educate men. We need to take education seriously for everyone. She starts doing that herself. She starts a really important school. Today its called the Emma Willard School in troy, new york, but her students then fan out from this school and begin modelling that school elsewhere, and so basically she starts a whole movement of women schools all across the country and even gets picked up beyond the country, in places like columbia, scotland, russia, other places, greece, they begin to build these schools for women on the basis of the model of emma willard. Shes a very famous woman in her own day. The other reason that she becomes a household name, though, is because she starts writing textbooks. These textbooks sell immensely. She sold over a million textbooks during her lifetime, which aint bad. And the thing that made her textbooks so important and so different is that she thought of history as a thing that could best be learned if it were pictured. So he really starts the practice she really starts the practice of drawing historical maps in order for people to learn the history of the United States. She also thought that if all of history could be pictured at once, it could be sort of kept in mind and remembered. So this tree is her history of the entire United States. Her history of america all in one picture. Each branch in the tree is meant to be a key turning point in American History, and you can see as you go along here what turning points matter to her and which ones do not. She starts the story of america with columbuss discovery. She next turns to Gilbert Patton who nobody knows about today and she uses that to explain the beginning of explorations in north america, what is now the United States. Then notice that the first really basic settlement that becomes a turning point for her is pilgrims landing 1620. And shes quite explicit about that in the book. What does not get mentioned what gets skipped entirely of course is jamestown, virginia, the south. There is no turning point for them here. Theres no branch. They are just not a key turning point. The beginning of slavery is not a key turning point in American History. It is just left out of the tree. So the pilgrims become important, and for her in her account of things, it is the may flower compact that then paves the way for the constitution of the United States much later. So this is the way in which she begins to unfold the history of the United States. Theres another guy at the time, george ban croft who writes ten volume history of the United States and he becomes sort of the most famous historian of the United States at the time. And today still if you win the big prize in American History, you win the bancroft prize, named for this guy. This is his account of the pilgrims. He says the pilgrims showed the way to an asylum for those who would go to the wilderness for the purity of religion or the liberty of conscience. Therefore the citizens of the United States should cherish the memory of those who founded a state on the basis of democratic liberty. It was the pilgrims who scattered the principles of Republican Freedom and national independence. He go so far to say that basically the moment pilgrims set foot on Plymouth Rock, freedom dawned in america. We had at that moment Democratic Institutions that would carry us forward ever since. You could see again a way of founding purpose is tied to a present day because the pilgrims came to this, thats what we stand for and the rest of American History can be set aside in order to elevate this particular kind of story. Its not hard to see then with all this writing going on in the 1800s, how can we move forward and continue that kind of story to get to the point where, for example, Ronald Reagan in his last address to the public in 1989, this is farewell address, basically the very last thing he says to the public as president , and he says hes made a career on the basis of america being a shining city on a hill. In making that claim, he kept turning back to John Winthrop and his 1630 sermon that we shall be as a city upon a hill. Why does that matter to him . It says John Winthrop was an early pilgrim, an early freedom man. Hes sort of purposefully combining pilgrims and puritans into one origin story. What we came for is what we stand for. The question is do we still stand for it . He says how stands the city on this winter night and then concludes shes still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurdling through the darkness towards home. So the pilgrims establish us. Theyre the origin that defines us and our basic goal is just to stay true to the purpose. And thats kind of the trajectory that reagan spells out in this sermon. What interested me about this is of course the history of that sermon is pretty mysterious and odd. And by unfolding the particular dynamics of that history, of that one particular sermon that becomes so important to reagan, i could get at this larger way in which american exceptionalism creates the foundation that it needs to tell a particular story of america. Here, for example, is the cover page of John Winthrops 1630 sermon, a model of christian charity. This is at the new york Historical Society. They have this. And this is the cover page. Theres a couple things to note about it. First and foremost, it is not in winthrops handwriting and the second thing to note about it is its also not in a handwriting of the sermon itself, which is also not in winthrops handwriting. We have one copy of the sermon that remains. Its written in the hand that isnt winthrops and then its got this additional cover page in a different hand. We have no idea when this cover page was added to the sermon itself. The other thing you can see about this cover page it is kind of a mess, so youve got people writing over it and adding between the lines more details. Its clear that it wasnt added in 1630 because you just wouldnt, you know, give a sermon and suddenly have a cover page on it that describes John Winthrop, here it says in his passage with the Great Company of religious people of which christian tribes he was the brave leader and famous governor. Thats not a title page you would use in 1630, right after he gave the sermon. So we dont know when this cover page was added to the sermon. We dont have the sermon in winthrops own handwriting. And this is the only thing that places this sermon on the Atlantic Ocean at the moment when winthrop was coming over. Were not even sure that thats true. Theres a few other things about this sermon that we should note. First of all, it was never printed, published, quoted, or noted in its own day. Basically nobody paid it any attention at all. The manuscript was completely unknown to everyone for over 200 years. It was first found and First Published in 1838, and even then, after they found the sermon, and after they published the sermon, nobody paid any attention to it. Nobody said we have the key text of American Literature, the city on a hill sermon. They ignored it for another hundred years and said oh thats kind of a long sermon by an early puritan, and they set it aside. And then finally, it started to gain National Prominence in the 1940s. Thats when it begins to take off. You could track this in a number of ways. But here, for example, is the cover the contents pages. On the left is 1961. Basically this is one of the most prominent such anthologies that we have got. In 1961, the sermon at that point had become decently well known. Perry miller was a harvard scholar. He spent the last years of his life sort of claiming that this sermon was in fact the foundation of American Culture, and perry miller has a sort of very intriguing story that i tell more of in the book. But im not going to get into that here. But anyway perry miller dies in 1963. It is known but not considered important. In 1961 it is not even included in the Norton Anthology of American Literature. By 1979 it is the first text in American Literature. It is chronologically out of place, bradford came before winthr winthrop, but they put winthrop first. They say this is the text that explains the development of American Literature. 1961, hardly known, ignored, neglected. 1979, the key text of American Literature. You can check this in other ways as well. So over the course of about five or six years, i worked with a team of students to track every citation of city on a hill or city upon a hill or its variants in google books from 1800 to the present day. You could then tell what this phrase is being used for, what its referring to, and you can see here from this chart that the phrase basically is not referring to winthrop or his sermon until about the 1940s and then increasingly and increasingly it becomes the phrase of winthrop, the foundational sermon of america. Another way to track this as well. City on a hill is a phrase that jesus used. It is in the sermon on the mount. It is in matthew 5 14. He explains it his followers will be as a city upon a hill. Through the 1800s the primary reference for city on the hill is the church. The church is understood to be the city on the hill. Not necessarily a political entity, not a city, not a country, etc. The main way that this phrase gets used is its used to describe the church or christians or followers of jesus, or apostles, disciples and so forth. It is a religious phrase. Following world war ii, we can begin to see more and more frequently this phrase begins to describe america or the United States. So actually weve got more charts elsewhere, but they can show the way in which a phrase that referred to the church was quite you can actually chart the way it was taken over by the nation so that the nation defined itself in the very phrase and the very term that used to define the church. So this leads to the second part of my talk. Let me see how im doing here. All right. Why we have winthrops sermon at all. The simplest answer to that question is because of historical societies that saved it, preserved it, printed it and somewhat promoted it. That raises the question why do we have historical societies at all . Every answer i get i always just ask another question i guess. Heres the table of contents for my book. The part i want to focus on here just a little bit at the end is this part, this idea of how we have the materials from which we begin to write American History or National History and what goes into the collection of Raw Materials and records and papers and manuscripts that then provide the basis for these tales of American History that we tell. So mhs was founded in 1791, it is the first of its kind in america, and it begins the model begins to spread after that. The problem that the founder of the mhs had is that as he looked around, he noticed that papers and manuscripts were constantly being lost, either burned or plundered or whatever, so these are all mentions of losses that he makes when he found the mhs, all these events that happened recently and everyone knew about them. The other thing thats guiding him at this time is basically a powerful sense of american exceptionalism, so he is one of these figures that believes america has achieved what no other nation in the world has yet achieved and as a result all other nations in the world would be looking to america to want to know its history so as to emulate it for themselves. Hes driven by the sense in which we need to collect the papers and preserve the records of American History so that other nations can see it and track it and follow it themselves. Thats guiding the process of the creation of historical societies. Theres our man on the left, jeremy belnap. Hes a bit portly. Theres some stories about him hiking that are funny, but anyway, his basic idea was that we needed a safe repository, a place to hold all these records. The guy on the right is Ebenezer Hazard which is a fabulous name to begin with, but his basic role in this whole scheme was he said look you cant put everything together no matter how many times we put things together in a safe house, no matter how safe that house, it will burn down or be plundered or something. His idea was weve got to copy everything because if we copy everything and we distribute everything, then once we lose one copy, we will still have another copy somewhere else. So basically these two joined forces. They become very good friends. They write a whole series of letters together. And what happens is they bellnap founded the massachusetts Historical Society on the urging of hazard basically, they start the collections of the massachusetts Historical Society. Basically they start printing a selection of what theyve got in order to basically to preserve it but also to bring it out to the public so the public can read its own history. It is in this series of collections that winthrops sermon first appears in 1838, the first printing, the first appearance really of that sermon in 1838 is in this collections of the massachusetts Historical Society. Thats where its printed, but thats not where its held. As i mentioned it is held at the new york Historical Society. Thats where the only copy was found. Whats interesting about that is that the new yorkers did not really care about the sermon. They found it. They looked at it. And they said oh i bet the mhs would be interested in this, this is kind of their history, not our history. When the new york Historical Society, they celebrated the dutch in 1609 and hudson and so forth, when they came across this 1630, 20 years later this sermon by a puritan they thought it is kind of boring. They wrote to mhs said do you want this sermon weve got . We will make a copy of it for you. Thats how the mhs got ahold of it but the new yorkers didnt really think of it as important. What is important is that the new york Historical Society which was founded by john pintard, i often describe a bit of his rather colorful story in the book, they built themselves on the model of the mhs. And pretty quickly after these historical societies began to increase, rapidly, so in 1812 i think in 1812, you get the american society, thats the third, and then in the 1820, they just start to proliferate. Now today if you live in new england and you walk around to various small towns, almost all of them have some form of Historical Society, a collection of papers, preservation of the past. And its a Huge Movement that has in fact saved a great many papers from the past. Whats important to understand about this process, though, is that as you go about preserving the past, youve got to make choices. Its not as though everything that ever comes in gets saved. In particular, when the thing that gets saved is what you go out looking to find, which is how belnap operated, what you will go out looking to find is the kinds of papers and records that you think of as important. Those are the kinds of papers and records that are going to support the kind of story you have of america. This was basically belknaps story of america. Their example was followed by others and in north america the oppressed of europe have always found safety and relief. Basically belknap who was a minister, preached and spoke this kind of story again and again. It is a story of being founded in liberty. The story of American History, the progress of liberty and the records that he wanted to preserve would explain how the progress of liberty works. The problem with that story is that it doesnt work very well with native americans. And belknap increasingly recognized this problem. The more he celebrated america as a progress of liberty, basically the less tolerance he had for native americans at all. And by the end of his life, he basically thought that they just needed to disappear. They just need to go away, recede into the wilderness and get out of the way so the story of america could continue. And what you see happening and sort of the big point of this story is that theres a reciprocal relationship between a National Archive and a national story. The story guides the collection that makes the archive, and then when people go to the archive to see about the past, what they come out with is often a replica of the story that guided the archive to begin with. Theres more going on than that which i will get back to in a moment. Theres this intense reciprocal relationship there going on. What to do with native americans who were clearly here, and basically i talk in the book about how the presence ongoing presence of native americans both then and now has excepted for american exceptionalism has represented for american exceptionalism a problem. Its meant to enhance certain kinds of values which just dont work if you begin the history of native americans. Heres how various people solve this problem, belknap and willard and others, they make native americans part of the wilderness setting, they are kind of like the trees, kind of here, they are part of the blank slate for when the story begins when europeans arrive. We can see that happening here especially. Like i said emma willard was partly famous for her historical maps and this is the first map in her book. It is called an introductory map. It is an account of where the native american nations were and her best sort of account of how they moved around and where they were located. She calls this an introductory map, which is interesting. The next map in the series is called then the first map and it is an account of the arrival of europeans. Even her map of native americans is not even considered the first map of the story. It is just basically a setting of the scene. Belknap does the same sort of thing. His famous book was called the foresters, an account of American History told through anyway, its an account of American History in which he basically makes native americans part of he compares them to the bears and the wolves in the wilderness and they are just there. They are just the landscape against which the story unfolds. So of course it would take much later, different sorts of archives to recover the papers of native americans, to claim that they are in fact part of the true american story, part of the same National History. So for example, this is a fellow, he was a convert to christianity, an important preach and minister. E traveled to england. He was a voice for native americans. And basically belknap by the end of his life spent time mocking and dismissing this guy and basically never would have thought to collect the papers of this guy, and it took a later archive and the work of others to basically come around and say this guys papers have to be preserved. Theyre part of the story. One way to think about historical societies then is that they are in some ways vast institutions of loss. Theyre sort of like this swelling of voices in the midst of a sea of silence. And what gets selected out of that sea is guided by certain choices. Preservation requires selection. On the other hand, and i was really hoping the internet would not give out right there, because on the other hand, these institutions are also vast institutions of gain, because of the work of belknap and pintar and hazard and others because of the historical societies all across america, we have tons and tons of papers and records which do not necessarily read themselves so well into the story that belknap sought to collect. When i was working at the mhs and i was reading through papers and letters, between belknap and hazard, there are all these books that were win with the help to have resources that were written with the help of the resources at mhs. Three were more prominently displayed, and they were new accounts of native American Culture history in early new england and all of them used resources at the mhs to be able to tell that history. You could see there, i mean Jeremy Belknap would never have imagined writing such books or imagine he was collecting materials that would help write such books and yet our ability to help write those books is because of the materials collected by him and by the society that he started. So these things work in dynamic and complex ways and with each of the characters that i talk about in my book, perry miller, emma willard, Jeremy Belknap and others there are a lot of complex dynamics going on. They are not just heroes and not just villains. The work they go have a lot of consequences in multiple directions. Let me just conclude that and we could turn to some q a. I wrote a bit of this conclusion out just to get it right. Heres what i want to end with then, why are we talking about these Historical Societys . Among all the papers preserved by all this effort was one manuscript that would change the political rhetoric. Historical societies which were themselves formed through a powerful belief in american exceptionalism discovered preserved and promoted a lost and forgotten text, which then later enabled others to make that text the very definition and origin of american identity and purpose. My book explains what this sermon meant in its own context 17th century, how it was lost and why it was found and how it rose to prominence after world war ii. The story of this one sermon allows me to tell a much broader story about how and why americans have gone about writing the National History and how and why they so often begin the history with the pilgrim. This year marks the 400th anniversary since pilgrims landed in plymouth. It seems like an appropriate time to think through what generations and generations of americans have said about the pilgrims and about the puritans and how we have understood them and what role they have played in the stories that we tell of our nation. Thats it. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for that very interesting talk. This is a point where if we were at mhs, everyone would start clapping. But unfortunately, we cant do that virtually. Instead, well just turn to some questions. This question said recently are there [inaudible]. I think they have become increasingly as a dichotomy. I dont think they were thought of as a dichotomy in early period. When belknap was thinking america founded on a certain principle, he was also thinking about it as a certain white version of American History. They werent as dichotomy. He didnt struggle to dismiss the south. He just did it or to dismiss native americans, he just sort of did it. He didnt really see the dichotomy there as much as we might now. I would also like to point out that people who are online watching this that you can raise your hand if you would like to, or you can type a question in. So we also have a question, was winthrop channelling an idea about america in his sermon that became a conceptual idea notwithstanding the sermon itself being abandoned i mean the whole first section of my book is what was winthrops actual message . What was he trying to get at in that sermon . You know, for a long time the idea was that this sermon was establishing new england as the forefront of history, a model for all others to follow, a singular sort of exceptional model for all others to follow. Then there was a sort of revisionist moment in history where they basically said no, no, winthrop basically didnt want to be noticed by anyone. He was seeking anonymity. This is not about modelling anything. It is not about exceptionalism. Basically, im in the middle on that. I think he thought of the society he was founding as kind of a model. He never thought of it as a singular model. What hes doing in the sermon is looking at other models saying we should be like those models, we should be a model in all the other models in the communities of the world. The key to his sermon is to think of it as a community of love. Theres a Reason Charity is in the its thele. In the title. He basically says if we love each other well, of course well be a model, just like any other community that loves each other well. And so thats sort of the gist of the sermon. The question what was the reaction to a speech when he tried to pull native americans back into the story . I was left hanging at the end of the chapter. Yeah. That was a very fun theres a whole piece in there about a very important native american activist and voice and intellectual any the early 1800s how he rewrites the history entirely. Where the pilgrims are folks who are after gold and are willing to slaughter native americans to get rich and so on. It is very hard to know what the reaction of that particular story was. I think the reaction was i dont know. The long and the short answer is i dont know what the reaction was to his speech when he gave that speech in boston in 1836. What i do know is that the views in new england were quite mixed at the time. So its not right to think that everybody was, for example, in favor of indian removal. There was a lot of, you know, whites as well in new england, for example, who thought indian removal as atrocious, an atrocious policy. They werent necessarily antiracist, but it was a sort of complex view of things. So i can imagine there being quite a bit of applause for the speech as well as disgruntled folks in the audience. We dont have many raised hands, but thats fine. The next question is, can we dismiss the ideas in the sermon as the ideas of one man who may have held these ideas alone, or could he have been expressing beliefs shared by those around him . Thats a great question. I think the longer we look at the sermon, one of the reasons given for why it made basically no splash at the time is because it just echoed Everything Else everyone was saying at the time. So one explanation for why it never came to fame in its own days is because basically winthrop was not that original, when he gave this sermon, and theres some great work by francis bremmer in the new england quarterly a while ago about the way that this sermon echo a ton of sermons that winthrop would have heard growing up. So i dont think that its right to say it is a singular person that we can dismiss. I think hes echoing a lot of people, and it is a fairly common place sermon at the time. The nationalistic history generated at the beginning of the 19th century impact a Reform Movement that gained power towards the close of the 19th century. Can you say that question again, sir . I missed that first part. How did the nationalistic histories generated at the beginning of the 19th century impact the progressive Reform Movements that gained power towards the close of the 19th century . Thats a great question. I do not know the specific answer to that, but let me punt on that by explaining what sort of happens in my book as i talk about how these National Histories take shape in the late 19th century. So one thing that emerges is that first of all you do have reformers, a lot of reformers in the mid 19th century who are reaching back to puritans for inspiration and claiming theres a book that just came out like last week which is a great book on the role of sort of reimagining the puritans in the Abolitionist Movement and well worth another talk at the mhs. But at the end of the 19th century, you begin to splinter into different traditions. One of them is this sort of celebration for the pilgrims and puritans for bringing freedom and democracy and so forth, but you also get at the same moment a radical opposition tradition which basically says the puri tans came here for principle of freedom but then just oppressed everybody. Basically the history of america is the history of escaping from their grasp. Whats interesting about both of those traditions is that both of them say basically that america is what it is because of the puritans and neither one of those say america is what it is because of virginia. They are still in many ways opposite traditions. We have a couple people who have raised their hands. Theres a paul lambert. Im going to allow him to speak. Paul, can you hear us . Yes, i can. Can you hear me . Yes. Excellent. Okay. This is maybe a technical question, but John Winthrop wasnt a clergyman. John winthrop was a politician, a lawyer. Uhhuh. And the city on a hill addresses is always referred to as a sermon. Uhhuh. First of all, since he wasnt a minister, was it really a sermon . Uhhuh. And number two, if it wasnt a sermon, does that mean it maybe carried less weight with the people who were listening to it in 1630, and maybe thats why it should be given less weight if youre looking back at it now . Yeah, thats a great question. Right, so he was a governor and a lawyer and not a minister. Puritans did have this thing called lay prophesying. Thats the name for it. Basically what it means is sermons from people who are not ministers. There was a long practice of that, and thats what i basically believe this to be is a sermon by someone who is not a minister. The reason i argue that its a sermon, and i get into this in the book, i mean, this is where i start to get into my sort of literature side of things, i love to think about the genre of this sermon and the way that genre relates to other genres of for example puritan sermons so it follows all the parts of a normal puritan sermon, it is structured like that. In the book i talk about how though it goes step by step through all those parts actually the first two parts where you begin with scripture, because you cant just make up doctrines, is missing. And so it seems to me that what weve got is actually a corrupt text, and so and theres a lot of ways in which we know it is corrupt, but this is a further way in which i think it is corrupt. It follows all the genre expectations of a puritan sermon but doesnt start with scripture. I think probably what happened over transmission is we lost say the first page of this which is not unusual in manuscript transmission. I get into that in the book. Jenny has her hand raised. Were going to allow her to speak. Jenny, did you have a question . I did. Thanks for this great presentation. It was really i mean, it was really thank you. Made me think about some other things im reading right now. For instance, i just finished the trials of thomas martin. We have a real antagonist of the puritans here. Uhhuh. He points out that people like Nathaniel Hawthorne for instance in the early 19th century start creating narratives where the puritans are not the good guys. Right. And i was wondering if you could talk a little bit about how these narratives, these literary narratives that are coming up that are championing kind of an alternative view of American History, and the narratives by people like emma willard, are they existing in separate strains that just arent talking to each other, or are they kind of ripping on each other a little bit . Yeah, yeah, so i get into that in many i book because what you begin in my book because what you begin to see happening as an emphasis of what happens among literary writers like hawthorne which contrasts with the emphasis of textbook writers like willard. History begins to write the pilgrims in one way while folks like hawthorne write the pilgrims another way. You begin to see the split so you could have it both ways the split between the pilgrims who become heroes and the puritans who become villains. In the 1800s, pilgrims can still be celebrated. You will see this happening some folks will say the pilgrims never really had an ordained minister which is what saved them from being so awful. The puritans were sort of power hungry and filled with the clergymen who made it terrible. You begin to see the split between the pilgrims and the puritans are the bad guys. There is a reason, reagan is articulate about this reason why he calls winthrop a pilgrim not a puritan. Reagan doesnt want to associate his good guy, his foundation of america with a puritan because they have all these sort of negative associations by that time. So hes quite conscious about saying well, you know, winthrop was a pilgrim like all people who travel are pilgrims so im going to call him a pilgrim because that sounds a little better. Theres a way in which these origin stories get mixed and messed around with in order to make the point people want to make. So sarah typed in a question. In your research, did you happen to come across references to america as a city on a hill in popular media, like films, given the rise and the use for the phrase in the 80s, it would be interesting to see if there are connections between that phrase and popular films of the era . Yeah, that would be great to see, and i encourage you to go see. We studied the google books database, and that had so many citations that it was all that we could do to basically track and graph that data. That data did not tend to have unless it was like a print printed account of the film it didnt tend to have the film references in them. Ever since i had kids, i have stopped watching movies, and so my own knowledge of movies is rather limited at this point. But anyway, that would be interesting to see how it shows up in these various films in the 80s and 90s. I think we can take one more question and michael has raised his hand so we can allow him to speak. Hi, can you hear me . Yep. Hi, great talk. Thank you very much. Thank you. Even in this form. My sense of that sermon has always been that it and i typed this up but i realize i didnt phrase it as a question. When winthrop refers to it is very selfaware on his part, in other words, you can extract portions of that sermon where he says we are a company professoring ourselves dot, dot, dot, so i wondered to what extent selfawareness professing ourselves dot, dot, dot, i wonder if perception of selfawareness is a factor and why that sermon rose to the top of the heap over the last 50 years . Whys interesting about his selfawareness is how aware he is of how everything can go wrong. That doesnt necessarily filters into the ways in which it gets used. The one of the things hes very aware of is first of all how over err colony has failed every other colony has filled in some miserable way. One of the baselines of this sermon is lets love each other and not die. Thats the baseline message. If we start going after a selfish pursuit of profit at other peoples expense, this thing is not going to last. Hes very aware of the company that they keep. He is in a certain sense i mean the way i write about it is hes trying to create the community that he envisions. So by saying that we profess ourselves fellow christians and we say that we love one another and so on, what hes trying to do is create a community of fellow christians who love one another. The sermon is in a certain sense trying to initiate what he is describing. And i think thats part of the way in which then it makes itself accessible to be reused by others later as the foundation moment of American Literature and history. Want to be conscious of peoples time. It is about 3 00. Thank you very much for this presentation. It was great, and im glad to see that your background has mhs in it. Yes, absolutely. It is sunnier in your picture than it is here. Im sorry that we werent able to get to everyones question, but i would encourage people to buy a copy of the book. Here is a slide with some information about local bookstores that were encouraging people to purchase from. And it is just a few blocks from where abram is currently standing. [laughter] id also point out that the massachusetts Historical Society is as i mentioned an independent nonprofit. We are able to bring programs like this to people thanks to the support of our members and donors who we are awaur of the fact that during who we are aware of the fact that during the covid19 crisis, many people dont have the ability to support nonprofits, but if you do happen to have the ability to do so, we would certainly appreciate a show of your support by either joining mhs or making a donation. I hope everyone will buy this book and consider supporting mhs. We hope everyone has a great rest of their friday afternoon. Thanks. Tonight on book tv, a look at best sellers and Award Winning books. Beginning at 8 00 p. M. Eastern, author eric larsen discusses the splendid and the vile that looks at Prime Minister churchills leadership during the london blitz. Then James Patterson and his latest book on the politics of the kennedy family. Later the announcement of the 2020 J Anthony Lucas prize. The winners announced during this Virtual Event included the author of the book black radical and the author of an american summer. Watch book tv, tonight and over the weekend on cspan 2. In his new book, talking to strangers, author Malcolm Gladwell details why he thinks people make inaccurate judgments about people they dont know. You can step on out now. I dont have to step out step out of the car. Im going to drag you out of here. You are going to drag me out of my own car . Get out of the car. Shes imprisoned for resisting arrest and then three days later she hangs herself in her cell. You know, a tragic and unexpected result, but the whole that exchange that we saw, which by the way goes on and on and on and on, we only saw a small snippet of it, is that was the kind of when i first saw that online, that was when i realized what i wanted to write about because if you break that exchange down, moment by moment, you see multiple failures of understanding of empathy, of a million things. Sunday night at 8 00 eastern on cspans q a. Good evening, everyone. My name is gilbert martin. Im from burmans bookstore. I would like to thank everyone for joining us tonight for [inaudible] for a Virtual Event, in conversation, presenting the book stealing home los angeles the dodgers and the live in between. Were excited and grateful that our bookstore can continue to bring authors to our community during this uncertain time. We will be hosting more Virtual Events in the future. You can learn about them on our website as well as our social media. Our next event is this coming tuesday, april 28th, at