Sandburg in the Civil War Monitor

[Rob Wick]

Just a heads up that Mark Grimsley has written an interesting, and generally favorable, article on Carl Sandburg's contribution to Lincoln biography in the latest Civil War Monitor magazine. That Grimsley views Sandburg favorably goes against the grain of most academics, who find very little to like in either his poetry or biography. Just one more reason to pick up the Monitor!

Best
Rob

[Dennis Urban]

(02-25-2017 11:17 PM)Rob Wick Wrote:  Just a heads up that Mark Grimsley has written an interesting, and generally favorable, article on Carl Sandburg's contribution to Lincoln biography in the latest Civil War Monitor magazine. That Grimsley views Sandburg favorably goes against the grain of most academics, who find very little to like in either his poetry or biography. Just one more reason to pick up the Monitor!

Best
Rob

I read the article and agree; then picked up "The War Years" and read it through. First time I had read Sandburg. He has an interesting conversational style and weaves a nice story. I wish some of his obscure facts and verbatim speeches by some of the characters were footnoted. That would have helped me a lot. I like to know sources.

[LincolnMan]

Thanks Rob. Nice to see attention paid to Mr. Sandburg nowadays. I'll be checking it out.

[Rob Wick]

Quote:I wish some of his obscure facts and verbatim speeches by some of the characters were footnoted. That would have helped me a lot. I like to know sources.

Of course the issue of Sandburg and footnotes came up almost immediately after Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years appeared in 1926. The problem, though, is that the book was never intended by Sandburg or Alfred Harcourt to be a scholarly study of Lincoln's life. It was a poetic interpretation based on fact. Both The Prairie Years and Abraham Lincoln: The War Years were so fact-laden that footnotes, or endnotes, would have been too great a burden for the audience it was trying to appeal to (which it did very successfully). Even some academic historians recognized what Sandburg was trying to accomplish, and while they would never have let one of their graduate students get by with what Sandburg did, they were tolerant of Sandburg because they knew that he was the best spokesman for their own work getting wider recognition.

In 1943, James G. Randall, the preeminent academic scholar on Lincoln during the mid-20th century, wrote to Sandburg lamenting how the stigma of being an academic hurt his publishing opportunities. "I seem unable to overcome the stigma of being a professor," Randall wrote. "Walter Kiernan said the other day in his point-sized column: 'What this country needs is a good five-cent history book.' The public needs our products, but we don't seem quite adequate in putting it across to the millions."

Sandburg's attitude toward his work underwent something of a change between 1926 and 1939 when The War Years came out. The biggest reason for this, in my opinion, was the embarrassment caused by his role in the Wilma Minor affair. However, Sandburg also was amenable to the criticism of people who, instead of attacking him for being something he never claimed to be, gave him constructive criticism without demeaning his overall efforts. One of the best was Harry E. Pratt, who along with his wife, Marion, received special recognition from Sandburg in the single-volume condensation of the six volumes for his tireless effort to correct the errors that crept into the book.

In the course of my research on Sandburg, I came across a poem written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow that I will use in some way as an epigram. It comes from the poem "John Endicott."

“Nor let the Historian blame the Poet here,
If he perchance misdate the day or year,
And group together events, by his art,
That in the Chronicles lie far apart;
For as the doubled stars, though sundered far,
Seem to the naked eye a single star,
So facts of history, at a distance seen,
Into one common point of light convene.”

Best
Rob

[L Verge]

Great posting, Rob. And, I love this paragraph: In 1943, James G. Randall, the preeminent academic scholar on Lincoln during the mid-20th century, wrote to Sandburg lamenting how the stigma of being an academic hurt his publishing opportunities. "I seem unable to overcome the stigma of being a professor," Randall wrote. "Walter Kiernan said the other day in his point-sized column: 'What this country needs is a good five-cent history book.' The public needs our products, but we don't seem quite adequate in putting it across to the millions."

I fear the history field still needs fewer "professors" and more good writers who know how to hold a reader's attention. The good, hard details can certainly be conveyed in less boring text than what some of our current historians employ. I feel we need to interest the "unwashed masses" more than ever these days, and professorial drone is not going to cut it.

[LincolnMan]

Thanks for the further explanation of Sandburg's work sans footnotes. I ordered the magazine from Ebay- three bucks!

[LincolnMan]

I just read the article. It is rather short. It gives a history of Sandburg's work The War Years. The author notes how it has suffered a "sharp reduction in stature"- among scholars. I like his concluding remark that "Sandburg's The War Years deserves a fresh look, as does his status as a bard of the "American Iliad."

[LincolnMan]

In 1939, Harry E. Pratt gave a book review of The War Years as published in the Bulletin of the Abraham Lincoln Association in which he said in part:

“The foreward contains Sandburg’s comments on only a few of the sources of materials used. He excuses himself for not listing and evaluating them all by referring the reader to the evaluation of such materials by Professor James G. Randall at the close of Lincoln in the Dictionary of American Biography. No footnotes occur in the book which reduces the value of the work at least one half for any careful student.”

My comment: This has been the greatest objection to the Sandburg work, I think. Again, the “careful student” would be best to look elsewhere for such details. Sandburg, obviously, knew what he was producing when he spent years writing it. And despite the objection as stated, it remains my favorite work on Lincoln- hands down. I'm sure this is true for countless others.

[JMadonna]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-history...1495755666

Good article by Peggy Noonan on David McCullough’s observations on history from his new book.

• It is a story. “Tell stories,” said the historian Barbara Tuchman. And what is a story? Mr. McCullough, paraphrasing E.M. Forster, observes: “If I say to you the king died and then the queen died, that’s a sequence of events. If I say the king died and the queen died of grief, that’s a story.”

• What’s past to us was the present to them. “Adams, Jefferson, George Washington, they didn’t walk about saying, ‘Isn’t this fascinating, living in the past?’ It was the present, their present.” They were acting in real time and didn’t know how things would turn out.

• They were never certain of success. “Had they taken a poll in Philadelphia in 1776, [the founders] would have scrapped the whole idea of independence. A third of the country was for it, a third of the country was against it, and the remaining third, in the old human way, was waiting to see who came out on top.”

• Nothing had to happen the way it happened. “History could have gone off in any number of different directions in any number of different ways at almost any point, just as your own life can.” “One thing leads to another. Nothing happens in a vacuum. Actions have consequences.” These things sound obvious, he says, but are not to those who are just starting out and trying to understand life.

• We make more of the wicked than the great. The most-written about senator of the 20th century is Joe McCarthy. “Yet there is no biography of the Senator who had the backbone to stand up to him first— Margaret Chase Smith, ” a Maine Republican who served for 24 years.

• America came far through trial and error. Mr. McCullough tells the story of iron workers in 19th-century Johnstown, Pa. For months they’d been devising a new machine to produce steel. Finally it was ready. The engineer in charge said, “All right boys, let’s start it up and see why it doesn’t work.” Progress has come to us largely through empirical methods.

• History is an antidote to the hubris of the present. We think everything we have, do and think is the ultimate, the best. “We should never look down on those of the past and say they should have known better. What do you think they will be saving about us in the future? They’re going to be saying we should have known better.”

• Knowing history will make you a better person. Mr. McCullough endorses Samuel Eliot Morison’s observation that reading history improves behavior by giving examples to emulate. He quotes John Adams: “We can’t guarantee success [in the Revolutionary War], but we can do something better. We can deserve it.” This contrasts, Mr. McCullough says, with current attitudes, in which success is all.

And happy Memorial Day—our 47th since it was designated a federal holiday, under Richard Nixon, in 1971. It was earlier known as Decoration Day, created just after the Civil War to honor the brave and noble who gave their lives while serving in the U.S. military.

[LincolnMan]

(05-28-2017 07:53 PM)JMadonna Wrote:  https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-history...1495755666

Good article by Peggy Noonan on David McCullough’s observations on history from his new book.

• It is a story. “Tell stories,” said the historian Barbara Tuchman. And what is a story? Mr. McCullough, paraphrasing E.M. Forster, observes: “If I say to you the king died and then the queen died, that’s a sequence of events. If I say the king died and the queen died of grief, that’s a story.”

• What’s past to us was the present to them. “Adams, Jefferson, George Washington, they didn’t walk about saying, ‘Isn’t this fascinating, living in the past?’ It was the present, their present.” They were acting in real time and didn’t know how things would turn out.

• They were never certain of success. “Had they taken a poll in Philadelphia in 1776, [the founders] would have scrapped the whole idea of independence. A third of the country was for it, a third of the country was against it, and the remaining third, in the old human way, was waiting to see who came out on top.”

• Nothing had to happen the way it happened. “History could have gone off in any number of different directions in any number of different ways at almost any point, just as your own life can.” “One thing leads to another. Nothing happens in a vacuum. Actions have consequences.” These things sound obvious, he says, but are not to those who are just starting out and trying to understand life.

• We make more of the wicked than the great. The most-written about senator of the 20th century is Joe McCarthy. “Yet there is no biography of the Senator who had the backbone to stand up to him first— Margaret Chase Smith, ” a Maine Republican who served for 24 years.

• America came far through trial and error. Mr. McCullough tells the story of iron workers in 19th-century Johnstown, Pa. For months they’d been devising a new machine to produce steel. Finally it was ready. The engineer in charge said, “All right boys, let’s start it up and see why it doesn’t work.” Progress has come to us largely through empirical methods.

• History is an antidote to the hubris of the present. We think everything we have, do and think is the ultimate, the best. “We should never look down on those of the past and say they should have known better. What do you think they will be saving about us in the future? They’re going to be saying we should have known better.”

• Knowing history will make you a better person. Mr. McCullough endorses Samuel Eliot Morison’s observation that reading history improves behavior by giving examples to emulate. He quotes John Adams: “We can’t guarantee success [in the Revolutionary War], but we can do something better. We can deserve it.” This contrasts, Mr. McCullough says, with current attitudes, in which success is all.

And happy Memorial Day—our 47th since it was designated a federal holiday, under Richard Nixon, in 1971. It was earlier known as Decoration Day, created just after the Civil War to honor the brave and noble who gave their lives while serving in the U.S. military.

Thanks for posting this. Good read.