there it rose to a white-hot polemic in favor of freedom of thought and the right of democratic clubs to hold and propagate their subversive doctrines in the United States.
Ezra Stiles, as you can see, was a dangerous man. But the danger lay less in his own radical views than in the freedom he wanted for others, the freedom to read and from reading to think and speak the thoughts that dissolve old institutions and create new ones. That kind of freedom is as dangerous today as it was then. If we allow young men and women to read and think, we must expect that their thoughts will not be our thoughts and that they will violate much that we hold dear.
The danger may appear remote that such innovating thoughts could arise from the study of rare books and manuscripts in a library dedicated to the American past. There exists among many persons today an assumption that the knowledge of our past will engender among its possessors a reverence for the status quo. Partly as a result of this assumption, there has arisen a widespread demand that young Americans know more about their history. Examination of our high-school and college graduates has in fact revealed a shocking ignorance of American history.
Though I am perhaps a prejudiced observer, since I make a trade of studying and teaching American history, I share the general dismay at this ignorance, and I applaud all efforts to overcome it. In particular I applaud the attack at the root of the matter carried on in libraries. But I am not sure that the effect of wider knowledge will be what some of its advocates suppose. Several years ago one of our educational pundits sent out a questionnaire to college administrators with a question to this effect: Do you think that a better knowledge of American history would make American students less susceptible to other ideologies? I had not previously realized that American history was supposed to be itself an ideology, but that is clearly how this man thought of it, as a religion, of which the founding fathers were the prophets. I suggest that the study of American history could prove as productive of heresy in this religion of American history as the study of religious and philosophical treatises was in the Calvinist religion of eighteenth-century New England.
Let us take just one article in the creed of our American ideology, the article that reads, âAll men are created equal.â Ever since the Declaration of Independence, these words have enjoyed an almost sacred devotion from Americans. But history will reveal that Americans sometimes interpreted the words in ways that would not be greeted happily in all quarters today.
Would anyone, for example, care to have the student derive from a study of American history the idea that all men should have an equal amount of property? Such an idea sounds like one of those âotherâ ideologies. But listen to the Reverend Benjamin Trumbull, a sober and respected New England parson, advising the freemen of Connecticut how to vote in 1773:
It should also be the particular care of every civil community to keep their rulers as much as possible dependent on them, and intimately connected with them. For this purpose it will be highly politic, in every free state, to keep property as equally divided among the inhabitants as possible, and not to suffer a few persons to amass all the riches and wealth of a country: and also to have a special care how they adopt any laws, customs, or precedents, which have a tendency this way. For when men become possessors of the Wealth of a state, it will be in their power to purchase, or by undue influenceâ¦to thrust themselves into all places of honour and trust. This will put it in their power, by fraud or force to keep themselves in those important posts, and to oppress and tyrannize over their fellow-men. It will teach the people to look up to them, as to lords and masters, make them servile, and by little and little it will despoil them of all
Ezra Stiles, as you can see, was a dangerous man. But the danger lay less in his own radical views than in the freedom he wanted for others, the freedom to read and from reading to think and speak the thoughts that dissolve old institutions and create new ones. That kind of freedom is as dangerous today as it was then. If we allow young men and women to read and think, we must expect that their thoughts will not be our thoughts and that they will violate much that we hold dear.
The danger may appear remote that such innovating thoughts could arise from the study of rare books and manuscripts in a library dedicated to the American past. There exists among many persons today an assumption that the knowledge of our past will engender among its possessors a reverence for the status quo. Partly as a result of this assumption, there has arisen a widespread demand that young Americans know more about their history. Examination of our high-school and college graduates has in fact revealed a shocking ignorance of American history.
Though I am perhaps a prejudiced observer, since I make a trade of studying and teaching American history, I share the general dismay at this ignorance, and I applaud all efforts to overcome it. In particular I applaud the attack at the root of the matter carried on in libraries. But I am not sure that the effect of wider knowledge will be what some of its advocates suppose. Several years ago one of our educational pundits sent out a questionnaire to college administrators with a question to this effect: Do you think that a better knowledge of American history would make American students less susceptible to other ideologies? I had not previously realized that American history was supposed to be itself an ideology, but that is clearly how this man thought of it, as a religion, of which the founding fathers were the prophets. I suggest that the study of American history could prove as productive of heresy in this religion of American history as the study of religious and philosophical treatises was in the Calvinist religion of eighteenth-century New England.
Let us take just one article in the creed of our American ideology, the article that reads, âAll men are created equal.â Ever since the Declaration of Independence, these words have enjoyed an almost sacred devotion from Americans. But history will reveal that Americans sometimes interpreted the words in ways that would not be greeted happily in all quarters today.
Would anyone, for example, care to have the student derive from a study of American history the idea that all men should have an equal amount of property? Such an idea sounds like one of those âotherâ ideologies. But listen to the Reverend Benjamin Trumbull, a sober and respected New England parson, advising the freemen of Connecticut how to vote in 1773:
It should also be the particular care of every civil community to keep their rulers as much as possible dependent on them, and intimately connected with them. For this purpose it will be highly politic, in every free state, to keep property as equally divided among the inhabitants as possible, and not to suffer a few persons to amass all the riches and wealth of a country: and also to have a special care how they adopt any laws, customs, or precedents, which have a tendency this way. For when men become possessors of the Wealth of a state, it will be in their power to purchase, or by undue influenceâ¦to thrust themselves into all places of honour and trust. This will put it in their power, by fraud or force to keep themselves in those important posts, and to oppress and tyrannize over their fellow-men. It will teach the people to look up to them, as to lords and masters, make them servile, and by little and little it will despoil them of all
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