In coming to these foreign parts and before a guild of which I am at best a provisional member, I have but one advantage. I represent a constituency which probably has the highest density of historians of any in the country. A Senator from Massachusetts – whatever his personal credentials – can find refuge by invoking the great names of both the past and the present. A century ago the names of Parkman, Motley, Prescott and Bancroft were outstanding. Today I can associate myself with a tradition whose older generation includes names such as Morison, Merk, and Schlesinger; and whose younger half includes another Schlesinger, a Handlin, a Commager, and a Freidel. And in the interval between the last century and this, the ranks of Massachusetts historians included such formidable figures as Channing, Hart, and Turner.
Here in the upper Mississippi Valley I can take added courage from the fact that the history of this area has been brilliantly illuminated in its decisive phases by at least four historians, all of whom were either born or adopted citizens of Massachusetts – Francis Parkman, Frederick Jackson Turner, Frederick Merk, and Bernard DeVoto. Happily, in historical scholarship we have been able to reverse Greeley's injunction. Our cry to the budding historian is: "Come East, young man." So even when we are not able to nurture the young historian on our home ground, we are able to take him into captivity – Frederick Turner, Bernard DeVoto, Perry Miller, Arthur Schlesinger, Sr., Frederick Merk, Frank Freidel. When we fail in Cambridge, Amherst or Williams are not far behind, as Henry Commager can testify, having come to us from Illinois after a long stopover on the exposed frontier of New York City. The reasons for this eastward movement I discreetly leave to your own interpretation, preferably not to a Harvard man such as myself.
But as a politician I am well aware of these developments in the historical profession. For I recognize that we live in an age in which the politicians, who are the stuff of history, are also becoming their own historians. Statesmen of past eras sought the pleasures of quiet retirement. Cincinnatus returned to the plow. But the retired politicians of today – and we do not always retire voluntarily – are soon plying a new craft with the help of their file cabinets, a Dictaphone, and several pads of foolscap. Indeed, the statesman of today who does not compose his memoirs is considered either lazy or eccentric. Even General Marshall, who stoutly insisted on the contentments of a real retirement, has yielded to the blandishments of Clio and is helping in the preparation of his life's impressions. And though Mr. Truman identifies himself as a retired Missouri farmer, in reality a very large portion if his time has – to all our benefit – been lavished upon harvesting his memories and tending the library in Independence. Here, he hopes, future historians will check up on his memory, and further chronicle the decisive times which he influenced so significantly.
To cite another example, the entire Senate turned historian just a year ago. I have faced many sobering tasks in the Senate which I am thankful are past. Political division sectional conflicts and personal ties have often made difficult my decision as to the right answer on such questions as Civil Rights, agriculture, foreign aid or the St. Lawrence Seaway. All these I would willingly face again for the slings and arrows they brought are a part of the fortunes of politics. But one Senatorial duty I cannot recall without shuddering, without a sigh of relief that it will not confront me again – and that was my assignment, as Chairman of a Special Committee on Portraits for the Senate Reception Room, to pick the five outstanding Senators of all time.
If we omitted Calhoun, would there be a filibuster? If we neglected Sam Houston, would the Majority Leader cut off our appropriation? There were suggestions of a Congressional investigation of Daniel Webster's fees and Henry Clay’s morality. We were under pressure to pick a second team, or award honorable mention, or vote on another five every year.
Our Committee, as you will recall, sought to spread its burden by polling all Senators and by establishing, under Professor Nevins, a panel of some 150 scholars. Many of you were kind enough to serve. Fortunately, four of our choices – Clay, Webster, Calhoun and LaFollette – were among the top five on both the list of those endorsed by the Senators and those endorsed by our panel of historians and political scientists. Our other choice – the late Senator Taft of Ohio – was first in the Senatorial poll and among the top ten on the "experts'" list.
There were still some, of course who pointed out that Norris and Taft were controversial. They argued that only those winning universal acclaim should grace so select a list. But I reminded the Senate that even Clay, Calhoun and Webster in their own times did not always enjoy the wide recognition of their talents that posterity has given them. Listen, for example, to these words spoken about Henry Clay: "He prefers the specious to the solid, and the plausible to the true… He is a bad man, an imposter, a creator of wicked schemes." Those words were spoken by John C. Calhoun. On the other hand, who said that John C. Calhoun was a rigid, fanatic, ambitious, selfishly partisan and sectional "turncoat," with "too much genius and too little common sense," who would either die a traitor or a madman? Henry Clay, of course. When Calhoun boasted in debate that he had been Clay's political master, Clay retorted: Sir, I would not own him as a slave." Both Clay and Calhoun from time to time fought with Webster; and from the other House, the articulate John Quincy Adams viewed with alarm "the gigantic intellect, the envious temper, the ravenous ambition and the rotten heart of Daniel Webster."
In the Senate we also turn to history for precedents and principles – often in the manner described by Romain Rolland; "History furnishes to politics all the arguments that it needs for the chosen course." But we have turned to present-day historians as well for aid in the field of politics itself.
There have been times during the last two national campaigns when it appeared that Mark Hanna had found his modern-day image in Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. Every time the campaign train came to a halt, the shock troops of the Party were led by such doughty warriors as Walter Johnson and the late Bernard DeVoto.
And in an earlier day, the historian-scholar-statesman led all the rest. Hamilton, Madison and Jay in the Federalist papers or Jefferson in his Notes on Virginia, were writing both a work of outstanding historical interpretation and a brilliant if restrained work of political advocacy. And there have been countless others: the Adamses, Thomas Hart Benton, Theodore Roosevelt, Albert Beveridge, Claude Bowers, the elder Lodge, and many more.
But if American politicians have shown an appreciation for historians and their importance, American historians have not always reciprocated. They have not always regarded either politics as very desirable or politicians as very important aspects of our nation's history. Too many seem to agree modestly with Oscar Wilde that "It is much more difficult to write about a thing than to do it – Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it."
I do not underestimate the number of great men in this audience. But neither would I underestimate the importance of great men whose actions have helped shape our history. I do not agree with one of the great historians and biographers of our time, my good and learned friend who has helped me on more than one occasion, Professor Allan Nevins. Dr. Nevins feels, as I read his address at Stanford some time ago, that our emphasis in explaining the past should be not on individual leaders, but "on groups and masses, on trends and impersonal forces." Too much biography and hero-worship he warns, tends to over-dramatize, over-humanize, and over-simplify our history.
Certainly there is much in what Professor Nevins has to say. We can no longer accept Carlyle's dictum that history is the story of great men's lives. But that should not lead us away from the fact that men's lives – both great and mediocre – are the stuff of history. And the man on the spot at the crucial moment may leave on the course of history a unique impact all his own.
This has been true of inventors and their inventions, accepting Franklin's thesis that the world owes more to its great inventors than to all its warriors and statesmen. Eli Whitney and the cotton gin changed history – so have Einstein, Fermi, Oppenheimer and the atomic bomb.
It is true too, of generals and doctors, philosophers and poets and preachers. All have left their mark – all have meant something more than "groups and masses, trends and impersonal forces."
But it has been particularly true, I think, of politicians. "Government," said George Bernard Shaw, "is neither automatic nor abstract; it must be performed by human rulers and agents as best they can." And Senator George Frisbie Hoar of Massachusetts put it perhaps more directly, when he told the Senate: Only "when wars are fought to successful issues without planning the campaigns, when battles are won without generals… (only then will) good results come to pass under popular governments without politicians."
It is true that Abraham Lincoln, a humble man, said that he did not control events but was controlled by them. But, while admitting the large amount of truth in this, it is a foolhardy man, indeed, who would maintain that the crucial years between 1860 and 1865 would have been quite the same if Steven Douglas or William Seward had occupied the White House.
Had Senator Edmund G. Ross of Kansas not cast his decisive vote against the conviction of Andrew Johnson, the Constitutional structure of our government might well have been changed. We cannot dismiss his courage in throwing away a promising career by simply terming it the result of trends and impersonal forces. What if the leadership of a much abused George Washington and the vote of a much abused Humphrey Marshall had not secured Senate approval of the unpopular Jay Treaty with Great Britain – would a new outbreak of war have engulfed the infant nation before she was able to stand? What if Sam Houston's bride had not caused him the grief that drove him to Texas and the Conquest of Santa Ana? What if young Tom Benton's duel with Jackson had not moved him from Tennessee to Missouri? What if Columbus were cowardly, John Wilkes Booth sane, or Paul Revere a poor rider?
Such examples are not all far removed from our time or this area. George Norris, for example, is rightfully called the father of the TVA. Were it not for Norris – for his long, lonely fight against the private development of Muscle Shoals – for his tireless leadership in building a coalition and a program – I think it safe to say there would be no TVA today, with all its influence on the social and economic development of this country.
It has justifiably been written recently of Norris and the TVA that he "…added a dimension to the process of social change which can hardly be explained in group terms alone." The sparks of passion and independence, the concentration of fire upon a limited goal, the galvanizing of group forces into a particular pattern – these are the expressions, at least in part, of individual will and character.
I do not wish to overstate my case. I would not pretend that history is all biography – and I know that all biography these days is not history. But I would ask the historian to appreciate a bit more fully the role of the politician – of his frequent stand against these groups and masses and trends that might otherwise be shaping our history. And I would ask you to remember the words of Lord Melbourne, when he stated that he wished he were as sure of anything as the youthful historian Thomas Macaulay seemed to be of everything.
I realize the difficulty many historians have in respecting the politicians. You seek the truth of the past, pure and simple, without regard to changing currents of public opinion. In the political body, on the other hand, compromises and majorities and procedural customs and rights necessarily affect the ultimate decision as to what is right or just or good. And even when they realize this difference, most scholars consider their chief function to be that of the critic – and politicians are sensitive to critics (possibly because we have so many of them). "Many intellectuals," Sidney Hook has said, "would rather 'die' than agree with the majority, even on the rare occasions when the majority is right."
The historian, the interpreter of our times, is best suited to bridge this gap between the intellectual and political worlds. We need not fewer biographies but better biographies "below the summit" – the stories of the Senators and party leaders who helped to shape our history and heritage but who are forgotten in the welter of material on Presidents and Generals.
And finally, we look for still closer cooperation between our two professions. "Worthy deeds," said Milton, "are not often destitute of worthy relaters – as by a certain fate great acts and great eloquence have commonly gone hand in hand." Our nation today stands in dire need of both great acts and great eloquence. May the politician and the historian, hand in hand, fulfill both responsibilities. The Emperor Augustus and his historians boasted that he found Rome in stone and left it in marble. May it be our boast that we found America in danger – and left it in peace and prosperity.
Source: Papers of John F. Kennedy. Pre-Presidential Papers. Senate Files, Box 900, "Mississippi Valley Historical Association, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 25 April 1958." John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.